THE 18 DAYS THAT CHANGED EGYPT: THE CONCEPT OF REVOLUTION IN THE EGYPTIAN ARAB SPRING DISCOURSE
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Abstract
The recent antecedents including the Tunisian revolution of 17 December 2010 – 14 January 2011 and relatively recent experience of so called color revolutions played a far greater role in shaping the popular idea of January 25 revolution than the schoolbook precedents such as the French, the American and the Russian revolutions or even the Egypt’s own revolution of 1952. From the political activists as well as the general public perspective, the Arab Spring was seen as a long overdue, political change that would save the Arab World from a protracted period of stagnation. It was, therefore, almost expected to be innovative and different from revolutions of the old age. Indeed, it was innovative in many ways, particularly in the manner, in which the initial sit-in in Tahrir Square deployed the modern electronic media as both an instrument of empowerment and a weapon against the autocratic regime. The article focuses on the semantic added value that the concept of REVOLUTION has acquired in the context of both the actual practice of mass protests seen as an exercise in multimodal mass communication and the verbal discourse of the Egyptian Arab Spring contrasted to theoretical constructs of revolution, either ideologically motivated or academic, that have influenced the manner, in which the concept of REVOLUTION functions in broader political discourse. Our overall methodological approach is grounded in George Lakoff’s theory of conceptual metaphor. Our ideas regarding the interplay of visual and verbal elements in the complex semiotics of the January 25 – February 11, 2011 outdoor protests have been inspired by Gunther Kress & Theo Van Leeuwen (1996) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. We draw on key ideas and terms of J. L. Austin and J. R. Searle’s speech act theory in addressing pragmatic aspect of the Egyptian revolutionary discourse. As the material for this study we use a sample of Egyptian media political discourse dating to the period of 2011–2013, available on the web.
How to Cite
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concept of REVOLUTION, discourse, Egyptian Arab Spring, The 18 days that changed Egypt
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