Critical Discourse Studies

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The rhetoric of collocational, intertextual and

institutional pluralization in Obama's Cairo
speech: a discourse-analytical approach

Amir H.Y. Salama

To cite this article: Amir H.Y. Salama (2012) The rhetoric of collocational, intertextual and
institutional pluralization in Obama's Cairo speech: a discourse-analytical approach, Critical
Discourse Studies, 9:3, 211-229, DOI: 10.1080/17405904.2012.688296

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2012.688296

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Critical Discourse Studies
Vol. 9, No. 3, August 2012, 211 229

The rhetoric of collocational, intertextual and institutional pluralization in

Obamas Cairo speech: a discourse-analytical approach
Amir H.Y. Salama

Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Kafr El-Sheikh University, Egypt

This article proposes a novel discourse-analytical approach that explores Obamas rhetoric of
pluralization in his Cairo speech on 4 June 2004. The approach eclectically combines both
quantitative corpus and qualitative discourse-analysis methods. Three aspects of analysis
are at play. First is the collocational aspect capturing the lexico-grammatical (ideational
and evaluative) meanings associated with the political and social actors nominated,
referenced and predicated in the speech. Second is the intertextual aspect that reflects
the political-religious (interdiscursive) meanings underlying the speech. Third is the
institutional aspect related to the spatial setting of the speech (i.e. Cairo University and the
country of Egypt) and the socio-historical meanings attaching to it; meanings that explain
how the institutional framework of the speech go fittingly with its core message. This
article has reached four important findings. First, Obamas Cairo speech is rhetorically
predicated on the pluralization of politically and religiously heterogeneous social actors,
such as Americans, Israelis, Christians and Jews on the one hand and Arabs, Palestinians
and Muslims on the other. Second, Obamas speech has drawn upon a political-religious
interdiscourse with four major functions, phatic communion, legitimation, exclusion/
inclusion and peaceful co-existence again all are directed toward arguing for political
and religious pluralization. Third, Obamas conscious choice of the spatial setting of his
Cairo speech is rhetorically oriented toward institutionally pluralistic meanings. Last, there
is considerable potential for integrating the micro collocational-intertextual aspect with the
macro socio-historical institutional aspect for critically examining the import of political
speeches.
Keywords: Obamas Cairo speech; pluralization; collocation; social actors; intertextuality;
interdiscursivity; footing; voice; legitimation; Cairo University

1. Introduction
Barack Obamas Cairo speech (2009) has marked the political contours of a new US policy
toward the Middle East. It is rather unfortunate that, since its launch on 4 June 2009 and
despite the far-reaching political effect it has had on Arab and international media outlets, to
date the speech has received little, if any, scholarly attention in the cross-disciplinary field of
discourse studies. A number of non-academic articles have been narrowly interested in produ-
cing a paraphrase of the speechs main argument, offering an ordinary content-analysis view
of Obamas attempt to impress Muslims with his humility and respect because of his citing
of Quranic verses (Olster, 2009); or, rather reductively, proposing a political analysis of
Obamas forceful reiteration of his support for a Palestinian state and his admonitions that
the Arab world should pursue peace with Israel (Meckler & Solomon, 2009).
An otherwise discourse-analytical perspective may well go beyond the limits of content
analysis or simplistic paraphrase of what Obamas overall message to the Muslims is purported
to mean in the Cairo speech. Actually, it is in this speech that Obama was keen to stage a new

Email: amir.salama79@gmail.com, amir.salama@art.kfs.edu.eg

ISSN 1740-5904 print/ISSN 1740-5912 online

# 2012 Taylor & Francis
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212 A.H.Y. Salama

beginning between the USA and the Islamic world. Underlying the whole speech is a reconci-
liatory discourse, whose text-internal surface features seem to be chosen and organized in a
way that rhetorically appeals to politically and religiously heterogeneous audiences, with pre-
sumably clashing historical conflicts, most notably the Christian West and Muslim World
(Saikal, 2000). This has eventually led Obama to take on rhetoric of pluralization, whereby
such heterogeneous audiences could be persuaded to reconcile in a pluralistic fashion, that is,
to co-exist despite their partisan political and religious differences. Here, the concept of plura-
lization derives its meaning from the philosophical premise of pluralism defined in Webster
Comprehensive Dictionary: The existence within a society of diverse groups, as in religion,
race, or ethnic origin, which contribute to the cultural matrix of the society while retaining
their distinctive characteristics (Marckwardt, Cassidy, & McMillan, 1977, p. 972). This
should leave us with the following overarching question: what are the discursive strategies
that Obama has drawn upon to constitute the rhetoric of pluralization in his Cairo speech on
4 June 2009?
Toward answering the above-formulated question, I propose a discourse-analytical
approach that can tease out the rhetorical aspects of pluralization in Obamas Cairo speech
at the collocational, intertextual and institutional levels. The approach integrates micro collo-
cational intertextual and macro institutional levels of analysis, which necessitates the combi-
nation of quantitative and qualitative methods. (1) A corpus method is used in computationally
identifying the collocates (e.g. Church, Hanks, & Moon, 1994; Clear, 1993; Hunston, 2002;
McEnery, Xiao, & Tono, 2006) of political and religious social actors (Van Leeuwen, 1996,
2008, 2009) in the speech, then a lexico-grammatical analysis of the collocational environ-
ments at stake is conducted. (2) A discourse-analysis method is employed in tracing the inter-
textual links (e.g. Fairclough, 1992, 2003, 2006) in the speech and the footing (Goffman,
1981) taken on by Obama and the different voices (Bakhtin, 1981) he has imported from
different discourses for bringing about some rhetorical effect on the target audiences. (3) A
socio-historical analysis of the institutional framework of the speech is utilized in a way
that reflects how institutional power may influence people (e.g. Althusser, 1971; Habermas,
1987; Weber, 1914) and accord discourse and its participating subjects legitimacy
(Foucault, 1972).
The overall structure of this article is fourfold. First, I set out the theoretical framework
suggested in this study in terms of the three notions of collocation, intertextuality and insti-
tutional power (Section 2). Second, I sketch out the methodology by casting light on the data
analyzed in the study and the procedure followed toward the data analysis (Section 3). Third,
I conduct the analysis of the data at the micro level of examining the collocates accompanying
the political and religious social actors nominated, referenced and predicated in the Cairo speech
and explaining the intertextual links discursively utilized in the speech on the one hand, and at
the macro level of interpreting the institutional framework of the speech on the other hand
(Section 4). Fourth, I close the article with a summary of the main findings and prospects for
future research that is relevant to the same research topic (Section 5).

