An analysis of the discourse topics, discursive and ideological strategies in the political speeches of the ousted Arab leaders during the Arab Spring: a critical discourse analysis

Abstract

This study aims at exploring how the ousted Arab leaders Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, and Muammar al Qaddafi of Libya de/legitimize the Self and the Other in their political speeches during the Arab Spring via the use of discourse topics (macro-strategies), discursive strategies, and ideological strategies. In order to achieve this objective, I employ two theories of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Reisigl and Wodak’s (2001, 2009) Discourse-Historical Approach is utilized to identify how discourse topics and the discursive strategies of nomination, predication, and intensification/mitigation are used in the examined speeches to de/legitimize the Self/Other. Second, van Dijk’s (1998) Ideological Square is employed to identify the ideological strategies used by the three leaders to socially include/exclude the Self/Other. These two approaches highlights that integrating the social, historical, and political contexts of these speeches also helps to better understand how the concepts of de/legitimization of the Self/Other evolved over time. The study revealed that the three leaders use the discourse topics of the harmful effects of the protests and foreign intervention to negatively represent the Other. Counting the sacrifices and offering evidence of reforms, on the other hand, are used to positively represent the Self. All three leaders rely more on the nomination strategy to positively represent the Self, while they rely more on the predication strategy to negatively represent the Other. They rely on repetition as a tool of intensification mainly to gain sympathy and support from their audience. All speeches exhibit ideological overtones which are communicated via the ideological strategies of authorization, narrativization, moral evaluation, self-victimization, comparison, blame attribution, arousing emotions, and personification. Finally, a substantial portion of CDA research has traditionally concentrated on Western democratic political environments. This research expands the domain of CDA to non-Western authoritarian environments by analyzing the speeches of Arab leaders. During crises, these leaders employed nationalistic narratives to establish themselves as protectors of national identity and stability. This emphasis on identity construction corresponds with the extensive CDA literature regarding the interplay between language and identity, especially in contexts where identity is utilized to advance political objectives.