The Inductive Function of Lexicons in ‘Those 23 persons’ in Search for Lexical Features of War Prisoner’s Memories

The book 'Those 23 Persons’ contains the memoirs of Yusefzadeh during his captivity in Iraq. He is one of those 23 Basiji youths who was imprisoned in Iraqi imposed war against Iran. The significance of the book relies on the depiction of historical events and the torture of youths in Iraq prisons, expressed in a childish and simple language with colloquial phrases andlocal accent. In this study, the inductive function and role of lexicons in this book in depicting the atmosphere described by the author was examined and analyzed through the classification of words related to war and captivity. The aim is finding access to lexical features of war prisoner's memoirs in Persian language and presenting a framework for their analysis. The range and frequency of lexicons used by the author incurs enough data for the analysis of the way in which reality was depicted in these texts and the function of lexicons in the expression of the atmosphere preferred by the author. The study shows that the special lexicons of war prisoners' memoirs mostly include military terms, words related to captivity, places, and persons with whom the author has lived or those he remembers, words related to war literature or the places in which the author has stayed during his captivity. The findings of this research present a framework for the analysis of lexicon of this literary type, which puts the words into a 15-part classification based on subject. The recognition of the lexicons of this literary genre/form by comparing them with those of other literary texts and the determination of the frequency of each group of words would reveal the themes prevalent in the prisoners’ minds and the amount of their significance for them.