Divine impoliteness: How Arabs negotiate Islamic moral order on Twitter

Once an increasing number of people agree that the religion of Islam does not reject humanitarian actions, questions about the form of a new, more inclusive, humanitarian, and merciful moral order are posed, leading some to extend healing to all living creatures, not just humans.

Together, this analysis illustrates the workings of (im)politeness and Islamic intersubjectivity concerning Islamic moral order: Namely, how the instigator used impoliteness as a linguistic strategy to disrupt Islamic intersubjectivity, how somecommentators used impoliteness to maintain intersubjectivity by referencing religious texts that sanction exclusion, and how other commentators used politeness to disrupt and shift intersubjectivity by referencing texts that encourage inclusion.

DiscussionandConclusion

In this paper, I used impoliteness as an analytical lens to capture the shift in the Islamic moral order as manifested on Arabic Twitter. The analysis specifically identified ten strategies commentators used to enact the rites of moral aggression and alternately employ and reject divine impoliteness in response to a triggering cultural attack: discrediting the moral judgment, projecting onto other cultural groups, responding to the projection, referencing authoritative texts, considering Islamic moral responsibilities toward others, attacking the existing Islamic moral order, launching ridicule and counterattacks against the triggering author, turning to religious clarification, proposing legitimate negotiation of the Islamic moral order, and initiating the start of an actual shift in the moral order. This examination of impoliteness was useful for understanding what Arabs do in digital contexts and why such actions matter, thus aiding in capturing one historic digital moment (of many) made possible by the agency of Arabs on Twitter.

Although present sociolinguistic research suggests that attacked individuals appropriate impoliteness to enhance group identity (Georgakopoulou and Vasilaki 2018) or to resist a particular moral order (Graham 2018), this paper demonstrated that, through the rites of moral aggression, impoliteness-oriented discourse served to create and maintain alliances (Graham 2007, 2008), help negotiate personal relations (Locher 2018), and ignite a reshaping of cultural identities. Specifically, commentators shifted from using divine impoliteness to justify a questioned moral order to appropriating divine politeness to justify the change in Islamic moral order and reconcile them with humanitarian principles. Accordingly, this study demonstrates that impoliteness is not only a relational concern at the linguistic level, but a cultural concern at the social level -- key to disrupting an old intersubjectivity and erupting a new intersubjectivity. In their efforts to create this new intersubjectivity, Arabs are not just repairing problematic religious texts (as I demonstrate in Al Zidjaly [2020]), they also are highlighting the non-aggressive, the non-impolite texts as a source to create a new moral order. These findings foreground the call made by Kadar (2017a) to examine the workings of impoliteness and moral order in under-studied non-Western cultures. Doing so is needed to properly theorize impoliteness-oriented discourse because as a cultural tool, its functions are deemed to vary. Impoliteness therefore merits continued examination in digital contexts, as social media platforms provide heretofore unprecedented access to different types of data, cultures and actions (KhosraviNik 2016; Al Zidjaly 2019b). According to Blommaert (2018), social media moreover provide the opportunity to test and fully theorise terms and concepts--in this case, allowing me to linguistically identify a new function of impoliteness that goes beyond relational work to cultural work with larger, yet to be realised effects.

Linguistically analyzing Arabs' Twitter-based negotiation process following cultural attack also revealed the role that religion can play as a resource for impoliteness, rituals and the moral order (while highlighting the role that intertextuality, questions and pronouns can play in the negotiation process). The centrality of religion to Arab identity suggests that the key to advancing Arab reform might lie in intertextually referencing inclusive religious teachings and texts needed to sanction the reconciliation of Islam with so it reads the tenets of the 21st century -- shifts that are key in an increasingly digitized and globalized world. Although this might be irksome for Ex-Muslim reformers, this route may offer the most expedient path to change, given the religiously engrained nature of Arabic societies (Lewis 2001). Further, as this analysis indicated, Islamic authoritative texts allow for various interpretations and even anecdotes of actions and Islamic practices assumed to be authoritative may actually be malleable cultural practices (see Example 9), underscoring the importance of ongoing examination of such texts. Impoliteness as a cultural practice connected to moral orders of societies therefore was shown to be a driving force of the Arabic reform project, as it was the negative reactions produced by divine impoliteness that prompted an attitude shift. Impoliteness also was central to unraveling and to understanding social change. This bears further examination in different cultural contexts and social media platforms to adequately theorize the links between impoliteness, moral order and social change.

