Language of political socialization: language of resistance Janette Habashi à Department of Human Relations, University of Oklahoma, Schusterman Center, 4502 E. 41st Street, Tulsa, OK, 74135, USA This paper discusses the notion of language as resistance for Palestinian children living in the West Bank. Drawing from the global/local language discourse, children constructed meaning of language that echoed the Palestinian political environment. The study examines the Palestinian children’s language usage and language meaning as a method of political resistance, resilience and reworking. Children’s conceptualization of language meaning emerged from discussion of the diversity of naming and strategies of resistance. Data for the study was drawn from the interviews of 12 Palestinian children (six females and six males) 11–13 years of age from cities, villages, and refugee camps in the West Bank. Keywords: language of resistance; jihad; Palestinian children; community speech; language of political socialization Introduction This paper 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 contest. 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 (2001) approach 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 struc- ture 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 col- lective experience, employs the tension over the power struggle between global and local Children’s Geographies Vol. 6, No. 3, August 2008, 269–280 à Email: jhabashi@ou.edu ISSN 1473-3285 print/ISSN 1473-3277 online # 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14733280802183999 http://www.informaworld.com