Document Type : Research paper
Authors
1 Persian Gulf University
2 Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, Persian Gulf University
3 schook
Abstract
Khuzestan Arab natives have inherited their culture and thoughts from the Arab community and the rest of their neighboring ethnicities, resulting in a rich and valuable linguistic and cultural background through this two-way interaction. Research in their language and culture, especially proverbs, reveals many issues related to Iranian Arab women worthy of deeper investigation to arrive at their ideological stance towards gender. These women are in fact mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters who have a high status in many proverbs and are referred to with good traits. In contrast, some proverbs accuse women to be malicious, simple-minded, weak, cunning, and deceitful.
This research aimed at analyzing the discourse of the Arab proverbs of Khuzestan natives using Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis approach and a field-analytical method. The findings show that Khuzestan society, like many other societies, uses proverbs to reproduce the various relations between social system elements such as family, ethnicity, marriage and power and has portrayed women in positive, negative, simultaneously positive and negative, and sometimes neutral ways. In this discourse, men hold the power, and prioritize some women over other women considering their social roles and statuses. In the Arab proverbial discourse of Khuzestan, the female element, especially mothers and sisters, has been viewed positively, while some of the proverbs based on kinship, emphasize gender discrimination and inequality.
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