Imam Khomeini’s Viewpoints about University According to Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis

Imam Khomeini is the father of the Islamic Revolution and is among the effective leaders in the history of the world, particularly that of the world of Islam. Given the cultural and ideological nature of the Islamic Revolution and the role of university in the formation of this culture, Imam Khomeini always had a special attitude towards university and academics and made many remarks about this issue. The objective of this paper is to study Imam’s viewpoints about university from the perspective of Norman Fairclough critical discourse analysis. Content analysis has been employed and the focus of the research is on one of the remarks of Imam published in Sahifey-e Imam which is related to the research topic. The findings of the research indicate that two conceptual relations of collocation and contrast have most applications compared to other sematic relations. The highest discursive gaps belongs to activism the next belongs to time and space gaps. The concept of university has the highest rank in the beginning of the sentences and most sentences are intransitive. The analysis of explanatory level underlines Imam’s depth of insight regarding this important social institution and shows that within Imam’s intellectual and creedal framework, university is the origin and focus of social and cultural changes and the pivot of reform or corruption of the society as well as its development or retrogression.