After a lot of work and effort put by our group over the past few weeks, we are glad to be writing this blog as a final one to update you on our project process and share our findings with you! If you haven’t read the previous blog, I recommend that you read it before going on.
Basically, we chose textual analysis as our ENGL256D project for this semester under these extreme and unexpected conditions (being quarantined and adapting to distant learning). The main goal of this project was to try to figure out the attitudes of the Orientalists (the people, mainly westerners, who wrote about the Orient) towards the Orient itself and its Orientals (people from the Orient) through their word choice and trends.
We chose this project because the potential findings were lucrative, and textual analysis itself seemed to be very interesting. Additionally, we wanted to test the widespread belief that Orientalism is a way of seeing that assumes, emphasizes, exaggerates and distorts the differences of Arab people, cultures, and traditions as compared to those of the West. It often views the Arab culture as exotic, uncivilized, and at times even dangerous.
We are also not a group that back downs from a challenge, so although this project was challenging in the sense that we had to learn a new software, Antconc, as well as a new skill, textual analysis, we pursued it and are more than content with the results it yielded.
TTo be completely honest, it was a challenge indeed. After we have chosen our points of focus (writers from the UK and the US, as well as writings written prior to 1860 and after the year 1910), we successfully downloaded the corresponding texts that met our requirements, cleaned the files up, and grouped them into many subgroups of corpora (UK, USA, before 1860, after 1910), with one corpus containing all the files. We will not elaborate on this point further as it is found in the previous blog.
However, this gave rise to our final research questions: How did the attitudes of the Orientalists change with time and how does it differ between two different nations (UK & USA)? Did they look at the Orientals from the same perspective? What different words/vocabularies were used by these authors in their writings during the given time periods that would reflect on their attitudes?
In particular, we faced our biggest challenge here, when trying to answer these research questions. None of us had any previous experience or knowledge of textual analysis and looking for word trends, which made it hard to continue the project as planned. This led to a change of tracks and the adaptation of a new methodology, research. After consulting Doctor Najla Jarkas, our course instructor, we decided to do some research and read a few orientalist writings to come up with words that could help us determine the attitude of the Orientalists towards the Orient.
To do so, we primarily focused on Edward Said’s book, “Orientalism”, in which Said criticizes the Orientalists and the Westerners for being biased and looking down at the Orient. He defines the Orient and the Occident (as in the West) as two unequal halves of the world. He also mentions some of the views that the Orientalists have of the Orient as racist, politicized, and dehumanizing.
Additionally, we extracted some words that reflect those attitudes from the book Representing Difference in the Medieval and Modern Orientalist Romance by Amy Burge, which touches on the topic from a different aspect such that it highlights the essence of what is known as “sheikh romance” and the difference between this kind of romance and medieval romance and along the way sheds a light on the attitude towards Orientalism from the relationship, culture, and artistic aspect.
Finally, we read “Before Orientalism” by Kim M. Phillips to back up our attitudes and extend our research horizon. In this writing, Kim Phillips addresses how Europeans have always looked at their culture as privileged, and at other cultures as somehow inferior. She also refers to Edward Said’s book and comments on many of his points regarding the attitudes of the Westerners towards the Orient, agreeing with his concepts, but also arguing against the extent to which he described those attitudes. She thinks that Said exaggerates the extent to which Westerners look down at the Orient and condescendingly describe it.
For example, Edward Said (1978) mentions the following view that Westerners, and specifically Lord Cromer’s, have of the Orientals: “Orientals or Arabs are thereafter shown to be gullible, “devoid of energy and initiative,” much given to “fulsome flattery,” intrigue, cunning, and unkindness to animals; Orientals cannot walk on either a road or a pavement (their disordered minds fail to understand what the clever European grasps immediately, that roads and pavements are made for walking); Orientals are inveterate liars, they are “lethargic and suspicious,” and in everything oppose the clarity, directness, and nobility.” (p.46).
These two words were mainly used to demonstrate that the Orientals were inferior to the superior Westerners
We then used the word list, found here, to look for those attitudes in our corpora. Most of the hits we got from Antconc actually backed Said’s claims. Although, we agree with Kim Phillips, that Said may have exaggerated to some extent and overgeneralized, it is still very apparent that most Orientalists had a condescending, callous, judgmental, and sometimes malicious, attitude towards the Orientals. Our results are found in the same document of the word list in the form of screenshots from the hits we got on Antconc that would back Said’s claims to some extent.
Nevertheless, we still found some results in which the westerners were kind in their writings, recognizing the skills of the Oriental culture & arts, appreciating their poetry, distinguishing the Arabs’ prowess in storytelling and poetry, and comparing Arab poets and story tellers to the European artists of the renaissance. These results are also found at the bottom of the same document linked; however, it is worthy to mention that they were not a lot, especially that we were looking for the attitudes specifically mentioned in the resources we have read.
