A top-secret game: metadiscourse analysis of the contractual discourse of purchasing 100 shares of the Suez Canal Company in 1947

1 Introduction

Suez Canal Authority is an Egyptian institution that manages the Suez maritime passage which stretches to link the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean via the Red Sea. Constructed in 10 years, the Suez Canal Company (SCC) was officially operated in 1869 and was constructed under the supervision of Ferdinand de Lesseps in the reign of Ismail Pasha, Khedive of Egypt and Sudan. In 1875, Ismail Pasha was forced to sell 44 % of the SCC to reduce the Egyptian economic turmoil at that time. Britain purchased the offered shares, granting it three seats on the SCC Board of Directors. In addition to the British colonization at that time, Britain had, then, full control over the Kingdom of Egypt. Egyptian Kings succeeded each other until the last King, Farouk, who ruled Egypt from 1936 until his ousting by the Egyptian Revolution in 1952. In 1956, Abdelnaser, the President of the Republic of Egypt, decided to nationalize the SCC which put the Canal under complete control of the Egyptian authority (Lutmar and Rubinovitz 2023).

Before the ousting of King Farouk, the Egyptian government had sought to purchase a majority of stake in the SCC whose shares were sold to French, British, and American investors (Lutmar and Rubinovitz 2023). Several secret missions were accomplished among which was the purchase of 100 shares owned by the American investor Albert de Jong. The purpose of this article, thus, is to analyze the discourse of the contractual documents that were secretly exchanged between the Egyptian party (buyer) and the American party (seller) in 1947 (The Egyptian National Library and Archives 2015). The process of purchasing/selling the shares took place at a top-secret level of correspondence to guarantee the success of the mission. The documents were linguistically crafted to guarantee the protection of the duties/rights of the parties involved. Further, these documents were then disclosed and offered to the public to show how Egypt and its diplomatic representation in the Embassy of Washington succeeded in regaining the stakes of the SCC. Deploying confidential strategic tactics, the mission was led by Anis Azer, Egyptian Ambassador in Washington under the supervision of Mahmoud Elnoqrashy, the Minister of Foreign Affairs at that time (The Egyptian National Library and Archives 2015).

2 Econo-linguistics and contract discourse

Econo-linguistics, language of economy (Fill 2008), or economics of language (Coulmas 2011), is an interdisciplinary field that relates the study of language to the study of economics. The term econo-linguistics was first coined by Baugh (1996) relating both disciplines together. Baugh (1996) argues that language is affected by economic circumstances and that linguistic behavior is directly influenced by the economic status of the social members. Thus, econo-linguistics enables both linguists and economists to better understand how the economic discourse is constructed and construed (Coulmas 2011; Fill 2008). As language is important in shaping human behavior, it is crucial to linguistically understand how the economic discourse is constructed in order to reach the objective of supporting the economic institutions and policymakers maximizing revenue and minimizing costs (Coulmas 2011).

Within the realm of economy, a contract is one of the economic discourses that encloses “an agreement in which the parties make reciprocal commitments in terms of their behavior- a bilateral ‘coordination’ arrangement” (Bag 2018: 2). A contract can, thus, be defined as having two main aspects: actions and conditions. ‘Actions’ are attained by the delivery of the services, and goods with financial and monetary payments that are performed under certain ‘conditions’ and requirements agreed upon by the parties (Bag 2018). Writing contracts is a crucial discursive implementation of governing and regulating economic/political issues among firms, individuals, or even governments (Bolton and Dewatripont 2005; Hart 1995). That is why contractual design is based on the negotiation of the agreements between the involved participants to ensure that the contract is mutually beneficial.

