Re-narration and Identity Construction: Frame-oriented Approach (90s Translation of Orientalism Concepts and Edward Said Identity in Iran: Paratext in Focus)

Reality is perceived differently by different people, and the translator is no exception. Identity construction is related to reality construction. So, the main issue is how the narrative acts as a mental tool in constructing reality and hence identity. Like the controversial issue of language-thought, it is not easy to deal with narrative discourse and narrative thinking, since the reality in the mind, depends on the spatiotemporal framework of the culture in question. This paper shows how society, as a cultural frame, forces the translator to retell the narrative and reconstruct the identity, and why this identity formation will be more pronounced in the paratextual elements (translatorial &authorial prefaces). To provide effective insights into the involvement of multiple agents in the translation process, it tries to indicate how Orientalism concepts have been re-narrated in translatorial and authorial prefaces of Edward Said’s Orientalism, how it has been affected by structure and agency during the 90s in Iran, and how these prefaces as metadiscourse play a crucial role in framing readers interpretation. Analyzing the framework, along with literature and media in the mentioned decade, it proposes a hybrid model regarding Somers’ features (Paul Ricoeur’s Mimesis), and Goffman’s Framework for the concrete manifestation of re-narration and analysis of the prefaces, and the incorporation of the core conception of identity construction. The outcome shall also tell us that the identity, has been constructed by and existed as a narrative, in this case, mostly through paratexts, and various functions and author-identities have emerged regarding structure/agency dichotomy.