van leeuwen

In this research, we try to apply linguistics studies to the analysis of novels through critical discourse analysis. Critical discourse analysts take into consideration those elements of discourse that are hidden medium in order to preserve power hierarchy. Contrary to descriptive-formal survey of language, they contend that language can be used intentionally to support dominance, inequality and struggle against them as well. The novel Bamdad-e Khomaar (The dawn of lassitude) by Fattaneh Haj Seyyed Javadi is analyzed based on Theo Van Leeuwen’s research tools namely activation and passivation, nomination and categorization, identification and functionalization, differentiation, and over determination. The research demonstrates how the analysis of the novel based on linguistic research tools, which were used in this research, can help readers to understand the opinions of the novelist regarding both social classes and women.

Critical discourse analysis is an interdisciplinary method that seeks to uncover concealed power dynamics, dominance, social inequalities, and ideological processes through language analysis, focusing on structures beyond individual sentences. Within this field, van Leeuwen's (2008) framework is a fundamental approach that emphasizes the role of social actors in manifesting underlying discourses. This framework comprises two main components: exclusion and inclusion, each encompassing various subcategories. Lutfia Al Dulaimi's "Women of Saturn" is a renowned literary work by the contemporary Iraqi writer, exploring political and social issues in Iraq over recent decades. This descriptive-analytical study examines the novel using van Leeuwen's framework's sociocognitive and semiotic aspects to illustrate how the author presents her ideology by introducing the novel's characters. The findings of this study indicate that the representation of social actors in "Women of Saturn" is influenced by Al Dulaimi's intellectual and social perspectives. In the novel, women are portrayed as active and dynamic agents, while male figures are depicted as passive and negatively valued, reflecting Al Dulaimi's feminist ideologies. Furthermore, the Baath Party, American forces, and Takfiri groups are represented as active agents due to their extensive crimes against the Iraqi people and their significant role within the tumultuous Iraqi context.

The process of actor representation in narrative involves various aspects of discourse-based formulations. The narrator refers to the actors as subjects to either accept or reject them, encompassing different stances, including acceptance and rejection with their sub-categories. Siavash Kasraei's stance as a subject-narrator towards a character as a subject-situator requires the selection of a specific approach and the rejection of other procedures. The mention or omission of actors in Arash Kamangir's poetry is directly related to the poet's thinking and his evaluation and interpretation of that character. The poet describes and depicts the situation of the character through his own interpretations.

Critical discourse analysis examines the dialectical relations between language, discourse and society and examines the consolidated hegemony of these relations at the level of social practice and the changes resulting from these relations. Critical discourse analysis explains the relationship between the text and the author's perspective.The analysis of critical discourse prepares the ground to benefit from it to treat literary texts that reflect political and social issues for societies in general and for Arab society in particular. Due to his politically and socially unstable life, Bayati chose poetry as a weapon to rebel against the prevailing situation and awaken thoughts in his backward society. Therefore, this research aims to portray the social agents in the poem "The Journey to the Cities of Love" and to determine the meanings of the aspects hidden in it and the semiotic and social elements, based on Van Leyen's theory, relying on the descriptive-analytical approach. In this poem, social agents are depicted with two methods of elimination and expression. Bayati removed the social agents who oppressed the people and deprived them of their freedom. But he identified the agents who rose up against the oppression and used the method of expression. Bayati has given legitimacy to concepts such as defiance, honor, revolution, and avoiding isolation by using myth and authorization and rationality and value for emphasizing his own perspective.Therefore,the strategy of authorization in this ode is very clear to legitimize these abstract concepts.In this discourse ,the naminalization is represented more along with the implicit meaning which is a type of statement in order to express the importance of the role of the characters in the awakening of the people and also to give legitimacy to their discourse based on the invitation to modernity and the awakening of rusty thoughts.As it has tended to delegitimize concepts such as stagnation, stagnation, lack of freedom, killing, and exile based on the theory of Van Leuween.

