women’s representation in war stories for children; a critical discourse analysis

the ideological discourse analysis and critical studies in social and human sciences have been of much interest recently. critical discourse analysis (cda) aims at discovering the negative influences of language use on the production and reproduction of power and domination relationships in society. thus, social inequalities such as race, age, religious, gender and class discrimination have been substantially dealt with in this theory. as a case study, the present paper reflects the gender discrimination in child literature and its effect on the formation of child identity. to do so, ten stories about iran-iraq war including seven short stories and three longer ones were chosen. the stories are male-dominant in their number of characters, their activity type or participation and relevance to the war. in these stories, the women are neglected, detached, inactive and sometimes deleted. considering the power, domination and hegemony and studying the clichéd presupposition and euphemistic and derogatory terms and so on, it is shown that inactive and neglected representation of females and the active, noticeable representation of males even the teenage and old ones during the war can help to the reproduction of the unequal power scale with the men at the powerful side and females at the powerless side.