Conceptualization of the Hegemon Discourse of the Post-Revolutionary Iran in Septembers of Shiraz: A Cognitive-Multimodal Discourse Analysis

The 1979 Islamic Revolution marked a pivotal moment in the political relations between the U.S. and Iran, resulting in a “soft war” that primarily unfolded in the media, particularly within films. This study aims to analyze how the selected film, Septembers of Shiraz (2015), represents post-revolutionary Iran from a cognitive perspective. The Islamic Revolution is characterized by distinct signifiers, including anti-Zionism, the duality of the oppressed and the oppressors, legality, Islamism, republicanism, and the rejection of the United States. Rival discourses attempt to dislocate each of these signifiers to delegitimize the hegemon discourse of the Islamic Revolution. This analysis employs a combination of three theoretical frameworks and cognitive construal tools at the micro-level: Talmy’s (2000) force-dynamic paradigms, the multimodal conceptual metaphor proposed by Forceville (2006, 2008, 2016), and the metonymy-producing relationships suggested by Radden and Kövecses (1999). A macro-level analysis will utilize Laclau and Mouffe’s (2001) discourse theory to uncover the hegemon discourse’s semiotic system using the micro-level data. The results demonstrate that this film employs the repetitive metaphor of IRAN IS PRISON, the metonymy of MEMBERS FOR A CATEGORY, and the force-dynamic paradigm of the revolutionaries as a strong Antagonist/ the Jewish society as a weak Agonist. Discursively, the Iranian revolutionaries are portrayed as irrational, dogmatic, and narrow-minded individuals who are drawing their other-making border with all those who are not devoted to the Islamic revolution. Rejecting anti-Semitism, the revolutionaries’ irrationality, Jewish sacred suffering, and messianic redemption are some of the signifiers articulated by this film.