Characters are considered an important element of narrative in a novel and a narrative work. This element, in addition to the structural aspect, is also responsible for a large part of the ideological form of the story in terms of thematization. In his theory of discourse analysis, Van Leeuwen links the element of character and the discourse of the work. He talks about the representation and non-representation of actors and their relationships with the discourse of the work. Based on this theory, this study aims to analyze the famous novel Mot Saghir by Mohammad Hassan Alvan. It is a character-oriented novel that deals with the life of Ibn Arabi, a famous Sufi of the 6th century, in the form of a narrative mixed with the author's imagination and reality. Ibn-Arabi encountered various personalities in his mystical journey and in the journeys he followed to achieve his mystical goals and purposes. The narrator of the story, according to the historical aspect of the work and the influence of each of the personality types in the formation of the discourse has focused on their representation by relying on different methods of elimination and expression.

This study is based on Van Leeuwen’s theory of legitimacy to show how proverbs can legitimize or derive legitimacy from a discourse. The research method is descriptive-analytical and is based on Leeuwen’s components such as authorization, moral evaluation, rationalization, and mythmaking. The statistical population is Twelve Thousand Persian Proverbs and Thirty Thousand Equivalents written by Ebrahim Shakurzadeh Bolouri. The sample size is three thousand Persian proverbs that have been selected from this book based on the systematic random sampling method. The results show that among the legitimation processes, the evaluation components have the highest range with a total of 380 proverbs. This seems to be due to the importance of evaluation as well as the human tendency to evaluate. The results also indicate that proverbs in discourse are used for various purposes such as persuading the audience and legitimizing or deriving legitimacy from a discourse.

The interaction and correspondence of a set of linguistic, literary, narrative, and discourse elements form a network of relationships with varying degrees of influence in connection with the text. The combination and integration of the views of theorists in linguistic, discourse, and narrative fields prevent the researcher from giving a one-sided account and pave the way for achieving more desirable results. In this study, using an integrative approach, we have attempted to present some of the most important linguistic, discourse, and narrative elements as effective factors in meaning formation, and to describe the position and the role of each of these elements in the text to understand the intra- and extra-textual aspects. To this end, the present research based its analysis on Halliday and Hasan's three-tiered theory of linguistics (context, agents, and mode of discourse). It also referred to Riffaterre's views for the description of the discourse context in poetics. Regarding the narratology, reference has been made to some statements of structuralist narratologists, and finally, for the description of discourse agents, Van Leeuwen's (2008) views on discourse and actors have been utilized. The results of the research show that firstly, the foundational theme and discourse context in Arash the Archer's poetry is the reproduction of the anticipation and hope for liberation through the emergence of a hero and savior. Secondly, the agents (actors) of discourse are divided into two main categories: the agent of action and the recipient of action. Arash, in the role of the sacrificed hero, is the agent of action in the narrative, and the people of the city, who are passive and waiting, are represented as the recipients of action. Thirdly, due to the specific discursive and ideological field to which Kasrai belonged, he omitted the ‘king’ character in the narrative.

"Nefrin-e Zamin" (The Cursing of the Land) is one of the important works of the social sciences in the1960s. The present study examines this book from the perspective of critical discourse analysis (CDA) based on the exclusion components in Van Leeuwen's model. The purpose of this study is to show how social and intellectual views are linked to discourse-based structures in fictional texts in order to highlight the importance of linguistic structures in creating social discourses and their relationship with power and domination. This survey has been studied using a descriptive-analytical method, based on socio-semantic categories in the representation of social actors and how to use different types of exclusion and its reasons in a total of 3600 expressive discourse phrases. The results show that in this story, the author has tried to suppress the role of social actors with the use of special linguistic structures, including short sentences with different types of exclusion, the preferences for passive structures over active structures, and using infinitive structures and the use of adjectives, and this has a direct connection with the social institutions and the author's community especially “institution of power and politics”. In the Nefrin-e Zamin, the impact of political issues on the social, economic, and public institutions of that period is obvious and the author with his language choices and his style has explained the manifestations of modernity, social transitions, and the imbalance of power in society.

