Know your enemy: the concept of fulul in the discourse of the Egyptian revolution

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Know your enemy: the concept of fulul in the discourse of the Egyptian revolution

A. Bogomolov

Introduction

From the onset of the Egyptian revolution of January 25, 2011 a single strand of discourse reflecting the rapidly changing political scene has emerged and prevailed in the local media through the entire period of political turmoil up until now. This discourse is built around a set of key concepts such as, TUWAR (REVOLUTIONARIES), SABAB (YOUTH) featuring as the vanguard of the revolution, IRADA(t) AS-SA`B (PEOPLE's WILL) - as its driving force, reason and justification, and, notably, the subject of the present study - FULUL - enemies of the REVOLUTIONARIES associated with the Ancien Regime. Participants of this discourse regardless of their specific political affiliation have all accepted these concepts as terms of reference in public debate, while arguing for their respective views and statuses, however different those may be, and reshaping their identities in the context of an emerging new social order. These concepts all fit into or make up a mega-frame of the REVOLUTION, just as characters, settings, scenes and plot elements would combine into a movie. Not any revolution but a very specific one, whose key events happened at sites and settings that are known to all, protagonists could be often named or classified based on a set of social markers (the youth, the military, the Muslim Brotherhood members, the pillars and clients of the Ancien Regime, etc.) and key themes are still debated evoking vivid emotions and hot argument. Unlike a movie, however, this show is still going on, events keep adding up, and there is neither a single privileged view point nor a single `true' story, the villains are villains and heroes are heroes only in as much as one party in the debate could manage to lead the discussion controlling the key sites of discursive deliberation such as media.

At its inception, the story's key protagonists were the broadly defined PEOPLE (SA`B) against the narrowly defined REGIME (NIZAM), as reflected in the most popular revolutionary slogan as-sa`b yurid isqat an-nizam (people want the downfall of the regime)², with JAYS (the Egyptian Armed Forces) featuring on the backdrop as a politically neutral patriotic force. Upon the collapse of the Ancien Regime the military effectively took power renouncing their ostensible neutrality, which prompted some revolutionaries to rephrase their slogan as yasqut yasqut hukm al-`askar (let the rule of the military fall). The military were then succeeded by a democratically elected president, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood Muhammad Mursi. That led to the Muslim Brotherhood laying claim to the legacy of the revolution and the bearded traditionally dressed Muslim types featuring increasingly as the prototypical revolutionaries and sidelining in that capacity the young secular (often leftist) activists, who took credit for their role in triggering the initial large-scale anti-Mubarak protests. Before the ousting of President Mursi on July 3, 2013, the word revolution had only one referent in the media discussion - the revolution of January 25, described by media and politicians as tawrat al-karama (the revolution of dignity), reflecting a strong moral dimension in the newly revisited concept of REVOLUTION<sup>3</sup>. Later, there were already two such events, as the participants of anti-Mursi protests started referring to their rallies that led to the overthrow of President Mursi by the Egyptian military, as another revolution, while the Muslim Brotherhood-led National Alliance to Support Legitimacy called it a coup. The REVOLUTION and the status of a (true) REVOLUTIONARY have obviously come to be associated with high moral authority and even political power, thus making it an asset worth contesting for. This has contributed to a strongly polemical nature of the discourse, which affected the semantic structure of concepts from the `traditional' political discourse inventory and stimulated the invention of new nominations and concepts with a stronger illocutionary force and more specific range of reference.

Our overall methodological approach in this study is grounded in George Lakoff's theory of conceptual metaphor⁴. For a finer analysis of the semantic contexts featuring the concept of FULUL, we use elements of Charles J. Fillmore's frame semantics, particularly, some specific frame descriptions available on the FrameNet⁵. The FrameNet frames have been identified and described on the basis of English language material, yet the situations these frames refer to appear to be so basic that their respective descriptions seem to be almost universally applicable. At least, the very idea that semantic structures of Arabic could be presented and analyzed as frames in the same manner as it is done on the FrameNet, if even these frames may differ, appears to present no difficulties. We, however, use the FrameNet descriptions with a certain degree of caution, as a kind of guidance but also as a comparative case rather than a ready-made model, as differences and inconsistencies between our material and the FrameNet descriptions may be accounted for by a mix of different factors, such as the presumable shortcomings of the FrameNet or idiosyncrasies of either the Arabic language/culture or the Egyptian revolutionary discourse itself. It is the idiosyncratic part of the frame-sematic structures that we are primarily concerned with in this study. Leonard Talmy's force dynamics⁶ is another theoretical framework that we found particularly useful for the analysis of modal aspects of acts that the revolutionaries ascribe to their opponents - FULUL. As the material for this study we use a collection of recent Egyptian media texts available on the web which has been pre-selected on the basis of their relevance to the subject of the recent Egyptian revolution⁷.

While the discourse of the Egyptian revolution may be presented as hinging on a complex dynamic semantic structure that we have tentatively described as the mega-frame of the REVOLUTION, where concepts such as FULUL fill in specific slots, at the core of it must be some very basic frame, such as the Revolution frame as presented on the FrameNet⁸. For a more adequate representation of our Egyptian media material, however, the Revolution frame appears to be insufficient, an extension or supplement in the form of at least one more frame appears to be required - the one described as Hostile_encounter on the Framenet⁹. For the purposes of this study we will refer to the combination of at least two frames as presented on the Framenet (Revolution and Hostile_encounter) as an (extended) REVOLUTION frame. In the discourse of the recent Egyptian revolution(s), the extended REVOLUTION frame provides a backdrop or a basis for arguing both for and against specific political groups, ideas and practices by foregrounding different elements of the frame and assigning different values to these elements¹⁰. It is in this context that the concept of FULUL, a key discursive tool in (post)revolutionary polemics, has emerged.

