Macro and micro legitimation in discourse on Iran’s nuclear programme: The case of Iranian national newspaper Kayhan

Abstract

The present article attempts to throw light on the nature and quality of discursive strategies used in Iranian discourse on the nuclear programme as represented in an influential Iranian daily, Kayhan (کیهان). Working within the general guidelines of critical discourse analysis, the general orientation of the article is towards explicating how the newspaper texts may come to be perceived within an Iranian socio-political context. The article is part of a larger research project which has looked at the discourses of Iran’s nuclear programme as represented in different British and Iranian newspapers, and the ways they may devise micro-linguistic and macro-argumentative strategies to construct and de/legitimise the positions of Self and Other. The focus of this article is on findings on the broad argumentative aspects of one of the influential Iranian dailies which functions as a flagship of what can arguably be called the overarching conservative rhetoric of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Broad discursive approaches of the newspaper are distinguished in terms of a global, overarching, political macro-legitimatory approach versus a local, restricted micro-legitimatory approach towards identities of Self and Other and the nature of the political conflict over Iran’s nuclear programme.

Keywords

Critical discourse analysis discourse analysis discourse and identity politics discourse and international conflict Iranian journalism Iranian press Iran’s nuclear programme legitimation macro-argumentation media discourse analysis the Middle East

Theoretical approach

The main thrust of a broadly defined critical discourse analysis (CDA) is to explicate the dynamics of communication and society both in terms of forms of communication mode, for example language, and what is perceived by the target audience in society. Critical discourse studies concentrate on texts as an integral element of their investigations and carry out various levels/methods of micro-linguistic and macro-discursive/argumentative analysis. In explicating the meanings, a discourse approach would need to account for texts in contexts as a unit of analysis. Despite being a contentious notion in the field, the inclusion of context in linguistic analysis is viewed as the defining criterion in demarcating critical discourse analysis versus what can be categorised as descriptive linguistic analysis. Critical studies view social context as an indispensable part of their research design based on an assumption that this is the very domain where meanings actually reside (Van Leeuwen, 1996), as opposed to language forms which function as signifiers of those meanings. In fact, from a rather unexpected angle, CDA has been criticised for not foregrounding the context substantially enough and focusing on de-historicised texts (Blommaert, 2005), which is on the counter side of criticism that CDA subjectively transcends the texts at hand (e.g. from the corpus linguistic angle, see Baker et al., 2008; O’Halloran and Coffin, 2004 but also see Baker, 2012 on the notion of bias in research).

Most of these discrepancies stem from differences in (sub)disciplinary practices, such as approaching language from formal linguistic versus ethnographical traditions and what they would theorise as the first entry level of analysis; from context to texts or vice versa. Despite differences in approaches and methods in what can be put under the umbrella term of critical discourse studies, the integration of text and context as an analytical approach remains the central theme. Indeed, a telling definition for the term discourse, as Cook (2001) argues, is the understanding of texts in their (social) context as one unit. This is to argue that in explicating the common critical questions of who says what to whom, in what manner and why, etc., the analysis needs to provide some kind of account for (a) the broad socio-political characteristics of the target society and the contexts through which members of that society interpret and consume the texts (historical and synchronous ‘discourses in place’, repertoire of ‘old’ knowledge, etc.), and (b) the genre-specific features of the texts – for example, in the case of newspapers, journalistic practices, quality of circulations and distributions of texts. Only within such a socially oriented, contextually founded framework can a critical discourse study account for processes of production, consumption and distribution of discourses. The first two are embedded within the socio-political context of explication, and the third is accounted for by providing the background to norms of discursive practice and the institutional aspects of discourses under investigation, as represented in Figure 1.