In sum, this paper contributes to advancing the Arabic reform movement I documented in Al Zidjaly (2019a). The analysis not only contributes to impoliteness and social media research, but also to research on Arab identity and sociolinguistic theory and method. Impoliteness-oriented discourse, as a key to cultural revolution, is an important tool in the process of cultural reflexivity occurring in digital discourses among Arabs. Giddens (1990) noted that such reflexivity is a main ingredient in the creation of democratic societies. Being able to witness the negotiation has made it easier to fathom what goes into the making of Arab identity and analyzing the workings of such cultural reflection has provided a rare glimpse into the shifts needed for Arabs to integrate into an increasingly globalized, connected world. This is a notable counterpoint to the cynicism typically surrounding social media actions and actual change (See Mozorov 2011 for a discussion). The ramifications and extent of such changes in Islamic society are yet to be measured; in the meantime, divine politeness appears to have ignited change among the participating Arab commentators. My ongoing ethnographic documentation of Arabs' digital actions demonstrate that since the represented tweet and ensuing discussions, inclusive Islamic prayers frequently appear on Twitter and WhatsApp. They signal an actual shift in the Islamic identity which is historically centered around exclusiveness. Twitter therefore has played a key role in providing Arabs with a platform to engage in cultural reflexivity, and impoliteness has provided Arabs the linguistic tool to elevate their societies.

References

1. Abdul Sattar, SalasiahHiba, CheLah& Raja Suleiman (2009). A study on strategies used in Iraqi Arabic to refuse suggestions. The International Journal of Language Society and Culture, 30, 81--95.

2. Alaoui, Sakina (2011). Politeness principle: A comparative study of English and Moroccan Arabic requests, offers and thanks. European Journal of Social Sciences, 20 (1), 7--15.

3. Al-Adaileh, Bilal A. (2011).When the strategic displacement of the main topic of discussion is used as a face-saving technique: Evidence from Jordanian Arabic.Journal of Politeness Research, 7, 239--257.

4. Al-Shlool, Safaa (2016). (Im)politeness and gender in the Arabic discourse of social Media Network Websites: Facebook as a norm. International Journal of Linguistics, 8 (3), 1948--5425.

5. Al Zidjaly, Najma (2006). Disability and anticipatory discourse: The interconnectedness of local and global aspects of talk. Communication & Medicine, 3 (2), 101--112.

6. Al Zidjaly, Najma (2010). Intertextuality and constructing Islamic identities online. In: Rotimi T (ed.) Handbook of research on discourse behavior and digital communication: Language structures and social interaction.New York: IGI Global, 191--204.

7. Al Zidjaly, Najma (2012). What has happened to Arabs? Identity and face management online.Multilingua, 31, 413--439.

8. Al Zidjaly, Najma (2014). WhatsApp Omani teachers?Social media and the question of social change.Multimodal Communication, 3 (1), 107--130.

9. Al Zidjaly, Najma (2015). Disability, discourseandtechnology: Agencyandinclusionin (Inter)action. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

10. Al Zidjaly, Najma (2017a). Memes as reasonably hostile laments: A discourse analysis of political dissent in Oman. Discourse & Society, 28 (6), 573--594.

11. Al Zidjaly, Najma (2017b). Mental health and religion on Islamweb.net.Linguistik Online.http://dx.doi.org/10.13092/lo.87.4178.

12. Al Zidjaly, Najma (2019a). Digital activism as nexus analysis: A sociolinguistic example From Arabic Twitter. Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, paper 221.

13. Al Zidjaly, Najma (2019b). Society in digital contexts: New modes of identity and community construction (Introduction). Multilingua, 38 (4), 357--375.

14. Al Zidjaly, Najma (Forthcoming in 2020). Multiscale repair as activism on Arabic Twitter. In Gordon,
Cynthia (ed.). Approaches to discourse. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.

15. Al Zidjaly, Najma& Cynthia Gordon (2012). Mobile phones as cultural tools: An Arabian example. Intercultural Management Quarterly, 13 (2), 14--17.

16. Al-Zumor, Abdul Wahed (2011). Apologies in Arabic and English: An inter-language and cross-cultural study. Journal of King Saud University -- Languages and Translation, 23 (1), 19--28.

17. Badarneh, Muhammad A. (2019). `Like a donkey carrying books': Intertextuality and impoliteness in Arabic online reader responses. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict.https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00027.bad.