In the discourse of the Egyptian revolution the word fulul (pl. of fall^un - break, or notch, in the edge of a sword, or of anything)¹¹ has rapidly gained enormous popularity and become the key instrument of othering political opponents, initially used mainly in reference to the government officials and clients of the Ancien Regime, but later expanding its meaning and the range of reference beyond this rather narrow scope.

In our previous article¹² we focused on the role of the proverb la yafullu al-hadid illa al-hadid (only iron notches the iron) in the semantic evolution of FULUL. While, the salience of the proverb in the early revolutionary discourse must have contributed to making the word fulul a preferred nomination in reference to the political opponents of the revolution(s), it is important to point out that before it became an essential part of the current political vocabulary, the word had been used in one strictly defined meaning linked to a very specific scenario representing an entailment of the same metaphor underlying the proverb. In modern standard Arabic the word fulul has featured mainly if not exclusively in reference to debris of a defeated army, cf.:

fa-tahawwalat `ala aydihim fulul al-jays al-misrl al-maksura al-gayr qadira `ala haml silahihim min al-hawf ila usud ja'i`a ila nasr wa sahada¹³ ... and in their hands (i.e. under their command) the debris of the defeated (lit. broken) Egyptian army not capable of carrying their weapons out of fear have transformed into lions hungry for victory and martyrdom.

This usage fully corresponds to the meaning of fulul as given in the classical Arabic dictionaries. The late 13^th century Lisan al-`Arab, for instance, gives the meaning `defeat' for the verb falla and the `defeated people' for fall (sing.) and fulul (pl.), while citing `breaking' and `notching of the sword' as the original meaning (asl) of the root¹⁴.

Given the context, from which fulul was borrowed into the discourse of the Egyptian revolution, it is clear that the modern concept FULUL is an instance of the Lakoffian POLITICS is WAR conceptual metaphor meant to represent political opponents of the REVOLUTION as a defeated enemy.

To be sure, there are other competitive nominations also used in reference to remnants of the Ancien Regime - such as baqaya (pl. remainder, remnant, residue), dulul an-nizam as-sabiq (tails of the Ancien Regime), abna'an-nizam as-sabiq (sons of the Ancien Regime) and rumuz an-nizam as-sabiq (symbols of the Ancien Regime). The latter two terms are devoid of any negative connotation, while rumuz an-nizam is simply a standard Arabic expression referring to the most important political figures and public officials. It is only the first and the second nominations in the list that are linked to the actual scenario of the REVOLUTION - i.e. the withdrawal of their respective referents from the position of prominence and it is only the second term that assigns an evaluative (pejorative) connotation to this act. Both terms provide no clue in their semantic structures (the frames that they evoke) as regards the manner, in which their referents have been removed from the political scene in contrast to fulul, which portrays them as those, who have been defeated in a battle. Unlike the other nominations, fulul has provided a basis for derivation - cf. a totally new coinagefululi, which functions as a relative adjective or sometimes as a singular form of fulul¹⁵. Nomination fulul not only occurs far more frequently compared to other coreferential terms in the verbal discourse of the Egyptian revolution, but graphic representations in print media and on political posters of the enemies of revolution, which we discuss in another paper in this series¹⁶, are most usually (if not exclusively) tagged as fulul.

Within the extended REVOLUTION frame, FULUL corresponds to the slot described as Current_leadership of the Framenet's Revolution frame¹⁷, but also to Side_2 slot of the Hostile_encounter frame. FULUL appears as an embattled Enemy of the revolutionary forces, cf.:

wa adafa mu'nis fi risala musawwara buttat al-layla anna al-ma`raka badat wadiha hilal al-asabi` al-madiya bayna qiwa at-tawra wa fulul nizam mubarak alladl yas`i li-stirdad nufudihi wa anna al-ma`raka la taqtasar `ala kawniha ma`raka intihabiyabal hiya ma`rakat tawra¹⁸

And Munis has added in a video message broadcast tonight that the battle has become clear (i.e. it has become clear that it is indeed a battle) over the past weeks between the revolutionary forces and FULUL of the Mubarak regime, which seeks to recover its influence, and that the battle is not limited to its being an electoral battle, but it is a battle for revolution (lit. battle of revolution).

While the meaning of FULUL seems to be self-evident for the speaker, defining the other side of the confrontation, the we-group, on the behalf of which the speaker is branding his or her opponents as FULUL, may often present difficulties. Contribution of specific social and political groups to the Egyptian revolution of January 25, even more so the notion that the events of June 30, 2013, which led to the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated President Mursi, constituted another revolution or a completion/ correction of the revolutionary cause, all these highly contested ideas may result in a serious disagreement about the status of a specific speaker as member of the group that could be identified as tuwar (revolutionaries). All speakers would, nevertheless, agree that FULUL exist and represent a more or less clearly definable group. To identify the counterpart of FULUL, the we-group that in most cases is not clearly named in the text, we have, therefore, resorted to using our own term good guys and occasionally simply us, marked in italics.

