Farhad Rajabi, Milad Tajrobehkar,
Volume 6, Issue 4 (4-2025)
Abstract
Social agents play an important role in shaping a text or discourse. They are central to its meaning and purpose. However, little attention has been paid to how they are represented in literary texts. Van Leeuwen argues that agents are represented in two main ways: exclusion and inclusion. Each has its own subcategories. Understanding these representations helps to reveal underlying discourses in a text. This article studies The Baghdad Clock novel by the Iraqi author Shahad Al-Rawi as a research project to examine the representation of social agents in it. It will also identify and introduce the main functions of these social agents that passes through the underlying layer of the story. This research aims to understand different discourses in the novel. It also examines the socio-semantic functions that these agents signify through their representation. The results show that the author uses various methods of representation. However, the focus is more on inclusion than exclusion to describe the tragedies of Iraqi people. Among the inclusion strategies, partial identification is emphasized the most. It highlights movement and dynamism in the story, despite themes of war, destruction, and occupation. This research follows a descriptive-analytical approach.
Shahrzad Amirsoleymani, Raja Abuali,
Volume 18, Issue 1 (5-2026)
Abstract
Legitimization is a conscious path that people take daily to justify their behavior and the roles they play in society. For this reason, a person is forced to rely on sources to create and strengthen this legitimacy among others with the help of these sources. The process of legitimization and delegitimization is very important in critical discourse analysis; Because through it, it is possible to identify how the discourses legitimize or delegitimize some actors, their behaviors and goals. The method of this research is descriptive-analytical, which, relying on van Leeuwen's theory of legitimization and delegitimization, intends to find out the strategies that the discourse producer used for legitimization or delegitimization in his discourse, as well as the cases that he legitimized or Reveal what has been delegitimized from them. Van Leeuwen proposed four techniques for legitimization, which include authorization, justification, mythmaking, and evaluation. Each of these techniques can work individually or in combination. In this research, Khalil Hasan Khalil's novels, which depict the lives of oppressed and marginalized people, have been analyzed based on Van Leeuwen's model of legitimization and delegitimization. This research concluded that the techniques of "influence" from the types of "instrumental justification" and the techniques of "myth-making" and "authoritarianism of the expert", the model or pattern and tradition from the types of "authoritarianism", then "evaluation" with its two sub-components, namely "comparison" and "moral evaluation", play an important role in legitimizing or delegitimizing an issue in this discourse.This research also shows that through these strategies, Khalil Hasan Khalil legitimized issues such as freedom, justice, equality, courage, and the formation of a just society, and at the same time, issues such as exploitation, and the capitalist system, and the fear of Power holders and other issues have been delegitimized.
