Metaphorical political slurs in Arab social media discourse describing Middle East conflicts

Abstract

Metaphorical political slurs (MPSs) have been very common on social media since the Arab Spring, during the Gaza-Israeli war, and the Syrian revolution. This study aims to analyse and describe the type, structure, meaning, and purpose of a sample of Arabic MPSs. Results showed general MPSs referring to political figures (Khissisi for Sisi); TV channels (Alkhanzeera, “the swine” for Aljazeera); religious, ethnic, and racial (Satan's Party for Hezbollah). Structurally, MPSs consist of satiric word play as phoneme and word substitution (?aahir salacious for ? ahil monarch); a pejorative produced by combining a general-purpose insult with the name of ethnicity, as calling Arabs "a nation of ewes", calling Iranians "fire worshippers"; adding common insulting modifiers to create loaded descriptivism (history's dump). Semantically and pragmatically, MPSs express abuse, disparagement, contempt, criticism, and hostility. They refer to personalities, parties, countries, or TV channels that the users oppose or dislike in a derogatory, satirical, or insulting manner. Further analyses and examples are given in detail.