According to the determinant role of the images in transferring the curricular concepts, the present study analyzed the Arabic textbooks images based on social semiotics approach of Kress and Van Leeuwen. Statistical population was the Arabic textbooks of 7th to 9th grade of year 1400 SH. The statistical sample was 15 main images, randomly selected from every three grades. The images analyzed according to representational, interactive, and compound metafunctions. On the level of representational meaning, the analysis showed that visual patterns used for images are both narrative and conceptual. These patterns are assistive for students in achieving different information from events, measurement, and instruction of people; therefore, using these two patterns are the positive points of the images of these textbooks. Analysis of the images in the level of interactive metafunction indicated that most of the images are in the provider and exhibitive mood and stands as information source and thought topic for the viewer. Also, the visual angle of most of the images is from the front view and on the eye level which is consistent with curricular aims of the images in textbooks. Analysis of the images at the level of compound metafunction demonstrate that in the most images there is no complete coherence and proportion between texts and images, so it is suggested to revise the images by the writers.

The literature of the constitutional era is a mixture of socio-political conditions of the society. Poets and writers present their poems or writings to the audience based on the events of the day, either as critic, advocate or opponent. The literature study of this era is of paramount importance aligned with social and political changes to get basic texture reading, and is an excellent source for analysis and investigation in the field of sociological-semantic studies. Farrokhi Yazdi is one of the poets of turbulent times of constitutional era who dedicated his poetic talent to the service of social goals and concerns and his poems are full of social and folky themes. Diversity of social and national concepts in Farrokhi Yazdi’s poems require an analysis of its discourse with a society-oriented perspective. Discourse criticism according to Van Leeuwen’s model is helpful in better understanding the ideology and value system governing the poems’ text, as well as understanding Farrokhi Yazdi’s intellectual and social views in the constitutional era. The result of this research is not only the linguistic interpretation of Farrokhi Yazdi’s poems, but also the interpretation of the society in which this freedom-loving poet lived and struggled with its crises and difficulties. In this research, it is assumed that social-political poems of Farrokhi Yazdi contain discourse-oriented components that can be analyzed and examined by Van Leeuwen’s model. This study is done in order to discover the position of social agents and how they are depicted in the poems of Farrokhi Yazdi.In Van Leeuwen’s model, the text is not examined from the perspective of formalism, but rather the impact of social issues on the text. In this model, each text expresses the social intellectual views or the specific class of the writer or poet. The degree of utilization of power sources has a direct effect on the openness and concealment of the text in such a way that the greater access to power sources, the franker and more transparent the text and the social agents are displayed in an active manner, and the lower access to power sources, the image of social agents is more covered Although, in Van Leeuwen’s approach, sociological components are preferred over linguistic, but the analyst is still bound to use linguistic components. This is because the foundations of social functions are in language and words are linked with meaning. The current research has taken advantages of the application of nomination and categorization in the discourse approach of Van Leeuwen’s social agents. This research seeks to show the result of using these two components in Farrokhi Yazdi’s poems and rereading them in his social-political thought system. Based on this, in the first step, verses that have social-political contexts were selected. In the following, discussed components were marked in every verse and the application rate and statistic of the components were determined. The result of the study show that Farrokhi has paid much attention to deliver social matters indirectly and in a hidden way due to the asphyxiation and mutes of the era. Highest frequency based on the numbers of occurrences respectively, is assigned to the components of negative appraisement, classification, nomination and functionalization.

