This assignment is for a history class about collective memory and national identity, but my paper will be looking from a sociological linguistics perspective with speech act theory in addition to a historical collective memory lens.
My essay is a “Linguistic Analysis of Oppression and Resistance Narratives in Public Discourse”. It will focus on Israeli and Palestinian nationalities and collective identities.
The Jeffery C Alexander Trauma source has an idea of how to analyze narratives of trauma, and that is the basic path I am taking. You can see where I am TRYING to go with this on a document called FinalPaper_i.
The goal of my essay is: To analyze examples of individuals and groups claiming Israel to be either a sanctuary or an oppressive force, as well as the responses, and use Speech Act Theory to explain the success or failure.
My working thesis is: Although spoken language seems like a passive channel for nationalist narratives, the way the narratives are linguistically framed is imperative to the acceptance of the narratives of Israel as an oppressive force or a sanctuary.
The basic idea is not to use sources of examples to show speech act theory or this Jeffery C. Alexander theory works, but to use these perspectives of analysis to reanalyze and better understand the narratives. That is the key. What new stuff can be illuminated, not showing that an established theory simply works.
All sources that should be used are in a document called InClassPresnetation under the sources section along with general usage, but I will go over that here too.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. “Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma.” Essay. In Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity: contains a theory of how to analyze narratives that includes speech act theory. His idea of different “arenas” is where the meat of the analysis of this paper should come from. The religious, aesthetic, legal, scientific, mass media, and bureaucratic arenas give the context to what the narratives of collective memories are about.
Harriet Feinberg “ARAB AND JEWISH WOMEN IN DIALOGUE: The political is personal”: examples of multiple narratives being accepted or not in a small group setting.
Ahad Ha-Am/Eran Kaplan and Derek Penslar “Truth from Eretz Israel” in “The Origins of Israel: A Documentary History”: many perspectives about israel with varying success.
Rosemary Sayigh/ Lila Abu-Lughod “Women’s Nakba Stories:Between Being and Knowing” in “Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and Claims of Memory”: contains narratives that are mostly failed about palestinian struggles from a female perspective.
Wermenbol, Grace “A tale of two narratives”: a book about varying narratives with multiple arenas, but specifically for education and textbooks.
Hill and Plitnick “Except for palestine”: a book about the failed narrative of palestinian support in the context and arena of politics.
But I will also need to reference concepts about Speech Act Theory (mostly felicity conditions and Locutionary, Illocutionary, and Perlocutionary acts) from J L Austin’s “How to do things with words” or any source of your choosing. I do not have any downloadable sources for that, so it would be helpful to have access to databases. I’ll have to leave that up to you.
Any sort of background information on Israel and Palestine should be covered with “The Palestine Mandate and the Birth of the State of Israel” Cleveland and Bunting reading.
To be honest, I am very lost and do not have much to go on. That means that you have a decent amount of creative liberty to do what you need.
I have as much as I could muster of this assignment in a document called FinalPaper_i. I have a goal and bare-bones outline of what I want in a document called InClassPresentation.
I also have a sample of my writing from a random assignment from class titled Journal3 for you to look at my style.
I suggest looking at the sources (from a speech act theory lens) and figuring out the literal message of the group with a message, what the underlying goal/message is, and then at whether it was accepted or not. Next, to figure out why (felicity conditions) based on if there is a correct “ceremony” for getting that message across, if the location was correct, the roles were appropriate, if it was done with full purpose and belief/sincerity, and if it was done completely. Then ground that in the ideas of “contextual arenas” like religion, law, science, media, bureaucracy, education/textbooks, esthetics/optics, etc.