On such a view, as stipulated by several scholars working within critical discourse studies, discourse is not only a container and carrier of ideologies – whereby ideology is represented in discourse – it is also an action in itself, which contributes to or constitutes ideologies. It is argued that discourse – as in language in use in any form – is both socially constitutive as well as socially conditioned, that is, it constitutes situations, objects of knowledge and social identities of and relationships between people and groups of people. It is constitutive both in the sense that it helps to sustain and reproduce the social status quo, and in the sense that it contributes to transforming it. In the meantime, since discourse is so socially consequential, it gives rise to important issues of power (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997: 258). As ideologies pertain to the social aspects of nature, language acquires a pivotal role in re/producing, re/creating and re/shaping ideologies (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999: 260; Van Dijk, 2001; Wodak and Meyer, 2009). Discourses are in many respects icebergs where only the most relevant information is actually expressed in the semiosis of texts. In other words, texts, as instances of discourse, provide an incomplete projection of discourse, the meaning of which is only complete by integrating context and interpretation. Consequently, language users and target social audiences need social and cultural knowledge in order to establish local coherence, to derive global topics and generally make sense of a piece of language thrown at them. These repertories of old knowledge are constituted in various discourses in place both synchronically – what other discourses in the present are linked to this text/discourse – and diachronically – what other historical discourses/texts in the past are visibly or tacitly relevant or called on in the way that the text communicates it messages. The producers and consumers of texts need this knowledge in order to establish whether a discourse is meaningful (Van Dijk, 2003: 92) in its intended strategic ways. The collective repository of knowings – old information, learned attitudes, quick conclusion rules, linguistic short cuts such as presuppositions – is a property of participants in a communicative event, and hence part of the context and the public sphere (Van Dijk, 2003: 94; see KhosraviNik, 2010 and Wodak, 2008 for context systematisation in CDA; and Polyzou, forthcoming, on a detailed systematisation of presupposition in discourse).

Iran’s nuclear programme: A brief history

For a better grasp of the perception of Iran’s nuclear programme, it is important to acknowledge the historical continuity of the pre- and post-revolutionary identities of Iran.¹ Crucial instances in the recent history of Iran come to play a role in the way the news is produced and perceived on the Iranian side. Putting political discourses aside, Iran’s nuclear programme began as a natural continuation of technological development of the country at the time – not as a major international issue/problem/crisis – in the 1950s with the encouragement and investment of the USA and the West. It was part of providing support for the West-friendly monarch of Iran, Mohammad Reza Shah. In 1968, Iran joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); this was 11 years before the Islamic Revolution and a year after an American-supplied nuclear reactor started its activities in Tehran. Following that, extensive plans to build several nuclear power plants were announced by the Shah. Nuclear developments continued until the 1979 Iranian revolution.

The 1979 revolution reversed Iran’s relations with the West, specifically the USA, amidst strong revolutionary thrusts portraying the revolution as an emancipation of the country from old and new colonisers and imperialist ‘international arrogance’. Within a couple of years after the revolution and within a chaotic context of competing political struggles of various liberal, national and Islamic groups and parties, Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army launched an all-out invasion of Iran; this is the war which is officially referred to as ‘imposed war’ or ‘sacred defence’ and it continued for eight years (1980–1988). Iranian nuclear activities and plans were put on hold until the early 1990s, when Iran moved to have its long-awaited Bushehr power plant functional with the support of the Russians.

While the anti-Western rhetoric of Iran continued, rising sensitivities regarding Iran’s nuclear programme culminated in 2002 when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced that it had come to learn about the existence of two undeclared nuclear sites in Iran. In 2003, the Iranian reformist government of Khatami² signed an agreement with France, Germany and the UK to voluntarily suspend its nuclear enrichment programme and fully cooperate with the IAEA during the negotiations. In return, the country’s rights to peaceful nuclear energy would be recognised and technological support would be provided to Iran to that end. After two years of suspension, in February 2005, the outgoing government of Khatami asked for the negotiation to be expedited to reach a concrete agreement. Towards the end of 2005 and after the new president of Iran, Ahmadinejad, had assumed office, under a revived revolutionary zeal and his widely controversial rhetoric Iran moved towards resuming its nuclear enrichment. Shortly after, the three European powers offered a package to Iran in return for abandoning enrichment. Iran dismissed the offer, characterising it as ‘a humiliating and insulting empty box’ and resumed its enrichment programme under the highly belligerent rhetoric of the new president. By January 2006, news and commentary about Iran and its nuclear programme had become the hottest news topic in the Western world as Iran continued its enrichment, along with some intermittent rounds of negotiation.