FULUL as wrongdoers

When referring to the pre-revolutionary past, the Egyptian revolutionary discourse portrays FULUL as systematically engaged in wrongdoings, cf.: al-fulul hum man ista`adu wa tarabbahu wa kasabuminharam amwalhada as-sa`b al-miskin, al-fulul hum man sahaw min nawmihim wa-ktasafu anna dawlat az-zulm qad saqatat ila gayr ruj`a wa kanu yata`ayyasuna `ala az-zulm¹⁹

FULUL are [those] who have sought returns and made profit and gained and robbed the forbidden property of this poor people, FULUL are [those] who woke up from their sleep to find that the state of injustice had fallen with no [hope of] return, while they had been feeding on injustice...

This description includes almost all the key words used for decades in the criticism of the Ancien Regime by all colors of the Egyptian political opposition. Aside from key words, the paragraph also cites the most basic underlying relational frame, still widely used to explain local politics, i.e. poor people vs. the unjust ruler. While NIZAM (regime), with which FULUL were associated, has disappeared and is now often described as ba'id (the one that vanished, perished), essential qualities attributed to it have persisted in the form of core meaning components of the newly coined concept. They have been projected on or transferred to FULUL together with the implied binary opposition as described above, albeit the modality of the binary relationship and the perceived relative strength of its two constituents have changed.

In the aftermath of the January 25, 2011 revolution, FULUL are ascribed a tendency to `return' or regain `centrality' (sadara) on the [political] scene, which is seen as major threat to the REVOLUTION. Cf. ahsa min `awdatihim ila sadarat al-mashad natijat du`f tanzm al-qiwa at-tawriya (I fear their return to the centrality of the scene)²⁰. This is a clear case of orientational metaphor²¹ that could be specified as CENTER is POWER. The presupposition of such statements is that presently FULUL are seen as peripheral and hence weak. Return to centrality is seen as FULUL's essential tendency, a goal they strive to achieve through a set of specific actions. They are seen as engaged in buying votes (sira ' al-aswat), deception and attempting to re-write the history of January 25 revolution (yugalituna wa yuhawiluna i`adat kitabat tarih tawrat yana'ir)<sup>22</sup>, assembling their supporters and dragging the masses to go out against authorities (hasd ansarihim wa jarr al-jamahTr ila al-huruj `ala an-nizam)²³, violent acts against revolutionaries (qama al- fulul bi-darb an-na'ib as-sabiq `an hizb al-hurriya wa al-`adala... wa kada al-fulul an yaftaku bihi - FULUL have beaten a former deputy from Freedom and Justice Party (...) almost came down on him²⁴), insulting the president and revolution (isa'a li-r-ra'is wa at-tawra)²⁵, penetrating the political life (tawaggul fi al-haya as-siyasiya)²⁶, and corrupting or spoiling the political work (ifsad al-`amal as-siyast). Such wrongdoings are often cited as reasons that justify specific acts of persecution against FULUL by good guys, cf.: ahalI al-iskandariya yutariduna al-fulul li-isa'atihim li-r-raTs wa at-tawra Locals of Alexandria are chasing FULUL for their insulting of the president and revolution.

The texts that do not explicitly refer to any such counter-FULUL activities are still designed to leave the reader with an impression that `something needs to be done'.

FULUL are also attributed symbolic acts of derogatory nature, meaning to humiliate them, which may be expressed by idioms, cf.: idrab bi-quwwa ya mursI fa-l-fulul yataqayya'una dam li-nijahatika ad-duwaliya wa irja' amwal al-arad!²⁷

Beat strongly, Mursi, for FULUL are vomiting blood because of your international successes and the return of land money.

The paragraph conveys the message of encouragement to President Mursi by referring to demoralizing effect of his success upon his political opponents. Pragmatically, as we see from the above examples various acts are attributed to FULUL not for the sake of providing an accurate description of their activities, but rather to stimulate or justify certain proactive moves on the part of the other party - the good guys, described as `Egyptian people', concerned `locals', the `revolutionary' president, Army etc.

`Taking the central position on the scene' appears to be the key, if not the only, euphemism of power that could be attributed to FULUL. In the paragraph below, it appears that FULUL although having acquired some sort of `centrality' (i.e. POWER) have done so somehow very locally, and the author seems to be referring to this fact in a manner of warning rather than asserting that FULUL have finally fulfilled their goal: tatawasal al-intihakat al-hassa bi-l-istifta' bi-muhafazat kafr as-sayh min hilal tasaddur fulul al-hizb al-watam al-munhall li-l-mashad wa da`wa li-n-nas li-t-taswIt bi-na`am `ala ad-dastur wa hasd an-nahibIn li-t-taswIt bi-na`am bi-stihdam satta al-wasa'l al-mumkina fa-qad qam al-fulul wa mu'ayyid! al-inqilab bi-istihdam mukabbirat al-masajid f! ad-da`wa li-n-nuzul wa at-taswIt bi-na`am `ala ad-dastur kama hadata f! qaryat al-kum al-ahmar bi-baldm²⁸...

There continue violations related to the referendum in the governorate of Kafr el-Shaikh through the occupation of the central position (tasaddur) on the scene on the part of FULUL of the dissolved National [Democratic] Party and the call of the people to vote `yes' on the Constitution and assembling the voters for voting `yes' by deploying all possible methods, and FULUL and the supporters of the coup have used loudspeakers of the mosques for calling for coming out and voting `yes' on the Constitution as happened in the village of Kum al-Ahmar in Baltem...

The manner in which FULUL intend to achieve their purposes is, however, indirect. Cf.: wa ayyan kan naw` min al-mata`ib fa-sa-tajid al-kath min an-nas yaksif `an wujud `umala' qama al-fulul bi-tahndihim li-yutbitu anna misr biduna mubarak tusawI al-fawda²⁹ And whatever the type of troubles, you will find a lot of people who expose agents, [who] FULUL have incited in order to prove that Egypt without Mubarak equates disorder.

