Orientalist philology reduces Arabic to a dangerous ideology of inherent vagueness and excess

Evidence

Perhaps the most indisputable of these rock-bottom “truths,” and the most peculiar (since it is hard to believe it could be maintained for any other language), is that Arabic as a language is a dangerous ideology. The contemporary locus classicus for this view of Arabic is E. Shouby’s essay “The Influence of the Arabic Language on the Psychology of the Arabs.” The author is described as “a psychologist with training in both Clinical and Social Psychology,” and one presumes that a main reason his views have such wide currency is that he is an Arab himself (a self-incriminating one, at that). The argument he proposes is lamentably simple-minded, perhaps because he has no notion of what language is and how it operates. Nevertheless the subheadings of his essay tell a good deal of his story; Arabic is characterized by “General vagueness of Thought,” “Overemphasis on Linguistic Signs,” “Over-assertion and Exaggeration.” Shouby is frequently quoted as an authority because he speaks like one and because what he hypostasizes is a sort of mute Arab who at the same time is a great word-master playing games without much seriousness or purpose. Muteness is an important part of what Shouby is talking about, since in his entire paper he never once quotes from the literature of which the Arab is so inordinately proud. Where, then, does Arabic influence the Arab mind? Exclusively within the mythological world created for the Arab by Orientalism. The Arab is a sign for dumbness combined with hopeless overarticulateness, poverty combined with excess. That such a result can be attained by philological means testifies to the sad end of a formerly complex philological tradition, exemplified today only in very rare individuals. The reliance of today’s Orientalist on “philology” is the last infirmity of a scholarly discipline completely transformed into social-science ideological expertise. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 815

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘dangerous ideology’ framing of language that Islamophobia readings will reuse — language as racialized cognitive deficiency rather than neutral medium.
• DEFINE: Defines the ‘Arabic-as-dangerous-ideology’ trope that recurs in Orientalist and anti-Muslim discourse.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 815