2. Theoretical framework
This study offers an integrated theoretical model of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis
whereby the micro aspect of collocational-intertextual analysis may work in tandem with the
macro aspect of institutional socio-historical analysis. Although these aspects are theoretically
and analytically kept separate in this study, they should be perceived as interdependently
co-working toward an overall goal: first, collocation can ideally reveal how the text producer
employs the surface lexico-grammatical resources in representing the social actors referred to
 Critical Discourse Studies 213

in the text; second, intertextuality can (a) explain how different discourses come to interface in a
way that produces new meanings in text, such as legitimation, and (b) cast light on the historical-
institutional setting of the text; third, institutional analysis enables a socio-historical investi-
gation of the spatial setting of the speech and its correlation with Obamas central message.
In what follows, I shall discuss the theoretical framework covering these three aspects of collo-
cation, intertextuality and institutional power.

2.1 Collocation and social-actor representation

Leech (1974, p. 20) refers to collocative meaning as consisting of the associations a word
acquires on account of the meanings of words which tend to occur in its environment.
A similar vision can readily be recognized in the way Halliday and Hasan (1976) refer to
collocation as a cohesive device: a cover term for the kind of cohesion that results from the
co-occurrence of lexical items that are in some way or other typically associated with one
another, because they tend to occur in similar environments (p. 287). Thus collocation can con-
tribute to building up the text surface-structure by rendering the words in a text cohesively
hanging together. Here collocation counts as a text-building resource for what can be called
in the Hallidayan sense the lexico-grammar of text; it can operate both by combining two (or
more) items on syntactic grounds and by associating the same items on semantic grounds. As
Bartsch (2004) argues, collocation parallels more closely a notion of semantic and syntactic
combinatorial properties attributed to individual lexical items, and indeed, to individual word
forms (p. 29). In this way, collocation can be said to enable text at the two planes of any
linguistic sign, i.e. the paradigmatic and the syntagmatic.
Kress (2001) reports Saussures (1983) vision of the linguistic sign as participating in two
kinds of structures: one, its place in an organized inventory of signs, which he [Saussure]
referred to as the axis of association [or the paradigmatic]; and the other, its place in an
actual, outwardly visible form, which he called the axis of combination [or the syntagmatic]
(p. 30). However, in order to understand how collocation operates on either axis in text, the struc-
tural form of the collocating items needs to be made explicit as well as reliable in terms of its
actual frequency. Indeed, in studying collocation, corpus linguistics1 has maintained criteria
of this sort. Based on Sinclairs (1966, 1991) corpus-based approach to collocation, Stubbs
(2001) has offered a statistical definition of the term collocation: collocation is frequent
co-occurrence (p. 29).2 Also, Stubbs pays attention to the structural pattern of collocation,
where a node is the word-form or lemma being investigated and a collocate is word-
form or lemma which co-occurs with a node word (p. 29). Simple as it seems, this definition
of collocation is useful in two respects. First, it attends to the rigorously statistical principle
of frequency, which wards off drawing on the intuition or bias of the native speaker in selecting
the collocates of a node word; after all, intuition is typically a poor guide to collocation
(McEnery et al., 2006, p. 83). Second, the node-collocate structure is a convenient way of
looking at how words are collocationally strung in text.
A statistical approach may well serve the purpose of identifying the collocating items in one
text. Arguably, it is appropriate to use corpus software packages, for example, WordSmith Tools
(Scott, 1996), in determining empirically which pairs of words have a statistically significant
amount of glue between them, and which are hence likely to constitute significant collocations
[. . .] (McEnery & Wilson, 2001, p. 86). A number of statistical formulae are used in corpus lin-
guistics to identify significant collocations; for example, MI, t and z scores. In this study, in iden-
tifying collocations, I follow the tradition of Church et al. (1994) in intersecting the MI and t
scores in order to measure the strength and the statistical significance of the collocating pairs,
respectively.3 This can be taken as a reliable starting point for doing the qualitative analysis
214 A.H.Y. Salama

of collocations. An easy way of conducting this form of collocational analysis can be achieved
via concordance examination:
A concordance is a list of unconnected lines of text, which have been summoned by the concordance
program [in our case, WordSmith5] from a computer corpus, that is, a collocation of texts held in a
form which is accessible to the computer. At the centre of each line is the item being studied
(keyword or node). (Partington, 1998, p. 9)
Thus, identifying the significantly co-occurring items in one text is by no means adequate for
collocational analysis; the co-text of the collocating pairs needs to be electronically mined by
dint of computational concordancing.
In his influential 1951 paper Modes of Meaning, Firth (1951) introduced collocation as a
theoretically significant level at which meaning can be analysed: meaning by collocation is
part of lexical meaning (Anderson, 2006, p. 60). Thus, at least in theory, any linguistic sign,
taken as a node word, can associate and/or combine with collocates in a way that may define
its value or meaning potential. Not surprisingly, then, Hoey (2005) has strongly argued for
the pervasiveness of collocation (pp. 5 7). It is at this level of collocational analysis that
the textual presentation of a node word can be lexico-grammatically realized in its immediate
context, or co-text, where nominational, referential and predicational meanings can be ideally
captured. Indeed, the way a node word and its collocates associate or combine may well
peculiarly reflect the biased stance of the text producer, which eventually yields what Salama
(2011) terms ideological collocation:
a hegemonic discursive practice that is textually instantiated in the form of frequent lexical
co-occurrences, and that is therefore deemed to be a potential site for contested representations
of participants, topics or events across and/or within clashing texts and opposing discourses.
(Salama, 2011, p. 338; italics in original)
Indeed, the representation of participants can be ideologically loaded, especially when
those participants are viewed as social actors in a discursive practice with well-defined semantic
roles such as agents or beneficiaries (Van Leeuwen, 1996, 2008, 2009, p. 149). It is in this
sense that discursively participating social actors can be investigated within their concor-
dance-based collocational environments, with a special analytic focus on their contested rep-
resentations in a given discourse. Such collocational environments can easily exhibit in what
way social actors are nominated, referenced, and predicated, politically and/or religiously (see
Reisigl & Wodak, 2001, pp. 45 69). Collocation-based representations of social actors are to
mark a critical shift from textual (lexico-grammatical) presentations toward discursive
(pragma-political) representations. A critical shift of this sort entails a further intertextual
aspect, where there exists a set of other texts and a set of voices which are potentially relevant,
and potentially incorporated into the text (Fairclough, 2003, p. 47). Also, equally importantly, it
stresses the need for highlighting the institutional aspect involved. Both aspects will be the focus
of the coming subsections.