They are not seen as going headlong to their aspired ultimate goal of regaining power, but do it by trying to weaken their opponents. The subversive actions as listed above are meant to contribute to the creation of a state of disorder in the society described as FITNA (an intraethnic or intraconfessional strife) or FAWDA (anarchy, disorder), sometimes specified more technically as harb ahliya (civil war). This list of nominations refers to the same social reality of a profound disaster with FITNA as a native and also a Sharia term appearing as the most self-evident and capturing the very essence of threat posed by FULUL.

It's either us or them: the force dynamics aspects

egyptian revolution fulul marker hero

Importantly, semantics of FULUL and their opponents, the good guys, who may be described as revolutionaries or simply us³⁰, are paired, particularly, in the evaluative component. The mechanism of this pairing is based on an asymmetry of qualities. Any statement regarding relative power of FULUL will imply weakness of us, the good guys. Same asymmetry is observed in the implied moral evaluation of physical acts ascribed to both parties. For instance, FULUL could be attributed openly aggressive behaviors, which they may espouse in response to what is presented as a justified rejection of them on the part of the people, cf.:

amam rafd al-ahali wujfid al-fulfil amam al-mintaqa as-simaliya qam al-fulfil bi-rasq al-ahali bi-l-hijara wa az-zujajat al-fariga wa al-mulutuf wa al-asliha an-nariya wa al-bayda' mimma idtarra al-`adid min ashab al-mahall at-tijariya bi-sari` bur sa`id ila iglaq mahallihim tahawwufan min hudfit ayy i`tida' `alayhim³¹

In the face of the rejection of the presence of FULUL in front of the Northern District, FULUL have showered the [local] residents with stones, empty bottles, Molotov [cocktails], fire and cold arms, which forced many owners of trading outlets on Port Said Street to close their shops in fear of an assault against them.

Obviously, the local residents must have tried to force FULUL out of their district, which could have provoked a violent reaction on the part of the latter. The text, however, does not explicitly attribute any such violent acts to the party that enjoys empathy of the author, substituting those with a vague moral concept of rejection, which is presupposed to be self-evident and self-justified.

When it comes to FULUL engagement in acts that could potentially be a game changer with regard to power balance, if even at a local level, these are often presented as attempts. Cf.: fi madinat balqas ijtama`a 30 min fulfil al-hizb al-watam bi-muhafazat ad-daqahliya mu`zamuhum min a`da' majlis as-sa`b as-sabiqf muhawala minhum lamm as-saml ba`d ma asaba al-hizb min inhiyar wa diya`ba`d tawrat 25 yanayir allati atahat bi-n-nizam al-ba'id al-fasid alladl haymana `ala al-haya as-siyasiya aktar min rub` qarn³² In the city of Belqas, 30 FULUL of the National [Democratic] Party in the Daqahlia gover- norate have gathered, most of them members of the former people's council, in an attempt on their part to re-unite after collapse and loss that had afflicted the Party in the aftermath of the January 25 revolution, which had brought down the defunct corrupt regime that dominated political life for more than quarter century.

The Arabic verb hawal just as its English match try `involves focus at the initial phase without knowledge of its outcome'<sup>33</sup>. The act, in which FULUL features as Agent, ijtama`a (gathered) is, hence, presented as an initial phase of the act of lamm as-saml (reunion). The latter idiomatic expression is composed of lamm (gather, unite) and saml (entirety, integrity, integral whole), which in this context implies that FULUL were trying to bring all their forces together again. The paragraph, however, implies that for some reasons this purpose has not been fully achieved.

Here is one more example:

wa adafa al-`adli annahu yatawaqqa` qiyam tawra sa`biya la taqill `an tawrat yfinyfi ida ma hawala fulfil al-watam al-munhall aw baqaya jama`at al-ihwan al-muslimin al-mahzfira al-wusul ila majlis as-sa`b^M

And el-Adli³⁵ added that [he] is expecting the rise of popular revolution no less [strong] than June Revolution if FULUL of the dissolved National [Democratic] Party or the leftovers of the prohibited Society of the Muslim Brothers would try to enter the People SAssembly...

Here the act, where FULUL features as the Agent, is part of a conditional clause, which implies that the act has not actually occurred, but has a degree of probability, FULUL are ascribed a tendency to perform the act and may engage on its initial phase (try to enter the Parliament), but will hardly succeed as they stand to face resistance on the part of a stronger counter-force (the rise of the popular revolution).

In the example below the REVOLUTION is represented as an ongoing purposeful movement, while FULUL are portrayed as those who are trying to impede it:

al-fulul tutiaq `ala man yuhawil i`aqat at-tawra `an tahqiq ahdafiha li-l-qada' `ala az-zulm wa at-tugyan. al-fulul hum man yarfaduna si`arat at-tawra allati rafadat (sic., probably, the author meant to say rufi`at) wa tutalib bi-l-hurriya wa al-karama wa al-`adala al-ijtima`iya³⁶ [the term] FULUL applies to whoever is trying to obstruct the revolution from the fulfillment of its goals of eliminating injustice and tyranny. FULUL are [those] who reject the slogans of the revolution that were raised and demand freedom, dignity and social justice.

The three above examples reflect a force-dynamic pattern, where FULUL is a relatively weak Antagonist, and REVOLUTION (or any sentient entity representing it, such as REVOLUTIONARIES, PEOPLE's WILL or simply us) is an Agonist³⁷. All the above reviewed acts that FULUL perform on the public scene (buying votes, forging elections, trying to penetrate public offices, instigating public disorder etc.) also fall into the same pattern as they affectively substantiate their presumed natural tendency to obstruct the REVOLUTION.

