A Study of Ideological Strategies of Shahnameh in Production of Iranian Superiority Discourse: A Case Study of “The Story of Rostam and Chengesh”

Shahnameh of Ferdowsi has been continuously studied by numerous researchers and scholars from literary, mythological and cultural aspects. One of the rarely and less noticed issues in this regard is investigating the ideological role and function of language in this piece of literature based on a certain adopted theory and method. In other words, the writers of this article try to understand how Ferdowsi utilizes language to engender the ideology of Iranian superiority and revive Iranian identity by producing the relevant discourse. To achieve this goal, the current study has been constructed over the theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis introduced by the famous linguist Teun van Dijk. We also focus on the battle of Rostam and Chengesh in the story of “Rostam and Chinese Khaghan” (“Rostam and the king of China”) to restrict the research area. The results show that Ferdowsi employs some strategies such as ideological polarization, positive self-presentation, negative other-presentation, lexicalization, and actor description to make a discourse on the supremacy of the Iranians.