3 Game Theory and contract design

A game can be defined as a rule-governed interaction between the involved participants (Heap and Varoufakis 2003; Umbhauer 2016). Using dynamic strategies, the involved parties, or players, seek to get as much outcome as they can (Rasmusen 2001; Umbhauer 2016). Neumann and Morgenstern (1959), the originators of the Game Theory, argue that, in economics, Game Theory provides a formal description of the interactive strategies that enable socio-economic systems to provide solutions for both expected and unexpected human behaviors. Specifically, when there are social or economic problems, social members (or players) have to, in all the interactive encounters (game), plan and develop their ‘strategies’ after collecting all the available ‘information’ about other players. The game, hence, has key elements that enable ‘players’ to achieve their ‘payoffs’. Players have the choice to adopt a set of ‘moves’ (sequence of available choices) according to their combination of strategies, or ‘equilibrium’ within a frame of game ‘rules’ which cannot be violated (Neumann and Morgenstern 1959; Rasmusen 2001).

From this perspective, Bolton and Dewatripont (2005) relate contract design to Game Theory. A contract, Bolton and Dewatripont contend, is like a game: it involves behaviors that are strategically planned to guarantee a communicative interaction between the involved players. Both game and contract design require calculations of how their processes proceed and how players evaluate the incentives, the payoffs, and the outcomes of the whole interaction. In this sense, Bolton and Dewatripont (2005) conform to Neumann and Morgenstern’s (1959) Game Theory which is based on the planning of a ‘dominant strategy’ that leads to achieving the utmost payoff. Contracts, as assimilated to games, have essential elements that are similar to those defined by Neumann and Morgenstern (1959): ‘players’ (seller and buyer), ‘actions’ (negotiations and decisions), ‘payoffs’ (accomplishing the deal) and ‘information’ (about the contract details). Players have to devise strategies, or ‘equilibrium’, to get the utmost outcome to guarantee the utmost benefit for all the participants involved. In the contract game, if we may say, it is argued that decisions are based on the strategic behavior of the involved parties (Bolton and Dewatripont 2005; Neumann and Morgenstern 1959). Therefore, when designing a contract, key players are expected to follow several procedures:

1. sitting down at date 0 and writing ‘a renegotiation-proof contract’ (Hart 1995)

2. specifying each party’s obligations (Hart 1995)

3. allocating rules (Neumann and Morgenstern 1959)

4. assigning protection against worst-case scenarios (Hart 1995)

5. allocating power or control (Hart 1995)

6. assigning Enforcement mechanisms (Bolton and Dewatripont 2005)

7. achieving payoffs (Bolton and Dewatripont 2005; Neumann and Morgenstern 1959)

Modeling the strategic mechanisms must be negotiated and revised by the involved parties or players before making a decision. This will influence not only the key players but also decision-makers, economists, etc.

4 Metadiscourse analysis

Metadiscourse is the medium that retains the relationship between the author and the audience (Kumpf 2000; Vande Kopple 1988). Metadiscourse analysis (MDA) is an approach to analyzing the discourse elements (Kumpf 2000) or metadiscourse resources (Hyland 2005) to identify how authors organize the text and maintain relations with their readers (Kumpf 2000; Vande Kopple 1988). In its general sense, metadiscourse means “discourse about discourse or talk about talk” (Hyland 2005: 16) or “writing about writing” (Vande Kopple 1988: 234). Vande Kopple (1988) identified seven kinds of metadiscourse whose elements can be categorized into two categories: ‘textual’ (i.e., connectives, code glosses, validity markers, narrators) and ‘interpersonal’ (i.e., illocutionary markers, attitude markers, commentary). Both categories integrate to establish relationships between the reader, the writer, and the text. Further, Hyland (2005) modeled an approach to metadiscourse that focused on both the interactive dimension (the organization of the discourse and its rhetorical constructions) and the interactional dimension (the evaluative voice, engaging presence of the writer to express solidarity with the reader).

