Persian Nationalism on FB Paper

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Persian Nationalism, Identity and Anti-Arab Sentiments in Iranian Facebook Discourses

Critical Discourse Analysis and Social Media Communication

Majid KhosraviNik & Mahrou ZiaNewcastle University / Lancaster University

This study adopts a Critical Discourse Analytical approach to investigate how a form of Iranian national(ist) identity is (re)constructed and (re)presented on a popular Facebook Page called Persian Gulf. It focuses on linguistic practices of the Iranian side of the debate over the name of this body of water. After briefly discussing some of the challenges of applying CDA to a participatory web platform e.g. Facebook, This paper explores the characteristics of the Persian identity discourse in the way that it is utilised to legitimize the name Persian Gulf vs. the claim to the name Arabian Gulf. The paper concludes that the emergent Persian national/ist identity discourse is strongly preoccupied with opposing a perceived cultural invasion of the Arabic Other in its emphatic defence of the name Persian Gulf but in the meantime it aspires to distinguish itself from the officially propagated Islamic identity. It is also shown that aspects pertaining to powerfulness, defiance and conflict are the main thrusts of the discursive representation of this Self-identity.

Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis; Social Media discourses analysis; Facebook; National identity; Nationalism; Iran; Persian Gulf; Arab identity; theMiddle East

1. Introduction

The discursive politics of identity has been one of the main topics of research in Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA). This reflects in the bulk of research on representation of minority groups e.g. immigrants (see KhosraviNik 2009, 2014a for an index and variety of such studies) and constructions of national(list) identity (Richardson 2013, Wodak et.al. 2013) as a discursive construction of difference, uniqueness and distinctiveness (Wodak 2001). Despite the wide-

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Majid KhosraviNik & Mahrou Zia

spread expansion of application of CDA, there is still a strong tendency to focus on powerful, top-down texts and discourses of symbolic elites e.g. mass media. Mass media in general and print media in particular have been traditional sites for CDA investigation under the (rightly held) assumption that impact of mass mediated discourses on society is a legitimate scholarly research focus. In fact, the preoccupation with (discursive) power is an integral part of CDA in its goal to account for processes of production, distribution and consumption of texts. It is argued that power is exerted both from within discourse as well as the pre-existing social structures. In other words CDA engages both with power behind discourse e.g. the power of mass mediated texts as well as power in discourse e.g. socially constructed and disseminated texts (see KhosraviNik 2014b for discussion on the notion of power in digital media).

A large body of critical conceptualization in Media and Cultural Studies share this assumption of power for mass media and as such have theorised nuanced explanations for media-society relations including Foucaults (1977) discourse theory, Halls (1973/1980) encoding/decoding model, Adornos (1991) culture industry, MacCabes (1985) screen theory and Entmans (2002) framing theory. CDA itself has developed on the backdrop of (and contributes to) this type of the-orisations; all of which share a conceptual principle about the power of discourse in shaping society and socio-political orientations (Fairclough et al. 2011; Wodak & Meyer 2009; KhosraviNik 2010).

With the advent and popularity of interactive digital media e.g. social net-working sites, several of the shared core assumptions in critical media/text research such as notions of audience, representation, dynamic of text producers/ consumers and most importantly the linearity of media power have been chal-lenged. The linear, one-sided, one-to-many flow of texts in traditional media is now replaced by what seems to be an interactive, participatory, many-to-many flow of texts, which in turn undermines (at least at the local level) the assumed power behind the discourses of mass media (KhosraviNik 2014b). Even though early utopian thrills about the potentials of Web 2.0 in decentralising discursive power and affording a grass root participatory dynamic have not materialised or are yet to be tested on real-world experiences, the new communication environ-ment is a major imposing reality and challenge for traditions of theorisation in mass media. In fact, the very notion of media and their social functions/impacts now require new understanding especially for those critical research strands that centrally engaged with the notions of (discursive) power such as CDA.

While the paper engages with some features of the participatory web and its implications for a CDA approach, the main purpose of this paper is to adopt a critical discourse analytical approach in the way it can be applied to data on a social networking site and explore how the bottom-up discursive practices are



at play in propagating a national identity. The paper aims to investigate how an Iranian national identity is (re)constructed and (re)presented on a Facebook page called Persian Gulf by Iranians over the contentious issue of the very name of this body of water. It is argued that that given the increasing concentration of discursive practice on the internet and the impact of social media on various political, cultural and business aspects of society, a socially committed critical approach to communication, i.e. CDA, cannot afford to shy away from such dis-cursive concentration, especially more so for certain socio-political contexts. For more detailed discussion on theoretical and methodological challenges of doing CDA on digital discourses and participatory web see KhosraviNik & Unger (forthcoming) and KhosraviNik (2014b).

2. Participatory media and critical data repositories

From a linguistic point of view the Internet communication resembles both what is categorised as inter-personal and mass communication. Several new Internet technologies have broken the uni-directionality of the flow of content of producer > mass media > consumer and, at least formally speaking, empowered ordinary receivers to participate as producers of texts. As contestable as it may be (see Khos-raviNik & Unger forthcoming) there are arguments that the Internet as a social- as opposed to a mass-media tool has allowed for the construction of a wide variety of non-mainstream identities (Kahn & Kellner 2004) and opened up spaces for new dynamic of social and political power for non-elite text producers resisting the discourses of established institutions (see Kelsey & Bennett 2014 for an example on Twitter). The receivers or audiences of these messages can also number from one to potentially millions and may or may not move fluidly from their roles as audience members to the producers of messages (Kelsey & Bennett 2014).

