The language of occupation in Palestine

Abstract EN

The analysis of political discourse under occupation reflects the spirit of new orientaliism in the Middle East.

The objective of orientalism is to create two contrastive pictures of two types of people , a powerful brilliant and civilized nation hungry for control and sovereignty against a powerless uncivilized nation whose aspiration does not go beyond struggle by all means for survival including terrorism and obsequiousness.

This is the case of the Israeli occupation in Palestine.

The realization of power through language is evident in the quotes of hate speech of the Israelis.

The aspects of hate speech project the ideology of occupation.

Such aspects will be analyzed to explore the linguistic features of such language.

In analyzing the linguistic means to spread hatred in the interest of power, speech acts by the authorities in power (statement, question, command, promise, threat, etc.) are important, because they enforce their interests.

Some speech acts are associated with special supporting conventions that enforce one’s power and serve one’s interests such as insult and slander, condemnation, and so forth (Brekle, 1989).

It has been noticed that such speech conventions of insults and slander are abundant in the Israeli quotes.

Applying Grice’s maxims to Israeli quotes, it is found that, by motivation of power, such quotes meet, to a large extenct, clarity, brevity, relation and truthfulness; however, the quotes of Palestinians, motivated by lack of power, barely meet Grice’s maxims.

The main arguments in the Israeli ideology are supported by prejudice keywwords supporting the main arguments like use of imagery and metaphor in particular, i.e., images of hated creatures, killing, arrogance, deception and lies.

The focus here English Department, Faculty of Arts, Hebron University The Arab-Israeli conflict makes smart people dumb, sensitive people brutal, and open minded people pigheaded fanatics.

(Ron David, 1993) is on: 1- the Israeli discursive position as power; 2- discursive position of the Palestiniians lacking power; and 3- the asymmetrical discursive relation between the Israelis and Palestinians.