Ideological positioning on the demise of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz in the Anglo and Arab diplomatic condolences

Abstract

This thesis deals with the letters of diplomatic condolences that the Anglo and Arab leaders express on the passing away of the Saudi Monarch Abdullah bin Abdulaziz. This study aims at uncovering what King Abdullah represents to the Anglo and Arab leaders in particular and why those leaders pay attention to that event. I want to find out the embedded and excluded categorizations of the King which give some insights into the ideological positions of Saudi Arabia and its Sovereign. The aim of this thesis is to reveal the perception of King Abdullah and Saudi Arabia by the included and excluded identities and representations of social actors in the Anglo and Arab condolences. Moreover, it intends to set out the performed collective identities together with the linguistic and cultural differences between the condolences of each context.

I argue that to have a deep analysis, I adopt a mixture of various theories, namely speech acts, Critical Discourse Analysis, political and diplomatic discourse, ideology, and identity. To achieve my goals, I deploy the following methods: social actor representations, national and religious identities, and Discourse Historical Approach.

The findings reveal that the ideologies of the leaders in each context result in the constitution of several identities where the Anglo condolers view King Abdullah as an advocate of peace in the region and partner in the patronage of inter-state relations, while the Arab leaders view him as a pan-Arab leader and a supporter of the Arab unity. Further, the Anglo leaders construct an international collective identity, whereas the Arab leaders perform a regional group identity. Moreover, the consolation in the Anglo data is done through secular discourse by retelling the deceased’s achievements, whereas the Arab data focuses on religious discourse. The results indicate that the identities given to King Abdullah make him an important figure who belongs to both groups.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Darren Paffey: orcid.org/0000-0003-2709-8012

Catalogue record

Export record