Discourse analysis of The Wedlock movie by focusing on the stigma of the contrast of tradition and modernity

Abstract

When faced with changes, communities always show resistance. Facing the modern world as a large change is not an exception. Some new traditions emerging from the modern world, regardless of the positive and negative valuations, due to not being aligned with traditional values are rejected by society and those who follow these new customs and traditions are judged. One of the ways to prevent changes in society is stigmatizing. Women who comprise half of the population when facing challenging situations far more sensitive than men, have special conditions. The current study examines how women are stigmatized when they follow modern values using Fairclough's critical discourse analysis method which has four layers. The results indicate that the three components including “modern woman’s deconstruction", "rejection of modern woman from tradition" and "labeling the modern woman by tradition" are three steps of labeling the modern woman in this movie. So, discursive strategy shows that the existence of modern features in a woman provides the conditions for the stigma.

Keywords

• discourse analysis
• iranian cinema
• modern woman
• stigma
• the wedlock