The Status of Women in Qashqai Oral Literature; from the Perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis

This paper examines the status of women in Qashqhai oral literature from the perspective of critical discourse analysis. The data consists of a series of couplets, proverbs, idioms and folk stories from Qashqai books written by Mardani Rahimi (1391 and 1378) and Kiani (1371), and other works compiled by the researchers. This study seeks to show that in the aforementioned works, ideology, power relations, ethnic customs and tribal traditions matter in analyzing the status of women. The data has been investigated according to Fairclough's three-dimensional model: description (vocabulary and grammar), interpretation (power, ideology, intertextuality) and explanation (social functionalism). On the description level, data is analyzed based on empirical, expressive and relational values; additionally, representations of discourse are studied in linguistic forms. On the levels of interpretation and explanation, the context in which texts are formed is analyzed. Having considered the data, the researchers found out that in most texts, women, compared to men, have a lower dignity and value. But this evaluation has changed in some texts and situations, and positive ratings of women can be observed. In general, women in Qashqai oral literature have positive value as long as they play the role of the mother, otherwise, there can be seen no evidence of equality with or superiority to men. Nevertheless, because of the social and cultural progresses, this issue is not acceptable among the younger generation.