John I. Edward, M.A.

PhD Project

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Rhetoric of Mobilisation: From Hasan al-Banna to the Rabaa Sit-In

This dissertation applies Discourse Analysis and Rhetorical Criticism techniques to analyze the predicational strategies – realized by metaphors, similes, comparisons, metonymies, hyperboles, irony, euphemisms, and allusions − underlying the Rhetoric of Mobilization in the discourses of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). The texts analyzed are the writings of the Murshids (plural from the word murshid مُرشِد , a guide), Sayyid Qutb, Al-Nadhir ( النذير ) newspaper, and the speeches given in the Raba’a sit-in (June 21st and August 14th 2013) and the articles written about it on MB websites.
The aim of the dissertation is to investigate how these predicational figures are used by the authors to evaluate and frame social actors, objects, phenomena, events/processes, and actions; moreover, the study also investigates the influence of the aforementioned linguistic features on mobilization.