Data selection and methods

This study focused on one of the picks of the controversy as represented in the frequency of news articles in British newspapers. For the British side of the data, the archive of NexisUK has been used to download all the news articles with the query words of Iran – including Iranian(s) – and nuclear or atomic. At this stage, four British newspapers – The Guardian, The Times, the Daily Mail and the Sun – were analysed for statistical calculations. All the articles, which qualified as above, were downloaded on a monthly basis from 2004 to 2007 and the numbers summarised in tables for each newspaper (see e.g. Table 1 for the numbers in The Times).

Table 1.

The number of articles on Iran’s nuclear programme in The Times from 2004 to 2007.

2004	Articles	2005	Articles	2006	Articles	2007	Articles
Jan 4	24	Jan 5	21	Jan 6	67	Jan 7	42
Feb 4	35	Feb 5	47	Feb 6	49	Feb 7	60
Mar 4	19	Mar 5	21	Mar 6	46	Mar 7	52
April 4	3	April 5	10	April 6	58	April 7	49
May 4	7	May 5	23	May 6	48	May 7	30
June 4	17	June 5	27	June 6	46	June 7	33
July 4	22	July 5	9	July 6	38	July 7	25
Aug 4	5	Aug 5	33	Aug 6	46	Aug 7	13
Sep 4	16	Sep 5	35	Sep 6	48	Sep 7	41
Oct 4	21	Oct 5	19	Oct 6	36	Oct 7	28
Nov 4	33	Nov 5	22	Nov 6	38	Nov 7	46
Dec 4	13	Dec 5	11	Dec 6	47	Dec 7	32

Total	215	Total	278	Total	567	Total	451
Average	18	Average	23	Average	47	Average	39

A graphic representation of the frequency of news articles in all four newspapers across the selected time period is represented in Figure 2. The lines represent The Times, The Guardian, the Daily Mail and the Sun, respectively, from highest to lowest numbers of relevant articles.

As shown in Figure 2, in all the newspapers the highest pick for the number of news articles in all four sampled British newspapers is ‘January 2006’, which is taken as the sample for this study. This was about five months into Mahmoud Ahmadinejad assuming presidential office in Iran and shortly after his anti-Semitic remarks had received huge coverage among media outlets across the board. This is the period when the official grand narrative of the Islamic Republic of Iran was replete with remarks and news on issues around Iran’s nuclear programme. With the presidency of Ahmadinejad, the conservative establishment in Iran offered its full weight and support, which is reflected not only in the endorsement of the Supreme Leader but also in conservative newspapers close to the establishment. Similarly, other newspapers largely covered the news, diplomatic developments and the fiery speeches of Ahmadinejad and other officials.

Within the same time frame of January 2006, the Iranian data (articles on Iran’s nuclear programme) were manually collected and selected. Attempts were made to include a variety of socio-political perspectives available among Iranian national newspapers at the time. Kayhan (The Universe) is selected as the most influential Iranian national daily, representing the over-arching radical conservative side of political perspective within the Islamic Republic.

