The Representation of Power Structures and Social Conflict: A Discourse Analysis of Verbal Games in Siah-Bazi Play

Siah-bazi is one of the joyful theatrical forms in Iranian culture that, through linguistic conventions, humor, and verbal game, critiques power relations, class structures, and social conflicts. Despite the significance of this theatrical genre, it has received little attention from the perspective of Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis, particularly with a focus on linguistic and discursive mechanisms. The present study aims to identify discursive elements in verbal play within Siah-bazi performances. The article addresses the question of how verbal games in Siah-bazi reflect critiques of power structures and social oppositions. Adopting a descriptive–analytical approach and drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis through Fairclough’s three-level model of description, interpretation, and explanation, the study analyzes discursive levels in Siah-bazi. The findings indicate that the characters, by relying on colloquial language, humor, linguistic conventions, and irony, construct a popular–critical discourse in opposition to the formal, authoritarian, and hegemonic language of the ruling class. At the interpretive level, this linguistic and discursive confrontation becomes a symbolic encounter between the lower classes and official authority; at the explanatory level, Siah-bazi goes beyond mere entertainment and functions as a form of critical social action that activates the audience’s critical awareness by breaking traditional conventions through verbal game. Accordingly, despite its comic and colloquial appearance, Siah-bazi constitutes a dynamic arena for negotiation between power and the people and, through the language and dialogues of its characters, is both a reproducer of and a challenge to social and class structures in contemporary Iran.