Confrontation between the discourses of Dominant and ineffective identities of Iranian and Mongolian women in Tarikh-e Jahangosha

Abstract

In addition to the historical and social significance of Tarikh-e Jahangosha written by Joveyni, the text is notable in terms of discourse analysis. In the discourse of war, as the hegemonic discourse of the text, one of the distinctive discourses should be studied according to social presence of women. On the one hand, gender equality in Mongolian culture, and from the other hand the Iranian-Islamic identity of Iranian women have created a bipolar discourse, showing Iranian women as ineffective slaves, while Mongolian women, as champions equal to men, dominant and victorious. Using Halliday’s ideational metafunction, naming and processes, all parts of the text where Iranian and Mongolian women attended were studied; then by collecting all statements about them, characteristics of each were extracted. Under the effect of religious beliefs, Iranian-Islamic identity of women is represented in the form of defeated participants of discourse of war, by introducing their social characteristics, indirectly expressing their names and their less frequent presence. However, the identity of Mongol women, as the dominant and triumphant participants, is expressed directly and a special way of naming is used by the author. In many cases, the Mongolian woman is a hero and wise politician, whereas the Iranian woman, except in few cases, is a nameless veiled person who goes into captivity.

Keywords

• discourse of war
• iranian and mongol women
• social identity of women
• tarikh-e jahangosha