Language, Ideology, and Popular Culture: A Discourse Analysis of Vernacular Slogans and Wall Writings from the Iranian Islamic Revolution

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Department of English language teaching, Farhangian University, Tehran, Iran

10.30473/il.2025.75329.1716

Abstract

The popular slogans of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, as linguistic manifestations of resistance and reflections of social discourse, contain diverse elements of folk culture whose analysis can lead to a deeper understanding of the linguistic, ideological, and cultural mechanisms of that period. The aim of this study is to analyze colloquial language in the slogans and wall writings of the Islamic Revolution, drawing on Michel Foucault’s power–knowledge discourse theory and Norman Fairclough’s three-layer framework of critical discourse analysis. The methodology is qualitative and quantitative, using a descriptive–analytical approach. The corpus under examination includes 301 samples of slogans and wall writings from the revolutionary period, analyzed based on six main indicators of folk culture (taboo, conversational speech, folk poems, curses, popular beliefs, and proverbs). The findings indicate that colloquial language was not only a means of expressing immediate emotions, but also a discursive tool for redefining political legitimacy and cultural resistance. The analysis shows that by appropriating colloquial language, the people formed a kind of bottom-up resistance discourse through which they were able to challenge the official narrative of power. In this discourse, body language, humor, children, and women also entered the political arena, producing—in Foucauldian terms—a form of power emerging

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References

 
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Journal of Sociolinguistics
Volume 8, Issue 4
December 2025
Pages 66-53

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