18. Badarneh, Muhammad A &FathiMigdadi (2018).Acts of positioning in online reader comments on Jordanian news websites.Language & Communication, 58, 93--106.

19. Bakhtin, Michael (1981). The dialogic imagination.Austin: The University of Texas Press.

20. Bateman, John (2014). Textandimage: A criticalintroductiontothevisual/verbaldivide.Abingdon: Routledge.

21. Beeman, William (1986). Language, status, and power in Iran. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

22. Blommaert, Jan (2018).DurkheimandtheInternet: Onsociolinguisticsandthesociologicalimagination.London: Bloomsbury.

23. Bou-Franch, Patricia &Garces-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar (2018). Relational work in multimodal networked interactions on Facebook. Internet Pragmatics1:2. 134--160.

24. Bousfield, Derek (2007). Beginnings, middles, and end: A biopsy of the dynamics of impolite exchanges. Journal of Pragmatics, 39.2185--2216.

25. Brown, Penelope & Steven Levinson (1987).Politeness: Some universals in language use.Cambridge University Press.

26. Culpeper, Jonathon (1996). Towards an anatomy of impoliteness.Journal of Pragmatics, 25: 349--367.

27. Culpeper, Jonathon (2010). Conventionalized impoliteness formulae.Journal of Pragmatics, 42 (12), 3232--3245.

28. Culpeper, Jonathon (2011). Impoliteness: Using language to cause offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

29. Ebadi, Saman& Salman, Ahmed Rawdhan (2015). Using compliment responses in Arabic and English: Focusing on male and female EFL learners in Iraq. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, 2(7): 157--178.

30. Eickelman, Dale (1989). National identity and religious discourse in contemporary Oman.International Journal of Islamic and Arabic Studies, 6 (1), 1--20.

31. Eickelman, Dale & Jon Anderson (2003).New media in the Muslim world: The emerging public sphere. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

32. Emery, Peter (2000). Greeting, congratulating and commiserating in Omani Arabic. Language Culture and Curriculum, 13 (2), 196--216.

33. Farhat, Emdelellah (2013). Gender, power, politeness and women in the Arab society.Journal of English Language & Translation Studies, 1 (1), 50--60.

34. Feghali, Ellen (1997). Arab culture communication patterns.International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 21, 345--378.

35. Garces-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar (2010).The YouTubification of politics, impoliteness and polarization. In Rotimi T (ed.). Handbook of research on discourse behavior and digita,134, 120--133.

36. Garces-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar, Nuria Lorenzo-Dus& Patricia Bou-Franch (2013). Relational work in anonymous, asynchronous communication: A study of (dis)affiliation in YouTube. In Kecskes I & J Romero-Trillo (eds.) Research trends in intercultural pragmatics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 343--366.

37. Georgakopoulou, Alexandra (2017). `Whose context collapse?'Ethical clashes in the study of language and social media in context.Applied Linguistics Review, 8 (2-3), 1--32.

38. Georgakopoulou, Alexandra &TerezaSpilioti, (eds.) (2016).The Routledge handbook on language and digital communication.London: Routledge.

39. Georgakopoulou, Alexandra & Maria Vasilaki (2018).Small stories and impoliteness in online discussions of the Greek crisis.Internet Pragmatics, 1(2), 215--240.

40. Giddens, Anthony (1990). The consequences of modernity. Cambridge: Polity.

41. Goffman, Erving (1967). Interactionritual: Essaysinface-to-facebehavior.Chicago, IL: Aldine.

42. Graham, Sage L. (2007). Disagreeing to agree: Conflict, (im)politeness and identity in a computermediated community. Journal of Pragmatics, 39 (4), 742--759.

43. Graham, Sage L. (2008). A manual for (im)politeness? The impact of the FAQ in and electronic community of practice. In Bousfield, D. & M. Locher (eds.) Impoliteness in language: Studies on its interplay with power in theory and practice.Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 281--304.

44. Graham, Sage L. (2018). Impoliteness and the moral order in online gaming.Internet Pragmatics, 1 (2): 303--328.

45. Graham L. Sage & Scott Dutt (2019). “Watch the potty mouth”: Negotiating impoliteness in online gaming. In Ensslin, A. and I. Balteiro (eds.) Approaches to videogame discourse. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 201--223.

