Analysis of Role of Identity Functions of Language in Praise Poems

As social conditions gives life to language, language gives meaning to social phenomena. From this perspective, language has a representative feature, and the text, as a linguistic structure, results from specific temporal and spatial conditions. Accordingly, language can be seen as an explicit manifestation of its historical and cultural conditions, and texts also represent certain social conditions through words and type of their arrangement. Understanding the identity of a writer or a poet depends on the relationship between the external semantic structures and understanding the social implications of language. A clear example of the multifaceted texts is the praise poems, in which the poet as the author considers language and meaning for a poem, which can be called a meaningful subject with identity who can express his personal interests. From psychological perspective, he/she is a poet who establishes the design and meaning via selecting the words, but the praise poet shows passive obedient objects that ultimately lead to losing his/her identity. In fact, the poet creates himself/herself and his/her personal identity by selecting the words and repeating and internalizing them.

Several studies have been conducted on the identity of the poet in praise poems considering the ethical and historical dimensions. For example, Gholamhossein Yousefi in the book entitled “Farrokhi Sistani, a discussion on his biography and times and his poetry" indirectly pointed out a poet's dependence on the Praised from moral and historical perspectives. Nader Vazinpour in the book entitled “ Eulogy, a stigma on the face of Persian literature” dealt with the history and examples for eulogy in detail and condemned praise using a moral approach as shown in the title of the book. Reza Zarinkamar et al. (Ref. Reza Zarinkamar et al., 2015: 129-152) conducted a study titled “The Dissolution of panegyrist identity in the praised identity ", and tried to dissolve the identity of the poet using a historical and social approach.  There was a difference between the present study and other studies with respect semiotic method.  In the present study, we attempted to examine the identity through the relationship between language and society using the semantic approach. Given that the praise poems are directly influenced by social codes, especially power; therefore, using a social semiotic approach, an attempt was made to investigate how to form the poet's personal identity and its dissolution in the praise poems emphasizing Farrokhi Sistani's poetry.

Identity can be considered as the result of the person-environment relationships. In other words, identity is the unique set of characteristics that can be used to identify a person. Praise poetry is formed by the cultural, political, economic and social codes. The poet's dependence on each of these codes shapes his/her identity. According to memoirs and historical texts, Farrukhi Sistani entered the service of the Ghaznavids due to his financial difficulty (Nezami Aruzi, 1899: 57-58) and was known as one of the most prominent Persian court poets in the history. In the Tasbib, the poet seeks to announce his presence, but in the main body of the eulogy, this power is reduced in favor of the praised and the poet's identity collapses. Accordingly, two structural levels can be considered for the poet's identity in the ode. In the Tasbib, the poet  presents himself/herself in his/her own text and talks about his/her feelings and emotions, and the other part, which is the body of the praise poem represents  the absence of the poet and the transformation of his/her identity as the praised. An example of identity is activism and presence. These two components require freedom. Literature is considered as one of the characteristics of the poet's freedom in the text. The more literary the text, the more visible the poet's personal identity and freedom, but the more the poet constrained to discourses of power, the more entangled his/her text and language would be, and his/her personal identity fades away. Since the praise poems are based on the court’s ideology and discourse, these two-dimensional contrasts encompass all odes, that is, all the praise poems are based on the distinction between poets and the praised. The fact that the poet considers his/her existence and identity to be dependent on the praised shows the poet experiences alienation, leading to his/her anonymous identity. The anonymous identity becomes more apparent when it shows the opposition of the poet "I" and the praised "He" throughout his/her poem. Another example of the anonymous identity in praise poems is the poet's alienation. The more poets alienate themselves from their self, the more they are deprived of their authority and originality. Dependence on material world is the most important factor in the anonymous identity. From this perspective, the poets of praise and courtiers alienate themselves from their self who have sacrificed mentality and wisdom for commodity relations (eulogy and flattery for money).

Praise texts are among the texts that have been organized under the influence of the court’s discourse. Identity has its own mechanism in these texts. The point that makes identity in these texts a matter of reflection is its process and its symbolism, that is, identity in the praise texts has a multi-layered and differential field. Therefore, identity cannot be examined in isolation from the codes of power, because is, as a sign or symbol, is implicit or hidden in the various linguistic and semantic layers of the text. In the Tasbib, the poet  presents himself/herself in his/her own text (I) and on the other hand due to his/her freedom in selecting the signs, he/she somehow reconstructs his/her personal identity, but as soon as the text enters the praise, the process of  loss of the poet's identity begins. In the main body of eulogy, the power of the court, due to its effects on the poet's mentality, manifests itself in the form of words and becomes objective in nature as a layer of the text. For this reason, a kind of general contrast is formed throughout the text, representing   the  praised and  the poet’s  personal identity.