Transgressive Arabic discourse in Lebanese political protest

Abstract

Abstract A wide range of Arabic language variation in form, code choice and orthographic script was wielded by Lebanese political protestors in their graffiti and political placards in Beirut in 2015. That summer, civil protests spilled out into the streets to critique the government inaction over waste management and overall corruption. I will focus on four tactics that highlight a trend towards linguistic transgression and strategic recontextualization of Arabic discourse in these protests: reworking of state iconography; inscribing irreverent spoken dialect in written form; incorporation of hashtag (#) participant and interpretive frameworks; and the recontextualization of traditional calligraphic forms in new contexts. This paper explores the intertextuality of protest signage and consider the ways in which the transgression of traditional linguistic boundaries might inform understandings of the social dynamics of contemporary politics in Lebanon.