Critical Discourse Analysis of Campaign Films of Two Elected Presidential Candidates: Case study of 7th and 9th Presidential Elections in Iran

Applying discourse analysis, this paper compares two electoral campaigns of two elected candidate, 7th and 9th presidents of Iran, Seyed Mohammad Khatami and Mahmood Ahmadinejad respectively. The article analyzes the changes in government and people discourses during two different eight years periods by conducting a comparative analysis of their campaign films. These films were broadcasted by Iranian national television during the days of campaigns. In this paper, we interpret and explain two elected political discourses namely Reform Discourse and Justice-oriented Discourse.
We applied Fairclough’s approach to critical discourse analysis. Our findings suggest that there are considerable similarities and differences between the two campaign films. In case of similarities, there are varied citations to topics such as women, the youth, manner of cost savings in running campaigns, and the will to change. On the other hand, there are different trends in defining concepts such as Islam and Iran, justice and freedom, law and being kind, using the pronoun “we”, religious views, looking at literature and women’s hijab and also the styles of speech. Another important note is that both candidates avoid discussing sensitive topics including economy, inflation, unemployment, crimes, etc.