Document Type : مقالات علمی پژوهشی
Authors
1
Assistant Professor of Linguistics, Damghan University, Damghan, Iran
2
Assistant Professor of Persian Language and Literature, Damghan University, Damghan, Iran
Abstract
The socio-critical novel of Ibrahim Beg’s travelogue is a work in which the author criticizes his own society and its political and religious constitutions through Western domestication. In this discourse, the confrontation between Iran and the West is an attempt to bridge the gap between Us and Them by reversing their roles and reflecting Us more bizarre than Them.This paper tries to answer two basic questions by identifying the discourse methods and strategies of ideological representation in this novel: (a)How do discourse strategies convey the author's ideology? (b)How is the reversal of the discourse, which is the result of the process of Western domestication, manifested? The aim of this descriptive-analytical article is to investigate the representation of the West in this novel from the perspective of Van Dijk ideological square. The salient achievement of the research is that the image of the West in the Maragheh discourse, as a modernist intellectual author, does not depict the stereotypical image that may exist in Iranians’ mind about this phenomenon. In his discourse, he generally applies polarization strategy to accentuated the West positives as Us and highlighted the Iranian government negatives as Them. For describing Us, the author uses ideological strategies such as comparison, implicit, dramatization and irony in order to reflect the spirit of freedom, loyalty and hard diligent in the text. For representing Them, he applies the strategies such as actor description, hyperbole, and number game to demonstrate the characteristics of greed, tyranny, regression, and deception to his audience.
1. Introduction
If our conception of the West in the history of political and cultural developments in Iran has been stereotypically based on the "outsider", this historical conception has changed in the discourse of Iranian writers since the early twentieth century. After facing the advances of Western civilization, some of these writers, in a discourse turn, represented Europe and America in their minds and languages, no longer as "outsiders", but as "insiders". By doing so, they wanted to blame their governments for the problems and mismanagement, as an "outsider" group.
Based on what has been said, the main issue of the present study is to express how this discourse rotation is manifested in the story of Ibrahim Beyg's travelogue. Hence, the authors have tried to explain the quality of this new discourse by using Van Dijk's ideological strategies. To examine this issue, the following questions are first posed: 1.How is the author's ideology represented in this work? 2. What is the author's ideological discourse towards the West as one of the pre-revolutionary intellectuals? 3. Does the image of the West in his discourse represent a stereotypical and special image that exists in the minds of Iranians of Westerners? 4. In relation to the image of the West, how is the political system of the time represented in Iran, and how does this representation serve the author's ideology? In connection with the above questions, two hypotheses have been formed: 1.The author's discourse in this work prescribes a kind of complete homogeneity with the West. 2. In his discourse, the author seeks to strike at the Iranian government as an outsider.
2. Literature Review
There are many articles, treatises and books that have used Van Dyke's theoretical foundations to analyze non-literary texts, and most of them are in the field of political and media texts. Here are some of them: Azad (2008), Khalouzadeh et al. (2012), Khajeh and Khan Mohammad (2009), Eris (2013), Ghiasian et al. (2014), Aghagolzadeh and Firoozian Pourasfahani (2016), Rezaeipour and Ahmadi (2016) ), Niazi et al. (2015) and Firoozian Pourasfahani et al. (2015). Due to the limited pages of the article and the importance of data analysis, we will suffice to introduce the same number of researches and refrain from further explanation about them. It is worth mentioning that in recent years, there are articles in which modern Iranian poetry has been analyzed using the Van Dijk model. These articles include the following: Critical Discourse Analysis of the Story of “Rostam and Shaqad” based on Van Dijk’s Ideological Square, Hamedi, Z. & Zarghani, M. (2014). Interconnection of nature descriptions and society situation in Mehdi Akhavaan Sales̕ s poetry by looking at critical discourse analysis, Mirahmadi, M. & Tajalli, A. (2017). Analysis of Implicit Critical Discourse and Ideology with Emphasis on the Poetry of Ahmad Shamloo Based on the Theories of Ferklaf and Van Dijk, Jahandide, S. (2016).
This result was obtained by examining the content of studies related to Van Dijk's theory: So far, no research has been done on the subject of the present study, ie the critical discourse analysis of the Iranian socio-political novel based on the ideological square model. Therefore, the present study addressed this issue and problem in order to compensate for the gap and deficiency in this type of research.
3. Methodology
In this research, the data collection method is library and the research method is descriptive-analytical. After studying the background of the issue and the subject of the research, the authors, by referring to the text of the story, extracted its discourse-oriented sentences, in which 26 speeches were identified. In the next step, the collected discourses, which contained discourse-oriented constructs, were analyzed based on Van Dijk's ideological square. After qualitative analysis, using quantitative frequency analysis, the frequency percentage of each discourse strategy was presented.
4. Discussion
The dual structure of the present discourse is elaborated by a comparison between the West and Iran based on "insider / outsider" polarization. The author, stating that the people of the West (insiders) with the help of the press and government criticism, have been able to eliminate corruption in their countries, considers the problem of the authoritarian Iranian society in the lack of transparency and intolerance of political rulers (outsiders). In general, using the strategy of polarization, the actors present in the discourse are divided into two poles, "insider" and "outsider", and it is on the basis of this polarization that the author's ideology is embodied. Examining the studied discourse, a total of 52 "polarizations" were found that form the semantic structure of the story. Using the strategy of "ambiguity", which is one of the strategies considered by Van Dijk in the category of meaning, the author has diminished the identity of the Qajar rulers in his discourse. In this discourse, actors are generally described in relation to their job, social status, and physical characteristics. Another common example in the author's discourse is the description of religious leaders in relation to their jobs. The author shows his non-religious ideology in speech 9, describing the job and characteristics of "Mullah Mohammad Ali". In his discourse, the author sometimes uses metaphors such as "treasure" and the like to make something more valuable or even more objective, such as Iran's natural mines and capitals. In connection with these metaphors, the author presents his ideology, which is generally a critique of the government in Iran. The author sometimes depicts the behavior of negative actors inhumanely through the use of derogatory metaphors. Metaphor in this author's discourse is not a decorative element, but a means of expressing ideology. In total, metaphor with 39 repetitions in this discourse is one of the most frequent strategies in this study.
For describing us (the west), the author uses ideological strategies such as polarization, comparison, implicit, dramatization and irony in order to reflect the spirit of freedom, loyalty and hard diligent in the text. Besides, for representing them (Iranian government), he applies the strategies such as actor description, hyperbole, and number game to demonstrate the characteristics of greed, tyranny, regression, and deception to his audience.
5. Conclusion
In this study, the issue of ideological strategies based on Ebrahim Beyg's travelogue was considered to show the author's method of positive representation of the West and negative description of the Iranian government. Based on Van Dijk's theory, the present text was examined and it was found that in it, the author, using polarization between two groups of insiders (West) and outsiders (Iranian government), paid attention to the general strategy of producing ideological discourse. Strategies such as polarization, comparison, implication, and dramatization were used to positively represent the "insider" group. And strategies such as actor description, Hyperbole, and number game have been used to describe the "outsider" group in the present discourse. Based on Van Dijk's ideological square, it was observed that the author emphasizes the strengths of the Westerners (insider group) and does not mention any negative features for them (except in relation to the colonial case). On the other hand, it highlights the weaknesses of the "outsider" group (the rulers of Iran) and lightly represents their positive characteristics
Keywords
Subjects
Language Related Research