Graphic Identity in the Scriptorial Landscape of Lebanon

Abstract

AbstractThe relationship between space, language, and the active construction of political identity in Lebanon is explored through a diachronic look at the outdoor display of political rhetoric of the Lebanese political leader, General Michel Aoun, and his evolving party, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), in the public landscape of Beirut. Specifically, I will focus on graffiti of the FPM in 2005 and discuss its resonances with the earlier political rhetoric of Aoun during the civil war and his Paris exile, at a time when he was in a conflicted relationship with the state. I will then look at his later political advertising campaigns from 2008–2009 to see how some semiotic elements from Aoun's time in exile and his return in 2005 have been extended into the more recently professionally polished party image. Through the examination of linguistic strategies, such as the use of reported speech and graffiti font, I argue that these textual artifacts contain the residue of contested ideologies of populism, nationhood, and belonging, which gain particular meaning when placed in specific geo‐semiotic zones within the political landscape of the city. These ideologies formed the basis for constructing a graphic identity for Aoun in subsequent advertising campaigns. The publicly placed written word, then, provides a medium through which political identity is formed, negotiated, and revised. [political discourse, Lebanon, arabic, advertising, graffiti]