Discourse Analysis: A Method to Analyze the Reflection of Revolutions

Great and social revolutions such as the Islamic revolution of Iran in addition to national and territorial impacts, involve transnational and global reflections, since their ideas and goals spread worldwide and result in regional or global consequences. The international dimension of revolutions has received less attention than the other aspects and it has been less theorized. The present study, utilizing Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse analysis theory, considers the international aspect of revolutions and seeks to provide a theoretical framework for analyzing the reflection of international revolutions. This study particularly tries to answer the question that from the perspective of Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse analysis theory, the capabilities of a revolutionary discourse and the way it is reflected in the transnational arena depends on which factors ? According to the findings of the study, we can say that in order to understand the capabilities of a revolutionary discourse such as the Islamic revolution of Iran and the way it is reflected, we should consider factors such as the semantic system of the revolutionary discourse, credibility and availability of the revolutionary discourse, the capability of the revolutionary discourse to form a comprehensive equivalence chain, the metaphorical level and the universality of the revolutionary discourse myth, counter-discourses and discourse competitions in the regional and global arena, and discourse conditions in the audience societies.