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Paper short abstract:

While Western-funded secular peace initiatives in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict use dialogue and sincere speech, local religious initiatives are characterized by joking and teasing. This talk examines how these divergent genres and speech styles correlate to different theories of reconciliation.

Paper long abstract:

For a long time, peace initiatives in Israel/Palestine have been funded by American and European liberals who seek to promote dialogue between Jews and Palestinians. These initiatives are largely ignored by the target population and attended only by secular elites from both sides. For nearly a decade however, grassroots peace initiatives seek to address the question of peace from the perspective of Israel and Palestine’s large religious and non-liberal populations have begun to emerge. In particular, I have conducted research between Muslim Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews (of Middle Eastern origin), groups with significant cultural commonalities. One of the differences I found between Western-funded secular/liberal and local religious/non-liberal peace groups is the genre and speech styles employed in the exchanges. Secular/liberal peace initiatives use “dialogue”, characterized by a serious and somber tone, sincere speech, confession, and emotional self-exposure, while the religious/non-liberal initiatives I have observed are characterized by joking, teasing, and wordplay. These divergent genres and speech styles correlate to different theories of reconciliation. The sincerity of liberal groups assumes an individualized self-representation, and reflects a theory of reconciliation based on personal transformation, corresponding with Western models of reconciliation such as contact hypothesis (Gordon Allport) and Habermasian people-to-people dialogue (Hélène Pfeil). By contrast, religious/non-liberal peace initiatives' use of joking assumes a more collective self-representation, and reveals a theory of reconciliation based on intercommunal solidarity and group negotiation. The theories of reconciliation that underlie these initiatives are less formalized but do correspond to the insights of Adam Seligman and John Paul Lederach.