2.2 Intertextuality, footing and voice

The semiotic notion intertextuality is often credited with the literary theorist Julia Kristeva, who
maintains that any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and
transformation of another (Kristeva, 1986, p. 39). This may explain why Fairclough (2006,
p. 151) counts intertextuality among the salient features of contemporary discourse. This
premise can nicely find its way into Kristevas declaration that every text is from the outset
under the jurisdiction of other discourses which impose a universe on it (Kristeva, 1974,
pp. 388 389; translation by Culler, 1981, p. 105, cited in Chandler, 2007, p. 197).
 Critical Discourse Studies 215

Arguably, intertextuality may well bring together different discourses at utterance level with
a view to constituting interdiscursivity in text. Fairclough (1992, pp. 117 118) distinguishes
between manifest intertextuality and constitutive intertextuality; he equates the latter with
interdiscursivity. Manifest intertextuality, writes Fairclough (p. 117), is the case where
specific other texts are overtly drawn upon within a text. Fairclough (p. 118) continues to dis-
tinguish between what he calls modes of intertextual relations: (a) sequential intertextuality,
where different texts or discourse types alternate within a text; (b) embedded intertextuality,
where one text or discourse type is clearly contained within the matrix of another; (c) mixed
intertextuality, where texts or discourse types are merged in a more complex and less easily
separable way. Fairclough argues that interdiscursivity is a matter of how a discourse type
is constituted through a combination of elements of orders of discourse (Fairclough, 1992,
p. 118).4 However, Reisigl and Wodak (2009) offer a rather different approach toward interdis-
cursivity, where the principle of topicality is at play:
Interdiscursivity signifies that discourses are linked to each other in various ways. If we conceive of
discourse as primarily topic-related (as discourse on x), we will observe that a discourse on
climate change frequently refers to topics or subtopics of other discourses, such as finances or
health. (Reisigl & Wodak, 2009, p. 90)

Thus, intertextuality, in its two forms, is a signifying process that links texts and discourses
in a way that contributes to building the semiotic structure of discourse in its broadest sense; that
is, as comprising all forms of meaningful semiotic human activity seen in connection with
social, cultural, and historical patterns and developments of use (Blommaert, 2005, p. 3).
Intertextuality takes an active role in constituting what Bakhtin (2006, p. 106) called the
dialogic overtones that fill the utterance. Manifest and constitutive intertextual references
bring different voices, which are semiotically mediated by speech utterances, into text. This
intertextuality-based dialogism is one important criterion that Bakhtin (1981) has drawn on in
making a distinction between authoritative and internally persuasive discourse. In Bakhtins
(1981) view, Wertsch (2001, pp. 226 227) argues, whilst authoritative discourse is based on
the assumption that utterances and their meanings are fixed, not modifiable as they come into
contact with new voices, the internally persuasive discourse allows dialogic interanimation.
The discrepancy between the univocal authoritative discourse and the dialogic internally per-
suasive (rhetorical) discourse should highlight the interface between voice and intertextuality; it
is a discursive interface that renders the speaker or writer capable of adjusting in Goffmans
(1981) terms their footing.
Goffman (1981) introduced footing as a concept that is sensitive to the change in the align-
ment we take up to ourselves and the others present as expressed in the way we manage the pro-
duction or reception of an utterance. (p. 128). Thus, like intertextuality, footing can be detected
at utterance level. Indeed, the way footing is adjusted in speech or text has a close bearing on the
intertextual references embedded therein. Footing can be semiotically traced via the intertextual
references which can explicitly or implicitly distinguish between the authorial and non-authorial
voices in text. The Goffmanian concept of footing has its own quarrels with strict speakerhood,
i.e. the understanding that text producers are strictly the speakers of speech utterances; rather, it
allows for the multivoicedness of discourse and its material (intertextual) realizations in text.
Commenting on footing, Wetherell (2001) points out that when people talk they can speak
as either the author of what they say, as the principal (the one the words are about) or as the
animator of someone elses words (Wetherell, 2001, p. 19; emphasis in original).
Thus, it can be said that the concepts of voice and footing can be semiotically mediated by
intertextuality. Intertextual cues can mark out the different (discursive) voices invoked in text in
terms of footing, or the way in which writers or speakers arrange themselves and their
216 A.H.Y. Salama

relationships to others (Reisigl & Wodak, 2001, p. 82). Probably, any attempt to separate out the
intertextual and the historical is doomed to failure, simply because often there is a dialectical
relation between the two dimensions. Drawing on the theoretical framework proposed by Kris-
teva (1986), Fairclough (1992) points out such a dialectical aspect, where intertextuality implies
the insertion of history (society) into a text and of this text into history (Kristeva, 1986, p. 39;
cited in Fairclough, 1992, p. 102). As a result, here, I argue that institutional analysis, being part
of the societal and the historical, is a significant continuation of intertextual analysis. Let us
tackle the institutional aspect in the coming subsection.

