ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the social-political circumstances of life constitute the current language usage of Palestinian children. However, the local meaning and usage of children’s language is not an isolated interaction. The local language is a direct result of the dialectic relationship between global and local political discourse. Language discourse follows political power. Global contested power is in every local issue even when a locality is in a remote area. The boundaries of global discourse are undefined; it is elastic and is defused in every local act, whereby locals, including the children must amend to such global/local contests. Therefore, locals’ responses are extensively fluid and contingent on the global discourse, and yet local forces are unequal to global ones (Katz 2004). This framework of understanding the relationship between global and local issues explicitly intersects with Fairclough’s approach (2001) to language usage and power. Language usage and presentation should not be perceived as merely a medium of communication and expression, but instead be understood as a power structure deployed in social policy and used in shaping the power structure of the new world order. According to Fairclough, language is a power discourse and extensively intersects and renders the meaning of local and global policies and ideologies. Language as power discourse constitutes ideology and policy; thereby the contested usage of language encompasses language meaning. The debates over language as power are observed in social and political domains of language meaning (Gould 2005). The language meaning, whether it is governed by state ideology or collective experience, employs the tension over the power struggle between global and local discourse (Fairclough 2001). The meaning of language explicitly reflects elements of global/local power discourse; additionally it embraces implicit meaning that is ingrained in political structure (Gould 2005).