Since images play a significant role in educational texts, its systematic application could simplify learning and increase learners' cognitive performance. In present study, images of first grade of high school Arabic textbooks were qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed in terms of various aspects of representation, including development, character and setting based on the social semiotics of Kress & van Leeuwen (2006) and in what manner to convey the meaning of images proper to learners' knowledge and their cognitive and perceptual progress on the basis of Guo and Feng's Ontogenetic perspective (2015). The results displayed that in most images in the modes of representational meaning, there is no appropriate pattern in the selection of images in the seventh to ninth grades in accordance with the procedure of cognitive and perceptual progress of learners; Because in reviewing the development mode, progressive and cognitive changes have not been fully observed from the narrative process method to the concept in the pictures of seventh to ninth grade textbooks. In the character mode, progressive and cognitive changes from cartoon images to real images have not been observed and only individual and group characters have been used to some extent. In terms of setting mode, there are no progressive and cognitive changes from indigenous to non-indigenous environments in the seventh to ninth grade images. The results of this research can assist the authors to select appropriate images with developmental and cognitive modifications of learners to facilitate their learning in future editions of these textbooks.

The book Asrar al-Tawhid is a mystical work in which social agents are represented in different ways. The purpose of the present study is to analyze the discourse of this book based on Van Leeuwen's model relying on the descriptive-analytical method. Preliminary results of the study indicate that in this work, Abu Saeed Abu al-Khair is introduced as a dynamic and effective force through activation. The highest frequency of writing after Abu Saeed Abu al-Khair is related to Khajeh Hassan Modab, the special agent of Abu Saeed and Abolghasem Qashiri. It is obvious that the frequency of naming this prestigious figure due to his final inclination towards Abu Sa'id has had a tremendous impact on the image and spiritual legitimacy of Abu Sa'id Abu al-Khair. In Asrar al-Tawhid, the highest frequency of groups is related to Sufi elders, dervishes, and disciples, all of whom belong to their own group and to the sect-oriented discourse. In the non-identification section, it was found that the identities of anonymous agents were not important in propagating the method-oriented discourse. However, what matters is what they do. The actions of these anonymous agents always have a similar and effective function in expressing the author’s mystical views, which often include observing and perceiving the greatness and importance of the spiritual personality of Abu Sa'id Abu al-Khair. In the book Asrar al-Tawhid, the humanization of animals has an ideological burden, because the presence of these wild animals is one of the virtues of Abu Sa'id Abu al-Khair to be a sign of his legitimacy, consolidation of power, and truth. From the point of view of the deletion component, it was proved that parts of Abu Sa'id's knowledge include the category of fading, since the producer of discourse in this work, like other seekers, is obliged to refrain from revealing the secrets of God and not to share the secret of truth except with the people of truth.

In the present study, the novel Tibetan Dream by Fariba Wafi is examined in the framework of critical discourse analysis using Van Leeuwen's model. In this novel, the representation of social actors is a platform for presenting the views and ideologies that the text seeks to establish. The identity of the actors at the beginning of the novel is designed in such a way that the reader is accompanied by the text to discover this identity in order to identify the implicit meanings in the text in relation to the actions of the actors. Using Van Leeuwen's sociological-semantic components, the relationship between ideological processes and discourse structures can be identified. In this way, he evaluated the mechanism of formation of the current of power and ideology and its role in the explicitness and secrecy of the actors and how they interact or confront. Accordingly, in the present study, an attempt has been made to explain the ideological attitudes of social actors from the perspective of women's class system in relation to discourse-oriented components through qualitative analysis. This study shows that most of the sociological-semantic components used in the novel include omission, activation, passive representation, naming, categorization, confusion time and symbolization. These components serve to describe the social and ideological mechanisms governing the social system of women.