To complete our brief analysis of the phase aspects of acts ascribed to FULUL we will now review examples containing another phase verb najah (succeed) - a pair to hawal (try). While the verb hawal (try) `involves focus at the initial phase without knowledge of its outcome', the verb najah (succeed) shifts the focus `on a known occurrent or non-oc- current outcome'³⁸. Examples containing the collocations of FULUL and najah in their various forms - najah (perf.), yanjah (imperf.), al-fulul (def.), fulul + genitive attribute (e.g. fulul an-nizam as-sabiq - FULUL of former regime) - feature persistent pragmatic patterns of threat or warning. Syntactic patterns include emphatic negation (lan yanjah al-fulul - FULUL will never succeed), negative part. lam + imperfect (lam yanjah al-fulul - FULUL have not succeeded), question (halyanjah al-fulul - will FULUL succeed?). Success of FULUL is also often described as a hypothetical situation, syntactically expressed either as unreal conditional clause (law najah fulul - were FULUL to succeed) or, which seems to be less frequent, a simple conditional clause (ida najah fulul - if FULUL succeeded). Cf.:

a) lan yanjah fulul an-nizam al-baid fi ayy say wa `alayhim an yanhazu ila al-haqq wa yaltaffu hawla at-tawra wa yatubu `amma iqtarafat aydihim³⁹

FULUL of the defunct regime will never succeed in anything and they have to align with truth and rally around the revolution and repent for what their hands have committed

b) hal yanjah fulul al-munhall fi itarat al-fitan wa al-azamat li-ihraj ar-ra'is?⁴⁰

Will FULUL of the dissolved [National Democratic Party] succeed in exciting FITAN (pl. of FITNA - intraethnic strives) and crises [in order] to discomfit the president?

c) wa law najaha al-fulul la-`ada as-sarr wa `ada al-fasad li-yulqi bi-misra fi sira`at wa mahalik la ya`limuha illa allah⁴¹

And if FULUL were to succeed, the evil would come back and corruption would come back [in order] to throw Egypt into conflicts and perils that only Allah knows.

We have, however, encountered utterances, where collocations of FULUL & derivatives of najah (succeed) could be interpreted as indicating successful completion of various acts by FULUL. As these cases appear to be quite few, and contradicting the previously reviewed abundant material that tends to ascribe to FULUL mainly incomplete acts or those of limited affect, they merit a closer look. Here are two typical contexts:

d) wa qala muhammad as-sattar amin `am an-niqaba al-`amma al-mustaqilla li-l-`amilm bi-hay'at an-naql al-`am: `inqsamat al-garajat `ala qirar fadd al-idrab wa dalika ba`d an najah fulul an-nizam as-sabiq min hilal al-asalib al-multawiya fi at-ta'tir `ala ba`d `ummal al-hay'a alladlna qarraru ta`liq al-idrab⁴²

And Muhammad as-Sattar, Secretary General of the independent General Trade Union of the workers of the Department of General Transport, said: `the garages have divided over the decision to call off the strike, which [happened] after FULUL of the former regime have succeeded by way of devious methods in influencing some workers of the Department who decided to suspend the strike.

e) idan fa-qad najah al-fulul fi-styad at-tawra wa tarwid al-kutla at-tawriya min hayt aradat hadihi al-kutla insti'nas al-fulul wa damjahum fiha wa an-natija: gaba at-tuwar wa hadar al-fulul... sa`adat at-tawra al-mudadda wa habatat at-tawra al-haqiqiya ila ad-darak alladl alqat fihi suwar as-suhada' `ala al-ard wa rafa`at suwaran li-suhada' muzayyafin wa majja- dat alladlna ahdaru huquqahum bi-l-la`b fi al-awraq wa al-adilla wa sana`at minhum rumuzan li-l-istiqlal wa an-nidal⁴³

So FULUL have succeeded in hunting [down] the revolution and taming the revolutionary block as this block wished to domesticate FULUL and integrate them with itself, the result [was that] the revolutionaries have disappeared and FULUL appeared [instead]. the counter-revolution has risen and the true revolution has subsided to the extent that it threw down images (lit. pictures) of martyrs on the ground and raised images of fake martyrs and glorified those [who] have wasted their rights by playing with cards and evidence and made out of them symbols of independence and struggle.

In both (d) and (e) FULUL are ascribed acts from the familiar list of wrongdoings (deception). Paragraph (d) refers to a situation where FULUL have achieved some low level success - a merely tactical one in fact. Paragraph (e) represents quite an opposite situation, where FULUL have produced a complete disaster, have almost defeated the `true revolution'<sup>44</sup>. These two contexts are very typical: it is either a low scale tactical victory or a political apocalypse with hardly any middle ground in between. In the arsenal of successfully accomplished acts ascribed to FULUL, we have not been able to locate any medium level, `ordinary', acts or events that characterize normal everyday human experience.

Seemingly defeatist messages such as (e) can usually be traced back to peaks of political crises in Egypt. Their illocutionary point is to rally support for the `true revolutionaries' in the face of an imminent threat that they describe. Paragraph (e) claims that FULUL have afflicted major losses on the revolutionaries, which, notably, appear to be mainly of moral and symbolic nature (martyrs have been humiliated by their images being thrown down on the ground). The Hunting metaphor portrays REVOLUTION as a prey and FULUL as a beast of prey or a human hunter. Such account of FULUL's acts as provided in (e), or even more so in (c), is far removed from the language of everyday human activity, it is almost an epic, considering, particularly, the reference to the superhuman forces - the eternal Evil and God's wisdom.