Kayhan, is a distinct newspaper in Iran. Historically, it has been an influential news and analysis outlet in both pre- and post-revolutionary Iran since the Kayhan institution was founded in 1942. Mostafa Mesbahzadeh, who is regarded as the paper’s main founder, was a Senator under the Shah and served as the paper’s longstanding editor (Ghasemi, 2006). Kayhan and Ettela’at (The Information) – founded in 1925 – were known as ‘the Twin Giants’ of the Iranian press and are now flagship papers of institutions with the same names (Shahidi, 2007: 3). Kayhan is a powerful press institution with various publications in Persian, English, French and Arabic, as well as several weeklies, monthlies and periodicals. Before the revolution, Kayhan functioned as an important political institution for the Shah with close links to the monarchy (Shahidi, 2007: 4). After the Islamic Revolution, Kayhan went through a comprehensive overhaul in terms of its editorial staff and political orientations. Soon, Kayhan regained its character as a serious political newspaper with a new revolutionary ideology and close contacts with high-ranking officials of the newly formed Islamic Republic. After the revolution, the paper gradually turned into one of the most outspoken conservative newspapers of the Islamic Republic, tapping into a perpetual revolutionary zeal. The influence of Kayhan in the political sphere of Iran is mainly in its agenda setting and political content production, which are taken seriously in a wide range of social, cultural and political circles. There is a general lack of official records of press circulation/sales in Iran. One of the rare records to draw on could be Slackman’s (2007) estimation who records a circulation number of 70,000 for Kayhan in 2006.³ Both the Kayhan and Ettela’at newspaper groups are now part of the government-owned press institution. Kayhan is also the biggest and oldest publisher in Iran and currently publishes 13 (daily, weekly and periodical) titles (Khiabany, 2010: 84).

By the 2005 presidential election in Iran, Kayhan was relying heavily on public funds to survive (Shahidi, 2007: 135), despite being an influential hard-line newspaper with significant safety margins for political manoeuvres. Ghasemi (2006) claims that Kayhan is now one of the most conservative newspapers in Iran, with close ties with the office of the Supreme Leader’. Gareth Smyth maintains that the newspaper articulates the fundamentalist views of the Islamic Republic of Iran (2006). Hossein Shariatmadari, the paper’s longstanding editor-in-chief and the head of the Kayhan institution, has been described as a figure who ‘has become the voice of hard-line Iran, not only hard-line but also radical, secretive and uncompromising’ (Slackman, 2007). Shariatmadari disagrees with these labels and prefers to define himself as a principalist – a term that is generally used for hard-line conservatives who came to power following the 2005 elections (Inskeep, 2009).

The overall analytical approach of this article lies within common guidelines of critical discourse studies, partly sketched in the theoretical section. More specifically and at the local level, the analysis has taken up proposals in the discourse-historical approach (DHA) (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009) in the following ways: (1) identification and classification of the specific contents or topics of a specific discourse, (2) investigation of the discursive strategies involved, and (3) analysis and examination of linguistic means (as types) and specific, context-dependent linguistic realisations (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009: 93). In the larger project from which this article is sliced, a detailed analytical model, including DHA’s referential, predicational and argumentative strategies, has systematically been applied to the body of selected data (see KhosraviNik, 2010 for a systematisation of various methods). At the micro level, the model is meant to reveal patterns of language in use in terms of the representations of Self and Other, engaging the questions: How are persons, objects, phenomena/events, processes and actions named and referred to linguistically? What characteristics, qualities and features are attributed to social actors, objects, phenomena/events and processes? And, more importantly and specific to the focus of this article, what (macro-global and micro-local) arguments are employed in the discourse in question? The focus of the present article is the overall findings in the argumentation strategies of the overarching conservative discourse as represented by Kayhan.

Iran’s nuclear programme in the Iranian daily Kayhan

This study has followed a bottom–up discourse bundling in terms of the content of the data as postulated by Reisigl and Wodak (2009: 89). At the analytical level, discourse has been viewed as a bundle of texts with a macro-topic relatedness (discourse topics) and a potential for pluri-perspectivity in attitudes, along with having a general argumentative structure. Hence, the term ‘discourse on X’ is used rather than the single perspectivity of a Faircloughian ‘X discourse’. Discourse is viewed as ‘a cluster of context-dependent semiotic practices that are situated within specific fields of social action’ – in this case, news articles in journalistic practice – and ‘linked to argumentation about the validity claims, such as truth and normative validity’ – in this case, positive Self representation/legitimation and negative Other representation/de-legitimation (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009).