This study tries to deal with the effect of political, social, and ideological currents, and power relations on the discourse of selected satirists' works, and the degree of their words' explicitness and implicitness. These satirical works were written between 1953-1978. Moreover, this study aims to analyze the effect of various events and currents of this period such as coups, the spread of the discourse of absolute Pahlavi modernism, the expansion of political restrictions on Satire's discourse, and the words' explicitness and implicitness of mentioned satirists. Using components of Van Leeuwen's model such as categorization, impersonalization, nomination, etc., this article examines the methods of representing actors in satirical works and explains and analyzes their relationship to the prevailing powers and ideologies. The research results show that the implication of categorization has the highest frequency in all works; as satirists represent most actors based on their occupation, social status, gender, etc. By applying the exclusion component, they avoid criticizing the institution of the monarchy and clericalism. This can be justified by factors such as the prevalence of the discourse of absolute Pahlavi modernism, Shiite resistance, lack of political development, fear of the danger of excommunication of clericalism, and the precautionary thinking of these satirists. Furthermore, the explicitness and application of the nomination component are often reflected in the field of cultural, literary, and social satire.

Critical discourse analysis is an approach that considers language as a social practice in relation to factors such as power and ideology. According to this approach, the present study has tried to use sociological-semantic components to demonstrate how `Jalal Al-Ahmad expressed his ideology through the representation of the characters of Fall Valley and how he portrayed the social agents of that period after Reza Shah’s fall. In this short story, linguistic constructions are analyzed through the sociological-semantic components. So Van Leeuwen’s modal is appropriate for analyzing the text and discovering the relationship between language and the author’s ideology. The main question of this paper is whether the author has been able to reveal his hidden ideology through the representation of social agents? Research findings exhibit that this has happened and Al-Ahmad has expressed his ideology and views in the story by using the methods of suppression, backgrounding, activation, passivation, personification and impersonalization. Using the general strategy of “exclusion”, he hides the identity of high-ranking officials of Pahlavi government and completely “ignores” them by “backgrounding”. The “government” and the “army” have been activated in the discourse, and the “workers” and the “elites” have been passivated to highlight the oppression that has been inflicted upon them for his audience.

The main discussion in the present study is to examine the reflection of the discourse governing the working class of Reza Shah's era in the story of "Fall Valley". In this work, Al-Ahmad, using a general representation, shows the rulers of the Pahlavi regime as generally active in suppressing workers' protests.  He also identifies each of them with a distinct identity through a special representation. This research seeks to answer these questions in the framework of critical discourse analysis approach: 1.How does Van Leeuwen's theoretical model help to analyze the representation of social actors in the story? 2. Has the author been able to reflect his ideology in the text by representing the actors? 3. How is the relationship between the discourse-oriented components and the ideology embedded in the text explained? The main hypothesis related to the above questions is that Al-Ahmad has been able to use the depiction of social actors in the story to express his ideology.The results of the research related to the theory under study indicate that so far no research has been done on the subject of the present article, namely the sociological-semantic analysis of Al-Ahmad political stories and novels. Therefore, the present study examines this issue in order to compensate for the existing deficit in this field. Obviously, considering this point, the necessity and importance of such research is clear.

 Literature Review

Regarding the theoretical background of the present study, several works were generally found in the fictional literature that have been criticized according to Van Leeuwen's model. Among these works, we can mention Pooshneh and Babak (2013) who, in their study, have found different ways of representing social activists in the story "Between Yesterday and Tomorrow" by Ebrahim Golestan. The main purpose of this study is to discover the relationship between intellectual-social (ideological) perspectives with discourse-oriented structures in the story.In their study, Saeidnia et al. (2014) have examined the novels of Suovashun and Sang-e Sabour from the perspective of critical discourse analysis and based on sociological-semantic components. The results of this study indicate that the authors of these novels have represented women as a second sex, weak and with lower social prestige than men.Junidi and Khaghani (2015) in their article have represented social action in zane ziadi (story collection). Their research findings show that in this set, actions are more inactive and static that are pushed into the background of the audience's mind.The subject of the research of Armi et al. (2017) is dedicated to the analysis of how gender relations are represented in the novel "Lullaby for a Dead Girl" by Hamid Reza Shahabadi. This research, in the framework of critical discourse analysis and using Van Leeuwen components, has analyzed and explained the role and identity of family members and their interpersonal relationships in the novel.In their article, Hamidreza Akbari et al. (2019) examine the story of "Ab-e Bid" by Mohammad Bahman Beigi to determine how the author has used the representation of social actors to express his views. He also uses the component of changing time, at the same time as raising the issue of modern Iran, to reveal the faces of the people of a part of Iran who still live in a prehistoric way. The author of the article has thus challenged the policies of the Pahlavi government.Although the present study is similar to some of these works in terms of methodology, including Junidi and Khaghani (2015), but specifically and in terms of the studied stories, a study that analyzes the political and ideological literature of Al-Ahmad with this method. Has not been found yet.

