Critical Discourse Analysis of National Anthems of Arabic Countries located at Levant Area Based on Van Dijk Model

Assessing different discourse levels provides new perception of the same and shows the interaction between language and ideological structures. Since discourses causing ideology hegemony are considered as the determining factor in reproducing national identity, national anthem of each company assume an important role in recognizing it. Van Dijk, considering ideology as a basis for common social representation, has provided a model for critical discourse analysis that can be a proper framework for investigating identity reproduction in each country’s national anthem. The present study aims to discover discourse strategies of Arabic countries’ national anthems, located at Levant area (Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon), which leads to presenting national identity in language. Therefore, through a descriptive-analysis method and Van Dijk’s model, the results indicate that foregrounding positives points and backgrounding negative points form 78% of the mentioned anthems discourse system. Furthermore, meaning and propositional structures are the most prominent levels of discourse in the anthems.