46. Graham, Sage L. & Claire Hardaker (2017). (Im)politeness in digital communication. In Jonathon Culpeper (ed.). The Palgrave handbook of linguistic (im)politeness, 785--814. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

47. Hammod, Najla&Arwa Abdul-Rassul (2017). Impoliteness strategies in English and Arabic Face- book comments. International Journal of Linguistics, 9 (5): 97--112.

48. Hardaker, Claire (2015). “I refuse to respond to this obvious troll”: An overview of (perceived) trolling. Corpora, 10 (2), 201--229.

49. Haugh, Michael (2015). Im/politeness implicatures. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

50. Haugh, Michael (2018). Afterword: theorizing impoliteness. Journal of Politeness Research, 14 (1), 153--165.

51. Hegland, Michael (1998). Flagellation and fundamentalism: (Trans)forming meaning, identity, and gender through Pakistani women's rituals of mourning. American Ethnologist25(2), 240--266.

52. Herring, Susan (2004). Computer-mediated discourse analysis: An approach to Researching online behavior. In Barab, S., R. Kling & J. Gray (eds.) Designing for virtual communities in the service of learning. New York: Cambridge University Press, 338--376.

53. Hofstede, Geert (1990). Culturesandorganizations: Softwareofthemind.New York: McGraw-Hill.

54. Jay, Timothy (1992). CursinginAmerica: A psycholinguisticstudyofdirtylanguageinthecourts, inthemovies, intheschoolyardsandonthestreets.Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

55. Jay, Timothy (2000). Whywecurse: A neuro-psycho-socialtheoryofspeech. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

56. Kadar, Daniel (2017a). Politeness, impolitenessandritual: Maintainingthemoralorderininterpersonalinteraction.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

57. Kadar, Daniel (2017b). Indirect ritual offence: A study on elusive impoliteness. In Cap, P. and M. Dynel (eds.) Impoliteness: From lexis to discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 177--199.

58. Kadar, Daniel & Michael Haugh (2013).Understanding politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

59. Kadar, Daniel, Michael Haugh& Chang, Wei-Lin Melody (2013). Aggression and perceived national face threats in Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese CMC discussion boards. Multilingua, 32 (3), 343--372.

60. KhosraviNik, Majid (2016). Social media critical discourse studies (SM-CDS). In: Flowerdew F and Richardson J (eds.) Handbook of critical discourse analysis. London: Routledge, 582--596.

61. KhosraviNik, Majid& Nadia Sarkhoh (2017). Arabism and anti-Persian sentiments on participatory web platforms: A social media critical discourse study. International Journal of Communication, 11, 3614--3633.

62. Kristeva, Julia (1980/1967). Word, dialogue and novel. In Roudiez, L.S. (ed.) Desire in language: A semiotic approach to literature and art(T. Gora, A. Jardine& L.S. Roudiez, Trans.) New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 64--91.

63. Labben, Afef (2018). Face and identity in interaction: A focus on Tunisian Arabic. Journal of Pragmatics, 128, 67--81.

64. Lewis, Bernard (2001). The multiple identities of the Middle East. New York: Schocken Books.

65. Locher, Miriam A. (2006). Polite behavior within relational work: The discursive approach to politeness. Multilingua, 25, 249--267.

66. Locher, Miriam A. (2008). Relational work, politeness, and identity.In G. Antos & E. Ventola (eds., in cooperation with T. Weber).Handbook of interpersonal communication, 509--540. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.

67. Locher, Miriam A. (2015). Interpersonal pragmatics and its link to (im)politeness research. Journal of Pragmatics, 86, 5--10.

68. Locher, Miriam A. (2018). Politeness. In Chapelle, C (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics.London: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0916.pub2.

69. Locher, Miriam A. & Brook Bolander (2017). Facework and identity. In C.R. Hoffman and W. Bub- litz (eds.). Pragmatics of social media, 407--434. Berlin: De GruyterMouton.

70. Locher, Miriam A. & Sage L Graham (2010). Introduction to interpersonal pragmatics.In Miriam A. Locher and Sage L. Graham, Interpersonal pragmatics, 1--13. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

71. Locher, Miriam A. & Richard J. Watts (2005). Politeness theory and relational work.Journal of Politeness Research1: 92--33.

72. Mak, Bernie Chun Nam & Chui, Hin Leung (2014). Impoliteness in Facebook status updates: Strategic talk among colleagues `outside' the workplace. Text & Talk, 34 (2), 165--185.