The purpose of this research, with a descriptive-analytical approach, is to investigate the representation techniques of social actors using data collected from the story of Al-Ahmad. To achieve this goal, using a qualitative method, first thirty discourse-oriented sentences with political and social themes in the story were selected. These sentences were then analyzed based on Van Leeuwen's model in order to find the components of cognitive-semantic society. Although Van Leeuwon's theory lists 51 ways to represent social actors, the authors focus on only the most frequent components of the story, as not all of them appear in the selected sentences. Their findings show that the author has shown the actions of nomadic teachers to be effective through a mass display strategy.

Van Leeuwen (2008, p. 52) divides the "exclusion" component in discourse into two types, "suppression" and "backgrounding". In the discourse of Al-Ahmad, we see on several occasions the "suppression" or extremist exclusion of the activists who are the main cause of the deplorable situation of the miners. These activists, who are in fact the rulers of the Pahlavi regime and the owners of the means of production; By substituting unknown faces, they are completely hidden in the author's discourse! It is obvious that the author has deliberately removed from his discourse the indications of the involvement of the Pahlavi authorities in these cases by removing those who are responsible for killing the freedom fighters. This form of "suppression" serves to marginalize the first person of the government, Reza Shah. The extreme omission of Reza Shah's name in the discourse occurs by using the method of "general naming" that is, bringing the title "state" instead of the title of king. In this way, Al-Ahmad has tried to present the image of the "state" as a general nature, hegemonic and totalitarian, in order to remove negative and extremist actions from the realm of the "king" by highlighting it.
       The most prominent example of "backgrounding" in the discourse of the story is when describing an actor who is referred to as "Colonel D". Although this officer has little presence in the discourse and his function is limited to his brief meeting with the head of the mine, his actions are recognizable in all incidents, including raids on workers' homes and their arrest and execution. The action of "Colonel D" (exploring the valleys of the mines) initiates a bloody repression, while its action in this story is diminished by the producer of the discourse and marginalized through the background.
       It is obvious that the main cause of the repression of the miners and the execution of the protagonist is the Pahlavi government and Reza Shah himself, while as mentioned before, no name of this person is mentioned in the discourse. The question here is whether the removal of Reza Shah's name from the discourse was due to political reasons and the suffocating atmosphere around the text? The definitive answer to this question seems difficult, because the author wrote this story in 1326, six years after the fall of Reza Shah, and therefore could have explicitly named him as the main person responsible for the Zirab mine accidents. But why does he remove Reza Shah's name from his discourse instead? Perhaps the concealment of Reza Shah's name was based on the assumption that the audience already knew the hidden actor.
       In the process of "expression", the presence of actors in discourse is represented in the forms of "activation", "passivation"," Personalization" and "Impersonalization". In Al-Ahmad's discourse, we see the active depiction of gendarmerie officers; For example, Haidar Babakhanlu is mentioned several times in the discourse, and his actions (including the torture of miners in the field court) are prominently represented in all behavioral and speech processes. The linguistic manifestation of this method is the role of the actor as the subject in certain clauses. It seems that Al-Ahmad wanted to portray all the members of that organization in a negative light by actively portraying Babakhanlu as a member of the army. In the discourse under study, the "boss" and the "miners" are actors who are shown to be passive. And they are represented as if they have escaped the attention of the country. It is possible that Al-Ahmad, with this kind of illustration, wanted to show the audience that the working class and the elite of Iranian society will always be ignored by politicians!