A bottom–up analysis of selected texts from Kayhan has been devised to identify discourse topics constituting relevant discourse in the paper. The discourse/topic analysis of the Kayhan’s discourse on Iran’s nuclear programme during the selected one-month period includes a combination of (a) paper’s common ideological bifurcated themes, such as the nuclear programme versus Western threats, Iran as an atomic power, the nuclear programme and international bullies, and (b) current affairs of the time such as the Russian proposal,⁴ resumption of enrichment,⁵ and news from the IAEA and the United Nations (UN) Security Council.⁶ (See Figure 3 for details of the paper’s discourse topics, which are roughly ordered in terms of frequency and significance)

In both (a) editorial/op-ed/signed articles and (b) current news coverage, Kayhan’s content is strongly influenced by and contributes to an overarching anti-American/Western/Israeli discourse and makes a strong case for political Islamism. Not only do these tendencies feature at the centre of its discourse on Iran’s nuclear programme, but they shape the overall selection and inclusion of content and news which constitute other discourses in the paper. This is sometimes constructed by drawing on the role of Islam and its (perceived) opposition to the USA and the West. There is a noticeable construction of a dual conflicting world of Us (the constructed in-group, Self identity) as anti-American, anti-West/anti-imperialist, and Muslims and Them (the constructed out-group, Other identity), with a considerable degree of fluidity and vagueness nevertheless treated as solid and clear-cut assumed background information.

The discourse on Iran’s nuclear programme is positioned within a network of other discourses which are linked together not only in terms of a predominant ideological outlook, but also in terms of their arguments and topics. This discourse constitutes a significant amount of the content of the paper at the time. The discourse on Iran’s nuclear programme presents some broad confrontational lines between the Islamic Republic and the USA/West. It also draws on topics, through which the strength of Iran against the West is substantiated, such as unity within Iran, the popularity of nuclear policies and Iran’s leverage on oil markets, along with a strong reference to Iran’s rights. Some other topics within this discourse are brought up because of specific events which occurred in January 2006, such as the diplomatic dynamics and the role that Russia and China were playing in Iran’s nuclear case, Iran’s willingness to pursue diplomacy and its readiness to cooperate.

A similar bottom–up micro-topic analysis has been carried out to identify other political discourses available in the newspaper which are directly or indirectly linked to its discourse on the nuclear programme. The paper’s discourse on Iran’s nuclear programme, which is one of the most heavily attended-to discourses in this newspaper, is placed adjacent to a plethora of discourses on global anti-Americanism, on the Arab (Muslim) world and the Middle East, on Islam(ism), on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, on Syria and Khaddam’s case,⁷ on Iraq, and on Ahmadinejad and internal politics. All these discourses in Kayhan are strongly influenced by and contribute to the paper’s anti-American, anti-Israeli and political Islamic world views. The structure of the discourses in Kayhan within the analysed one-month period is illustrated in Figure 4, where the sizing and overlapping are designed to provide a rough representation of the content to scale, along with depicting the manner of their juxtapositions as far as possible.

The ideological/political stance of Ahmadinejad – who was strongly supported by Kayhan at the time – in terms of challenging the West/USA and their allies, is in line with the revolutionary aspirations of the Islamic Republic of Iran. These aspirations construct the main basis for legitimisation of the Iranian stance as regards its nuclear programme. The same strong inter-discursive connection can be seen in other discourses as well, for instance in the discourse on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, on anti-Americanism and on the Middle East and the Arab world. In this context, the Iranian stance on the nuclear issue is automatically legitimised and positively constructed, as are other radical conservative positions of the Islamic Republic of Iran, such as its anti-Israeli stance. While each one of these discourses involves specific groups of topics and details, the macro ideology which provides the basis for their legitimation is the same in all of them. It might also be interesting to note that Islam, as the main pronounced force in the post-revolutionary conservative rhetoric of the Islamic Republic of Iran, only functions adjacent to several other discourses in Kayhan, rather than being their defining feature. The main agenda of Kayhan is substantiating an anti-American stance which helps to present all its discourses and topics within the framework of a Manichean stand-off between the constructed unanimous Us versus Them.

