The Role of Metonymy-Producing Relationships in Drawing Self and Other Borders: A Cognitive Critical Discourse Analysis of World Powers and Terrorism in the First Statements by Khatami, Ahmadinejad and Rouhani in the General Assembly of the United Nations

This study aims to use cognitive critical discourse analysis in analyzing the first statements of the recent presidents of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the General Assembly of the United Nations. It seeks to capture how each discourse makes antagonisms through applying metonymy-producing relationships. The main question is how identity and its otherness are articulated in the context of the Iranian presidents’ statements in the UN’s General Assembly and which factors and signs in the metonymy-producing relationships serve this representation. The theoretical framework of this study is composed of Hall’s (2011) approach to discourse analysis based on cognitive linguistics, Laclau and Mouffe’s (2001) Discourse Theory, and Radden and Kövecses (1999) conceptual metonymy. The findings show that each president through using metonymy-producing relationships, profiles some vehicles that both negatively foreground some aspects of the other’s identities, and avoid explicit other-making and overt antagonism with them. On the other hand, all the discourses apply similar metonymys; this behavior denotes their common root as subdiscourses of the Islamic revolution’s metadiscourse.