5.

The authors of the present article sought to answer the question of how to use Van Leeuwen's strategies to analyze the representation of social actors in the story. The authors also sought to answer the question of whether the author was able to reflect his ideology in the text by representing the actors. Analysis of the research data, in addition to explaining the relationship between the discourse-oriented components and the ideology embedded in the text, showed that Al-Ahmad was able to use the representation of social actors in the story to express his ideology. His discourse shows that in representing the actors in the story, the author has used the strategy of expressing non-governmental actors in positive issues and removing them from negative issues, and vice versa, the same strategy in the case of government actors. Thus, statesmen are represented in the discourse as negative actors, and workers and miners as positive actors. In general, the author uses the method of "differentiation" to highlight the contradiction between these two groups, the "state" and the "working class". Using the method of "general naming", which uses the name "government" instead of mentioning the name of the king, the author has removed Reza Khan's name from the discourse of the story. The actors identified by their names in the author's discourse are all male and are portrayed formally, semi-formally, and informally. Al-Ahmad, by passively portraying the head of the mine, puts him in the spotlight to highlight the oppression that has been inflicted on him and the miners. In general, the representation of social actors in Al-Ahmad's discourse has been influenced by his socio-intellectual views and the power relations that govern the society of his time.

The Bani-Adam collection includes six stories from "The Lives of Contemporary Humans". The actions of the characters are a reflection of the author's social and political atmosphere.In this paper, this collection of stories has been examined from the perspective of Van Livon's principles of social semiotics to determine what tacticsDolatabadi - in the action of the actors -uses to represent the social and political harms in society.To achieve this goal, the stories were studied in a descriptive-analytical method based on the principles of Van Leeuwen 's social semiotics.The findings show that the narrative form of the story, in the imaginary and surreal atmosphere, includes social and political harms.The separation of the framing of stories in the infrastructure reveals the opposition between tradition and modernity, right and wrong, selfishness and otherness.The personal and impersonal authority in the lower layers of the stories speaks of the domination of the individual over the individual and the state over the people.The absence of female, lack of her naming and denial indicate the ignoring of women in the patriarchal society of Iran at that time.

Semiotics which emerged in the early twentieth century by Saussure and Pierce is a science that examines linguistic signs. Semiotics is a broad and pervasive branch of divergent and convergent schools that analyzes the signs of semantic production. One of the most important branches of semiotics is social semiotics, which is based on the linguistic role of Michael Halliday and emphasizes the context of the text. The present study, which is written in an analytical descriptive manner, seeks to analyze the context of the poem “Al-Asha al-akhir” which is one of the most important poems of Amal Donqol, a contemporary Egyptian poet (1940-1983), based on the principles of social semiotics. The poem is the result of the years following the Six-Day War which was fought between Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in 1967. It depicts the turmoil and bitterness of the Arabs’ defeat and its consequences, as well as the corruption in the governments of Egypt and the other Arab countries. In this poem, the poet recounts the historical and mythological past and condemns the current situation in order to call for a change. With the aim of inducing his readers to act toward this change, the poet uses historical, religious, and mythological personalities in order to give a clear picture of his ideologies and of the situation in Egypt. The article argues that Amal Donqol, using his lingual strategies and influential power, creates an integrated critical discourse system against the domination of tyranny. He addresses social evils such as poverty, passivity, and the lack of freedom in the society, emphasizing the important role of the intellectuals in making changes in the structure of the society. In his discourse, along with the reflection of the unhealthy situation in Egypt and, in general, the Arab society, he always delegitimizes the ruling government.