As seen in Figure 4, Kayhan’s discourse on Iran’s nuclear programme is by far the largest discourse (in terms of content) available in the newspaper at the time; sometimes it has a strong overlap with several other discourses (some on current affairs, e.g. the discourse on Syria). In many ways, the main (fresh) discourse on Ahmadinejad and his internal politics is represented significantly along the lines of the paper’s discourse on the nuclear programme, the paper having been a strong supporter of Ahmadinejad and his announced policies, both internally and internationally.

Compared to the network of available discourses in other Iranian dailies, Kayhan represents a strongly united, homogenised network of discourses on very clear Self and Other dichotomisation emerging from the international political scene. That is, domestic politics is by and large influenced and dominated by the international challenges and struggles of Iran, whereas in reformist newspapers (e.g. Shargh in Figure 5) domestic politics is clearly separated from international affairs, such as issues around Iran’s nuclear programme.

Argumentative themes in Kayhan

Broad argumentations about the construction of a legitimate Self and a delegitimate Other in Iranian discourse on the nuclear programme, emerging from the overarching conservative rhetoric of the Islamic Republic of Iran in general and the analysed Kayhan texts in particular (as an influential flagship newspaper with close ties to the conservative establishment), show two major tendencies, namely macro-legitimatory and micro-legitimatory strategies. Although these two are often interwoven to varying degrees, they comprise the main thrust of Iranian discourse on the nuclear programme and are drawn on in different communicative events involving different audiences, genres, personalities and occasions.

The macro-legitimatory arguments reiterate and re/create the macro-ideological frames of post-revolutionary Iran beyond the single issue of the nuclear programme. They position the stand-off over the nuclear programme within highly propagated and socio-politically saturated dichotomies such as the Islamic Republic in eternal confrontation with the West/USA, the Islamic Republic as the model for all the oppressed and/or Muslim nations versus the Others, the Islamic Republic against bullying super powers and various forms of recontextualised religious discourses of eternal virtuous war against the evil Other. These grand narratives have been resident argumentative grounds in various events and developments in post-revolutionary Iran in almost all social, political, cultural and educational domains over the last few decades. The legitimatory power of these arguments is built on the body of an already established set of overtly ideological constructs on the nature of global political players, the nature of world power relations, the oppressed and oppressors, the nature of the Islamic Republic and its aspirations, role and mission, which in one way or another link an explicit anti-colonial rhetoric with (sometimes vague, sometimes explicit) Shiite Muslim prophecy. This constructs a panoramic–synchronic and diachronic Self and Other dichotomisation between Islamic Iran (Self) and the West/USA (Other).

Consequently, it has been a practical tradition that the macro-legitimatory strategy mainly targets domestic audiences as an epistemic community whose repertoire of ‘old’ knowledge contains and recognises cues to other post-revolutionary ideological rhetoric. The sense-making apparatus of the macro-legitimatory strategy requires the communication of such assumptions of old knowledge in its dynamic of communication.⁸ In the meantime, the interplay between old and new knowledge, as well as the automatic assumption of the presence of a certain body of information (i.e. about the nature of the Islamic Republic and its mission) and the presence of revolutionary attitudes as a requirement for this sense-making apparatus, help to perpetuate and reinforce macro frames, such as the evil Other versus the virtuous Self. In a way, sometimes, the message is the very information which is communicated as background knowledge.

Macro-legitimatory arguments in Kayhan provide the grounds to justify and legitimise the position of the Self predominantly by de-legitimising the Other in the way in which the main argumentative impetus is the mere emphasis on how illegitimate the Other identity is, and as such the mere fact of reiterating that ‘We’ are against ‘Them’ works as a broad legitimation of Self. In other words, this macro-legitimatory conservative rhetoric, similar to any other overtly conservative rhetoric, does not engage in arguing why ‘we’ are right/good, but heavily and emphatically argues why ‘they’ are wrong/bad.