In the meantime, a wealth of (sometimes unique) linguistic data repository has been afforded through various social communication platforms. While offi-cial (powerful) discourses, e.g. official newspapers, TV news, magazines, speeches, manifestos etc., have been an easy (but necessary) targets for linguistic data (Unger 2012; Mautner 2005), research on social attitudes (bottom-up language in use) has always required a well-designed and invested research apparatus, e.g. systematic fieldwork, focus groups, interviews, etc. (Koteyko 2011). This reposi-tory of data should of course be evaluated against an array of limitations including issues regarding online vs. offline generalisability, specificities of users attitudes on online platforms e.g. trolling tendencies, issues regarding the demographics of access, etc. Nonetheless, the fact remains that such data could provide opportu-nities for research on bottom-up discourses on identity representations in social



contexts; even more so for contexts which lack a healthy public sphere i.e. not all social attitudes get a chance to be reflected in official mass platforms.

Following the traditions of anthropological linguistics and discourse analysis, Jannis Androutsopoulos and Susan Herring have, respectively, proposed approaches for socially and contextually sensitive discourse analysis of digital texts. Both Androutsopoulos Discourse-Centred Online Ethnography (2008) and Herrings Computer Mediated Discourse Analysis (2004) call for a move from medium-ori-ented approaches to Computed Mediated Communication (CMC) to user/context centred approaches which accords with the principles of being problem-oriented and socially relevant research in CDA theorisation. Thurlow and Mroczek (2011) along with Androutsopoulos and Beibwenger (2008) differentiate between the mainstream CMC analytical approaches and what they call commuter-mediated discourse analysis by foregrounding the problem-orientedness and situationally-focused orientations of this approach to digital discourse. While such shift is wel-comed from a CDA perspective, a strictly CDA approach would call for a more explicit critical approach to case studies by linking the online discursive practices to socio-political context of offline world. In other words, there should be a verti-cal contextualisation level (linking online and offline discourses) in addition to a horizontal contextualisation (tracing discourses across relevant online platforms).

3. Social networking sites: Facebook

There is an optimistic argument that social networking sites can turn into a new easily-accessed and managed space for social inclusivity, group recognition and pluralized participation of ordinary citizens (Dahlgren 2009 cited in Cottle 2011, p. 650) and can become new spaces of power to impact society, facilitate represen-tations and mobilise activism.

From a political communication point of view, despite its core corporate structure (KhosraviNik & Unger forthcoming) a mainstream social network-ing site such as Facebook appears to combine the best features of local bulletin-boards, newspapers and town-hall meetings and places them in one location that is accessible at any time anywhere. It has emerged however, that the mere provi-sion of these affordances does not guarantee the practice of meaningful political deliberation (Boyd 2008); at least in a late modern social context. The new affor-dances do not necessarily trigger radical new social and political engagements per se. In other words, technologies are shaped by society and reflect societys values back at us, albeit a bit refracted (ibid., p. 112). The key issue here is not only to avoid making universal assumptions about the nature of societies and the functionalities of participatory media (or traditional media for that matter)



but also to try and situate media practices in relation to the contextual structures of state power, the role(s) of the military and also the organization of politi-cal opposition in and across the different societies concerned (Cottle & Nolan 2007, p. 657). A society-oriented approach to the media discourse such as CDA would foreground the characteristics and circumstances of the society to be able to explicate the ways new affordances, e.g. online public spheres, are adopted and adapted in the fabric of a society, a community or a demographic fraction. This is not to argue that some societies (e.g. the Iranian society) are categori-cally immune from the macro-structural strategies of global media industry e.g. corporatisation of virtual spaces and specifically social networking sites (Fuchs 2014) but to emphasise on the need for a more wholesome approach towards integration of social contexts in the analysis to be able to make the connection between global structures and local practices. Therefore, it is safe to assume that in a highly politicalised society like that of Iran, perhaps unlike some Western largely apolitical contexts, politics in a broad sense (of identity, gender, minor-ity, opposition etc.) automatically pours itself into social networking sites as it would in any other accessible media. It is a fact that social media can and have facilitated social and political communication in various Middle Eastern contexts and have played an important role in what came to be known as Arab Springs, however, this is no evidence to assume that social media platforms have actually re-connected these societies with politics. Similarly as Cottle (2011) argues, label-ling Arab uprisings as Twitter Revolutions or Facebook Revolutions would be to misread and downplay the preceding socio-political characteristics. Such a social reductionist approach would do less than justice to both the political and media complexities involved (Cottle 2011, p. 650).

4. National identity

National identities are arbitrary discursive constructs in nature. National identity is substantiated based on a historical narration of material events, beliefs and val-ues in such a way that a (seemingly) coherent consistency and continuity over time is rendered (Triandafyllidou & Wodak 2003, p. 210). In a broad sense, identity refers to the social positioning of the self and others (Bucholtz & Hall 2005). In that spirit identity follows two basic meanings: absolute sameness (among mem-bers of in-groups and out-group) and distinctiveness (between the two groups). Furthermore, identity is neither natural nor static (Maguire 1994, p. 410 in Georgalou 2009, p. 110), thus it is socially constructed as a condition of being or becoming that is constantly renewed, confirmed or transformed, at the individual or collective level (ibid., quoting Triandafyllidou & Wodak 2003, p.205). National



identity as the most common and (perhaps) necessary construct has been at the core of political processes leading to (and emerging from) the creation of nation-states whereby the nation is conceptualised as an imagined political as well as cul-tural community (Anderson 1983, p. 15) contained within its borders. The closely related notion of nationalism as an explicit (often extreme) expression of identity is seen as a systematic transformation of this sense of national belonging between groups of people into an antagonistic orientation to other peoples and nations, regarding them as enemies, either oppressors or inferiors (Georgalou 2009, p. 111; See also Wodak et.al. 2013).