2.3 Institutional power

Recently, Mayr (2008, p. 4) has proposed three definitions of the term institution. (1) An
established organization or foundation, especially one dedicated to education, public service
or culture. (2) The building or buildings housing such an organization. (3) A place for the
care of persons who are destitute, disabled or mentally ill. Here, I am interested more in the
first sense of institutions than in the last two, not least because the immediate institutional fra-
mework of the data used in this research is educational, viz., teaching institute or university. It
holds its own cultural academic power as encompassing the expert think tank in society. This
should lead us to the term institutional power and its impact on (a) people in the public
sphere (e.g. Althusser, 1971; Habermas, 1987; Weber, 1914) on the grounds that institutions
are primary sites for reality construction (Mayr, 2008, p. 3) as well as on (b) discourses
and the subjects participating therein (Foucault, 1972). Actually, this is where ideologies are
mediated through institutions as common sense; hence ideologies can be viewed as being
meaning in the service of power (Thompson, 1984); and further as being the basis of the
social representations shared by members of a group (Van Dijk, 1998; italics in original).
The ideological role played by institutions has been meticulously tackled by the Marxist theorist
Louis Althusser, who, in his famous 1971 essay, wrote on ideological state apparatuses (ISAs) that
promote and distribute various forms of ideology through the dominant context of economic capit-
alism. Althusser (1971) gave an account of apparatuses (i.e. institutions) in capitalist countries such
as France and Britain, whose operations are largely ideological: the apparatuses of religion,
education, the family, the law, the system of party politics, the trade unions, communications
and culture (Althusser, 1971, pp. 136137). Actually, in focusing on the institutions of ideology,
Althussers essay located the educational apparatus (the school and the university) as the
dominant ideological State apparatus in capitalist social formations (Althusser, 1971, p. 146).
Further, interestingly, Foucault (1972) has made explicit the interrelation between insti-
tutions and discourses, where the latter derive some sort of legitimacy from the former. In his
explanation of the power vested with medical discourse and the subjects (or social actors)
involved therein, Foucault focused on the institutional sites from which the doctor makes his
[sic] discourse, and from which this discourse derives its legitimate source and point of
application (Foucault, 1972, p. 51; italics in original). Foucault has further exemplified that
legitimacy-giving aspect, which yields what can be eventually termed institutional power:
In our societies, these sites are: the hospital, a place of constant, coded, systematic observation, run
by a differentiated and hierarchized medical staff, thus constituting a quantifiable field of frequencies
[. . .]; the laboratory, an autonomous place, long distinct from the hospital, where certain truths of a
general kind, concerning the human body, life, disease, lesions, etc., which provide certain elements
of the diagnosis, certain signs of the developing condition, certain criteria of cure, and which makes
therapeutic experiment possible; lastly, what might be called the library or documentary field,
which includes not only the books and treatises traditionally recognized as valid, but also all the
observations and case-histories published and transmitted, and the mass of statistical information
[. . .]. (Foucault, 1972, pp. 51 52)
 Critical Discourse Studies 217

Here, of the essence is Foucaults detailed description of institutional power, not only in
respect of medical discourse, but also of the subjects (doctors), whose arguments are accorded
an air of credibility in the eyes of the layperson by virtue of the same institutional framework of
the hospital, the laboratory, the library, etc. and the socio-historical meanings of technical exper-
tise attaching thereto.

3. Methodology
3.1 Data
In this study, the data I use for my analysis is the web-based script of Obamas speech which was
delivered in Cairo University on 4 June 2006. The speech can be found online: http://www.
guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/04/barack-obama-keynote-speech-egypt.
This speech is particularly important as it records a historically significant moment in the
Middle-East politics, where Obama attempted to act as a mediator between the USA and world-
wide Muslims. Notably, he was keen to reconcile the two parties on a global scale, resorting pri-
marily to the rhetorical device of citing from the Quran in the speech (see Olster, 2009).
However, the Cairo speech has not stopped at the limit of addressing American and Muslim
actors; rather, it extended the political scope toward Israeli, Palestinian, Christian and Jewish
ones as well, in a notably pluralistic fashion. Perhaps, consequently, Obamas Cairo speech
has left many traces in subsequent texts in international and Arab media discourse, which
renders the speech an object of textual relevance (Teubert, 2007, p. 80). Now, let us move on
to the methodological procedure followed in this study.

3.2 Procedure
3.2.1 Collocational analysis: Node words, collocations and concordances
This is the stage of analysis where the study attempts the following research sub-question: what
are the collocational meanings contributing to the rhetoric of pluralization in Obamas Cairo
speech? In what follows, I set out the two steps required for answering this sub-question.
As far as collocational analysis is concerned, the first step is to decide upon the node words
(search terms) and their collocates in the speech, drawing upon quantitative and qualitative cri-
teria. It should be made clear that, using WordSmith5 (Scott, 2007), I shall generate a wordlist of
the frequent words in Obamas speech. On a qualitative level, from the wordlist I shall select
(as node words) lexical items based on their discourse participancy in the speech; that is,
their being political or religious social actors, who perform a certain semantic role (e.g.
agent or patient) in a social practice (Van Leeuwen, 1996, 2008). Also, note that the adjectival
form of these social actors (political or religious) may be equally significant and thus taken as
node words as well (e.g. MUSLIM, PALESTINIAN). On a quantitative level, I shall use Word-
Smith5 for calculating the statistically significant collocates of the node words by intersecting
the MI and t scores (see Subsection 2.1). It should be noted, however, that the corpus technique
of concordancing search terms has its own limitations in that it may target certain co-textual
information before and/or after the search term to the exclusion of other potential information
somewhere else in the data. Therefore, I was keen to constantly compare concordance-based
investigations with those beyond the scope of the concordance analysis of the data, so that
any contradictions may be detected.
The next step is purely qualitative in nature; it examines the collocational environments of
the designated political and religious social actors in the speech at the lexico-grammatical level
in their concordances.
218 A.H.Y. Salama

3.2.2 Intertextual analysis

This is the second aspect of analysis in the study, where there will be a continuation of the quali-
tative investigation of the relevant intertextual links used in the speech, with an eye to the
process of bringing together different discourses for textually creating a special meaning of plur-
alization that is intended for bringing about a rhetorical effect on the target audiences. So, at this
point of analysis, the following research sub-question is to be answered: what are the intertextual
meanings underlying the rhetoric of pluralization in Obamas Cairo speech?

3.2.3 Institutional analysis

This is the third part of (qualitative) analysis that takes into account the institutional setting of
Obamas Cairo speech, which covers the global geopolitical context of Egypt and the local aca-
demic institute of Cairo University. It is at this stage of analysis that the socio-historical mean-
ings associated with such an institutional setting are correlated with the overall message of the
speech in an attempt to explain their close bearings on the rhetoric of pluralization running all
through Obamas Cairo speech.

