An Analysis of Substitutable Linguistic Elements in the Works of Holy Defense Based on "Lashkar-e Khooban"

War memoirs are among the most enduring narrative writings on the “holy defense” in Iran that masterfully offer an authentic account of the imposed war. Masumeh Sepehri’s Lashkar-e Khooban reports adventures of an intelligence agent in 31st Ashura Division. The book provides a series of reports from Valfajr, Badr, Valfajr-8, Karbala-4, Karbala-5, Beitol Moghadas-2, Beitol Moghadas-3, and Mersad military operations. The narrator is the intelligence agent and gives a vivid and inclusive report on these operations. Furthermore, the narrative is fluent and is cemented occasionally with humor, both of which add to its stylistic development. This paper is a descriptive-analytic study of Substitutable elements in the work that aim at expanding overall meaning in the text. Substitutable elements are language constructions that replace other elements and contribute to conveying meaning while making use of humor, emphasis and imagery. Substitutable elements play a twofold role in Lashkar-e Khooban: on the one hand, they enrich emotions and overall discourse to induce the ideological theme; on the other hand, they help expand the language and enhance word bank and grammatical structures, leading to a more eloquent narrative.