Macro legitimation via topoi

Topoi analysis has been applied in the discourse-historical approach as a useful analytical category in dealing with the overall characteristics of arguments in discourse. Drawing on Van Eemeren et al. (1987, 1996) and Kienpointner (1992), topoi (or loci) are characterised as those parts of argumentation which belong to obligatory, either explicit or inferable, premises. Topoi are considered to be the content-related warrants or conclusion rules which connect the argument with the conclusion – the claim. They justify the transition from the argument to the conclusion (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001: 74–75). Bouvier (1993) emphasises the political use of topoi, their effectiveness in persuasion and hence their applicability in argumentation analysis in critical studies because topoi ‘provide the (standard) arguments, typical for specific issues’. Drawing on Anscombre (1995), she views topoi as general arguments in the sense that they may be applied to many different situations rather than being limited to specific situations at specific moments. Myers (2005) similarly emphasises the role of commonplaces as being ‘at the heart of legitimate public opinion’ and their role in invoking ‘shared experiences and points of view’ which would involve a sense of shared experience with a sense of perspective (2005: 536–537). Analysis of topoi has also been endorsed as a tool to enable people to question issues that normally seem obvious (Zompetti, 2006) – in line with CDA and its aspiration to raise critical awareness in the way language is used. Topoi can be viewed as highly conventionalised argumentation places, in which warrants – assumptions that link the evidence to the conclusions – are neither (usually) explained nor challenged. Topoi, however, do not necessarily function on fallacious bases. While they are usually based on a taken-for-granted warrant – they can be made explicit as conditional or causal paraphrases, such as ‘if x, then y’ or ‘y, because x’. At the same time, ‘there are rules for rational disputes and constructive arguing which allow discerning reasonable topoi from fallacies’ (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009: 110).

Kayhan makes a coherent strategic use of topoi in recontextualising the issue of Iran’s nuclear programme within a broader overall macro-legitimation strategy. This macro-legitimatory recontextualisation strategy shapes the perspectives and content of all the discourses in the paper, including – but certainly not limited to – its discourse on the nuclear programme. This approach positions the debate within a highly political/ideological bifurcation of Us and Them and has no or very little engagement with local/micro-legitimatory arguments, such as the possible benefits of nuclear energy for the country’s development. In a similar vein, it never engages in explaining or elaborating on grand assumptions in its automatic conclusion rules.

Macro legitimation: Topos of strength and defiance

‘We are right because we are (or are constructed as) strong and defying Them’

One of the main and dominant macro-legitimatory topoi in Kayhan regarding the nuclear issue is the topos of Strength and Defiance. This topos functions against the background of an already established body of knowledge – and at the same time reconfirms such knowledge. At the core of this knowledge is the perception of the Other as inherently, historically and automatically powerful (although hateful) and the Self as powerless. This is then attributed to the past pre-revolutionary identity of Iran which is demarcated from the present (represented) powerful and defiant identity of the Self/Iran.

Example 1

The beating [of the heart] of the crisis is in our hands, like it or not. The nuclear challenge should certainly be viewed in a large framework of actions and reactions in the world and through this angle we should begin challenging the West and this challenge should be a new opportunity to new renovation and creation in the evolutionary process in the power of the Islamic Republic of Iran – Muslims and oppressed nations – instead of seeing it as a threat.

(Kayhan, 15/01/06)

As highlighted in example 1, apart from expressions of power and being on the offence, the qualifier ‘new’ triggers a set of what is assumed to be old information for the targeted audience, that is, the superiority of constructed Them over Us in the past and the new imputes in changing the world order. The Iranian post-revolutionary narrative depicts the contemporary history of Iran in the light of powerless, inept monarchies or sycophant Shahs and as a country under the constant control or invasion of the colonial powers of Britain, Russia and the USA. Such saturated rhetoric is called on in the processes of construction and interpretation of such a message and the resonance of such topos for (some) Iranian audiences.

