Critical Discourse Analysis of Freedom-Seeking in the Protest Poetry of Farrokhi Yazdi Based on Fairclough's Approach

Introduction

Freedom is considered one of the most fundamental concepts of the constitutional revolution and has a high frequency in the literature of this period. The political literature of the constitutional era has also been called Protest Literature. Protest is the most important identity indicator of constitutional period poetry, protesting autocratic rulers who denied the most obvious human rights to the people. Farrokhi Yazdi is one of the famous poets of this era. By analyzing Farrokhi’s political and critical poems, this research tries to explore new angles of his freedom-seeking discourse and to answer the question why freedom is the most important political and social concern of the poet in this period. The research findings show that the power relations in Farrokhi’s freedom-seeking discourse are formed based on a two-way conflict. On one hand, it depicts the struggle of freedom seekers against the heralds of tyranny, and on the other hand, reveals the class discrimination between the rich and the poor in Iran’s heterogeneous society during the constitutional era. Farrokhi’s poetic and realistic language in recreating this two-sided and heterogeneous conflict reveals other aspects of important events of the constitutional revolution to the audience. In Farrokhi’s political thought, freedom precedes other fundamentals of constitutionalism. In the poet's worldview, class freedom and the freedom of the masses precede individual freedoms. Farrokhi’s perception of freedom is more political than individual; his definition of freedom gains meaning in opposition to tyranny.                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Literature Review

Much research has been done about freedom in Farrokhi Yazdi’s protest poetry. Sadeghzadeh (1387) has studied reformism and modernism in Farrokhi’s political poems. Based on the content of the poet's poems and writings, he concluded that Farrokhi is one of the modernist and intellectual poets of the constitutional era, who has used Western modernity extensively in his writings and poems. Alizadeh and Khosravi (1401) examined freedom in Farrokhi’s poetry from a legal perspective and concluded that in his poetry, freedom is used in the sense of “having the right” on the one hand, which cannot be restricted, and on the other hand, Farrokhi considered it as one of the governing principles of democracy, which has a legal burden and needs to be interpreted in the framework of the constitution. So far, there has been no independent research on the analysis of Farrokhi’s protest poems based on Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis, and the present study is the first of its kind.

Methodology

This research has selected, extracted and analyzed Farrokhi’s protest poem with the theme of freedom, which had the possibility of critical discourse analysis in a descriptive-analytical way and citing library sources. Although the method of the current research is qualitative, a quantitative perspective has also been considered in referring to Farrokhi’s protest poems.

Theoretical Basis

Discourse analysis is an interdisciplinary and qualitative orientation, first used by English structuralist linguist Zellig Harris in 1952. Harris and other structuralist linguists examined the text at a level beyond the sentence, but critical analysis paid attention to the inequality of power in societies and challenging the institution of power. In the approach of critical discourse analysis, the relationship between power and ideology is investigated in the context of the text. Norman Fairclough’s theory of critical discourse analysis is one of the most famous theories in discourse analysis, which while dealing with the category of power, domination, and ideology in the situational context of the text and paying attention to the hidden and visible layers of texts, including literature and poetry, tries to understand power relations on three levels: description, interpretation, and explanation.

Discussion
A) Description Level

At this level, Fairclough analyzes the experiential, relational, and expressive values ​​of the text in terms of vocabulary and grammar. In the description section, a text is examined at three levels: vocabulary, grammar, and text structures. Words in the speech chain are elements that give a certain meaning and ideological load to the text. In his protest poems, Farrokhi Yazdi uses more words that can reflect his revolutionary nature and the experimental values ​​of his freedom-seeking discourse. Variable phrasing is another characteristic of lexical experimental values, in which the speaker has a different understanding and interpretation of the social events of his era. Farrokhi uses this feature for harsh criticism against Reza Shah’s government. From Farrokhi's point of view, Reza Shah's rule was a continuation of the tyranny of the Qajar period, and for this reason, he stubbornly opposes it. People are described with less formal or euphemistic words and expressions and most of Farrokhi's descriptions have a negative attitude to people, personalities, and parties.

B) Interpretation Level

Interpretation is a mixture of the content of the text and the perceptions of the interpreter. According to Fairclough, interpretations are a combination of the contents of the text itself and the mentality of the interpreter. At the interpretation level, things like the story of the text, participants, relationships between participants, and connection (the role of language in advancing the story) are discussed. The main story of Farrokhi Yazdi’s protest poems reflects the political and social conditions of Iran's tyrannical society during the Qajar and Pahlavi eras. There are three categories of actors and participants in Farrokhi’s freedom-seeking discourse. First, the poet who is the narrator; second, constitutional revolutionaries; and third, the enemies and opponents of the constitution. The position of activists in Farrokhi’s discourse is the position of people. In terms of the function of language, Farrokhi’s poem is a monophonic narrative in which the audience only hear the voice of the poet who describes all the events and incidents like an all-knowing narrator. Farrokhi’s narration of freedom-seeking discourse is full of situations such as despair, hope, victory, defeat, struggle, and imprisonment which are reproduced in his poetic statements.

C) Explanation Level

At this level, the mutual influence of text and society on each other is examined. Farrokhi’s environmental conditions were inflamed and full of contradictions and inequality in the Qajar era. Injustice and lack of freedom and law caused Farrokhi to have a harsh and radical approach towards autocratic rulers. For this reason, his poetry is influenced by the events of the constitutional revolution and the fears and hopes resulting from it.

Conclusion

The research findings show that Farrokhi uses all the possibilities and linguistic capacities to stabilize the political tendencies of the constitutionalists and tries to educate the people about the concept of freedom and its place to introduce social struggles in a society where tyranny is rampant. Farrokhi, who is a constitutionalist, introduces the constitutionalists as revolutionary, modernist, and intellectual figures who have no other goal than the elevation and development of the country by expanding the discourse of freedom. Also, by highlighting the historical and cultural events and mentioning the mythical characters and symbols of Iran, it depicts the confrontation between the heralds of freedom and tyranny to make an acceptable and popular face of the constitutionalists who fight against the incompetence of the Qajar kings and the tyranny of Reza Shah.