Document Type : مقالات علمی پژوهشی
Authors
1
phD student of linguistics
2
the member of academic board of Tarbiat modares university
3
Assistant Professor, Department of French, Islamic Azad University, Tehran Branch, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Cognitive-critical discourse analysis approaches can lead us to figure out how financial problems can be caused verbally. The main purpose of this article is to investigate the recent economic crisis in Iran through Norman Fairclough model (1989). A text produced on february 26, 2012 by Mahoud Bahmani, the governor of the central bank of the 10th administration was analyzed by means of persuasive tools linguistically. Then, a comparison was done between the rate of the dollar before and after his speech. The result indicated that the economic actors in charge of power, by means of persuasion, can target the mind of people and make them excited to exchange their capitals into dollar, bringing inflation expectations to happen. Data in this research was chosen from five initial sentences of a text from “asre Iran” under code no. 195709. This text was analyzed from three dimentions: description, interpretation, and explanation.
1. Introduction
This article will examine the living conditions of people through investigating a text produced by an economic actor causing inflation expectation. The results of this research will help the country and people in order to make better decisions in society. The main issue of this research is the description of the current economic problems in the society, which can be caused by the weakness of management in the type of discourse in terms of the linguistic constructions of economic actors who may influence people's attitudes from the position of power with the tools of persuasion. We will investigate this issue borrowing Norman Fairclough’s approach (1989). The question is to figure out which category of economic actors can have an effect on people's cognition (mind) and how? Those economic actors who are equipped with the power mechanism can play a significant role in stimulating people's minds with the help of persuasive tools in discourse. The selection of data is based on the beginning of currency fluctuations after the issue of this text.
2. Literature Review
In recent years, many researches have been conducted on the approach of critical discourse analysis and many books and articles have been published. For example, Khadim et al. (2016) extracted the metaphors of 600 political and social articles with a cognitive-critical approach, examining the way of using the metaphors of power, anti-power and their interactions with the process of persuasion. In this article, Khadim et al. showed how people legitimize their own discourse and delegitimize the rival discourse through mental concepts. The similarity of the work in this article with the present article can be in the application of the process of persuasion through cognition. Zairi et al. (2016) have studied the strategies of language usage in court discourse to investigate the types of persuasion methods of lawyers in Iranian criminal courts in order to convince judges. The research data has been collected from twenty public sessions of Shiraz city court, which aims to answer the question of how activists use linguistic knowledge (syntax, semantics, pragmatics, etc.) and meta-linguistics to achieve the goal of persuading each other. In this research, it was discovered that by hiding and removing the active and passive from the sentence, and turning the known sentence into unknown, lawyers try to create a positive or negative attitude in the mind of the judge by downplaying and hiding some facts from the eyes of the judge regarding the crime that occurred, which can lead to the persuasion of the judge. Zairi et al.'s research is similar to the current study in the use of persuasion tools in discourse.
3.Methodology
The method in this research is a qualitative analysis and discourse analysis type, which has been done emphasizing on the content analysis of the economic text to show the role of language along with the tool of persuasion as well as the power mechanism in creating inflation and inflation expectations in society.
4. Results
After analyzing this text from the Governor of the Central Bank, it was achieved that language is not only a tool for processing and transmitting information, but it is a constructional group of meaningful categories to help the audience process the cognitive dimensions of Bahmani's message by comparing what they have in their mind from old experiences about economy, society, expensiveness, cheapness, profit, etc. and start trying new experiences. This article could be the first research in the field of economic discourse order and economic text analysis in the framework of critical-cognitive discourse analysis, which emphasizes the effect of language on the audience's mind. The inflation expectation we see in the economy of today's society can be due to the text produced by the head of the central bank of the 10th government, by enoucraging inflation in the framework of his ideology to keep the rate of dollar fixed with persuasive tools, stimulating people's mind and making them buy dollars and sell at a higher price.
In this research, according to the following model, adapted from Fairclough, we examined the relationship between language and inflation from the perspective of linguistics and interaction, and analyzed the economic text in three dimensions: description, interpretation, and explanation. The effect of language on exchange rate for dollar was investigated in three levels as social, institutional, and situational. In this model, the concept of economic text/language deals with linguistic concepts in the economic text. The concept of economic discourse order deals with economic issues with a discursive approach to create order in the economic text, and finally, the concept of socio-economic behavior which covers the previous two concepts, examines people's understanding of the interpretation of meaning in society in terms of behavior.
Conceptual model
Text explanation through Fairclough model in 3 levels: social, institutional & situational
Socio-economic behavior
Economic discourse order
Economic text
Economic stability/economic crisis (Inflation Expectation)
5. Discussion
It is suggested that economic actors persuade people in such a way that both are equal without any of them having a superiority over the other. In this way, an interactive relationship is established between them. Economic actors can use modals in their text and speech such as: “maybe…, it is possible…., perhaps…”, when they are uncertain about an idea.
6. Conclusion
The economic actors equipped with power mechanism should take care of their speech, for they can stimulate people's minds and make them excited by means of persuasive tools, to change their capitals into dollar and sell them at a higher price later. This phenomenon brings inflation expectation to happen which can cause prices to increase.
The result showed that the economic text which could lead to the creation of economic stability or economic crisis, has resulted in inflation expectations.
Keywords
Subjects
Language Related Research