In the modern life world, the primary collective identity to which individu-als are connected is the nation (Wodak et al. 1999). A nation, as a sociological entity within a specific territory, presupposes that both a common sentiment and a common identity are shared by its members (Duke & Crolley 1996). A nation as an imagined community (Anderson 1983) is shaped and conveyed both through top-down discourses (e.g. mass media, education, politics) and bottom-up social language-in-use through the (re)telling of national narratives by members. As members believe in and identify with the characteristics which form the image of national identity, the imagined community is counted as real (Grad & Rojo 2008).

Analysing collective identities has naturally been a main realm for CDA including national identity (Wodak et al. 1999), nationalism (Krzyanowski & Wodak 2009, Richardson 2013), ethnic/racial/religious identities (KhosraviNik, 2009) or an international collective identity e.g. European identity (Krzyanowski 2010). What is common here is that discursively propagated and disseminated constructs of collective identities are internalised through socialisation (hence communication; mass or interpersonal) whereby such constructs and dispositions of difference, distinctiveness and uniqueness (Georgalou 2009: 112) are re/created and re/presented. Discourses (top-down official/mass media or bottom-up non-official/ordinary citizens) can be seen as sites in which the qualities of national identity are revealed, given that language (re)produces and reflects social relations and practices.

. Persian Gulf: The name and debate

The Persian Gulf has been regarded as a border zone in the Middle East. This body of water separates Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia from Iran (Persia until 1935). Historically speaking, there is ample evidence to the name Persian for the gulf. Potter (2009) for example, notes that the name Persian Gulf came into use at the time of Darius I (522486 B.C.) when the Greek geographer Hecataeus used the term Persikos Kolpos,


Persian Nationalism, Identity and Anti-Arab Sentiments in Iranian Facebook Discourses 1

i.e. Persian Gulf, around 500 B.C. for the first time in a written source. Several early Islamic texts continued to use the Arabic equivalent of Persian Gulf; Bahr al-Fars (Sea of Fars/Persia). Later, the Portuguese used the term Sino Persico (Persian Gulf), which was later picked up as a reference source by European and British mapmakers for the past two centuries. Until recent years all British publications on the region would use Persian Gulf (Bosworth 1997). One of the signs of the Arab-Persian rivalry discourse in recent history was when the Arab nationalist president Nasser of Egypt launched a campaign for the Arabian Gulf in the 1950s as part of his pan- Arabian nationalist agenda. The campaign was faced by a strong opposition from the Iranian monarch of the time, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi - who had founded a large part of his monarchical legitimacy on a mythology of glori-ous Persian dynasties and a (secular) Persian identity for the nation (Tripp 2000). Compromised proposals such as the Islamic Gulf have not been embraced by either side, with the Iranians insisting on using the full historic name (ibid.).

The Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979 not only reversed the pro-Western leanings of the Pahlavi monarch but also changed the officially defined national identity of Iran/ians from a Persian identity (viewed as secular, and national) to a (Shiite) Muslim identity (viewed as religious, revolutionary and supra-national). After the Revolution, the semiotics of Persian identity was replaced with Islamic (Shiite) identity in all official discourses and institutions, e.g. education, mass media, politics, etc. The Persian identity discourse gradually took on the charac-teristics of a competing/oppositional discourse -especially by the first generation of exiled Iranians in the USA.

In 2004, the National Geographic Society published an edition of their world atlas which included Arabian Gulf in brackets, under the name Persian Gulf, as an alternative secondary name. This led to a firestorm of opposition among Iranians both inside and outside. Consequently, the National Geographic Society updated its online maps and included a brief explanation that the waterway was historically and most commonly known as the Persian Gulf .

The Gulf region has a hybrid culture of Arab and Persian. With the political changes in the region and the Shiite/Sunni struggle to maintain hegemony in the region, the matter has become further complicated beyond the regional geopoliti-cal constellations for example in terms of relations with the West. In most of the scuffles over the name, the Iranian/Persian sides reaction is much more exten-sive, emphatic and possessive which speaks to a complicated context of internal political struggles and an internal identity crisis as a consequence of long standing confrontation between Iran and the West (esp. the USA). As a general rule, the overwhelming mobilisation and engagement of Iranian (online) community in debates and issues regarding territorial claims (especially from Arabic rivals) has been a common phenomenon. On the Iranian side, the discourse about Persian


2 Majid KhosraviNik & Mahrou Zia

identity and hence engagement and sensitivity against the use of Arabian Gulf is predominantly organized, facilitated and pursued by social (non-official, non-state) social layers and sources. The official Iranian revolutionary discourse has traditionally been against identifying with the Persian mythology.1 On the Ara-bian side, the main thrust or what many Iranians view as provocative attempts in forging the name seems to come from official/state sources as Arab states insist on using the Arabian Gulf (Potter 2009). While almost all the Arab states of the region have extensive cordial official relations with the USA/West, the Iranian official over-arching macro-discourse is anti-colonial/USA/West (KhosraviNik 2015). However, most countries and international organisations such as the United Nations still use the term Persian Gulf as the official name.

Having said that, the aim of the current study is not to participate in the debate over the name whatsoever. The study seeks instead to look into the Iranian side of the debate as a concentrated discursive site through which the charac-teristics of the Persian national/ist identity is represented and re/constructed. While trying to avoid various socio-political complications, we attempt to see how the notion of Persian identity (Us/in-group/Self) is constructed in order to legitimize the name Persian Gulf as a universal name, and how the Arab identity (Them/out-group/Other) is constructed in order to de-legitimise the claim to Arabian Gulf .