MDA is concerned with the specialized use of language varieties in addition to the persuasive cohesive structuring of discourse that is intended to communicate specific ideas and attitudes from the writer to the reader (Hyland 2017; Hyland et al. 2021). In this sense, the producer of discourse has to deploy metadiscourse resources (e.g., expressions, transition markers, and hedges) in conjunction with contextual information to maintain communication between the participants. MDA, then, highlights the relationship between the discourse resources and provides information about three parameters: participants, socio-cultural context, and institutional context. It is by MDA that we can identify the writer’s goal and the relationship between the writer and the reader (Ädel and Mauranen 2010; Hyland 2005; Hyland 2017).

Ädel and Mauranen (2010) provide two traditions of approaching metadiscourse: (1) one is called the ‘thin’ approach (quantitative-oriented), and (2) the other is the ‘thick’ approach (qualitative-oriented). The quantitative approach is concerned with statistically retrieving a list of the existing linguistic phenomena while the qualitative is interested in the examination of the linguistic features and instantiations of such features. Hyland (2005) distinguishes MDA from Hallidayan textual and interpersonal metafunctions by stating, “Metadiscourse embodies the idea that communication is more than just the exchange of information, goods or services, but also involves the personalities, attitudes, and assumptions of those who are communicating” (p. 3).

5 Literature review

The assessment of economic discourse contributes to the awareness of how communication is attained between the economists and the social members which can be regarded as equally important as doing economics (Bramki and Williams 1984; Royce 1995). Various studies approach economics discourse to identify the interaction between the author and the audience.

Studies dedicated to econo-linguistics are infrequent and the discipline is argued to need further investigations for its roles and approaches (Bin Ramlan 2021; Coulmas 2011; Qassemi et al. 2004). The available literature about econo-linguistics, however, expounds the role of integrating language and economics theories in the discourse of economics. From the perspective of pragmatics, Qassemi et al. (2004) used Neumann and Morgenstern’s (1959) Game Theory and Grice’s (1975) maxims to investigate how interactionsare attained among interlocutors with different backgrounds in the economic discourse. Other studies investigate, semantically, the implication of metaphors in constructing economic discourse and its influence on financial systems (Chan et al. 2018). Approaching econo-linguistics from a sociolinguistic point of view, Uriarte (2015) relates language planning to economic status.

Using Hyland’s (2005) and Kumpf’s (2000) approach to metadiscourse, Al-Subhi (2022) analyzed social media advertisement. Al-Subhi (2022) argued that both visual and linguistic metadiscourse complement each other in delivering the message and constructing a persuasive means of “… structuring the discourse, engaging the audience, and catching the consumers’ interest” (p. 24). Metadiscourse, thus, provides an analytical frame for the interpersonal relations between writers and readers in multivariate fields such as language teaching (Ädel 2006; Amiryousefi 2010), academic writing (Agustinos et al. 2018; Hyland 2017), online advertising (Al-Subhi 2022), governmental campaign posters (Isalambo and Kenneth 2020), and economics and law articles (Tessuto 2021). Scholarships were also dedicated to the study of how authors interact with their readers through lexical familiarization devices (Bramki and Williams 1984), jargon and its contextual lexicalizations (Isalambo and Kenneth 2020), and linguistic complexity (Bushee et al. 2018). Some of these previous studies have carried out linguistic analyses on econo-linguistics and provided descriptions of how these discourses are constructed. Some others apply MDA to different genres to identify how the textual and visual resources manage to create a bond between the author and the reader. However, to my knowledge, no studies have integrated MDA and Game Theory within the realm of the discourse of economics. Therefore, I argue that this study hopefully will fill this gap in econo-linguistics.

6 Methodology

This study commences by setting out the scope of the data to identify the metadiscourse resources that construct a contractual discourse. The selected corpus comprises nine top-secret documents (Table 1) exchanged among five key players, namely, Albert de Jong, the American owner of the shares (AOS), the Egyptian Embassy in Washington (EEW), Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), Guaranty Trust Company of New York (Guarantor) and the Egyptian Ministry of Finance (MOF). In this mission, the Egyptian party sought to accomplish a purchase of 100 Shares of the SCC from the American party in 1947.

