Bogomolov O. Discourse of the Arab Spring: Cognitive-Semantic and Communicative-Functional Aspects (based on a study of the Egyptian media texts).

The thesis represents a study of the discourse of the Egyptian January 25 revolution – arguably the most consequential episode of the Arab Spring. A relatively small set of highly salient concepts, reoccurring across a large volume of texts, forms the basis of the entire revolutionary discourse. These concepts represent a set of ideas and meanings that helped Egyptians make sense of the turbulent years that followed the downfall of the Mubarak regime. The study opens with the review of the concept of ṮAWRA (REVOLUTION) – a folk concept of the event as opposed to the ‘expert’ notion of revolution – which reflects a belief in an immediate and drastic nature of change expected to materialize by force of the mere fact that the revolution had been proclaimed, which we have reconstructed as a REVOLUTION as MIRACLE frame. Further, the thesis examines the concept of ẒULM (‘injustice, oppression, wronging, tyranny’), a key element in explaining the reasons that led to the revolution. The concept is grounded in the foundational texts of the Arab Islamic culture, but was also influenced by the 20th cent. political Islam and leftist discourses. Then follows the discussion of the concepts representing the protagonists of the revolutionary metanarrative in their relations to each other, including but not limited to a key marker of the revolutionary discourse, the newly coined concept of FULŪL – political others, ‘diehards’ of the Ancien Régime, whom the revolutionaries strived to be ‘remove’ from the ‘political scene’. The idea of the removal (iqṣā’) of enemies and purification (taṭhīr) of the social space as a dominant theme of the revolutionary discourse highlights the polarizing nature of the Egyptian revolutionary discourse.