. Facebook and data

As the most popular social networking site (though not the first in kind) Face-book allows members to share their personal information, photos and interesting news and links in their profiles, along with providing a forum for discussions and exchanges on a variety of topics among a virtual network of friends (and friends of friends). In addition to opportunities for exchange and discussion on users mes-sage boards, there are numerous interest groups and pages focusing on a variety of issues, interests and topics-from the most mundane of interests to most serious political debates and activisms. Members can create their own themed groups on any topic and invite other members to join. In groups, members can post to mes-sage boards, add pictures, and post news and links. Groups/pages can be public with open membership (usually triggered by clicking on a like icon) or public with a closed membership. Group administrators can apply different degrees of

1. In April 2008, a gathering in front of the UAE embassy in Tehran against the use of the name Arabian Gulf was confronted by Iranian police.



control over the content, e.g. deleting some comments, topic updates, communi-cating on or off the list with all members.

With the growing popularity of the Internet and issues around access to mass media in Iran, part of this social impetus to propagate a Persian identity has found its way onto social networking sites especially Facebook. There have also been previous initiatives in the form of organising campaigns by fellow Inter-net users, e.g. the provision of a Google bomb2 against the name Arabian Gulf . There are a number of Facebook Pages on this topic. The most frequently vis-ited Facebook Page which directly concentrates on this topic is a called Persian Gulf.3 With good administration, promotion and networking, the page, which was launched in January 2010, has now more than 291000 members (at the time of writing). It is classified as an Education page and according to its administra-tor: the page is dedicated to the Persian Gulf, its name, geography, history, cul-ture and arts. Membership is granted by clicking the Like icon on the page. By doing this members get a news feed on their Facebook home page, can comment on the statuses posted on the page, view and comment on notes and pictures that are shared on the pages wall. Up until November 2011 members were able to post their own posts (topics) but this feature has been suspended due to the fact that, according to the administrator, the moderation of all posts and maintaining the focus proved impossible. There are notes posted on this page as well. Notes which are posted separately are usually long posts that are deemed too long to be published as a status on the main pages wall. The main bulk of communication, and hence the focus of this study, is what occurs in the comments sections of proposed topics/status/ shared news. For the purposes of this paper, we opt not to look at notes: firstly because they are limited in numbers with some not even related to the discussion of the Persian Gulf; and secondly, although members can also comment there, notes are not as visible and approachable as wall posts and thus the level of discussion and participation by members is significantly low for notes as compared to wall posts.

2. A Google bomb is a way to increase the ranking of a given site in the results returned by the Google search engine. Because of the way that Googles Page Rank algorithm works, a site will be ranked higher if other sites that link to that page all use the same consistent anchor text. The then thriving blogosphere of Iranians in 2004 decided to systematically hyperlink the term Arabian Gulf to a spoof page (Arabian-gulf.info) which gives an error message that The Gulf You Are Looking For Does Not Exist. Try Persian Gulf . Thus the more pages use the phrase Arabian Gulf, the higher the probability for Google search engine to render it as a high ranking relevant page for Arabian Gulf. Also see PersianAreNotArabs.com.

3. Accessible at https://www.facebook.com/Persian.Gulf.Gulf. The data for this analysis has been collected from this page.

https://www.facebook.com/Persian.Gulf.Gulf



As an operationally necessary stage, we also devised a systematic and sensitive way of down-sampling the data so that, on the one hand, the data is manageable for qualitative detailed textual analysis, and on the other hand, the topic, focus and context of the data can be kept under control for CDA contextualisation purposes (see KhosraviNik 2010). We focused on the size of the reactions and debates that a given post had initiated. Through a pilot topic analysis of the discussions between 1 June and 1 September 2011, we selected wall posts/topics which triggered a lengthy discussion in the comments section. As general criteria we decided to analyse posts that; a. related to the topic of Persian Gulf directly -hence construc-tion of Persian nationalist discourse; b. were within the defined time frame; and c. received at least 60 comments/reactions. This procedure provided us with a data set which would be both concentrated on the aims of the research and manageable for detailed textual analysis. A sample of topics on the Persian Gulf Facebook page which triggered substantial comments and their relative importance (indicted by the number of *) is shown in Table 1:

Table 1. Topics

Topic URL/Source Importance

The White house and the name Persian Gulf

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=246136642065871&set=a.122234974456039.19319.121064324573104&type=1&ref=nf

*****

Reuters report in which bogus name of A.r.a.b.i.a.n Gulf is used

http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFLDE75L1LC20110622

***

Lets turn Facebook to Persian Gulf. Dear fellow countrymen, please change your profile photo to the Persian Gulf poster on 30th of April in support of our Persian Gulf to show to the world that our Persian gulf is not for sale

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/?set=a.10150090968351111.309092. 285224906110

***

Dear Friends, please report this bogus and illegal page. Long live Persian Gulf

https://www.facebook.com/[email protected]@gmail.com

****

Dear Friends, we have managed to force the business and investment office of Britain to remove the bogus name of A.r.a.b.i.a.n Gulf However, this cunning old fox has closed their previous pages and opened new ones. We must continue emailing and sending our complaints until the word the Gulf is changed to the Persian Gulf .

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150153016796111&set=a.449813096110.241195.285224906110http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150232416846111

***

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=246136642065871&set=a.122234974456039.19319.121064324573104&type=1&ref=nfhttps://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=246136642065871&set=a.122234974456039.19319.121064324573104&type=1&ref=nfhttps://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=246136642065871&set=a.122234974456039.19319.121064324573104&type=1&ref=nfhttps://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=246136642065871&set=a.122234974456039.19319.121064324573104&type=1&ref=nfhttp://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFLDE75L1LC20110622http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFLDE75L1LC20110622http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFLDE75L1LC20110622http://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/?set=a.10150090968351111.309092.285224906110http://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/?set=a.10150090968351111.309092.285224906110http://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/?set=a.10150090968351111.309092.285224906110http://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/?set=a.10150090968351111.309092.285224906110https://www.facebook.com/TheArabianGulfhttps://www.facebook.com/TheArabianGulfmailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150153016796111&set=a.449813096110.241195.285224906110http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150153016796111&set=a.449813096110.241195.285224906110http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150153016796111&set=a.449813096110.241195.285224906110http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150232416846111http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150232416846111