Now for the final step, and in an attempt to back our previous findings, we further looked in our specific grouped corpora at collocates on Antconc, specifically any words paired with the word “Arab” or “Arabs”. Again, these word lists can be found in this document, in addition to the results we found and discussed below. Additionally, we used corpus analysis to compare each sub-corpus with the main corpus and find out words frequently used in those corpora that weren’t frequently used in the main corpus proportionally. This further educated us about the word choices and trends that we used to analyze the attitudes of the Orientalists.
For example, in our texts written before 1860, the orientalists wrote about the Arabs/Orientals mainly in the context of them living a primitive life. This is evident due to the excessive use of words such as “tribes”, “dress” and “shaykhs” along with the word Arab.
Additionally, it is clear that the Westerners see themselves as superiors to Arabs and Orientals from many word trends found on Antconc accompanying the word Arab, such as always pairing the Arabs with Persians, Turks, and sometimes even Greeks, as an inferior unequal other half of the world. Also, in these texts, we do not find any hit when we look for “Arab men”, meanwhile we get several hits when searching for “Arab women”, as if to say that they regard Arabs as men and have to specify when they’re talking strictly about women (similar to people adding female before a profession stereotypically thought of to belong to males, such as “female doctor”, or the opposite when saying “male nurse”).
As for the texts after 1910, we see that more political words, specifically related to territories and wars, were used. These words were also frequently paired with the word Arab(s), such as Arab forces, Arab empire, Arab army, Arab provinces… This clearly shows how the word trend and the choice of words has changed in this 50-year gap since 1860, to cover more political aspects than cultural. However, the attitude of the Orientalists towards the Orient doesn’t quite change. We still see from the word trends that the Westerners are grouping Arabs with Turks and Persians as “the others” while viewing themselves as superior and different. Additionally, we still see the same trend of using Arab women but not Arab men after the year 1910. Another interesting observation here would be the use of the word “horsemen”, indicating horse riders, skilled ones, in a context of battle. In the corpus of texts written before 1860, we did not see the combination “Arab horsemen”, we mostly saw the word “horse(s)” accompanying the word “Arab(s)”. Again, this shows how although the attitude did not change with time, the writings did, and they revolved around imperialism and politics rather than just scorning Oriental culture and tradition.
In addition, after analyzing the texts written by British authors, we notice that there was a general look of condescension at the Arabs and the Orient as a whole, as they regarded the Arab as a tribal society with chiefs for each tribe who made all of its decisions. Moreover, the frequent use of the word “Sheikh” and the context it was used in help us see that the British authors viewed the Arabs as a religious society whose primary purpose is their devotion to God. Another aspect of the British view towards the Orient centers around the fact that they believed that a woman is at the bottom of the chain with no rights or choices, and that if a man wanted a woman he would just take “it”. However, even though they viewed the Arabs as a primitive, tribal, religious society, they did acknowledge their art and literature which we can notice throughout the various times they refer to Arab poets, poetry, and its value. Moreover as we go ahead in time, around the time of the first world war which is after 1910, even though this view didn’t change the lens through which Arabs were looked at, it changed it to a political lens, as the British authors recognized the Arab forces and the Arab empire as a force to factored in their calculations.
When compared to the texts written by the USA authors, we notice that aside from the use of a different diction, the views toward the Orient and Arabs don’t differ much from those of the British which we notice through their frequent use of the words “chief”, “tribe”, and ”tradition”. This shows that they too regard the Arabs as a tribal society controlled by their traditions, and religions. And likewise, they too acknowledge the art and literature of the Arabs which we notice through the use of the word “writers” and its context. However, a slight difference exists around the time of the first world war as the American authors divide the Arab regions into provinces as opposed to the UK authors who viewed it as an Arab Empire. However, in general, the attitudes remain the same with only slight differences, being condescending and viewing Arabs as inferior, tribal, religious societies.
Finally, we would like to conclude our blog by urging the next batch of students to build on what we have accomplished by further trying to prove or disprove Edward Said’s claims. Although we concluded that his claims were well supported and accurate, we did find some appreciative attitudes towards the Orientals, and would like for the next batch of students to aim at finding more by looking at different Orientalist authors as well as texts written in different time periods.
Moreover, we urge them to investigate different fields of writings, written by Orientalists from different societies, to detect their attitudes. Specifically, we believe looking into religious writings and comparing those to missionary or military writings would yield great results as we expect the religious writings to appreciate the Arabs’ devotion and commitment to religion, whereas we expect condescending attitudes in military writings.
As for you, we also urge you to do something. We urge you to stay safe and stay home during these tough times to protect yourselves, your loved ones, and your country as whole.
References:
Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books.
MyDHBlog 