As a teenager growing up in Unayzah, a city in the heart of Saudi Arabia, Professor Abdullah Al-Ghathami had a habit: He would tear off small pieces of paper, then write down the titles of books — not of books he had read, but of books he planned to write one day. Now that Professor Al-Ghathami has turned 80, those notes are long gone, lost to time and house moves. But he has more than fulfilled the dream they represented.
Today, Professor Al‑Ghathami is one of Saudi Arabia’s most celebrated writers and critics, the author of more than 35 books and the creator of an influential theory about the relationships between language, culture, and power. His theory, which he calls “Hidden Cultural Norms,” argues that beneath the surface of everyday speech — in political slogans, poetry, and offhand remarks — lie buried beliefs that lay bare what a society truly thinks and feels, even when those beliefs go unspoken and unacknowledged. For his body of work, Professor Al-Ghathami was awarded a 2025 Kuwait Prize for Literature and Arts in the Arab World.
His theory took shape gradually, beginning when he left Saudi Arabia in 1971 to pursue his doctorate at the University of Exeter in Britain. There, he learned English and immersed himself in the works of English philosophers and poets. This triggered something unexpected: when he returned to the Arabic books he had read as a child, he saw them differently. “Adding another language in your mind makes you see things you didn’t see within your language,” he said. “Like reading yourself in another mirror.”
That new perspective led him to notice connections between Arabic literary theory — much of it centuries old — and the ideas of English thinkers who had independently arrived at remarkably similar conclusions. But observing their thinking from this dual vantage point also prompted Professor Al-Ghathami to develop his own ideas about how language and culture shape each other. “It’s not in English, it’s not in Arabic, it’s my work,” he said. “But based on these two.”
His concept revolves around the idea that language often conceals as much as it reveals. Just as a poet uses a metaphor to place one meaning in the foreground while another lurks beneath — or just as a slip of the tongue can expose what lies beneath our conscious thoughts, as psychoanalysts since Freud have long argued — public speech is filled with unspoken assumptions that reflect the deeper values and anxieties of entire societies.
As an example Professor Al-Ghathami offered an incident from 2018 when a member of the British Parliament muttered “stupid woman” in the direction of then-Prime Minister Theresa May. The comment caused an uproar, with many Britons feeling that the words amounted to an attack on all women, not just the prime minister. But why, asked Al-Ghathami. To him, the reaction betrayed a cultural anxiety buried in British society — a collective feeling that women in positions of power are not truly accepted as equals. If the same words had been directed at a man, no one would have assumed the speaker meant all men were stupid, Professor Al-Ghathami explained: “This is what I call the hidden cultural norms.”
The question of women and collective speech in particular has long preoccupied Professor Al-Ghatami. Five of his books trace how cultural discourse confined women to a separate, limited sphere, and how those ingrained patterns persisted even after women became educated and began contributing to public discourse themselves. He built out his concept of hidden cultural norms during a teaching career that took him first to King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, where he helped establish the Arabic Language Department, and later to King Saud University in Riyadh. He was named Cultural Personality of the Year in 2022 at the 16th Sheikh Zayed Book Award, one of the Arab world’s most prestigious literary prizes, which is presented annually in Abu Dhabi in conjunction with the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.
Yet his critical ideas were not always received favourably. Although some critics attacked him, Professor Al-Ghadhami remained unfazed. Of his detractors, he remarked: ‘I attributed their criticism to a lack of familiarity with the subject, and this, in turn, became a welcome opportunity to initiate a continuing dialogue.
Now 14 years retired from teaching, Professor Al-Ghathami has no intention of going quiet. “You don’t retire from thinking. I wish I could,” he said. He still writes an article every two weeks, applying his theory to current events and public figures and has authored a recent piece on U.S. President Donald Trump’s speeches. “I keep connecting with the world. I keep watching what’s happening.”
Whether hidden cultural norms can ever truly change is a question he approaches with doubt. Such norms have been forming for centuries and do not dissolve easily, he noted. But that, he suggested, is not quite the point anyway. The goal is awareness — bringing what is hidden to the surface so it can be examined. “Like a doctor, when he discovers a virus, he must tell us about this virus and you have to deal with it,” he said. “I cannot kill the virus. But I can tell people: this is the virus.”
In Saudi Arabia, he sees encouraging signs. Since the reforms that began there in 2015, he believes his country has started confronting its hidden cultural norms with new openness. “We are facing them with courage,” he said. “This is the greatest achievement.”
"His theory, «Hidden Cultural Norms,» argues that beneath the surface of everyday speech lie buried beliefs that lay bare what a society truly thinks and feels"
