A Study of National Identity Discourse in Iranian Junior Highschool Social Science Textbooks Based on Laclau and Muffe Theory

School is a mechanism, by which students gradually experience social-political issues and learn social behaviors. Therefore, school in general and textbooks in particular play a crucial role in students’ socialization. Textbooks as something that shape the structure of emotion in the school setting are the special characteristics of a country. Identity and specialness of a country are its logic and actually its mental image. In fact, textbook content is a stimulus that can be effective in shaping students' national beliefs. This study investigated national identity and how it was presented in Iranian Junior highschool the social science textbooks, as well as how educational discourse answered the question of collective identity in these books. The importance of such studies was to remind authors of the textbooks and educational planners so as to pay attention to identity components when designing the contents of these books and establish a balance in the texts in this regard. This differed from other studies on national identity since dealing with the issue differently. Researches on national identity have sought to answer the questions of what roles have textbooks in strengthening national identity or how religious identity is superior to other aspects of identity in the books under study, while there is less to do with reconstruction of identity.  

This investigation was done based on Laclau and Muffe Theory. Data analysis was done based on conceptualization and discourse semiotics proposed by Soltani (2014). There are two semiotic systems, i.e., image and text in textbooks; therefore, using the above method, the texts and images in the textbooks of social studies for guidance school students of the 7th, 8th, and 9th grades published in 2017 were analyzed and interpreted to include 3 stages: first, textual analysis, by which each book was analyzed individually. In this stage, sampling and analyzing were done through the written texts and images. Second, intertextual analysis, by which all the mentioned textbooks were analyzed in relation to each other based on Laclau and Muffe Theory. In the third stage, contextual analysis was done, by which propounded discourses in the textbooks were analyzed with regard to macro social and cultural discourses based on Laclau and Muffe Theory. In his discourse based on semiotic method, Soltani (2014) tried to propose a model, based on which analysis of long texts could be facilitated. Combining his method with Laclau and Muffe Theory would result in a model that provided micro and macro explanations simultaneously. 

The findings indicated that giving priority to religious discourse and presenting Iranian identity based on Islamic ideology, making a critical picture of all governments before Islam development and Islamic Revolution, reinforcing Occidentalism, and dividing the world into Islamic/non-Islamic societies were the all things that students learnt from the textbooks of social science studies. Thus, it seemed that Iranian government was based on Islamic culture; in this sense, Iranian identity was a reconstructed culture to restore the former societies against the western culture. Therefore, in Iran, government was formed by defining a legitimated and Shia’-oriented culture and naturalizing it in a systematic way through such tools as education.Boosting traditional identification in educational textbooks was what was generally followed by authors of the textbooks in Iran. In  fact, there was a close connection of space, time, and culture in a given land that met identity needs. In this sense, human beings easily achieve the identity and the meaning they need within their small, stable, and united worlds. However, the reality is that the media, advertising system, and the globalization process in general have greatly reduced the possibility of traditional identification and continuation of this practice in textbooks could lead to a kind of identity crisis.