Who is behind it? Conspiracy theories and the moral judgment

While FULUL mostly do not appear as an active Agent, one specific construction featuring FULUL in association with events and actions merits a special analysis. The illocutionary point of utterances based on this construction in most cases is to accuse FULUL of being somehow instrumental in causing a certain event, while still, as we shall see downplaying their active role in it. The construction may be schematically represented as X is wara' (behind) E, where X stands for a sentient entity responsible for E, an event of mostly negative nature, cf.:

a) al-fulul wara ' tarakum masakil al-hayy - FULUL [are] behind the accumulation of the neighborhood's problems⁴⁵;

b) al-fulul wara'ahdatmasbiru - FULUL [are] behind the events of Maspero⁴⁶;

c) al-fulul wara ' harq al-mujamma` al-`ilmi - FULUL [are] behind the burning of the scientific complex⁴⁷;

d) al-fulul wara'ahdat al-`abbasiya li-ta'jll al-intihabat ar-ri'asiya - FULUL [are] behind the events of al-Abbasiya (official spelling el-Abaseya) [in order] to delay the presidential elections⁴⁸;

e) al-fulul wara ' `uzuf as-sabab `an il-musaraka fi-l-intihabat - FULUL [are] behind the reluctance of the youth to participate in the elections⁴⁹;

f) al-fulul wara'rafd al-badawi al-indimam li-tahaluf musa - FULUL [are] behind the refusal of el-Badawi to join [Amr] Musa's Alliance⁵⁰;

h) al-fulul wara'insihabi min ijtima` as-silmi- FULUL [are] behind my withdrawal from the meeting [organized by] Silmi⁵¹;

g) fulul wara ' fitnat al-islamiyina wa al-libraliyin - FULUL [are] behind the FITNA (a Sharia concept describing a conflict within the Muslim community) of Islamists and Liberals⁵².

While the use of wara' in a causative sense is not limited to the description of events with negative evaluation, the elliptic phrases such as the above ones clearly sound accusatory. The construction implies a type of causative relationship between X and E, while rendering this relationship totally opaque as regards to the manner in which such causation could have occurred. Phrase (c) contains a substantiated form (masdar) of a transitive verb haraqa (burn), which implies an Agent, but the wara' construction instead of saying that FULUL have actually burned the place transforms their role to that of Cause of the event of burning, which may not necessarily be a direct one. But the segment certainly presents FULUL as an entity that has provided the necessary conditions for the negative event to happen, and should, therefore, take the blame. Case (b) demonstrates an even weaker implication of Agency, while (a) simply excludes it: the FULUL could hardly be seen as consciously accumulating problems, rather they have probably let them accumulate. Case (d) appears to be somewhat peculiar: it features a Purpose of the event. It all but reconstitutes the Agency back from implicature, as the phrase could easily be reformulated as FULUL have organized the events of al-Abaseya [in order] to delay the presidential elections⁵³. Case (g) appears to imply an agency only in translation, indeed Conflict must have at least two sides involved in it, but the Islamic concept of FITNA describes social conflict in a manner that does not foreground any `us' vs. `them', but rather a split `us', which refers to the entire community, that experiences a state of division. Cases (e, f, h) feature an explicitly expressed Agent, but completely distinct from FULUL. Let us review the text that follows phrase (h) in order to establish the type of relationship binding FULUL and the Agent of the act featuring in the segment (withdrawal) together:

barrara al-muhandis abu al-`ala madl ra'Is hizb al-wasat sabab insihabihi min al-ijtima` alladi da`a ilayhi d. `all as-silmI na'ib ra'Is al-wuzara' li-s-su'un as-siyasiya wa at-tahawwul ad-dlmuqratt bi-anna dalika ja'a ihtijajan `ala wujud al-`adId min fulul al-hizb al-watanI as-sabiq wa kadalika wujud al-katIr min al-ahzab al-kartuniya allatl suni`at `ala aydl an-nizam as-sabiq⁵⁴

The Engineer Abu-l-Ala Madi, chairman of the Wasat Party, justified the reason for his withdrawal from the meeting that Dr. Ali as-Silmi, Deputy Prime Minister for political affairs and democratic transition, called for, by that it occurred in protest to the presence of a number of FULUL of the former National Democratic Party and also the presence of puppet (lit. cardboard) parties created by the former regime.

The paragraph reveals a sociosemiotic pattern proscribing someone, who is not FULUL, from attending an event where FULUL are present to avoid being associated with them. FULUL have thus affected a certain symbolic act on the part of the Agent (declining to attend a meeting in protest) without taking any action at all, merely by providing grounds for a certain reading of a social setting.

The key concept that the warn' construction evokes is Responsibility. The Framenet provides the following definition of the Responsibility frame: `[a]n Agent is responsible for having intentionally performed an Act or for being a primary instigator behind the Act'. The material that we have reviewed in this section falls rather under the second part of this definition as it mostly excludes or obscures any direct engagement of FULUL in the Act. English illustrative material on the Framenet for the lexical unit behind, on the contrary, mainly refers to `intentionally performed acts' such as `attacks', `bombing', and `killing', evoking frames with clearly definable agents and patients in contrast to events like `reluctance to participate in elections', `withdrawal from a meeting', `accumulation of problems', or FITNA (intragroup strife).

