خلاصة:
Introduction
Critical discourse analysis, especially the critical analysis of literary discourse, is a relatively recent field in linguistic studies. There are many approaches in this field, one of the most important being Van Dijk's (2006) socio-cognitive model. The present study analyzse the story of “Rostam and Esfandiyar” based on the ideological strategies proposed in this model and its ideological square orientations.
Van Dijk (2006) considers critical discourse analysis as an approach that studies the methods of abuse of social power, domination, and inequality, as well as the resistance of texts in social and political contexts against them. From this perspective, the creators of a text attempt to impose their own ideology on the audience. To do so, they employ various ideological strategies aimed at consistently portraying the “ingroup/us” positively and the “outgroup/them/others” negatively.
This approach proposes four possibilities that together form what Van Dijk’s (2006) terms the “ideological square”. This square contains four main orientations, which are: 1) emphasize our good things; 2) emphasize their bad things; 3) de-emphasize their good things; 4) de-emphasize our bad things. In this theory, after introducing the ideological square and its pillars, some ideological strategies have been introduced to achieve the four goals of this square. Then, these strategies have been classified into four groups: formal-syntactic (negative construction, active and passive construction, nominalization, topicalization, cleft and pseudo-cleft) , content-semantic (actor description, categorization, burden, comparison, authority, counterfactuals, disclaimers, evidentiality, example and illustration, generalization, implication, lexicalization, national self-glorification, negative other-representation, polarization, positive self-representation, presupposition, vagueness, legality, victimization) , rhetorical (euphemism, hyperbole, irony, metaphor, number game, repetition) , and socio-political (populism, consensus, norm expression).
Based on the above, this study aims to determine the frequency and significance of the use of various formal-syntactic, content-semantic, rhetorical, and socio-political strategies in the “Rostam and Esfandiyar” story. Furthermore, it seeks to examine the significance (or lack thereof) of the application of each strategy in relation to the four orientations of Van Dijk's (2006) ideological square. This, in turn, will help discover and specify the relationship between Ferdowsi's ideology and the representation of social actors in the story.
Accordingly, the research questions are as follows:
Are the ideological components in the story of “Rostam and Esfandiyar” represented according to the orientations of Van Dijk’s (2006) ideological square?
Is there a significant difference in the frequency of the four orientations of the Van Dijk’s (2006) ideological square within “Rostam and Esfandiyar” story?
According to these questions, the hypotheses of the present study are:
The ideological components in “Rostam and Esfandiyar” story are represented in accordance with the orientations of Van Dijk’s (2006) ideological square.
There is a significant difference between the frequency of using the orientations of Van Dijk’s (2006) ideological square in the “Rostam and Esfandiyar” story.
Materials and methods
The research method is descriptive-analytical with a comparative approach. Accordingly, first, the text of “Rostam and Esfandiyar” story was carefully studied, and the examples were identified and extracted. Then, the frequency, usage percentage, and significant rate of each of these strategies in relation to the ideological square orientations were assessed via Chi-square test and presented in tables. If the significance rate is less than 0. 05, then the frequency application of the strategy under study is considered significant. On the contrary, if the significance rate is more than 0. 05, then the frequency application of such a strategy is not significant.
Results and discussion
The research results show that there is a significant difference in Ferdowsi’s use of the orientations of the ideological square in representing the actors (Rostam, Esfandiyar, and Gestasp) in this story, in such a way that most of the poet's efforts have been focused on exaggerating the positive points of the “in-group” (Rostam) and then the negative points of the “out-group” (Esfandiyar, Gestasp). Moreover, in order to polarize between “in-group” and “out-group, the poet has minimized the negative points of “in-group” and the positive points of “out-group”.
Accordingly, the poet has mostly used the actor description strategy in 508 cases, equal to% 23. 27 and the irony strategy in 429 casesm equal to% 19. 65. Also, strategies such as consensus (32 cases,% 1. 47) and counterfactuals (25 cases,% 1. 15) have been used the least strategies by the poet.
Besides, it was found that the poet has used the above strategies in a significant way to achieve his goals, which correspond to the four goals of Van Dijk’s (2006) ideological square. The poet's greatest effort has been spent on emphasizing the positive points about the “in-groups” and, in 978 cases equal to 44. 8% , he has used ideological structures to achieve this goal. Next, the poet has focused on magnifying the negative points of the “out-groups” and, in 715 cases (32. 75%) , he has highlighted their negative points. In addition, to polarize the “in-groups” and “out-groups”, the poet has de-emphasized the negative things about “in-groups” in 287 cases (13. 15%) and the positive traits of the “out-groups” in 203 cases (9. 3%).
Conclusion
The above findings show how Ferdowsi has used the foregrounding and backgrounding strategies to describe social actors in “Rostam and Esfandiyar” story. In this regard, the poet has tried to contrast the identity of the “ingroup” (Rostam) with that of the “outgroup” (Esfandiyar and Gestasp). Correspondingly, two poles have been created: the positive pole, where the ideal representation of the “ingroup” (Rostam) has been discussed and attempts have been made to highlight his positive points and put his negative points in the margins, and the negative pole, where the “outgroup” (Esfandiyar and Gestasp) is represented negatively, with their negative points emphasized and their positive points sidelined.
Therefore, it can be confirmed that the representation of ideological components in “Rostam and Esfandiyar” story is in accordance with the orientations of Van Dijk’s (2006) ideological square, and that there is a significant difference between the frequency of using its orientations in the story.
ملخص الجهاز:
The content-semantic class includes actor description 10, categorization 11, burden 12, comparison 13, reliance on authoritative figures and institutions 14, counterfactuals 15, disclaimers 16, evidentiality 17, example and illustration 18, generalization 19, implication 20, lexicalization 21, national-self glorification 22, negative other-representation 23, polarization 24, positive self-representation 25, presupposition 26, vagueness 27, legality 28, and victimization 29.
" Table 1: Frequency and percentage of use of ideological strategies based on the sides of the ideological square in the story "Rostam and Esfandiar" Goals Strategy Irony 160 181 55 33 429 19/65 Falsification 11 3 8 3 25 1/15 Exaggeration 75 0 6 19 100 4/58 Active and Passive 25 15 11 1 52 2/38 Scapegoating 18 35 4 9 66 3/02 Normative statement 8 16 6 6 36 1/65 Word choice 36 11 4 13 64 2/94 Metaphor 79 31 7 14 131 6 Providing examples 27 16 7 5 55 2/52 Actor description 216 180 65 47 508 23/27 Appealing to authoritative figures and institutions 50 15 8 9 82 3/75 Negative construction 172 108 35 14 329 15/07 Consensus 14 11 5 2 32 1/47 Testimonial 31 17 12 11 71 3/25 Playing with statistics and figures 19 7 6 3 35 1/60 Burden of responsibility 12 40 33 3 88 4/03 Presupposition 8 17 5 3 33 1/52 Comparison 17 12 10 8 47 2/15 Total 978 715 287 203 2183 - Percentage 44/8 32/75 13/15 9/3 - 100 the positive points of the "self" (Rostam) have been used.
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