The Rhetoric of Silence in Iraqi Political Discourse: A Critical Pragmatic Approach

Political communication in politically constrained environments frequently relies not only on what is explicitly articulated but also on what is deliberately left unsaid. This phenomenon is particularly salient within Iraq's Muhasasa system, where rhetorical silence enables politicians to communicate sensitive meanings while minimising direct attribution and avoiding explicit political accountability. Despite its central role in Iraqi political discourse, the linguistic construction of rhetorical silence has received limited scholarly attention. Addressing this gap, the present study investigates how rhetorical silence is linguistically constructed in Iraqi political discourse. The study adopts an integrated analytical framework that combines rhetorical analysis with critical pragmatics. At the rhetorical level, Bach et al.'s (2025) strategic ambiguity is adopted. At the critical pragmatic level, Mey's (2001) critical pragmatic model serves as the overarching framework, incorporating van Dijk's (2006) ideological-rhetorical strategies within the Critical Discourse Analysis dimension and Grice's (1975) Cooperative Principles at the pragmatic dimension. The study qualitatively analyses eight extracts from official political interviews with representatives of Iraqi Shi'a, Sunni, Kurdish, and minor groups between 2006-2025. The findings reveal that rhetorical silence is rhetorically constructed through strategic polysemy, interpretive communities, and communicative advantage. From a critical pragmatics perspective, it is primarily realised through ideological-rhetorical strategies characterised by systematic vagueness and through the recurrent flouting of Grice's maxim of quantity. Therefore, the study concludes that rhetorical silence functions as a strategic communicative resource shaped by the institutional and ideological constraints of the Muhasasa system, where explicit political commitment often entails substantial political risks.