Conclusions

Acts ascribed to FULUL represent a narrow set of politically subversive, unjust, immoral and illegal activities that we have tentatively summarized as wrongdoings. Even the mere presence of FULUL on the scene of whatever scale may cause a negative outcome. FULUL's acts represent a manifestation of their natural tendency to obstruct the REVOLUTION, while the latter is conceptualized as a positive purposeful movement of people toward a better future. Actions of FULUL are directional - they are opposite to those of the REVOLUTION and directed toward occupying the central part of the scene, metaphorically associated with POWER. In discussing real life events associated with FULUL the discourse of the Egyptian revolution gives preference to lexical items and constructions that either preclude FULUL from assuming the sematic role of an Agent or limit FULUL's role of an Agent to the initial phase of the acts⁵⁷, or an initial act in a presupposed series.

Acts of FULUL are part of a larger frame of REVOLUTION and their relative strength and effectiveness cannot be independently assessed outside of a single force-dynamics pattern embedded in this larger frame. If a particular speaker sees the REVOLUTION as making progress, which is the main tendency in the revolutionary discourse, FULUL will be presented as trying to perform wrongdoings, or even accomplishing single acts in a presumed series ultimately intended to bring FULUL to the aspired central position and prevent the REVOLUTION from going forward, but never actually reaching these goals. Yet if things go wrong to whatever extent, it is FULUL who will be held responsible as someone who was behind such a negative outcome. On the contrary, should the speaker for whatever reason, including a merely rhetorical one, hypothesize the defeat of the Revolution, or assert that it is already actually happening, the FULUL will be ascribed accomplished socially harmful acts of larger, almost, an epic scale, albeit fundamentally very similar in their nature - it will be basically the same type of wrongdoings that they have been engaged in so far anyway.

At the face of it, the ideas that FULUL are (a) almost denied the capacity to act or at least act effectively and that (b) they still represent a threat - may appear logically inconsistent, but they are not incoherent. Both fit into the idea that FULUL should not be occupying the central position or rather should not be present on the scene at all. They only are safe when they are out, their mere presence may trigger off a negative course of events, anyone who shares the space with them is either in danger of morally compromised. The denial of agency to FULUL represents an act of their symbolic removal from central position associated with POWER through the CENTER is POWER orientational metaphor.

One way of downplaying an active role of FULUL is by expressing the relationship between FULUL and the events at the focus of discussion with the help of non-core elements of the respective semantic frames, substituting the semantic role of Agent by a more general one of Cause, which downplays or hides a potentially more active engagement of FULUL in producing the event in question. It the paired relationship between FULUL and us, the good guys that appears to motivate such preferences: to assign an active role to FULUL would imply presenting the revolutionaries as a weaker party. Such discursive strategies may, hence, be seen as a verbal expression of otherwise material political struggle.

As a grammatical construction foregrounding the Cause, while precluding explicit representation of the type of agency involved, X behind E is not merely an economical grammatical device. Neither is it uniquely Arabic, as parallel constructions exist in other languages, including English. In both cases, such constructions represent a convenient way of expressing specific ideological beliefs. The implied question `who stands behind it?', to which this construction answers, appears to be a universal mantra of conspiracy theorists. To be behind something implies being removed from the field of vision, while being still present on the scene. X effectively may represent an invisible malevolent force, the ultimate cause of every disaster, whose identity the idiom claims to reveal. From the conspiracy theory perspective, it is not relevant to know exactly how a particular event could have come to pass. Moreover, the assumption that details regarding how the Agent of a conspiracy is manipulating other parties may never be known is an essential part of this worldview. It is, therefore, sufficient to reveal the name of the wrongdoer, whose interests the negative event in question supposedly serves and who, therefore, stands to be accused.

There are several reasons, why a new nomination fulul had to come to the fore and reshaped the archetypical ideas of ENEMY/OPPONENT and (political and social) OTHER in the context of the Egyptian Arab Spring. Unlike generic nominations such as enemy, fulul is an asymmetrical term that projects an unequal relationship of power and moral superiority, while, if A and B are described as enemies, both A and B may call each other an enemy on equal terms. It is also linked to a certain scenario frame describing the enemy as the one that has been of should be defeated. We will discuss pragmatic aspects of the concept of FULUL in some more detail in the next article of this series.

Notes

1. This is the 2nd article in a series on the construction of social and political other in the discourse of the Arab Spring in Egypt; the two others include: A. Bogomolov. Got a problem - destroy it! A frame-semantic analysis of the proverb la yafullu al-hadid illa al-hadid in the Egyptian revolutionary discourse. The World of the Orient (Skhidnyi Svit), 2014, № 2, pp. 101-110 and A. Bogomolov. FULUL and REVOLUTIONARIES: Negotiating social boundaries in the discourse of the Egyptian Arab Spring, Skhodoznavstvo, 2014, №65-66, pp. 15-31.

2. On the significance of this revolutionary slogan and its derivative concept IRADA(t) AS-SA`B see ours Kontsept IRADA(t) AS-SA`B (volya naroda) v diskurse `arabskoi vesny'. Skhodoznavstvo, 2013, № 64, pp. 15-27.

3. No such descriptive extension could probably have been attached to what for most Egyptians had just recently served as the prototype of the REVOLUTION - the Nasserite July 23, 1952; while the latter would be habitually described as glorious (al-magida), the recent one probably needed an epithet explicating the meaning of the event as opposed to its status, outlook or externally appreciated value.

4. Cf. George Lakoff, Mark Johnson. Metaphors we live by. London: The university of Chicago press. 2003.

5. FrameNet is a web-based corpus that contains description of the internal structure of various semantic frames that refer to situations, actions, events such as Revolution, Hostile encounter, Fight etc. - cf.

