Dzudzuana/Satsurblia/Iranic Pride

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Abstract

This essay explores the paradoxical phenomenon in which many Kurds freely speak Kurdish through mediated channels—phone calls, voice messages, livestreams, or social media—yet remain silent in face-to-face interactions. Drawing from sociolinguistic theory and digital ethnography, the paper argues that this “mediated courage” reflects a transitional state of post-repression identity: communication becomes possible only when the body of risk is removed from physical space.

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1. Introduction

In many diaspora and regional Kurdish contexts, an observable pattern emerges: individuals who avoid speaking Kurdish publicly will nevertheless do so fluently and confidently over the phone or in online spaces. The digital or acoustic distance functions as both a shield and a permission structure. While physical spaces remain contaminated by historical fear, mediated spaces simulate safety.

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2. The Psychology of Distance

Direct speech carries immediate social exposure: tone, volume, and accent become visible markers of identity. By contrast, mediated communication creates what sociologist Erving Goffman called a “frame of detachment”—a situation in which one’s speech no longer feels fully embodied or surveilled.

For Kurds, this distance transforms the suppressed instinct of caution into expressive potential. The absence of witnesses grants the speaker a sense of temporary autonomy; Kurdish can exist without consequence.

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3. The Role of Technology

Smartphones and social platforms have inadvertently become tools of linguistic emancipation. Voice notes, WhatsApp groups, and TikTok videos allow speakers to select their audience and control their vulnerability. This produces a new linguistic category: digitally mediated Kurdish—a form that thrives in private networks but rarely crosses into shared, physical soundscapes.

However, this mediation also fragments community. While Kurdish gains visibility in virtual environments, it remains largely inaudible in cafés, classrooms, and public squares. The result is a paradoxical landscape: an abundance of digital Kurdish words and a scarcity of Kurdish voices in real life.

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4. Mediated Courage and Deferred Freedom

This behaviour illustrates a liminal stage in the process of recovering linguistic agency. Speaking Kurdish through media is an act of mediated courage—a safe rehearsal for the public freedom that does not yet exist. It reveals both progress and hesitation: progress, because the language is alive and circulating; hesitation, because the body still fears its own voice.

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5. Diasporic Echoes: Toward Linguistic Sovereignty

Migration has displaced not only Kurdish bodies but the acoustic landscape of Kurdish identity. In the diaspora, the right to speak freely exists on paper, yet many Kurds still hesitate to let Kurdish fill public air. The inherited instinct of caution survives even where censorship no longer does. The result is a paradoxical freedom—one that grants expression but not confidence.

5.1 The Paradox of Safety Abroad

In Europe, Kurdish can be taught, printed, or sung without legal restraint, yet its speakers often default to the more “recognized” languages around them. Silence has evolved from prohibition into habit; the border once patrolled by the state now runs invisibly through self-restraint. Sovereignty, therefore, is not measured by laws but by how easily one can speak without translating oneself.

5.2 Multiplicity as Survival

Kurds in exile carry dialectal diversity—Kurmanji, Sorani, Zazaki—each shaped by a different colonial history. When they meet, they translate within their own nation, revealing both the fracture and the resilience of Kurdish identity. What outsiders call fragmentation is, in reality, a living record of endurance. Sovereignty will emerge not from uniformity but from the recognition that plural voices can still form one chorus.

5.3 From Digital Voice to Embodied Speech

Online, Kurdish thrives in podcasts, TikTok lessons, and Clubhouse debates. The internet has become a temporary homeland of sound, a rehearsal space for free speech. Yet linguistic sovereignty demands embodiment—the moment when a digital phrase becomes a street conversation. The next phase of revival lies in transferring digital courage into public space, until the Kurdish voice becomes as ordinary as any other.

5.4 Reclaiming the Ordinary

The final step beyond enabled silence is not heroic proclamation but casual fluency—greetings, humour, marketplace chatter. When Kurdish re-enters these small, habitual exchanges, it ceases to be a memory and becomes a daily fact of life. True sovereignty begins when the language no longer needs permission to exist.

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6. Conclusion: From Mediated Speech to Linguistic Sovereignty

The phenomenon of speaking Kurdish through mediated distance—phone calls, online spaces, or recorded messages—reveals that silence has not disappeared; it has merely shifted its geography. The Kurdish voice today exists between screens and borders, between the memory of repression and the simulation of safety. To speak Kurdish in private audio but not in public space is to live in a half-freedom: the words survive, yet the sound remains confined.

This condition reflects a deeper historical continuity. Even outside the geopolitical borders that once censored Kurdish speech, the psychological border persists. The instinct to lower one’s voice, to switch to another language, or to self-translate has outlived the state policies that first imposed it. Silence, in this sense, has become cultural muscle memory—unlearned only through deliberate practice and collective re-embodiment.

Yet, the proliferation of Kurdish through digital and diasporic channels signals a quiet transformation. Every voice note, livestream, and online lesson contributes to a growing archive of linguistic presence. This is not merely the revival of a language but the return of a soundscape: Kurdish rediscovering its resonance in both the digital ether and, slowly, in physical air.

The long-term challenge for revitalization lies in translating this virtual fluency into embodied presence—so that Kurdish can inhabit streets, homes, and public life with the same confidence it already holds online. True linguistic sovereignty will not arrive through institutions or declarations, but through the normalization of Kurdish in daily speech. When the language can exist without apology, without translation, and without fear, enabled silence will finally give way to enduring voice.

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