Sociological Analysis of the Language Policy Discourse during the First Pahlavi Period (Emphasizing the approvals of the Higher Education Council)

Abstract

AbstractModernization in Reza Shah's government necessitated the adoption of a clear lingual policy in the fields of administration and education. The lingual policy adopted during this period was to use Persian and to marginalize other Iranian languages. The present article addresses the question: what was the discourse strategy to establish a unified language policy during the first Pahlavi period? To analyze this issue, theoretical views with the following conceptual structure were expressed: Reza Shah's government with "crisis in the moral order of society", "mobilization of resources" and "chains of intellectual interaction" sought to establish an attained discourse. This research has analyzed the approvals of the Higher Education Council using Fairclough’s Critical Discourse analysis method. Findings from the analysis of the text of the resolutions show that the discourse order of this council, on the subject of language policy, has been centralized and uniformed, according to the context and social conditions of this period, in which cultural nationalism based on the Persian language had become dominant. The results show that the authoritarian government of Reza Shah, by implementing the modernization project, strengthened the network of intellectual interaction, mobilized existing resources and facilities, created instability in the previous moral and cultural order, strengthening the unifying the Language Policy Discourse.

Keywords

• fairclough discourse analysis
• unifying language policy discourse
• centralism
• higher education council