Arabic in the fray (al-'Arabiyyutu fī al-maydān) is an apt description of the fields of meta-linguistic data that have been examined in this book. These data were considered for what they say about fuṣḥāArabic to decipher the language ideology that they encode, as well as to show how Arabic, both as a symbolic resource and ideological site, is used to do politics, with a small p, in society. These themes run throughout the book, although some are better illustrated in some sites than others. Language ideology has been closely examined in Chapter 3, dealing with paratexts and the various tropes that are used in Arab culture to talk about the state of Arabic in modern times. Doing politics through culture, via language symbolism, is best illustrated in Chapter 4, wherein hybrid literature has been read as an inter-cultural phenomenon, in which language dialogism plays an important part. Both themes of ideology and cultural politics are encoded in other sites: the role of language and script in constructing national identities, the (in)imitability and (un)translatability of the Qur'an and their link to shu'ūbiyya and, finally, the use of Arabic to generate readings of the Arab mind. In all of these sites, the notion of the ‘fray’ is ever present, whether directly or indirectly, as a contextual factor that points to conflict.

This chapter pursues the twin themes of language ideology and cultural politics by considering issues of textual identity and language choice in hybrid texts. As understood here, hybrid texts (prose fiction) are texts written by authors of Arab origin – descent or heritage – not in Arabic, but in another language, such as French, English or Hebrew, among Palestinians in Israel. These texts are assigned to different cultural locations, which may be defined by the dominant language of the text, the background of the author or in a third space or twilight zone between these two worlds. One of the main arguments of this chapter revolves around the dialogic nature of these texts in the linguistic sphere, in the sense that the overt/present language of the text always recalls its covert/absent language. The interplay between languages, their ideologies and cultural politics is enacted through this dialogism. Language symbolism and language as proxy are used as the main tools for investigating the above issues. This chapter reveals that hybrid texts are another rich site for exploring language in the social world and never more so than when conflict, whether in reality or as memory, is simmering in the background.

This is a book about Arabic in the social world in the pre-modern and modern periods. It deals with identity and conflict in society, showing their continuity as features of social life, as well as the variety of ways in which they are manifested through debates about language in the political, cultural and theological spheres. The book therefore straddles many areas, hence the reference to the ‘social world’ in characterising the book, rather than framing it under ‘sociolinguistics’ or the ‘sociology of language’ as general headings, although it addresses researchers from these two constituencies from multiple perspectives. Owing to this broad framing, the book will be topic based and thematic, rather than chronological. It selects a few productive sites from which to pursue the twin themes of identity and conflict through, not in, language and deals with them in reference to the set of principles outlined below. The data utilised for this book are therefore second order perspectives on language, rather than data that are culled from language use, as is customary in formal linguistics. In other words, the data contained within this book are meta-linguistic, rather than linguistic in nature. Owing to this, these data tend to relate to the extra-linguistic world, rather than issues of linguistic structure or how data of this kind directly relate to social variables, such as those that abound in Arabic correlational sociolinguistics.

This chapter provides a comparative perspective on language construction in the non-scriptal and scriptal worlds. It does so by reference to the symbolic function of language. The use of language as proxy in expressing conflict in society reveals its availability for expressing competing narratives of the in-group and the out-group. The chapter deals with these topics by exploring three processes in language construction: identification, differentiation and distanciation, relating them to issues of national identity and inter- and intra-group political conflict. Language ideology is central to this exploration, as is the use of language to do politics through culture in society. A secondary aim of this chapter is to counter the folk-linguistic idea in the Arabic-speaking world that what is called fuṣḥā Arabic stands outside this constructivist paradigm, largely owing to its longstanding status as a standard language.

Introduction

Standardisation has the effect of making languages assume the status of natural categories of the social world. This is particularly true when language standardisation has deep roots in history, as is the case for Arabic. Most Arabic speakers are unaware of the constructed nature of their language, both at the status and corpus planning levels, or of the ideological factors involved in the complex and multi-layered process that led to its emergence as a marker of identity. The fact that this process is linked to ideas about uniformity, correctness, purity and ethnic election requires excavation, in order to bring it into the overt discourse about the language in folklinguistic terms.