. Methods

The Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) to critical discourse analysis (Reisigl & Wodak 2009) has been specifically focused on representation of Self-Other identi-ties and discursive constructions of national identity (see e.g. Wodak etal. 1999 for a classic example). DHA puts emphasis on the historical dimension by account-ing for the networks of discourses in place both synchronically and diachronically (KhosraviNik forthcoming). The historical dimensions of a discursive act are inves-tigated in two ways: a. Integration of all the available information about the histori-cal background and the original course in which discursive events are embedded and b. Explanation of the particular types and genres of discourse (Reisigl & Wodak 2009; Wodak & Meyer 2009). Overall, the thematic questions of What (is/not in the text), How (the textual characteristics are/not deployed) can be answered by investigating the qualities of a text, whereas the Why (it is the way it is) question is tackled via contextualisation i.e. accounting for the links between the analysed linguistic performance and the relevant socio-political explications (KhosraviNik 2010). The main analytical categories of the DHA in detailed textual analysis are: Referential/nomination strategies (i.e. actor descriptions) and Predicational Strate-gies (i.e. action attributions) which consider the linguistic construction of social actors, objects, events, processes and their qualification in terms of what actions, qualities, attributions etc. are associated with the actors of Self and Other. Together with argumentation strategies, the three strategies of referential/actor descriptions, referential/action attribution and argumentation constitute the core of DHA meth-ods along with strategies of perspectivisation and Intensification/mitigation which may influence all the three levels (KhosraviNik 2010). The DHAs proposed dis-cursive strategies have been utilised in a plethora of research. Depending on the research questions, the specificities of the social contexts and qualities of the genre of data, some of these strategies may prove to be more significant than others.

The genre of the data at hand could determine what strategies are foregrounded or afforded better than others. It is difficult if not impossible to characterise a general genre type for linguistic practices on the web. However, communica-tions on social networking sites such as Facebook are known to be overtly infor-mal, instantaneous and relatively brief. On the other hand, the general informality along with qualities arising from the norms of practice e.g. dealing with several pages almost simultaneously, multi-modal nature of communication etc., allow/require the comments to be structurally messy and impulsive. Therefore, not unlike linguistic characteristics of tabloid newspapers, coherent, explicit argu-mentative contents/strategies would have little room to feature in these debates. Inthis particular case study, there is an additional factor to push the (linguistically realised) argumentation out of the equation: the Page under investigation has an



on-the-record bias in favour of the Iranian side and thus it is predominantly a space to gather like-minded users who would share large body of understandings, attitudes, and values regarding the issue. As such, argumentation (if any) would only be hinted at e.g. via references or predications to trigger and connect to what is assumed to be the old shared knowledge among the Page members. As opposed to other data sets, e.g. (quality) newspaper articles and blog posts where writers have sufficient space/time and/or are required by the conventions of the genre to write in a more argumentatively coherent and visible manner, political commu-nication on Facebook Pages has general fleetness which calls for brief and quick expressions of (often highly evaluative) opinions.

. Analysis and discussion

The first main aspect of analysis is to investigate What linguistic content, along the line of referential and predicational strategies, is available, in what combinations and with what thematic categorisations. This is to examine in detail how Iranians discursively construct a positive representation of Self: Persians/Iranians and the Persian Gulf as the legitimate name and a negative presentation of Other: Arabs, and any institution/country which is perceived to propagate other names for this body of water.4

Referential strategies found for Self presentation include a combination of themes which stretch from racial categories e.g. Aryans, to glorification of the Iranian (pre-Islamic) history of Persian empires and various expressions of (extreme) patriotism and metaphorical (conflictual) constructs, e.g. the referential metaphorical representation of Us as lions. In line with a historical understand-ing of the name of Iran as the land of so-called Aryans, reference to this racial terminology is the most recurring category of Self, as opposed to representation of the Other as non-Aryans in the overture. Along with other occasional racial char-acterisations, e.g. references to purity, other categories include extreme historical glorification and emphasis on pre-Islamic patriotism as the real Iranian identity. Current Iranian officials and government members also feature quite substantially as members of the Other. This group is mostly represented similarly to the main group of Other (i.e. Arabs), either by association, e.g. Arab worshipers, or by nega-tive attribution, e.g. inept or inefficient officials

Expectedly, the most common and central referential strategy is the repetition of and emphasis on the continuity of the name of Persian Gulf , mostly along with

4. All coding is done manually by closely analysing the language used. Broader thematic categorisations emerge via detailed analyses.



qualifiers (Table 2). The main qualifying strategy is to emphasise the eternal nature of the name, e.g. Persian Gulf for ever, which is the most recurring and salient reference made to this gulf. In addition to that, salience is found in references to uniqueness of the name and the unchangeable nature of it by adding qualifiers such as just and only to the name, e.g. Only Persian Gulf , which seeks pragmati-cally to reject other proposals. Other referential features include the category of references to history, e.g. The legacy of our fathers, and the aesthetic features of the gulf, e.g. The turquoise gulf of Persia (Table 3).

Table 2. Referential strategies: Representing Self

Pronouns We, Us, IReferences to the country and the nation (Self).

Race: The Aryan generation The Aryan soil Aryans of the land of Iran, the children of Ahoura Mazda The land of Aryan The Persian race The Aryans The Persians (4)6 All the Persians of the Iranian land Clever Persians

Glorified history: Persian empire Great Cyrus Largest empire in history The true children of the ancient time The pure land of Cyrus The followers of Babak Khoramdin The children of Cyrus The country with great history

Patriotism: The zealous country lovers Patriotic Iranians The pure-natured patriotic people The true soldiers of land of Iran The sacred land of Iran Our sacred Iran The pure soil of the country My beloved land My country Our soil The mother-land.

