Policing Palestinian Speech: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Institutional Neutrality and Censorship in Discipline

Abstract

This paper is a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of the novel Discipline (2025) by Randa Abdel-Fattah, in which the concepts of institutional neutrality and professionalism are used to police Palestinian speech. Based on the Three-Dimensional Model of Fairclough (1995), the study focuses on the dialectical interdependence between institutional language and social power in the fictitious contexts of Western journalism and academia. The discursive practices, textual features, and even social structures are systematically explored to examine how certain linguistic practices, including (the rinsing of vocabulary, the use of the passive voice, and the implementation of two-sided framing practices) marginalize Palestinian voices and produce a calculated silence about the bombardment of Gaza. The findings indicate that institutional gatekeepers weaponize the rhetoric of objectivity to delegitimize lived experiences of oppression, framing them as biased or non-collegial. Through the fictionalization of these discursive struggles, Discipline reveals the ideological hegemony of the so-called white-centric gaze and institutional pressure on the Palestinian subjects to moderate their testimony. Ultimately, the study highlights the role of contemporary literature in documenting the linguistic mechanisms of censorship and providing a counter-discourse to institutional silencing in the Western public sphere.