The correspondences, organized chronologically, are classified into three categories: ‘pre-agreement documents’ that arrange relations between the parties, ‘agreement documents’ that guarantee the implementation of the deal, and ‘post-agreement documents’ that finalize the whole mission.

All data (whether English or Arabic documents) are translated and represented in English and highlighted in bold underlined (in Tables 3–6). These documents are part of The Suez Canal: Documentation of an Egyptian Dream, a voluminous book that is part of a documentation project by the National Library and Archives (2015) to whom all copyrights are reserved. In this study, we are textually approaching the selected corpus using Hyland’s (2005) Metadiscourse Analysis (as presented in Table 2) to identify both the interactive and interactional dimensions of the documents that yield the accomplishment of the deal.

The corpus is discursively analyzed to identify the strategies used to formulate the contracts, guarantees, information, actions, and enforcement mechanism (for both parties), to finally reach the payoffs. Using MDA, the paper seeks to analyze the textual aspects of the corpus relating the structural components of the corpus to Neumann and Morgenstern’s (1959) Game Theory. The outcome of the analysis is then observed to evaluate its capacity to benefit econo-linguistics in general and the contractual discourse in particular. Adopting these steps, the study seeks to answer the following research questions (RQs):

To answer these questions, the metadiscourse resources of the corpus are analyzed, the strategic behavior of the involved parties is observed and highlighted, and an evaluation of mission success is expounded. Implications are then made on the interdisciplinary field of econo-linguistics.

7 Analysis

The correspondences related to the mission of purchasing/selling the 100 shares of the SCC in 1947 have discursive features that need to be analyzed to understand how the mission is accomplished especially when Egypt (the buyer) and the United States of America (the seller) were known to have conflicting interests at that time (Lutmar and Rubinovitz 2023).

8 Discussion

In this article, MDA is used as an approach to analyzing the discursive contractual process of the purchasing/selling of the 100 shares of the SCC in 1947. The textual analysis of the metadiscourse resources pinpoints the interactionality of the discourse and the interactivity between the involved parties. The textual elements reflect how both parties make decisions about the mission and the interrelations with the other party. From the metadiscourse analysis, we can observe that the available linguistic choices are strategically employed. Through the analysis, we argue that the employment of the available resources helps in maintaining the balance between the offered incentives and the endorsed expectations. This balance is specifically sought especially when the involved parties have asymmetrical economic and political power. This compilation of linguistic and strategic behaviors, we argue, can be assimilated to a game. In other words, the outcome of the textual analysis puts the discourse of contracts in the form of a bargaining game where the buyer and the seller (players) are negotiating their power by language. That is, each player has a dominant strategy equilibrium to reach the outcome they intend to reach (see Figure 1).

Figure 1:

Dominant strategy in A Game of 100 Shares.

Figure 1 illustrates how this three-stage game is designed in analogy to the three-phase agreement of selling/purchasing 100 shares of the SCC. The game proceeds with a socio-political and economic background that marks instability at that time (World War II, British colonization of Egypt, Corrupt Monarchy disruption, and economic debts). Considering these socio-political surroundings, each player pursues a set of regulated moves till players reach their payoff.

The game commences with allocating game rules and players (pre-agreement phase). This stage comprises three moves. Move (1), as we propose, is marked by sitting down at date 0 (i.e., unidentified) and information was collected about the key players (the real owners of the shares). Given the asymmetrical lack of information, EEW managed to identify the real owner of the shares which is the American trading company Albert de Jong, not Mr. Shoulman as refuted by EEW letter to MOFA (document 2). Move (1) includes inscribing ‘a renegotiable contract’ which is left to the Egyptian government to (dis)approve. Move (2), comprises: (a) a set of regulations and guarantees, (b) terms and conditions as indicated in the contractual forms attached to document 2, and (c) the allocation of players. document 2 excludes Mr. Shoulman from the game as he was mistakenly thought to be the owner of the SCC shares. In contrast, it includes Albert de Jong and Co. (the American company that owns 100 shares of SCC), EEW (the direct contact and the mediator between MOFA and the AOS), and MOFA (the mediator between EEW and the Egyptian Government) as key players in this mission. document 2 is an important move that links the elements of the whole game together in a logical manner. This move secures the rights of both participants within the frame of the rules of the game namely, (1) the restriction of shipping the shares to Egypt, (2) owning shares that belong to enemies of the USA and Great Britain, or (3) that the shares are not genuine. Move (3) in this stage is requesting the sanction of the terms and conditions to mark readiness for the deal (document 2). After describing the set of rules and regulations and the key players (Move 2), EEW requested approval from the Egyptian government to begin the process of activating the rules and begin the mission of purchasing the shares.

