Abstract
The study investigates the dynamic interplay between the cultural identity of advocates and the advocacy rhetoric of social movements, particularly the Black Lives Matter movement and the Palestinian Cause. It explores the impact of the cultural identity of advocates on shaping their linguistic and rhetorical techniques to contest power structures and address dominant social norms and ideologies. This study employs Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive model of Critical Discourse Analysis to conduct a cross-cultural qualitative analysis of 20 speeches delivered by four influential advocates: Khaled Beydoun and Richard Barrett (the Palestinian cause) and Time Wise and Shaun King (Black Lives Matter Movement). The analysis encompasses two steps: a microstructure and a macrostructure analysis. The findings of the microstructure analysis showcase marked and discursive choices of syntactic structure (e.g., passive and active voice, pronouns, and nominalization), the fusion of both culture-generic and culture-specific terms, and the use of distinguished rhetorical strategies (e.g., storytelling, parallelism, historical analogy, rhetorical questions, and enumeration). The findings of the macrostructure reveal how cultural identity influences the advocates’ mental representation of their cause, consequently shaping the audience’s perceptions and interpretation of the cause. Consequently, the study underscores the vital role of cultural identity in shaping advocacy rhetoric, effectively engaging not only the advocates’ immediate communities but also the mass audiences with access to these messages worldwide. It provides a tailored, novel framework deduced and driven from research analysis and findings. This framework can enable linguists, analysts, and researchers to systematically examine linguistic markers and cultural nuances in advocacy rhetoric.
Presenters
Rima Jamil MalkawiStudent, PhD Candidate in Linguistics and Translation, University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Cultural Identity; Advocacy Rhetoric; Critical Discourse Analysis; Social Movements; Rhetorical