6. Cf. Leonard Talmy, Force Dynamics in Language and Cognition, Cognitive Science, 12, 49100 (1968).

7. With very few exceptions google search for the word fulul in Arabic will return an enormous amount of texts related to the recent Egyptian revolution(s) or Arab Spring countries; we see it as a compelling evidence of both the salience and the newness of the concept.

8. Cf. Revolution on Frame Index at Cf. Hostile_encounter on the Frame Index - ibid.

9. For instance, some texts argue or even presuppose that Muslim Brotherhood is a major revolutionary force, while others claim that they are an element of the pre-January 25 Ancien Regime; the military may feature as protectors of the revolution or the main counter-revolutionary force, part of the Ancien Regime, that struggles for the restoration of the old ways, which will affect the manner, in which these text use the basic concepts such as FULUL.

10. Arabic-English Lexicon by Edward William Lane (London: Willams & Norgate, 1863).

11. Cf. A. Bogomolov. Got a problem - destroy it! A frame-semantic analysis of the proverb la ya- fullu al-hadid illa al-hadid in the Egyptian revolutionary discourse. The World of the Orient, 2014, № 2, pp. 101-110.

12. From an anonymous war memoir published on the web on 7 October 2009.

13. Cf. wa al-fallu: al-munhazimuna. wa falla al-qawma yafulluhum fallan: hazamahum fa-infallu. wa hum qawmun fallun: muhazimuna, wa al-jam`u fululun ... wa al-fallu: al-qawmu al-munhazimuna wa asluhu min al-kasr, wa infalla sinnuhu (...) al-fallu at-talmy fi as-sayf - Ibn Manzur, Muhammad b. Mukarram b. `All b. Ahmad al-Ansan al-Ifnqi al-Misfl Jamal al-Din Abu l-Fadl. Lisan al-`arab. Beirut: Dar Sadir, 1955-1956, 15 vols.

14. In the same manner as the word `arabi means both `an Arab' and `Arabic'; by contrast classical Arabic dictionaries describe fulul as the plural form of fall (a notch), which is out of use in modern language (cf. Arabic-English Lexicon by Edward William Lane. London: Willams & Norgate 1863), attesting to the opaqueness of the grammatical structure of fulul for the modern speakers of Arabic.

15. See A. Bogomolov. FULUL and REVOLUTIONARIES: Negotiating social boundaries in the discourse of the Egyptian Arab Spring, Skhodoznavstvo, 2014, №65-66, рр. 15-31.

16. The term `current', however, appears to be not quite appropriate as FULUL rather refers to elements of what used `current leadership'.

17. The text is part of news article dated 14 April 2014, the time when the candidate nomination for extraordinary presidential elections of 26-28 May 2014.

18. Cf. George Lakoff, Mark Johnson. Metaphors we live by. London: The University of Chicago press, 2003, p. 15.

19. It is a news article title dated 23 Nov., 2012 - i.e. the hey day of Mohammad Mursi's presidency

20. The paragraph contains a list of a few more villages which we have omitted for sake of space.

21. Texts foregrounding FULUL quite often have no explicit reference to the other party, its presence is however an essential part of the presupposed background.

22. Cf. Talmy's description of the semantics of the verb `try' in Leonard Talmy, Force Dynamics in Language and Cognition, Cognitive Science, 12, 49-100 (1968), p. 74.

23. Sayyid el-Adli, Egyptian journalist, founder of the Egyptian Independence Party.

24. On the semantic roles of Agonist and Antagonist and the notions of their relative strength and the resultant produced by their force-dynamic interaction cf. Leonard Talmy, Force Dynamics in Language and Cognition, Cognitive Science, 12, 49-100 (1968), pp. 53-54.

25. Cf. Leonard Talmy. Force Dynamics in Language and Cognition. Cognitive Science, 12, 49-100 (1968), p. 74.

26. The article, from which the cited paragraph was borrowed, carries a characteristic title `Tatwrr al-fulul am taflrl at-tawra (turning FULUL into revolutionaries or FULUL-izing the revolution), and is dated 17 April 2013, the time of deepening political crisis, when a mass protest movement broke out against Muslim Brotherhood affiliated president Muhammad Mursi, who was then overthrown by the military in less then three months.

27. Case (d) is a news article title and it does not appear to us as a normally constructed phrase, rather it is a shorthand summary of the article that follows enumerating a long series of various negative public events, which, according to the author, all represent evidence of FULUL's intention to delay the elections (niyatuhum fr ta'jrl al-intihabat).

28. For the notion of `evoking' frames cf. Jozsef Andor. Discussing the frame semantics: The state of the art. An interview with Charles J. Fillmore. Review of Cognitive Semantics, 8:1, 2010, p. 158.

29. As in the case of hawal al-fulul an... (FULUL tried to), which `involves focus at the initial phase without knowledge of its outcome' - cf. Talmy's description of the semantics of the verb `try' in Leonard Talmy, Force Dynamics in Language and Cognition, Cognitive Science, 12, 49-100 (1968), p. 74.

30. Cf. Lakoff's discussion of consistency vs. coherence in the case of the metaphorical representations of time in George Lakoff, Mark Johnson. Metaphors we live by. London: The University of Chicago press. 2003, pp. 44-45. According to Lakoff, although the two metaphors TIME IS A MOVING OBJECT and TIME IS STATIONARY AND WE MOVE THROUGH IT `are not consistent (that is, they form no single image), they nonetheless “fit together,” by virtue of being subcategories of a major category and therefore sharing a major common entailment', namely, that `from our point of view, time goes past us from front to back'.