An Investigation of the Cultulings of “Patriarchy” and “Matriarchy” in the Iranian Culture: A Comparative Case Study of Iranian Movies across Two Decades

The close relationship between language and culture is rooted in the analysis of language and culture in historical knowledge, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Inasmuch as the fact that language and culture are inextricably bound, examining the pivotal role of the language of a speech community can yield significant information about its culture. Conceptualized under an overarching field of study, culturology of language, postulates how the realizations of cultuling (culture in language) can be entrenched in a language. In so doing, the present study aimed to investigate the “patriarchy” and “matriarchy” cultulings in Persian movies from the viewpoint of Hymes’ (1967) SPEAKING model. This is a qualitative research, aiming at demonstrating Iranian culture and finding the covert reasons of using the cultuling of “patriarchy” and “matriarchy”. To this end, the total 100 Persian movies from two decades of 1360 and 1390, were investigated based on the 500 extracted language expressions for each decade. The most recurrent cases of cultuling of “patriarchy” encompass showing threat, pride, anger, domination, order, sarcasm, wiggery, ridicule and contempt for the 1360s movies. In contrast, the cultuling of “matriarchy” was delineated through decision-making, scolding, humiliating, wisecracking, attracting, complaining, showing anger, showing oppressed, pride, and ignoring for the1390s movies. The findings revealed the patriarchy role is less dominant from 1360 to 1390. In fact, the patriarchy has been replaced by matriarchy these days. The paper concludes with some implications for learners, teachers, and educationists who are interested in the culturology, cultuling, and cultural studies.