Language in the world of Naguib Mahfouz : a textual linguistic criticism of literary discourse in al-liṣ wal-kilāb

Abstract EN

Throughout his writing career, which lasted for more than 70 years, the Egyptian novelist and Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz was aware of the role of language and its relationship to society.

For Mahfouz, language is not only a medium of representation, but also a means of intervention into the sociopolitical context.

In al-Liṣ wal-Kilāb (The Thief and the Dogs), particularly, Mahfouz detaches standard Arabic from its regular territory in order to provide a clear view of the turbulent social life in Egypt after the 1952 revolution.

He creates instead a new assemblage of classical fuṣḥā (heritage), contemporary fuṣḥā (modern), colloquial Arabic of the educated, and colloquial Arabic of the illiterate.

The purpose of using this multi-level linguistic style by Mahfouz, it will be argued, is to give voice to the marginalized cultural groups in the post-revolutionary era.

Therefore, the paper examines al-Liṣ wal-Kilāb from a linguistic perspective, aiming at analyzing and demonstrating the interaction between its linguistic style and polyphonic narrative structure.

This analysis ultimately reveals that by using a multi-level linguistic style, Mahfouz is able to open a kind of foreign language within standard Arabic which escapes its monotypic mode of representation.