Persian Nationalism, Identity and Anti-Arab Sentiments in Iranian Facebook Discourses: Critical Discourse Analysis and Social Media Communication

Abstract

This study adopts a Critical Discourse Analytical approach to investigate how a form of Iranian national(ist) identity is (re)constructed and (re)presented on a popular Facebook Page called Persian Gulf.It focuses on linguistic practices of the Iranian side of the debate over the name of this body of water. After briefly discussing some of the challenges of applying CDA to a participatory web platform e.g. Facebook, This paper explores the characteristics of the Persian identity discourse in the way that it is utilised to legitimize the name Persian Gulf vs. the claim to the name Arabian Gulf. The paper concludes that the emergent Persian national/ist identity discourse is strongly preoccupied with opposing a perceived cultural invasion of the Arabic Other in its emphatic defence of the name Persian Gulf but in the meantime it aspires to distinguish itself from the officially propagated Islamic identity. It is also shown that aspects pertaining to powerfulness, defiance and conflict are the main thrusts of the discursive representation of this Self-identity. Key words: Critical Discourse Analysis; Social Media discourses analysis; Facebook; National identity; Nationalism; Iran; Persian Gulf; Arab identity; the Middle East.