. The number in brackets corresponds to relative emphasis of the element in the analysed data.

(Continued)



Metaphor: The land of brave lions The realm of brave lion Land of lions The lion (-hearted) Iranian men and women

Other: Iran and its lion & Sun flag Here Iran Hard-working Iranians Iranians from various ethnic, racial and cultural groups The educated people

Negative representations of the Iranian government (Other-inside)

The Arab lovers The Arab worshipers A bunch of Arab worshipers The thieves The inept and unpatriotic government The inefficient government The anti-humanists The crazy crowd The domestic traitors

References to Our Persian Gulf.

Permanence: Persian Gulf for ever (5) Forever and ever and everPersian Gulf (2) The eternal Persian Gulf (4) The eternal Persian Gulf Everlasting Persian Gulf Persian Gulf for all the times Viva Persian Gulf

Uniqueness: Only Persian Gulf Just Persian Gulf The truly named Persian Gulf

History: The older than history The honourable heritage The legacy of our fathers The gulf of Arya

Aesthetic features: The turquoise Gulf of Persia The beautiful Persian Gulf The turquoise and powerful waters of the Persian Gulf for ever The blue jewel of Iran The pure and sacred (gulf)

Table 2. Referential Strategies: Representing Self (Continued)



The predicational strategies employed in Self and Other representation can be categorised into predications of the country and the Persian Gulf. Similar to references, the first theme is to emphasise the permanency and ever-lasting nature of Us and the country, followed by positive predications, e.g. our country accom-modates all ethnic groups, has a wealth of culture, etc. Similarly, the theme of ancient glorification also features at a predicational level, e.g. we have an ancient civilization. The Persian Gulf is also represented through the same themes as in referential strategies (Table 3). This includes representation of Us/our country as a steadfast, long-lasting entity and having or being associated with strong historical roots (Table 3).

Table 3. Predicational strategy representing Self

Our country and nation (Self)

everlasting: will live forever will last till an Iranian exists long lives will long live will remain Persian

features: accommodates all ethnic groups is sacred has had a wealth of culture has a single unified voice is loved dearly and zealously

Iran as Persia (history): are descendants of Cyrus the Great love our history, culture and symbols are the true children of our proud ancestors have a much bigger history than America are Persian have Zoroaster as our prophet have an ancient civilization love our Persia will not overlook the insult our identity are ready to defend it with blood love peace and friendship

Our Persian Gulf (Self) heritage and permanency: is forever, here and anywhere is Persian now and forever will live long is our past present and future is eternal

(Continued)



has always been Persian and will remain Persian is protected by us for ever remains Fars forever is for future generations is the legacy of the Great Cyrus stays Fars was and will be Persian gulf has been Persian for thousands of years is older than history is a universal name has an honourable history is not a memory has only one name

belonging: belongs to the Persians belongs to Iranians belongs to Iran belongs to us means home is my birth certificate is ours is placed in our soul and blood is our identity is the beating heart of Iran is engraved in our hearts is part of our national identity and culture

Other: is loved is very precious is a burial for the Arabs

The predications of Persian Gulf constitute the main bulk in terms of recur-rence. Apart from predications emphasising the heritage and historicity of the name and the entity, there is a substantial theme around the notion of belonging. The notion of belonging here conceptually denotes a collective mental representation of the situation in which the conflict is beyond a mere matter of naming and is rep-resented in a presupposed shared understanding of a frame in which Iran is losing territory. This should be positioned in a network of discourses situated diachron-ically within the contemporary history of Iran over the last few centuries in which there have been a series of territorial losses and a repertoire of old knowledge/perceptions claiming that glorious Persia has been constantly shrinking in terms of both power and territory.

The Iranian officials/government feature as the Other within predica-tions as well. A major category of presentation of this group is negativisation by

Table 3. Predicational strategy representing Self (Continued)



association. As the Page is heavily against the Arabic Other, the Iranian Islamic government is associated with the Other by race and religion, e.g. They are not (real) Iranians. On the one hand, there is a general conflation of the concepts of religion and race in both Self and Other representations on the other hand, there is a Manichean division of universal good and evil on the basis of Persian and Arabs with no other contravening factor. Another theme is the predications regarding the perceived lack of government defensive initiative in the conflict, e.g. They are merely onlooker on this issue; They take no responsibility (Table 4).

Table 4. Predicational strategy for representation of the Other-inside

Iranian government (and its supporters)

Arabs and Religion: have an Arab ancestry are proud of their Arabic race are not (real) Iranians have turned the whole of Iran into Arab have sacrificed the (Iranian) nation for their (own) religion are obsessed with religion have no patriotic zeal

ineptness/shamelessness: take no responsibility have officially destroyed Iran are merely onlooker on this issue smirk at Iranian people (should) wake up as soon as possible and come to our aid should be ashamed of themselves

The negative representation of the Arab-other is constructed substantially through a series of random demeaning references with little argumentative con-tent. Apart from the main reference to Arabs, this referential strategy associates the Other with being uncivilised, ignorant and primitive. Several references are also made to what are supposed to be the consequences of life practices in dry lands,6 e.g. Lizard eaters, or derogatory references to the so-called tribal nature of the Other. Interestingly, there is also a very small group of references to Other which collates the Arabs (governments) with America and other organizations/countries that support them in what is perceived as attempts to distort the name and by extension to threaten the territorial integrity of the country, e.g. The Arabic Obama. The name Arabian Gulf is generally avoided. To refer to the name, users

. Interestingly, there is a substantial desert area in central Iran but it is never noted in discourses on Iranian Persian identity. This actually points to the exclusionary projection of nationalist identity and that it is strongly skewed toward urban areas, especially the capital Tehran.



either resort to using a particular punctuated spelling style, i.e. A.r.a.b.i.a.n (this is to avoid contributing to the recognition of the name in the Internet content) or refer to it as bogus, unreal or a fabricated name (Table 5).

