Defiant Discourse

Speech and Action in Grassroots Activism

Tamar Katriel author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd

Published:30th Oct '20

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

This paperback is available in another edition too:

Defiant Discourse cover

In this timely and innovative book, Tamar Katriel takes a language and discourse-centred approach to the subject of peace activism in Israel-Palestine, one of the most significant political issues of our time, while also posing more general questions about the role played by language in activist movements – how activists themselves conceptualize their speech and its relationship to action.

Viewing activism as a globalized cultural formation that gives shape and meaning to grassroots organizations' struggles for political change, this book explores the relations between the cultural categories of speech and action as constructed and evaluated in activist contexts. It focuses on the specific empirical field of defiant discourse associated with the soldierly role in Israeli culture, using it to offer an in-depth exploration of the cultural underpinnings of defiant speech. Katriel interrogates discourse-centered activism as part of social movements' action repertoires on the one hand, and of the local cultural construction of speech cultures on the other.

This is critical reading for all students and scholars studying activism and social movements within linguistics, Middle Eastern studies, peace studies, and communication studies.

In Defiant Discourse Katriel unpacks the complex relationship between speech and action in a case study of anti-war activists in Israel. Along the way she gives us an emotionally powerful textual ethnography, a mini-history of Israeli politics, and a theoretically engaging account of the ways speech is and is not action.

Karen Tracy, University of Colorado, USA

ISBN: 9781138895737

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 453g

202 pages