The second stage marks the beginning of the mission. The stage commences with Move (4) by sending a letter to the American Guarantor that responded with a letter of declaration that there is no restriction for the American government to ship the shares to Egypt. As a result of the previous move, Move (5) was taken by receiving the money from the embassy and completing the payment which was confirmed by document 4.

The third stage in game design is achieving payoffs. Move (6) marks the beginning of this stage by announcing the success of the mission through a letter that declares the transmission of the shares from EEW to MOFA (document 5). MOFA, then, took Move (7) which represents proof of the transmission of the shares which is considered a reassurance of the success of the mission. Move (8) marks collecting payoffs. Payoff/Reward, is, finally, attained by transmitting the 100 shares from MOFA to the property of the MOF (document 8). This move is attained by sending a letter to the Ministry of Finance requesting them to receive the share and to acknowledge, in written form, the receipt of these shares. This dominant strategy equilibrium (presented in Figure 1) can be regarded as a blueprint for the success of any contractual practice whether in the stage of negotiations or implementation till reaching the target.

9 Conclusions

The current MDA of the contractual discourse can be regarded as a step forward in the path towards econo-linguistics which has not received much attention in the field of discourse analysis. Interestingly, current studies of economic language ignore the metadiscursive resources and their interactional and interactive nature. MDA of contracts and agreements enables a better understanding and structuring of economics texts regarding the lexical and structural formations of such specialist texts. Economic discourse is not about the economic information within them. Rather, it is how the factual information is communicated via linguistic devices such as value, engagement, framing, hedging, etc. The contribution of this study lies in the interconnection of the MDA with the economic discourse within the frame of Game Theory. Such modeling provides insights into the construction of the obligations/rights in the discourse. Creating such discourse and using microstructures enable the economic discourse to perform its socioeconomic and even political macrostructures.

In this study, we exemplified the economic discourse with a corpus of correspondences and contractual documents to explain how a successful economics mission can be achieved. MDA deconstructs the documents to highlight the textual resources used to maintain the functionality of the text and to guarantee its interactivity with the topics embedded in them. The approach also highlights the linguistic choices that create a dialogue and maintain interactionality and engagement with the reader getting them to be convinced by the embedded propositions and their intents.

The outcome of the metadiscourse analysis is compared to the elements of Game Theory. The key element of the theory is analogized with the structural components of the current corpus. With regard to the success of the mission, we can argue that this deal progressed by following set of moves, each of which is strategically based on the other till the involved parties achieve their goals.

The results show that econo-linguistics is an emerging interdisciplinary field that needs more exploration of the approaches and roles of the economics of language and the language of economics. Integrating MDA and Game Theory is a step forward for further investigation of the linguistic structure, the discourse strategies, and the context of economics discourses. Understanding how economic discourse is constructed helps both individuals and policymakers to deduce implicit meanings, hidden agendas, and power imbalances in the discourse. Concerning econo-linguistics, the GAME is never OVER.

Future research

For further research, the paper suggests the application of MDA to different types of economic discourse. The paper also advises that research could adopt the same model to analyze the contractual discourse between participants from different socio-political, cultural, and economic backgrounds to highlight how the metadiscursive strategies differ.