Critical Discourse Analysis of Imam Ali's (AS) Letter to Muawiyah

The Leader's Letters have always some special features to be analyzed in the frame work of critical discourse analysis. One of the valuable letters is the 28th letter of the Imam Ali's Nahj Al-balāghe having special place among the letters of Imam Ali. In principle, this letter manifests legitimate discourse of the Imam. The main question of this article is that how is it possible to investigate the relationship among the different linguistic layers within this discourse? Furthermore, how this legitimate discourse of Imam can be shaped by these linguistic and discursive selections? And finally how it can fight with the opponent discourse (Muāwiyah)? Our assumption is that in this letter, Imam to by perpetuating and promoting his legitimacy and combating with the opposite discourse, Imam makes specific choices of linguistic possibilities and tries to gain the attention of the audience to his policy. To explore this, this article uses the Halliday's functional grammar theoretical framework to study the Imam's letter based on three metafunctions of this approach. These metafunctions are ideational, interpersonal and textual .The results indicated that the legitimate discourse of the Imam, in order to stabilize and promote itself against opposite discourse, spreads the concept of "Us and Them" in the letter by making appropriate and specific choices from linguistic devices particularly in the application of relational and material processes and modality. Also, the textual function enhances previous metafunctions in the way to guaranty the coherence of the discourse in terms of legitimacy.