Language Matters: Talking about Palestine

Abstract

This article explores the linguistic repertoires and conceptual categories that are discursive workhorses in the task of informing U.S. public opinion and shaping policy on Palestine. It situates language commodification in a modern settler-colonial context as it intersects with corporate public relations. The article probes two sites of knowledge production and circulation: the media and the academy. It argues that, ultimately, the media's discursive strategies are handmaidens of violence, enabling and legitimizing colonial relations of displacement and domination. Shifting to academic discourse, particularly anthropology, the article engages with a few selected terms to explore emerging and alternative ways of conceptually framing Palestine.