Hybrid Genres and the Cognitive Positioning of Audiences in the Political Discourse of Hizbollah

This paper aims at providing a better understanding of the workings of political rhetoric in the discourse of Hizbollah by examining relatively underexplored socio-cognitive dimensions in production and reception of political speeches. It argues for the centrality of the macro-linguistic textual notion of hybrid genres to the understanding of the socio-cultural makeup of speaker-audience relations and dynamics. The adequateness and uniqueness of the Lebanese, and by extension, the Middle-Eastern context are more clearly evident in the overwhelming dominance of dogmatic discourses which, I argue, both trigger and aid the perpetual construction and reconstruction of ideologically susceptible audiences. Elements of these discourses such as religious, political, military and even literary blend in a unique way in public, normally political, speeches to produce a type of hybrid genre which helps construct constantly shifting audience roles with varying effective power. A pragmatic-stylistic analysis of the discourse of conflict, I propose, can help provide a starting point for understanding the complexity of the rhetorical situation in the region especially in the context of continuously rising extremism.