4. Analysis
4.1 Collocational meanings of pluralization in Obamas Cairo speech
Investigating the collocational environments of the political and religious social actors could be
an important clue to significant lexico-grammatical meanings in Obamas Cairo speech. Using
WordSmith5 (Scott, 2007), 62 words have been identified as having statistically significant col-
locates in the text. Applying the qualitative and quantitative criteria in Subsection 3.2.1, the fol-
lowing have been taken as node words: AMERICA, ISRAELIS, MUSLIM, PALESTINIAN,
and STATES. Table 1 lists these five node words and their collocates.
In Table 1, the first node word is AMERICA. Obviously, it is a political social actor, which is
much associated with the negative-marker collocate not. Let us examine the concordance of this
collocation AMERICA . . . not in Figure 1.
As is clear in Figure 1, Obama attempts to negate a particular image of America, which has
long been stereotypically entrenched in the minds of Muslims: the omniscient America that
knows what is best for everyone (line 1). The negation of this image presupposes its very exist-
ence in the world of politics, where America has interfered with the domestic policies of other
countries, especially at the time of George Bush Jr. This claim is strategically made by Obama in
order to create audience-specific preparatory conditions for the core theme in his speech the
relation between Islam/Muslims and America. This thematic representation is clear in the rest of
the concordance lines (2 5).
Except for line 2, which constructs America as being ready to support the Palestinian cause,
all the lines explicitly reflect such a theme. In line 3, the collocation AMERICA . . . not mirrors

Table 1. The collocates of the political node words in Obamas Cairo speech.
Number Node word Frequency Collocate Frequency Joint frequency MI t Score
1 AMERICA 25 not 40 5 4.87 2.16
2 ISRAELIS 9 and 233 6 4.06 2.30
Palestinians 10 5 8.34 2.23
3 MUSLIM 26 communities 14 10 7.32 3.14
4 PALESTINIAN 10 people 44 5 6.05 2.20
5 STATES 18 and 233 7 3.28 2.37
 Critical Discourse Studies 219

Figure 1. The collocation AMERICA . . . not in Obamas Cairo speech.

Obamas assertive tone about the non-existence of war between America and Islam; the existen-
tial process is negated in both the present and the future temporal frames (is not/never will be) in
a way that renders the truth of the proposition factual. In line 4, the collocate not is reiterated; it
comes before and after the node word AMERICA. By doing so, Obama has created a rhetorical
analogy, which is initiated with the comparator Just as, where Muslims and America share the
same feature: each does not fit a crude stereotype. The last line (line 5) focuses on Obamas cer-
tainty not using any epistemic modality markers about the non-exclusiveness between
America and Islam. Thus, by using the collocation AMERICA . . . not, Obama is keen on
showing a positive attitude toward Islam and Muslims.
Now, let us move to the second node word in Table 1, ISRAELIS. Again, it is a political
social actor that is collective in essence. In Obamas speech, ISRAELIS collocates significantly
with the two lexical items and and Palestinians, where the latter is also a political social actor
that stands in a pragma-politically symmetrical relation with the node ISRAELIS. Let us have a
look at the concordance in Figure 2.
As shown in Figure 2, the collocates and and Palestinians appear in the dominant lexical
pattern ISRAELIS and Palestinians. Significantly, on the one hand, the two social actors Israelis
and Palestinians are predicated on the syntagmatic relation of conjunction, which renders the
two elements as one syntactic unit, viz., noun phrase, in lines 1, 2 and 4. Thus, both elements
form a structural unity; they are constituently inseparable, and are therefore potentially entitled
to perform the same semantic role in the text. On the other hand, at the paradigmatic level,
Obamas choice of ISRAELIS in collocation with Palestinians stresses the politically shared
grounds of the two social actors; this can be coherently realized in light of the long-standing pol-
itical conflict between the two parties. Here, Obama presents us with the ideal (rather than real)
situation, where there is a hypothetical world of Israelis and Palestinians securely co-existing
(line 1).
The same ideal situation continues in lines 2 and 4: respectively, Obama envisages a state
where the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear and
where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security. However, in lines 3 and 5,
Obama comes down to earth, striking a balance between the ideal and the real. For example, in
line 3, Obama began to realistically argue that peace cannot be imposed and that what is said in
private to both parties should equate with what is said in public; in line 5, Obama emphasizes
the productive role of discussing the situation between the two parties. Thus the collocational
pattern ISRAELIS and Palestinians marks out a rhetorical shift from the ideal to the real in

Figure 2. The collocates of ISRAELIS in Obamas Cairo speech.

220 A.H.Y. Salama

Figure 3. The collocational pattern MUSLIM communities in Obamas Cairo speech.

order for Obama to offer a balanced discourse, which is neither rosy nor morbid in political vision.
Significantly, this is a linguistic cue to Obamas representation of a context that pluralizes both
Israelis and Palestinians; this representation has been textually actualized by revealing the inse-
parable syntactic combination and semantic association between the two political actors (Israelis
and Palestinians), as if they ineluctably share one and the same destiny.
One important collocational pattern in Obamas speech appears with the node MUSLIM, that
is, MUSLIM communities. It is displayed in Figure 3 above.
Prior to coming to the co-text of this collocational pattern, one important observation should
be made about the syntagmatic status of the node word MUSLIM in Figure 3. It is a classificatory
Modifier that constitutes a well-defined religious social actor (MUSLIM communities).
Also, paradigmatically, Obama has consciously selected the defining religion-based attribute
MUSLIM, and thus he chooses to address the particularly religious communities of Muslims
at this point of his speech. This is expected since the speech itself is delivered in Egypt,
where the predominant faith community is Muslims.
Speaking of the collocational pattern MUSLIM communities, I would like to start from line 7
in Figure 3, where Obama constructs himself as a carrier of the goodwill of American people and
of the typically Islamic greeting (Assalaamu alaykum) from the Muslim communities in
Obamas country (also see intertextual analysis in Subsection 4.2). (Note, here, how Obama
is keen on propositionally bringing together the voices of Americans and Muslims living in
America.) It is in this sense that Obama makes out of himself a messenger, whose mission is
to bring together religiously, and probably ethnically, different groups. I can argue here
with further evidence to come that this is the core meaning of the whole speech, Obamas car-
dinal message so to speak. Obama exemplifies the affinity between America and the Muslim
communities at different levels of education, politics, health and economy.
For example, in line 1, he expresses the will to encourage more Americans to study in Muslim
communities. In line 3, he articulates the joint intention of both America and those threatened
Muslim communities to defend themselves; this, according to Obama, should lead extremists
to a state of being isolated and unwelcome in Muslim countries (line 2). In line 5, Obama pro-
ceeds with the same theme by focusing on the expanded partnership between America and Muslim
countries toward promoting child and maternal health. And, finally in this regard, in line 9 he
expresses his personal initiative to deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and
social entrepreneurs in the United States and Muslim countries around the world. Also, in an
attempt to raise the pathos of Muslim communities, Obama voices a laudatory tone toward the
glorious history of civilization within Muslim communities (lines 4 and 8). The same rhetorical
meaning can be captured in the coming collocational pattern PALESTINIAN people.
Like the previous collocational pattern MUSLIM communities, let us begin by explaining the
syntagmatic and paradigmatic statuses of the node word PALESTINIAN in Figure 4.
Viewed as a linguistic sign, the node PALESTINIAN has a special lexico-grammatical value
in Obamas speech. At the syntagmatic level, it is the fixed position of a Modifier which is
 Critical Discourse Studies 221

