Discourse Analysis of the Novel Missing Soluch Based on Van Dijk’s Ideological Square Model

The novel Selouch Vacancy is one of the prominent works of Mahmoud Dolatabad in which the author depicts the problems of the rural society of the Pahlavi era with an eloquent expression. Using his critical expression in a confrontational way, the writer highlights negative traits of "others" (classes of rulers and landowners) and positive features of "us" (poor people), and showed  negative traits of "us" and positive traits of "others" non-significant, and these four pillars are the basic axes of Van Dijk's theory. The purpose of this research is to analyze the socio-political views of Daulatabadi based on a theoretical base in order to better understand and know their instances. At the same time, the author's methods and techniques of expression are also mentioned. Many articles have been written in the field of analysis of the novel " the Vacancy of Seluch" from which we can refer to the article "Comparative Analysis of Seluch Vacancy by Mahmoud Dolatabadi and Marun Abboud's short stories from the viewpoint of regional literature" " (1393), by Mohammad Khaqani Isfahani and Hassan Najafi which compares regional, social, and cultural characteristics in two stories. The article "Investigation and Analysis of Silence in Literary Discourse with the Semiotic-Semantic Approach of a Case Study: 'Kolidar' and 'Vacancy of Seluch' by Mahmoud Dolatabadi" (1398) by Mina Alaei and Ali Abbasi, which examines the tense function of discourse and its role in examining silence. The article "The link between the audience and the text in the polyphonic creation in the Novel 'Vacancy of Seluch' "(1395), By Zulfiqar Allami and Zahra Azimirad, which deals with the relationship between the audience, the text, the author and the compound dialogues in the novel. The article "Analysis of the element of incident in Daulatabadi's Novel  "Vacancy of Seluch"(1388) By Tahereh Khushal Dastjardi and Milad Shamei in which she has examined all kinds of incidents in the novel, categorizes incidents into different sections, and for each of these types, gives examples of the story. The article "Analysis of the post-colonial Appearances in 'Vacancy of Seluch'"  (1394) By Saeed Hajti and Ahmad Razi in which they examine the components of post-colonial criticism in the novel, state the main topics of this criticism, and compare it with the story. However, so far, no independent research has been done about the novel "Vacancy of Seluch" from the perspective of Van Dijk's Ideological Square.  The authors are trying to criticize and analyze this novel by looking at the type of expression and the author's point of view towards the situation of the society of the time and relying on the function of the theory of critical discourse analysis Based on Van Dijk's Ideological Square.

This research answers the following questions:

Has the author used critical discourse to express the issues of the society and the ideology that governs the society in the novel "Vacancy of Seluch"? How does the author use critical discourse analysis? And what topics has he discussed? Are the pillars of Van Dijk's Ideological Square used in this novel to form the structure of critical discourse? The method of this research is a descriptive-analytical and library method; In fact, discourse analysis seeks to discover the relationships in the text; because the author has tried to express her complaint about the existing conditions by using critical discourse. This method of analysis in the approach of literary criticism is more related to structuralism, formalism and hermeneutics; because in the methods of hermeneutic criticism and post-structuralism, they pay attention to the context of the text and its situational context to discover the meaning. No discourse expresses all the truth and they must be analyzed to reach the truth. Layered stylistics examines and analyzes texts at different grammatical, lexical, rhetorical, etc. levels (Fotuhi, 1391: 237).Based on Van Dijk's Ideological Square theory, this work can be examined at the three mentioned levels. In fact, by focusing on "our positive points" and "the negative points of others" and downplaying the negative traits of "us" and the positive points of "others", it is possible to identify and analyze the elements of the text. Also, by using this structure, the author penetrates people's minds and changes their thoughts. As a result, critical discourse analysis causes the unconscious awakening of defeated people against modernity. (Ghiyathian, 1386: 207 and 208) It is in this situation that the analysis of texts based on the theory of critical discourse analysis becomes important. The purpose of using it, is to reveal the hidden power relations, unravel the ideologies in the text and specify the meanings. The story of "Vacancy of Seluch" is the story of the poverty of the family and the people of the society who are faced with modernity. In most of this story, what the author expresses is the oppression that has been perpetrated against them by the lords, the chieftains, the stewards, and the small owners. People like: Kodkhoda Nowruz, Karbalai Dushanbeh, Mirza Hasan Khan, Ali Genav, Zabihullah, etc. are representatives of cruel and oppressive people. This section of the society with their selfishness and self-interest oppresses the people and takes "God's land" from them to carry out land reforms. The government also supports them and supports this oppression, and because of these events, the people of the village are forced to migrate. The aim of the authors of this research is to provide a new interpretation of this story, using Van Dijk's Ideological Square approach; a description that shows how the oppression of the powerful hurts the poor and inferior people and forces them to migrate. Among the results of the present research is that Doulatabadi, with a critical statement, seeks to reform the society in which the oppressed people have failed against the modernists. By expressing the positive and negative characteristics of us and others, he expresses his criticisms towards the oppressed society of his age, and he has benefited from lexical, syntactic and rhetorical tricks. This article talks about the negative characteristics of others such as trickery and cunning, theft, selfishness, lust, condescension, etc., and about the positive qualities of "self" such as courage, harmlessness, hard work, loyalty, zeal, independence, respectability, etc. Basically, the author rarely mentions the positive qualities of others and our negative qualities, however, qualities such as: cleverness, wisdom, foresight, compassion, religiousness (for others) and irresponsibility, selfishness, bullying, rudeness and arrogance and (for us) can be extracted from the side of the story.