The Representation of Social Actors in Ab Bid Based on Van Leeuwen's Socio- Semantic Model

Abstract

In this study, “Ab Bid” written by Mohammad Bahmanbeigi has been investigated according to Van Leeuwen's model (2008) to explore how the writer uses the representation of social actors to express his ideology and viewpoints. The writer, using suppression, excludes and deletes social actors of Pahlavi dynasty and at the same time, by nominating and activating the nomadic teachers, magnifies their educational actions. The people of “Ab Bid” have been passivized consciously by the writer to indicate their cultural poverty and to show how they have been neglected by the government. The writer, using advantages of aggregation and presenting numbers and statistics emphasizes the importance of the nomadic teachers and the works of Tribal Education Department. Using anachronism, the writer reveals the existence of some prehistoric people at the time of the great ambitions of Pahlavi dynasty to challenge the government policies. By symbolization, Bahmanbeigi portrays the teachers of nomadic society as influential social actors. These findings confirm that the representation of social actors in “Ab bid” reflects the ideology and social viewpoints of the writer.

Keywords

• critical discourse analysis
• van leeuwen's model
• social actors
• bahmanbeigi
• ab bid