Figure 4. The collocational pattern PALESTINIAN people in Obamas Cairo speech.

intended to classify a particular group. At the paradigmatic level, it stands as an alternative

(choice) to a whole class of other classificatory labels that are related to the same context of
situation, namely, ISRAELI. Thus, in this context, the addressee of Obama is the PALESTI-
NIAN people, who collectively seem to be the focus of certain issues raised in the Cairo
speech. The whole instances of this collocational pattern in Figure 4 evoke Obamas sympathy
toward the Palestinian people: (a) associating the collocation with the behavioral Process help
in line 1, which syntactically constructs the Palestinian people as the close Range of the Process
help; (b) deontically presenting the [p]rogress in the daily lives of the Palestinian people as
being part of a road to peace, and (deontically again) committing Israel to taking concrete
steps to enable such progress (line 2); (c) taking the position of a caller for the unification of
the Palestinian people (line 3); (d) acknowledging the suffering of the Palestinian people
(lines 4 and 5).
As such, Obama has rhetorically created a sympathetic context that may well appeal not only
to the Palestinians but to the majority of Muslims worldwide as well.
The next node word in Table 1 is STATES, which is identified to collocate with the conjunc-
tive marker and. As the concordance in Figure 5 reveals, the node STATES is part of the proper
noun the United States:
As noticed above, the node STATES (invariably referring to the United States) and the item
Muslims conjoin in most instances by the collocate and. Obama is aware of the relevance of this
conjoining process to his speech, and he makes the best political gain out of it. First, in line 1, it is
this conjoining process that marks out the purpose of his visit to Egypt, and thus his speech: to
seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world. Second, in
line 2, the same process enables him to draw attention to the reason behind the tension
between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran nuclear weapons. Third, in line
3, using the same conjoining process, Obama presents himself as being privy to the past (histori-
cal) tension between the USA and Muslims; and thus, as being able to resolve the present tension
between the two forces and proffer a vision for a better future between them. Last, in order to
confirm that vision, the conjoining process between the USA and the Muslim communities
takes a concrete form of a co-operation between the two forces.
In the last line in Figure 5, Obama uses the collocation STATES . . . and to adduce concrete
evidence of the claim he made about his purpose of seeking a new beginning between the
United States and Muslims around the world (line 1). That evidence has been subtly couched
in the speech by using the coordinating conjunction and as a collocate: the collocate has coor-
dinated the specific case of Obamas order to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay onto the

Figure 5. The collocational pattern STATES and in Obamas Cairo speech.

222 A.H.Y. Salama

general claim that Obama prohibited the use of torture by the United States. Such a coordi-
nation-based transition renders Obama as a man of action and not just rhetoric. Thus, again,
this collocational pattern (STATES and) is predicated on the context that favors the pluralization
of the USA and Muslims.
Now, let us move from the lexical level of analysis to the utterance level, where intertextual-
ity plays a significant role in furthering the same rhetoric of pluralization.

4.2 Intertextual legitimation of pluralization in Obamas Cairo speech

Obamas Cairo speech contains several cases of intertextuality; each amounts to a distinct type
of intertextuality that serves a particular discourse function. However, I shall restrict my analysis
to those cases which bring together different discourses whereby pluralization is legitimized in
some way. Let us begin with the first case in Figure 6.
This case of intertextuality is used in the opening paragraph of Obamas speech as part of an
audience-greeting practice. It is the subtlest case in the whole speech as it operates on two levels:
a structural (code-based) level and a pragma-semantic level. Let us take each in turn. First, on a
structural level, the form Assalaamu alaykum is a classical-Arabic transliteration of the ideal
code of greeting across a Muslim community; and it literally translates as Peace be upon you.
Using this code, Obama has enhanced an intertextual meaning by maintaining its original clas-
sical-Arabic code. This has rhetorically brought in a code-specific dialogism in his speech,
where classical Arabic and American English meet at one point, producing what might be
termed linguistic pluralism. On a pragma-semantic level, this code of greeting has been intrin-
sically grounded in the Islamic discourse of Prophetic tradition or the Sunnah (i.e. a record of the
sayings and acts of the Muslims Prophet Muhammad in his life). It had long been enacted by the
Muslims Prophet in a speech-act verb that commits each and every Muslim to disseminating
peace amongst their fellow Muslims.
As such, Assalaamu alaykum is a social utterance par excellence: it has emerged basically
for what Bakhtin (2006) has technically called addressivity, i.e. the utterances quality of
being directed to someone (p. 107). Given the religious felicity conditions of divine revelation
on the part of the Muslims Prophet (Muhammad), such a speech act is still endurably in effect so
much so that it amounts to a crucial part of the Muslim identity. As shown in the first-part (col-
locational) analysis, here Obama bears this typically Islamic code of greeting from Muslim com-
munities in America to his predominantly Muslim audience in Cairo, thereby politically
capitalizing on the religious emotions of this audience. Obviously, the present intertextual
link fits well as part of Obamas greeting part of the speech; and thus, it takes the form of a
mixed intertextuality that is hard to separate from the generic structure of the speech, which
further constitutes an integral part of the context of traditionally Islamic culture. Actually,
such an intertextual code of classical-Arabic greeting contributes to perpetuating the discourse
order of the same traditionally Islamic culture. And, by so doing, Obama has created an

Figure 6. The first case of intertextuality in Obamas Cairo speech.

