Abstract
This chapter explores the extent to which Islamic values representing the core of Arab culture, and Qur’anic rhetoric, influence public political discourse in the Arab world. It specifically examines the influence of Qur’anic themes, stylistic techniques and discursive practices on public speaking in three Arab countries. To that end, it analyzes how six political leaders in Egypt, Iraq and Tunisia strategically employ Qur’anic rhetoric to legitimize their public policies and advance their political agendas. From a theoretical perspective, the chapter draws on the concept of linguaculture (Risager, Language and culture: Global flows and local complexity, Multilingual Matters, 2006; The Routledge handbook of language and intercultural communication. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, pp. 101–115, 2012a) which focuses on the cultural dimension of language use, namely the semantic-pragmatic dimension, poetic dimension and identity dimension. From a methodological perspective, the study employs both discourse analytical and stylistic frameworks to elucidate how public speaking in the Arab world is heavily influenced by Qur’anic elements. The corpus is composed of public speeches delivered by six heads of state (Egypt, Iraq and Tunisia) during times of crisis across pre- and post-Arab Spring eras. When supplemented with empirical evidence and insights on Islamic values and Qur’anic rhetoric, the three-tiered conceptualization of linguaculture proved adequate to identify striking similarities between the Qur’anic text and the political speeches analyzed.
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Al-Rikaby, A.B.M., Altahmazi, T.H., Tan, D.A.L. (2021). Qur’anifying Public Political Discourse: Islamic Culture and Religious Rhetoric in Arabic Public Speaking. In: Feldman, O. (eds) When Politicians Talk. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3579-3_3
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