The Rhetoric of Silence in Iraqi Political Discourse: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Within Iraq's consociational power-sharing system, direct attribution carries factional consequences, making silence a central communicative strategy. Although there is increasing interest in the study of political discourse, the literature lacks examination of how silence is ideologically constructed within consociational power-sharing systems, particularly in the Iraqi context. Thus, the present study aims to examine how Iraqi politicians use ideological rhetorical strategies to construct silence. The study adopts a CDA approach as an analytical framework, based on van Dijk's (2006) ideological-rhetorical strategies to analyse six extracts selected from interviews with six Iraqi political figures. The findings indicate that silence is systematically constructed by political actors through a variety of ideological rhetorical strategies that serve to disperse agency, defer accountability, and protect factional interests without explicit attribution. Collectively, these strategies construct distinct forms of silence, including non-naming silence and procedural silence, confirming that silence in Iraqi political discourse is a structurally conditioned practice rather than an individual stylistic choice.