 Critical Discourse Studies 223

interdiscursive meaning, where a political discourse and an Islamic discourse are combined.
Standing as an Islamic greeting formula, Assalaamu alaykum serves as a phatic-communion
function in what may be described as a political-Islamic interdiscourse (Figure 6).
Interestingly this case of intertextuality features Obama as the Animator of an Islamic greet-
ing that is made by a collective producer (or Author), that is, the Muslim communities in
America. In this case, the Principal is ideally every peace-seeker, whose ultimate goal is to
live in peace in the company of others this is the main message behind the social utterance
Assalaamu alaykum in Islam. Here, strategically then, Obama is keen to bring together
America and Muslims in a diaphonic discourse, where the voice of Muslims in America
reaches the ears of Obamas Muslim-majority audience in Cairo.
Now, let us move to the second case of intertextuality in the speech.
As is clear from Figure 7 below, Obama reports a Quranic verse as a form of manifest inter-
textuality that is embedded into his speech. This form of intertextuality brings the discursive
voice of Obama together with the scriptural (allegedly sacred) voice of the Quran by sharing
the same propositional content of the verse, viz., one should tell the truth: [. . .] and speak
always the truth. In this instance of intertextuality, Obama is the Animator of an utterance
that is sacred to the target discourse community of Muslims, to whom the Author of this utter-
ance is a monotheistic God, i.e. Allah; and the divine source of the same utterance is focused on
the Principal of truth-seekers, who themselves always speak the truth. Therefore, here, Obama
constructs himself as a speaker of truth, whose message to the audience in Cairo should accord-
ingly be taken as a truism, drawing on the authenticity and sanctity of the reported Quranic verse.
Also, interestingly, the present reported verse stands as a case of constitutive intertextuality
(i.e. interdiscusivity), wherein political and religious discourses are hybridized as a political-
Islamic interdiscourse. This hybrid discourse is intended to legitimize Obamas overall political
message of reconciling America with Muslims worldwide.
The third case of intertextuality is closely similar, yet with a different discourse function, to
the second case. Figure 8 illustrates the third case.
Again, in an intertextual reference, Obama resorts to the Quran in a way that rhetorically
appeals to the pathos of the Muslim community at large. This is a case of manifest embedded
intertextuality that is imported into the speech by means of the reporting verb teaches,
which invokes the didactic meanings associated with the scriptural message of the Quran.
However, significantly, Obama has dismissed the Target of the reporting Process teaches.
This can be explained in light of the fact that, in explicitly stating the Target us (teaches
us), Obama could well politically imperil his solidarity with other Christian or Jewish

Figure 7. The second case of intertextuality in Obamas Cairo speech.

224 A.H.Y. Salama

Figure 8. The third case of intertextuality in Obamas Cairo speech.

American/European audiences. The intertextual content is functionally couched as the Verbiage

of the Process teaches; this should bring in the instructive voice of Allah as the divine authority
to Muslims. The voice of such a divine authority so bitterly abominates the killer of an innocent
soul to the point of hyperbolically demoting them to the status of being killers of all mankind.
Also, the same voice so glamorously favors the savior of a person to the point of equally hyper-
bolically promoting them to the rank of being saviors of all mankind.
At this point, footing matters significantly as Obama has carefully adjusted his discursive
participancy as a mere reporter (or Animator) of the so-called divine message articulated by
the God of Muslims, Allah (or Author). Notably, the authored content is directed toward any
killer of an innocent and any savior of a person (or Principal): the former is negatively rep-
resented as a mass killer of innocents and the latter positively as a philanthropic sustainer of
lives. As such, Obama has tactfully distanced himself from incriminating violent extremists
or applauding cooperative helpers, be they Muslims or otherwise, by drawing on the Quranic
voice, whose discursive effect on the Muslim audience is rhetorically effective. The clearest
manifestation of this discursive process can be found in Obamas statement The enduring
faith of over a billion people is so much bigger than the narrow hatred of a few, which pits
the abstract concept of Islamic faith against the collective social actor of extreme Muslims.
That asymmetrical representation, where the abstract social practice of Islamic-Quranic belief
is set against the concrete social actor of Muslim killers, enacts the socio-semantic meaning
that Islam itself excludes those killers; and, as a consequence, it is the duty of true believers
in Islam to fight against them and, further, to cooperate with other non-Muslims who pursue
the same goal of fighting against Muslim killers. But, also importantly, the present form of
Quranic intertextuality is intended to favorably include those who save the lives of others.
In this way, Obama employs a political-Islamic interdiscourse in a way that is exclusive to
those who kill innocents, amongst whom are extreme Muslims, and that is inclusive of those who
save (or help in saving) persons. In Obamas political discourse, it is through Islamic (Quranic)
discourse that killers are delegitimated and relegated to the status of evil-doers and saviors (or
helpers) are legitimated and elevated to the rank of good-doers. It can be said, then, that
the present interdiscursive meaning bears a double function of exclusion and inclusion in
Obamas Cairo speech (Figure 8).
However, there is yet another case of intertextuality that goes beyond the discursive limits of the
Quran as the holy book of Muslims toward other religious discourse types as shown in Figure 9 below.
This is the most interesting case of intertextuality in the whole speech; its overall meaning
has been captured in Obamas statement The People of the word can live together in peace
 Critical Discourse Studies 225

Figure 9. The fourth case of intertextuality in Obamas Cairo speech.

(Figure 9). The case represents three intertextual links to the three major scriptures of the
Koran, the Talmud and the Bible, all in the form of manifest embedded intertextuality.
Crucially, all three links share almost the same propositional content of all [Muslims,
Jews, Christians] living in peaceful co-existence. Here, Obamas footing is strategically
oriented toward this discursive meaning, where Obama is the collective Animator of three pur-
portedly divine messages, articulated by three Authors (the three Gods in Islam, Judaism and
Christianity); it is this discursive meaning that contributes to religious pluralization in the
speech. Only here does multivoicedness emerge with an amalgam of political discourse and
three (allegedly complementary) types of religious discourse that yield a political-religious
interdiscourse. Overall, these manifest embedded forms of intertextuality highlight the dis-
course function of religious co-existence that Obama seems to be calling for in the Cairo
speech (Figure 9).
At this point, it may be useful to shed light on the overall institutional setting of Obamas
Cairo speech; an analytic aspect that will bring in the socio-historical meanings sustaining
Obamas rhetoric of pluralization.

