Critical Discourse Analysis of the Economic Debate of Two Candidates of the Thirteenth Iranian Presidential Election (Raisi and Hemmati)

In this study, one of the most important election campaigns in Iran, the presidential election debates, one of the most important and most popular programs of the presidential election’s candidates in IRIB has been studied from the perspective of critical discourse analysis. For this purpose, representatives of the two dominant discourses in the debates of the thirteenth Iranian presidential election were selected, Mr. Raisi as the representative of the discourse near to the revolutionary discourse or the same as ‘fundamentalism’ and Mr. Hemmati as the representative of the discourse near to the reformist and constructive discourse. To analyze this discourse, Van Dijk’s critical discourse analysis method has been used, and the study’s population included the first debate on economy. Of the three debates, this debate was chosen because of the importance of the economic situation in the country. The debate has been examined at three levels (Semantic, Style, and Argument) and finally, the basic proposition of the debate was extracted. Data analysis shows that the keynotes of Raisi’s speeches in the economic debate have been "supporting the national production", "fighting corruption", "pragmatic government to revive economic conditions" and "criticizing Hassan Rouhani's government", and Hemmati's main statements include "engineering of the election", "unreality (covering nature) of the other candidates" and "the effects of sanctions and non-membership in the FATF Convention on the economy."