The present article seeks to analyze the contents of an Arabic newspaper based on the linguistic principles of text and discourse. The importance and necessity of this work is that it explains and reveals the linguistic techniques that journalists use to engage in media warfare against a country. Since Iran is a regional power in the Middle East, the newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat was selected from a country with an opposing discourse, namely Saudi Arabia, to show the various forms of use of ideology in the press. Asharq Al-Awsat has the important feature (important to this study) of writing ideological news against Iran. So the texts studied in this article are deliberately selected from a newspaper whose hostility to Iran is clear, despite claims of neutrality. The reason for this choice is to be able to perform a precise analysis of a discourse against Iran. The purpose of the article is to analyze the semantic discourse constructs of Asharq Al-Awsat with the aim of explaining the representational patterns in it. To do so, the critical discourse analysis model of Theo Van Leeuwen is used, which discusses representation in political texts, and the selected texts are examined qualitatively. According to Van Leeuwen’s theories — according to, for instance, what he calls role allocation — several factors show the ideological interferences of the authors with the discourse structures of the text. In many case, this newspaper, through various textual and linguistic strategies such as identification and classification, represents Iran as an influential actor with negative performance. In all such cases, on the contrary, the authors have represented Saudi Arabia positively. Thus, the article argues that the primary strategy of the text on which its structural discourses are based is to portray the negative and interfering role of Iran in opposition to the positive activism of Saudi Arabia.

The purpose of this research is to reach the dimensions of the meaning and theme of the first verse of Bustan, which, in understanding it, should receive the relation of the text to the social and cultural context in which it was produced. The method of this study is a critical analysis of discourse. In this approach, one of the points emphasized is that context is a social action reflecting the social inequalities in language. In this case, the legitimation or delegitimation methods are considered by Theo van Leeuwen, a discourse critical analysis theorist. In this pattern, critic tries to show how a context on study can represent a discourse legitimate or illegitimate by language satisfactory power. The main four methods of discourse legitimation are: 1- authorization; 2- moral evaluation, 3- rationalization, and 4- mythopoesis. Each method has various forms, and this research analyzes the first chapter of Bustan directly related to the governmental discourse in terms of legitimation methods. The final result of research is that, in the first chapter of Bustan, Sa’di's method for legitimation or delegimation of an issue in governmental discourse is rationalization, as it is natural according to the context audience, mainly including courtiers. The example of phrases Sa’di confirms the legitimation in governmental discourse in his lingual and literal processing is as follows: paying attention to the farmers, the passengers and businessmen for further development, confidentiality in governance affairs, accompaniment with scientists and clever, and such alike. But the world mortality and paying attention to the farmers are more frequent. Cruelty to the farmer has been more emphasized among the phrases delegitimated.

The current study aims to survey a discourse about the Iranian nomadic people within the Critical Discourse Analysis framework using the advantages of Van Leeuwen's model of representing social actors. For this reason, Dar Boyer-Ahmad, written by Mohammad Bahmanbeigi, has been studied to identify how the writer uses the representation of social actors to express his own ideology and viewpoints. The results show that the representation of social actors in this story is purposeful, and serves the writer's social and conceptual attitudes. The writer, using the advantages of spatialization legitimizes the rebellions occurred in Boyer- Ahmad and shows the unity of Boyer- Ahmadi's people. The writer activates all of the Boyer- Ahmadi's social actors from the students to the rebels but passivates the female actors to foreground the oppression of women in nomadic societies. On the one hand, the writer categorizes the social actors to demonstrate them as people engaged in common complications and on the other hand, he nominates them specifically and individually to both picture them as distinguished persons and indicate the cultural norms dominating the nomination of children in the nomadic societies. Avoiding the nomination of female actors, the writer shows the respect the nomadic people consider for women and the appraisements and symbolizations of the text serve to portray the social actors as brave people with long family and historical background.