This chapter continues the exploration of the symbolic function of language by considering an important text that marks the transition from the premodern to the modern period. It then moves to explore the cognitive role that Arabic plays in connecting thought with reality. This chapter examines two modes of performing this task: the behaviour-centred and the structure-centred approaches, with emphasis on the former, owing to its dominance in attempts to study Arabic from a cognitive perspective. The data for this analysis are a set of texts in Arabic and English, which, in spite of their differences, exhibit similarities in terms of method, as reflected in the use of cross-cultural comparisons and literal translation. The loose nature of the behaviour-centred approach brings many of the findings based on it close to ideological advocacy. This proximity invites language symbolism into the cognitive domain through the back door, in a way that blurs the difference between them. As a result, the overall effect is not one of looking at Arabic through a cognitive prism, but through an ideological gaze that uses the power of language as a proxy to construct a largely negative view of Arab culture. Both Arab and non-Arab authors participate in this mode of doing politics through language as a cultural product.

This chapter continues the exploration of the notions of construction, language symbolism, language conflict and language as proxy through an examination of paratexts and poetic compositions. Paratexts, such as titles, dedications, epigraphs and jacket copies have received little or no attention in relation to studying Arabic in the social world. This chapter argues that since most encounters with texts are mediated through these thresholds, scholars of language in the social world must pay attention to them for the information they yield on language ideology and the deployment of culture to do politics in society. The same is true of poetic compositions. This chapter further identifies the most productive tropes of language ideology in the modern world, together with their constitutive metaphors, in order to shed light on issues of language conflict and language anxiety. The tropes of crisis, fossilisation and war act as shorthand codes for the promulgation and recursive circulation of Arabic language ideology in society. As a given of this world, Arabic language ideology does its work without drawing attention to itself. Although the terrain dealt with in this chapter is historically and intellectually different from the one dealt with in Chapter 2, the conceptual unities underlying these two terrains reveal infra-structural continuities in the study of Arabic in the social world across time.

This chapter explores the two themes of group identity and inter-group conflict in the pre-modern Arabic-speaking world, in so far as they relate to language as a primary factor in articulating them. To achieve this, the chapter investigates three major sites of discussion and debate in Arab and Islamic theological, cultural and political life: the (in)imitability of the Qur'an, its (un)translatability and the inter-ethnic strife called shu'ūbiyya. The chapter develops parallel lines of discussion in each of these three sites, before it draws them together into a unified framework. The figure of Jahiz – one of the most prolific writers in the first four centuries of Islam – constitutes the fulcrum of this unified framework. His theory of language as a semiology of semiologies is interpreted against the socio-political context of the day to reveal its historical situatedness. The chapter emphasises the continued relevance of the notions of construction, language symbolism and language as proxy, which we encountered in Chapter 1, in understanding aspects of the pre-modern world.

Introduction

The association of Arabic with group identity is inscribed in the lexical link between the name of the people, 'arab, and that of the language, 'arabiyya, in a way which may not be mirrored with similar transparency or connectedness in other language situations. The root meaning of both names is semantically related to the notions of: (1) speaking clearly, plainly, distinctly or perspicuously in a way that is free of incorrectness, corruption or barbarousness; (2) making a person recoil from foul speech or obscene language; and (3) knowing a horse by his neighing to be of pure Arab blood.

In a long and distinguished career, Carole Hillenbrand has become best known as an Islamic historian of the Seljuks and the Crusades. For her work on the latter she won in 2005 the prestigious King Faisal Prize for Islamic Studies, the first non-Muslim to be honoured in this way. However, Carole's scholarly interests go far beyond history in the technical sense to include Sufism and Islamic thought. Carole has published in all these areas, out of conviction that the best scholarship on Islamic history and Islamic studies should view Islam not just as a religion but also as a civilisation. This is precisely how Carole has approached her teaching at Edinburgh – where I had the pleasure of working with her for over 16 years – to generations of undergraduate students as well as in her supervision of scores of postgraduates. Carole has always believed that serious teaching and research cannot but be language-based. This explains her proficiency in so many languages and her insistence on teaching the first-year Arabic course at the university for over twenty years.

The contributions in this volume reflect Carole's scholarly interests. While history, naturally, predominates, Islamic culture and Islamic studies are present in force. Some of the essays deal with the problematic nature of the sources of Islamic history; others deal with aspects of Islamic thought and culture of interest to scholars of Sunni and Shi‘ite Islam.