73. Mazid, Mohammed (2006). (Translating) Emirati Arabic politeness formulas: An exploratory study and a mini-mini-dictionary. The Seventh Annual U.A.E University Research Conference, 76285.

74. Mohammed, Hiba N. & Abbas, Nawal F. (2015).Pragmatics of impoliteness and rudeness.American International Journal of Social Science, 4 (6): 195--205.

75. Morozov, Evelyn (2011). Thenetdelusion: ThedarksideofInternetfreedom. New York: Public Affairs.

76. Najeeb, Zena M., MarlynaMaros&FarizaMohdNor (2012). Politeness in E-mails of Arab students in Malaysia.Journal of Language Studies,12 (1): 125--145.

77. Nelson, Gayle, Mohamoud Al Batal&Waguida El Bakary (2002). Directness vs. indirectness: Egyptian Arabic and US English communication style. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 26: 39--57.

78. Nishida, Kitarц(1958). Intelligibilityandthephilosophyofnothingness. Tokyo: Maruzen.

79. Nordenson, Jon (2018). Online activism in the Middle East. London: Ibtauris.

80. Reiter, Rosina & Sara Orthaber (2018).Exploring the moral compass: Denunciations in a Facebook carpool group.Internet Pragmatics, 1 (2), 241--270.

81. Samarah, Abdullah (2015). Politeness in Arabic culture.Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 5 (10), 2005--2016.

82. Schegloff, Emanuel A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

83. Schiffrin, Deborah (1989). Discourse markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

84. Scollon, Ron (2001). Mediateddiscourse: Thenexusofpractice. London: Routledge.

85. Sinatora, Francesco (2019a). Chronotopes, entextualization and Syrianpolitical activism on Facebook. In Najma Al Zidjaly (ed.). Society in digital contexts: New modes of identity and community construction. Multilingua, 38 (4): 427--458.

86. Sinatora, Francesco (2019b). Language, identity, andSyrianpoliticalactivismonsocialmedia.London: Routledge.

87. Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2018). “Ya bloody drongo!!!” impoliteness as situated moral judgement on Facebook.Internet Pragmatics, 1 (2), 271--302.

88. Sumiala, Johanna & Lilly Korpiola (2017). Mediated Muslim martyrdom: rethinking digital solidarity in the “Arab Spring”. New Media & Society, 19 (1), 52--66.

89. Tetreault, Chantal (2015). “What do you think about having beauty marks on your -- Hashek!”: Innovative and impolite uses of an Arabic politeness formula among French teenagers. Journal of linguistic Anthropology, 25 (3), 285--302.

90. Ting-Toomey, Sue (2004). The matrix of face: An updated face-negotiation theory. In W. Gudy- kunst (ed.). Theorizing about intercultural communication, 71--92. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

91. Ting-Toomey, Sue (ed.) (1994). The challenge of facework: Cross-cultural and interpersonal issues. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

92. Tracy, Karen (2008). `Reasonable hostility': Situation-appropriate face-attack. Journal of Politeness Research, 4, 169--191.

93. Tovares, Alla (2006). Public medium, private talk: gossip about a TV show as `quotidian hermeneutics.' Text & Talk, 26 (4/5), 463--491.

94. Tovares, Alla (2019). Negotiating “thick” identities through “light” practices: YouTube metalinguistic comments about language in Ukraine.Multilingua, 38 (4), 459--484.

95. Upadhyay, Shiv R. (2010). Identity and impoliteness in computer-mediated reader responses.Journal of Politeness Research, 6, 105--127.

96. Vasquez, Camilla (2014). The discourse of online consumer reviews. Indiana: Bloomsbury Publishing.

97. Watts, Richard (2003). Politeness. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

98. Wilce, John (2005). Traditional laments and postmodern regrets: The circulation of discourse in metacultural context. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology,15 (1), 602--71.

99. Xie, Chaoqun (2011). Politeness and memes: Philosophizing pragmatics. Fuzhou: Fujian People's Publishing House.

100. Xie, Chaoqun (2018). Introduction: (Im)politeness, morality and the internet. Internet Pragmatics, 1 (2), 205--214.

101. Xie, Chaoqun, Ziran, He & Lin Dajin (2005). Politeness: Myth and truth. Studies in Language, 29 (2), 431--461.

102. Zappavigna, Michelle (2011). Ambient Affiliation: A linguistic perspective on Twitter. New Media & Society,13 (5), 788--806.

103. Zayani, Mohamed (2018). Digital Middle East. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Размещено на Allbest.ru