In this article, I investigate how political dissent is linguistically constructed and mitigated in memes that are circulated nationally on WhatsApp in Oman. I do so by drawing upon insights from relational approaches to face, the theorization of communicative strategies as polysemous and ambiguous, and research pertaining to the Islamic practice of lamenting. The data consist of a representative set of memes collected in the summer and fall of 2015 as part of an ethnographic project on social media and Arab identity. I theorize memes as cultural tools that take the form of 'reasonably hostile' lament-narratives, which enable citizens in Oman to engage in democracy while saving face. To create lament-memes that voice dissent while mitigating face-attacks, Omanis draw upon various communicative strategies: They use repetition, code choice, hashtags, and different genres; they juxtapose emojis with text; and they manipulate the production and participation frameworks of texts. Collectively, these strategies, which function via intertextuality, allow the concerns to be aired, but indirectly and playfully. The article demonstrates how political dissent is negotiated and mitigated through memes, the agency of social media users, and the validity of conceptualizing memes as cultural tools.

This study explores how agency emerges and is negotiated moment by moment in interaction by applying Erving Goffman's notion of production format to an extended sequence of discourse that revolves around accomplishing a conjoint action: the rewriting of an offi cial letter. Deconstructing the participants into the social roles they undertake in accomplishing this task illustrates what is involved in exercising agency: interactively negotiating production format roles and footing shifts through several linguistic strategies aimed at either claiming, ratifying, or rejecting the participants' agency. These include providing options, negotiating production format roles, asking questions, speaking for another, questioning and asserting expertise, providing counter-arguments, and asserting past agentive selves. This study, thus, contributes to an understanding of agency as co-constructed, mediated, and continually negotiated, while also identifying specifi c linguistic strategies through which agency is negotiated in interaction. (Agency, disability, production format, social actor, conjoint action, linguistic strategies) * I n t r o d u c t i o nThe concept of human agency is fundamental to our understanding of social interaction of all types; yet discourse analytic studies that have considered the concept have focused primarily on the discursive assignment and the linguistic realization of personal agency in narrative discourse (e.g.). As a result, they do not explain how agency emerges and is negotiated moment by moment in conversational interaction. In this article, I aim to fi ll this gap by exploring what is discursively involved when social actors take action. I do so by applying Goffman's ( 1981) notion of production format to an extended sequence of discourse that was captured on audio tape as part of an ethnographic case study of the everyday experiences of Yahya, a quadriplegic man from the Islamic Arab country of Oman. Specifi cally, to examine how agency is negotiated in discourse, I deconstruct into production NA J M A A L Z I D JA LY Language in Society 38 :2 (2009) 178format roles the social actors engaged in one activity involving Yahya and two other participants: rewriting an offi cial letter. This deconstruction illustrates what is involved in accomplishing a conjoint action: the interactive negotiation of production format roles and footing shifts through several linguistic strategies aimed at either claiming, ratifying, or rejecting the participants' (especially Yahya's) agency. These include providing options, setting and negotiating production format roles, asking questions, speaking for another, questioning and asserting expertise, providing counter-arguments, and asserting past agentive selves. The analysis thus demonstrates a powerful way of conceptualizing agency as collaborative and interactive -exercising agency as a mediated, collective process of negotiating alignments, tasks, and roles -while also outlining specifi c linguistic strategies used to do so.The organization of the article is ...

In this paper, I use nexus analysis framework to examine how one quadriplegic man from Oman, named Yahya, directs the course of his present (and his future) through anticipatory discourse. In particular, I analyze conversations between Yahya and me regarding his future as they relate to actions I undertake on his behalf to effect a social change: to secure Yahya, an unmarried man, a permit to hire his own resident nurse/assistant (permits for such hirings are reserved only for married couples in Oman). I demonstrate how Yahya influences me to follow his agenda through constructing a helpless identity in narrative discourse. Reciprocally, I suggest that through the actions Yahya's caregivers subsequently undertake, they succeed in giving him a sense of control over an important aspect of his life (being able to hire his own assistant), and I demonstrate how Yahya subsequently displays agentivity in his narratives. I thus illustrate the interconnectedness of Yahya's anticipatory discourse and his caregivers' (macro-level) actions that cause societal change, as well as the interconnectedness of these actions and the kinds of selves Yahya constructs through anticipatory discourse in private (micro-level) interactions.

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This chapter explores, from a sociolinguistic perspective, the role that the Internet plays in the online discursive construction of the Islamic religious identity of an enlightener. It does so by examining chatroom conversations between a man with a disability from the Islamic Arabian country, Oman and individuals of diverse religious backgrounds and nationalities with whom he frequently chats. The chapter illustrates how an enlightener identity is constructed through juxtaposing two contrastive religious identities: a liberal identity (when interacting with other Muslims) and a far more traditional one (when interacting with non-Muslims). The findings of the study suggest that the Internet is helping transform many Islamic discourses from being “authoritative,” i.e., unquestioned, to being “internally persuasive,” i.e., open for debate (Bakhtin, 1981). The analysis also reveals how the Internet is offering new possibilities regarding the constitution of an Islamic identity while additionally posing increasingly poignant questions about the role of Islamic religious leaders in this digital age.