The violence of language and the language of violence : A Search for origins and a correction of concepts

Abstract

This study is a part of the investigations into verbal violence. It aims at
discussing the violence of language to see how words turn into bashes,
language into shots, and the threads of speech into an ambush. The study
seeks to answer the following question: is our Arabic language violent?
How is violence manifested in our language? What are its causes and
effects?
The motivation for these questions is what constitutes the assets of the
Arabic language. One of the meanings of “syntax”, for instance, is
“obscenity”, and one of the meanings of “speech” is “hurt. Grammar
books never tire of giving examples such as:" Zaid hits Amr " and
“Khaled kills Said”.
This study also tackes the effect of violence on our Arabic language. It
corrects some misunderstandings of Quranic terminology, such as: «alshahadah"
(martyrdom) and «al-tafjeer" (infidel), which now constitute
the image of Muslim and Arab on television and in the newspapers.
Words like “cutting necks”, “dragging corpses”, “women captivity”, and
the “bombing of buildings” and other manifestations of violence are what
define the terms (Arab) or (Muslims) for the (Other). We shall evince that
(explosion) and (martyrdom) do not have any relation with the meaning
of (violence). The paper shows some aspects of linguistic violence in our
popular culture, and we end with an invitation for (peace) and how to
develop our linguistic discourse so that our language will evolve from the
(discourse of power) into the (power of discourse) and from the (violence
of language) into the( benefit of language). That is why we have chosen
the title above.