Table 5. Referential strategies: Representing the Other

Pronouns These, This, You, ThoseReferences to country/nation (Other) Arabs7:

The A.r.a.b.s The Bedouin The Taazi worshipers The camel riders The strangers The enemies of Iran A bunch of newly rich (people) A bunch of liars The racist

Other Others: The Satanic American bastards The Arabic Obama The freemason Americans The foreigners

References to the Arabian Gulf Arabian Gulf: The bonus name (8) The fake name (6) The camel gulf (4) The A.r.a.b.i.a.n Gulf The Lie (3) The unreal name The Gulf of grass hopper eaters The Forged word

Predicational strategies in representations of the Other (Table 6) range from inaccurate and distorted historical perceptions regarding their habitual practices to what is perceived as the detrimental impact of Islams conquest of Persia/Iran, e.g. They have brought in the culture of slavery since the day they set foot in Iran. There is again the interesting theme of Arabs conspiring with others against Iran, pointing to a strong converging exclusionary nationalism which essentially functions within a dichotomy of Iran vs the rest.8 Many of the page users are aware or have been

. We found it unnecessary to be as thorough in listing the derogatory references here.

. Interestingly, the official Islamic Republic discourse constructs a similar dichotomy but between Islamic Iran vs Others.



actively involved in campaigns against some American institutions (sometimes symbolically sensitive ones, e.g. the US Defence Ministry), which have been flagged for using the fake name. As such, there is a considerable body of predicational representation of the Americans as part of the construction of the Other. This is reinforced by the fact that American officials/government have very cordial rela-tions with most of the Arab officials/kings in the region while being in (open) con-frontation with Iranian officials. This theme makes references to negative American predications both in its own history, e.g. They have killed all their indigenous popu-lations, to the role they are publically believed to have played in the Iran-Iraq war in favour of Saddam Hussein, e.g. They have provided chemical weapons to Saddam.

Table 6. Predicational strategy, representing the Other

Country/nation They/Arabs: have no idea about freedom have invaded the honour, dignity and culture of Iran want to loot our cultural heritage brought in the culture of slavery since they set foot in Iran used to bury infant girls alive have been blood thirsty are used to grabbing everything by force have been sent all the prophet and Imams but are still evil natured had better brains than our officials (positive) cant pronounce P want to prove to Persians that they also exist have conspired with Americans against Iran could not have dared to do this by themselves

Americans: have changed the name of Persian Gulf have called Iranians savage and terrorists have sold chemical weapons to Iraq to kill Iranians have funded terrorist groups against Iran have killed all the indigenous populations in America

Apart from the linguistic content, a discourse as in a bundle of semiotic resources in communicating certain topic plus attitude-can also be represented through other meaning bearing affordances than linguistic content. This paper is focused on accounting for the linguistic realisation of the Persian identity dis-course however a multimodal analysis of the discourse would be a logical addition to this research.9 Although, exposure to and communication of discourses have always had a multimodal nature e.g. in advertising or political communication,

. Work in progress.



it could be argued that the new communicative norms of participatory media i.e. social networking sites have pushed multimodality analysis (Kress and van Leeu-wen 2001) much more to the centre of critical discourse analysis. As Barton and Lee (2013, p.28) argue in understanding language online, we are also trying to understand how different modes work together to form coherent and meaningful online texts. In the current case study in social media, these modalities include the traditional semiotic modes such as visual (posters, cartoons, memes, videos, pho-tos, colour, etc.) and audio modes (songs, music, sound bites, anthems etc.) as well as specific extra-linguistic modes such as hyperlinking affordance -as some kind of super-intertextuality option through which all kinds of semiotic resources can be incorporated within the single text. Another category would be the orthographical features of the realised linguistic content. The analysed commentaries in this study reflect an array of choices of typefaces, font sizes, transliterations, spelling strate-gies, code switching, etc. which are all deployed systematically to serve the main thrusts of the discourse as well as reflecting personal variations among the users. Orthographic manoeuvring is a common feature of online language which could include patterns of using acronyms and initialism (LOL for laugh out loud), word reductions (gd for good), letter/number homophones (U for you), stylised spell-ing (Im soooooooo happy!), emoticons () and what they categorise as uncon-ventional/stylised punctuation (!!!!!!!!) (Barton & Lee 2013, p. 5).

The data displays similar trends of the web language, including, messy gram-mar, code-switching, letter/word combinations, abbreviations, and unconven-tional punctuation, etc. Occasionally specific orthographic features come to be used strategically to scaffold the discourse of Persian identity. One of the most common and strategic stylised forms of using the language in this case is the way representations of the terms Arabs and Arabic are manipulated. An example of manipulation is the use of the word Arab as a set of initials in Persian Alphabet .or the English word A.R.A.B.I.A.N **



As the analysis of referential strategy illustrated, there is a strong emphasis on the name Persian Gulf. This emphasis is mirrored orthographically via the use of capital letter, denoting a louder and more emphatic expression of the term.

A similar goal is pursued through the repetition of letters and a stylised spell-ing of the name Persian Gulf in Pinglish (Persian in Latin alphabet), e.g. khalije faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaars (eqv. Persiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan Gulf).

Conclusion

A case study as such should be considered against the circumstances and (degrees) of availability of viable traditional venues of the public sphere (e.g. mass media) for representations, debates and deliberations. It is admittedly problematic and theoretically risky to generalise a common set of communicative practices for the whole body of Iranian Facebook users; nevertheless, the Iranian user-community seems to be acutely aware of a sense of assumed empowerment through social networking sites. Iranian society is preoccupied with various issues of identity and representation both within itself at the domestic scale as well as the way it wants to be viewed internationally. As such, users seem to naturally and efficiently adopt the new affordance of participatory web to amplify, record, and spread informa-tion and social activism that they deem important (Boyd 2011, p. 46). This should be considered against the backdrop of a representational deficiency in the tradi-tional media discourses (see Sreberny & Khiabany 2010). As such, social use of participatory media in Iran has come to be viewed as a space to defy and resist the official discourses (Rahimi & Gheytanchi 2009) and attempts to fill the perceived gaps in representations.



