Indexical (re)ordering and commodification of linguistic resources during the December Revolution in Sudan

Abstract

In this essay, we analyze the processes through which the actors of the December Revolution in Sudan—being themselves revolutionary activists or counterrevolutionary promoters—use language for political and economic purposes. Based on an ethnographic analysis of both oral and written language practices, the study describes the metasemiotic changes that occurred during the last Sudanese uprising, against the background of the language-related ideological struggles, and it analyzes them through their embeddedness within local sociocultural patterns. By focusing on the processes of indexical (re)ordering and language commodification, the study eventually shows how a phase of political crisis can generate metasemiotic reconfigurations of the revolutionary linguistic resources in order to render them more suitable for the market economy and/or to produce political consensus.