Negative Constructs in Family Court Discourse: A Case Study of Divorce Demanding Women based on van Dijk’s Approach

Language as a social phenomenon is a reflection of thoughts and ideologies of actors and speakers. It contains the beliefs, worldviews, beliefs, and thoughts of its speakers. It constantly reflects immortalized and encrypted ideologies. Each speaker, from his own point of view, ascribes to the world, its phenomena and realities, and looks from the angle of his own view to represent those realities. Ideologies are hidden within language and subtly submerged in social structures and become social conventions. Divorce demanding women, as social activists in the family courts, use a variety of linguistic strategies and tools in order to persuade and ideologically inspire their audience in the courts. To probe into the way divorce demanding women use negative constructs for ideological expression of their desires and persuading the judge, the present study explored negative constructs in divorce demanding women’s discourse in family courts based on van Dijk’s (2006) theory of society-Knowledge and discourse. A total of 60 meetings were attended in the counseling center of families of the Public and Revolutionary Tribunal of Zahedan and divorce demanding women’s remarks were collected. The findings of the study showed that the participants used negative construction in order to magnify their positive points and reduce negative points of themselves.