A discourse analysis of the martyr's will of the Iraqi imposed war on Iran

This article aims at investigating and analyzing 50 selected wills of Iranian martyrs of Holly Defense and concentrates on particular discourses and their capacity of articulation using Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory. As a starting point for answering these questions, the pivotal axes and themes of these wills are extracted and then it is identified which signs have privileged position and how they are defined in their relations with other signs in that specific discourse. Besides, we have discussed what meanings are kept and fixed and also what potential meanings are excluded by these wills through putting the elements in certain relations with each other. The main themes and axes of the wills included: 'supreme leadership and Imam Khomeini', 'anti-imperialism', 'events of Karbala', 'Hijab', 'Friday prayer and collective prayer', 'negating mundane world' and 'mourning for Karbala martyrs instead of mourning for the martyrdom of the will writer. 'Supreme leadership and Imam Khomeini' is considered as the main signifier around which other signifiers are articulated and get meaning. According to Laclau and Mouffe, the meaning of peripheral signifiers is fixed by articulating them around the central signifier and main point. Hence, we can talk of 'Martyr's discourse' which make warriors the subjects who think about nothing but afterlife; subjects who have already embraced death before they are really murdered and consider dying in the Holly Defense as dying in events of Karbala.