4.3 Institutional pluralism: Cairo University and Egypt

Now, having finished with the micro aspect of collocational-intertextual analysis, it is time we
moved to the macro aspect of institutional analysis, where the spatial setting of Obamas speech,
Cairo University and the country of Egypt, is in focus. Such a spatial setting has had its own
political history that may explain why Obama has particularly chosen it as the locus of his
famous speech in Cairo.
226 A.H.Y. Salama

To begin with, at the outset of his Cairo speech, Obama has referred to two prestigious insti-
tutions in Egypt, that is, Al-Azhar and Cairo University as being educationally complementary
to each other: For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning,
and for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypts advancement. Together,
you represent the harmony between tradition and progress. Understood as such, both institutions
are pluralistically combined as key mediums for the past (viewed as being traditional) and the
future (viewed as being progressive); and both therefore constitute the present of modern Egypt.
Even so, Obama has decidedly chosen the progressive institution of Cairo University as the
setting for his speech. Before explaining the whys and wherefores of this choice, we need to
cast light on the institutional framework of Al-Azhar. Al-Azhar is the oldest Islamic institute
of Arabic literature and Sunni Islamic learning in the world. It has had a long tradition of teach-
ing and learning Islamic law (or shariah). Institutionally then, Al-Azhar has had a polarized
way of teaching and learning; it is squarely focused on Islamic and Arabic studies, and is
thus exclusionary in approach to, say, Coptic-Christian students and scholars. Such a historical
background renders the institutional framework of Al-Azhar non-pluralistic in essence; a fact
that runs counter to the main theme of Obamas Cairo speech as seeking a new beginning
between Muslims and non-Muslims.
Contrary to this non-pluralistic institutional framework is that of Cairo University, which
bears almost the same educational pedigree as Al-Azhar in Egypt, yet with a crucial difference;
that is, the institutional framework of Cairo University is liberal or secular enough as to accom-
modate both Muslim and non-Muslim students and scholars. Thus, Cairo University is far more
institutionally pluralistic in approach than Al-Azhar, and is deemed therefore to fit in well with
the major theme of Obamas Cairo speech. Also, on a political-economic plane, Cairo University
is reckoned to have been an intellectual force in the politically radical change of Egypt from a
feudalist monarchy to a republican state, headed by late President Gamal Abd al-Nasser, since
the revolution of May 1952. The then-Nasserite military regime exploited Cairo University as an
ideological state apparatus (Althusser, 1971), via which the socialist (anti-capitalist) ideology
was promulgated in the Egyptian society at that time. It is in this sense that Cairo University
staged an academic discourse of a politically and economically new beginning in the then-social-
ist Egypt. Note how this chimes very well with the core message of Obamas Cairo speech: I
have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the
world. Obviously, the institutional history of Cairo University can boost the rhetorical
purpose of Obamas reconciliatory discourse that enhances a radically new meaning at both pol-
itical and religious levels. As such, Cairo University can be said to establish the meaning of insti-
tutional (dynamic) pluralization as opposed to the meaning of institutional (static) separatism
advocated by Al-Azhar.
Also, going beyond the immediate institutional setting of Obamas speech (Cairo University),
the geopolitical context of the speech, the country of Egypt, has had a long history of uniting the
Arab countries. The Nasserite nationalistic discourse perpetuated mythical meanings that have
been ideologically codified into the concept Egypt, e.g. it being the heart of the Arab
world, the elder sister of all Arab countries and so forth. In selecting Egypt as the spatial
context of this speech, Obama is making political use of such socio-historical meanings which
construct Egypt as the meeting-point of all Arabs, be they Muslims, Christians or Jews, of all
possible political stripes and intellectual persuasions; and this is the very essence of pluralism.

5. Conclusion: Findings and future research

This article has offered a discourse-analytical approach based on a tripartite model (colloca-
tional, intertextual, institutional) that explores Obamas rhetoric of political and religious
 Critical Discourse Studies 227

pluralization in his Cairo speech. Specifically, I argue, Obamas Cairo speech advances a per-
suasive argument for the necessity of abolishing religious and political divides between the
USA and Muslims as being parties to the same historical conflicts and challenges; this argument
is both linguistically and institutionally structured in a way that renders its logic pluralistically
palatable to ideologically opposing social actors; for example, Muslims vs. Christians and Pales-
tinians vs. Israelis. A linguistic-institutional analysis of Obamas Cairo speech can reveal both
the micro-textual persuasive aspect of Obamas argument in the Cairo speech and the macro-
institutional aspect of the socio-historical meanings attaching to the spatial setting of the
speech in a way that enhances the same persuasive aspect conveyed by Obama to the target audi-
ences Muslims and Americans.
This article has reached four important findings. First, Obamas Cairo speech is rhetorically
predicated on the pluralization of politically and religiously heterogeneous social actors, such as
Americans, Israelis, Christians and Jews on the one hand and Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims
on the other hand. Second, Obamas speech has interdiscursively drawn upon a political-reli-
gious interdiscourse that ranges over four discourse functions, phatic communion, legitimation,
exclusion/inclusion and co-existence again all are directed toward arguing for political and
religious pluralization. Third, Obamas felicitous choice of the institutional setting of his
Cairo speech is rhetorically oriented toward socio-historical pluralistic meanings. Last, there
is considerable potential for integrating the micro collocational-intertextual aspect with the
macro socio-historical institutional aspect for critically examining the political import of the
speech.
For future research, applying the same discourse-analytical approach, I would suggest study-
ing other speeches (produced by Obama) that followed the Cairo speech, so that we can test the
hypothesis whether the same kind of rhetoric the rhetoric of pluralization constitutes a
pattern in different or similar arguments.

Notes on contributor
Amir H.Y. Salama is currently a lecturer in Linguistics at the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Kafr
El-Sheikh University, Egypt. He obtained his PhD in Linguistics from the Department of Linguistics and
English Language at Lancaster University in the UK in 2011. His doctoral thesis is on Ideological Collo-
cation in Meta-Wahhabi Discourse Post-9/11: A Symbiosis of Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Lin-
guistics. He got an MA in (applied) linguistics from the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Tanta
University, Egypt, in 2006. His research interests are Critical Discourse Analysis, Corpus Linguistics, Sys-
temic Functional Linguistics, Text Linguistics, and Lexical Semantics.

Notes
1. Corpus linguistics is the study of language based on examples of real life language use (McEnery &
Wilson, 2001, p. 1). It utilizes bodies of electronically encoded text, implementing a more quantitative
methodology, for example by using frequency information about occurrences of particular linguistic
phenomena (Baker, 2006, pp. 1 2).
2. In this respect, there are also other publications which reach back in the 1990s such as Stubbs and Gerbig
(1993), Hardt-Mautner (1995) and Stubbs (1996).
3. An MI score of 3 or higher is proposed to be taken as evidence that two items are collocates
(Hunston, 2002, p. 71). A t score of 2 or higher, write McEnery et al. (2006), is normally considered
to be statistically significant (p. 56).
4. Note here that Fairclough (1992, p. 43) uses the term orders of discourse in its Foucaldian (1972) sense
to refer to the totality of discursive practices within an institution or society, and the relationships
between them.
228 A.H.Y. Salama

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