The findings of this analysis show that a strong Us/Them dichotomisation (either with us or against us) between a constructed unanimous Us as Persian and Them as Arabs is systematically substantiated through referential and predica-tional strategies. Such homogenised bifurcation of the two constructed identities has been a constitutive and constituting characteristic of Iranians rhetoric regard-ing current surge of (this kind of) nationalism in identity struggles in Iran. It is evident through the frequency and the number of references made on the basis of linguistic choices that Iranians sensitivity to their assumed real (as opposed to the official) identity as Persians is paramount, and this fuels a mobilisation in deploy-ing discursive resources in the promotion and defence of such identity, including this campaign for the name Persian Gulf.

The discursive unification of Self as Persians in opposition to the Other serves a double purpose. While, on the one hand, it strongly opposes the perceived inva-sion of the Arabic Other, it seeks to construct and promote a Persian identity for Iranians as a form of (tacit) resistant identity against the official discourses. Put-ting aside the highly racialised and racists exclusionary imputes of such a nation-alist discourse, the identification of Self as Aryans or Persians rather than for example Shia Muslim which could still serve the purpose of opposing the Sunni Arab Other, indicates that the Facebook page users are backgrounding Islam in their Self-Identity and associating it to the two groups of Other: the explicit exter-nal Other and the implicit internal Other.

As this case study illustrates, such extraordinary feverish reactionary engage-ment with the issue is symptomatic of a state of identity crisis among Iranians (KhosraviNik 2007) which is fuelled by grievances regarding their representation domestically and through the critical lens of Western media. Socially speaking, there has been resistance against the officially enforced identities in Iran both before and after the Revolution. Amidst the lack of sufficient official representa-tions, some layers in Iranian society have now come to view the already exclusion-ary Persian glorification discourse as an alternative to the official religious identity discourse, especially in international public spaces. The negative representation of Iran by the dominant conservative discourses in the West and international media, influenced by the confrontational politics of its government, has taken a huge toll on ordinary Iranians who seem to experience a state of confusion and a clash between their personal identity and the powerful media-enforced ones. The important note here is that the crisis has led to attempts to construct an identity which is different from the domestic official discourse but also similarly confron-tational, powerful and defiant in opposing the perceived meek and negative rep-resentation of Iranian identity by the West. While the Iranian official discourse propagates an ideological bifurcation of Islamic Iran vs. its enemies, the Persian identity discourse maintains a line of conflict between Persians vs. its enemies.



What seems to resonate with the Iranian society is the desire for recognition and respect which reflects in the infatuation with expression of and aspiration to having power and defiance which often than not lays the ground for a cultural tendency of slipping into a Manichean Us/Them bifurcation at the expense of plurality.

It is clear that the bulk of communication analysed here is racist, reductionist and reactionary. In terms of its contents, strategies and realisations, the discourse resembles several other cases of right-wing, nationalist aspirations around the world (Wodak et al. 2013) albeit in a crude and non-nuanced style. In the absence of viable spaces for healthy discursive engagements and deliberations, identity-related struggles as such remain nothing but truncated, inarticulate outbursts of despair and agitation. However, whatever the justifications and contexts may be, such a turn to extreme exclusionary nationalism in social discourses in Iran would render (or add to) a fertile ground for the rise of populist, exclusionary and authoritarian discourses which would embed presuppositions of superiority and exceptionalism in one way or another (Wodak et al. 2013).

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Authors addresses

Majid KhosraviNikArmstrong Building,Media & Cultural Studies,School of Arts and Cultures,University of Newcastle,Newcastle upon Tyne,NE1 7RU, UK

[email protected].

Mahrou ZiaDepartment of Sociology Bowland NorthLancaster University Lancaster, UKLA1 4YT

[email protected]

About the authors

Majid KhosraviNik is a lecturer in Media and Discourse Studies at Newcastle University, UK. He is interested in theory, methods and application of critical discourse studies in a range of topics and media discourses including the intersection of discourse and (national/ethnic/group) identity in mass and new digital media. For the past few years, he has been working and publish-ing on application of CDA on Web 2.0 environments such as e.g. social media. He sits on the board of a number of international journals and is a co-founder of Newcastle Discourse Group. His co-edited book, Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse (with Ruth Wodak and Brigitte Mral), was published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2013. He is currently finalising a book manuscript on Iranian and British press discourses regarding Irans nuclear programme.

Mahrou Zia is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University, United Kingdom, from where she also received her MA in Sociological Research. Prior to this she also successfully studied for an MSc. in Science and Technology Studies from the University of Edinburgh. She is interested in the intersection of digital technologies and ICT use among social agents, and how these technologies challenge their actions and routines and brings about changes in their everyday lives. Her Ph.D. aims to contribute to scholarship in interdisciplinary research on Information and Communications Technologies in transnational contexts of e.g. ICT4D. She is specifically focusing on ICT use (e.g. mobile phones, and internet) and its impact on contemporary religious practices.

mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://us.mc1423.mail.yahoo.com/mc/[email protected]

Persian Nationalism, Identity and Anti-Arab Sentiments in Iranian Facebook Discourses1. Introduction2. Participatory media and critical data repositories3. Social networking sites: Facebook4. National identity5. Persian Gulf: The name and debate6. Facebook and data7. Methods8. Analysis and discussionConclusionReferences

Documents

Persian Nationalism on FB Paper