A Pragmatics-based Appeal to Saving Face so as to Save Lives: On Intercultural Pragmatic Awareness (or rather: Lack thereof) in a Handbook for US Soldiers Deployed for Iraq

Abstract

The present paper zooms in on levels of pragmatic awareness and the range of stereotypical presuppositions as appearing in one specific text, i.e. the Soldier’s Handbook to Iraq. This text was made available to the 1st infantry division of the US Army when they proceeded to Iraq in 2003. In the present mixed-methods study we demonstrate that the handbook systematically uses what Beukeboom and Burgers (2019) call ‘biased language’ in that the text is cohesively composed of such lexico-semantic choices that point explicitly or implicitly to (mostly negative) stereotypes associated with the categories of ‘Arabs’ or ‘Iraqis’. We pay specific attention to the cross–cultural use of imperatives and lexical verbs–one of them being ogaf اوگف-“stop!”–as representing explicit speech acts of command. Overall, our study argues that the handbook came condemnably short in equipping its readers in terms of intercultural pragmatic competence and awareness, which surfaces both on the lexico-semantic level in the shape of stereotypical labels and descriptions of ‘the Iraqi’ as well as on the pragmatic level in terms of politeness and face-threatening language use towards Iraqis in Iraq.