In one way or another – through interdiscursivity, adjacent discourses, presuppositions, etc. – this topos makes reference to the (constructed) history of contemporary Iran in terms of feeble, bandwagon and, of course, powerless regimes up until the revolution in 1979, with a grand discourse of challenging and defying the West, specifically the USA, which is a common resident semiosis for positive Self representation for Kayhan. In response to the colonial orientalist mentality, Kayhan’s anti-colonial ‘reversed orientalist’ discourse represents the Self on a par with what it assumes to be the most powerful Other: the USA. This also reflects the fact that the Islamic Republic’s over-arching conservative narrative highly values reactions from the Other side. Challenging and defying the Other in the stand-off over Iran’s nuclear programme has been the most important platform for this topos over the past two decades. This topos has a natural tendency to cause/seek reactions from the constructed Other as a win–win circular argumentation. Reactions could be the expressions of concern and worry, expressions of verbal threats or threats to take military action. Concern in the (constructed) Them camp feeds back and strengthens the topos of Strength and Defiance, while overt expressions/actions of threat are fed back and confirm the widely circulated anti-colonial arguments in the legitimation of Self and the need for power.

Macro legitimation: Topos of resistance

‘We are right (in what we do) because we are (or are constructed as) resisting’

Through synchronic topics, such as current (constructed) colonialist expressions of threats and practices in the camp of the Other/enemy, and diachronic topics, such as the impartial role of the Other in Saddam’s war against Iran (1980–1988), which are sometimes realised inter-textually and sometimes simply presupposed, the topos of Resistance functions as a short-cut argumentation where a united Iran is depicted as struggling and defending itself against a united international Other. The topos of Resistance is implicitly differentiated from the topos of Defiance in that it implies an inherent power imbalance between Self and Other in the way that the (constructed) illegitimate Other has a universally accepted upper hand against the (constructed) legitimate Self. This renders such resistance as a virtue, automatically reinforced by analogy to Shiite historical narratives on resistance and martyrdom. These are emphasised by existential reference to Their military prowess and Their imposing nature against the lawful and logical Self.

Example 2

They want to impose their own political goals on us by showing off their military prowess against Iran’s lawful logic.

(Kayhan, 28/01/06)

A major thrust of this topos is the discourse of war (Iran–Iraq, 1980–1988), which has been systematically and referentially constructed as the sacred defence or the imposed war in post-revolutionary Iran. This war is taken as merely one example in the series of plots against the Islamic Republic by the West, the international arrogance and the new colonialists. In this conclusion rule, the mere existence of pressure (real or constructed) indicates the rightfulness of Our stance, hence any characterisation of the Other as the imposer and pressuriser is contextualised through this topos as Our rightfulness. In addition to the diachronic aspect, other current issues, such as Western sanctions and hostile policies and (sometimes) UN resolutions, are recontextualised as further substantiation of this conclusion rule. In a circular manner, while the topos of Defiance argues for the legitimacy of Self in terms of challenging the Other, the consequences of this defiance are recontextualised into the topos of Resistance as another venue for Our legitimacy. In such a context, the recurrent themes of They pressurising, They trying to deprive Us, They trying to stop Us are symptomatic aspects of drawing on this topos.

Macro legitimation: Topos of threat and invasion (history)

‘We are right (in what we do) because they are (or are constructed as) threatening’

Closely related to the topos of Resistance is the topos of Threat and Invasion which denotes the existence of a permanent threat and potential invasion. Part of the historical relevance and possible resonance of this topos across Iranian social layers can be traced to the contemporary history of Iran and the repeated unfavourable role that foreign powers have played in Iran – for instance, long history of influence and control over Iranian affairs by colonial powers, the Anglo–Soviet invasion of Iran during the Second World War in 1941, the British/American ‘coup d’etat’ against the popularly supported Mossadegh in 1953 and the widespread power of the USA in Iran during the Shah’s regime.

Example 3

The talk of military attack against Iran or referring Iran to the Security Council of the United Nations has no interested audience among our nation and our people are used to threats like that.

(Kayhan, 22/01/06)

As a country with vivid memories of war, revolution and violence within the last half century, the semiosis of war and attack is especially important in the interpretative context of the nation. Similarly, in another circular dynamic, the topos of Invasion works hand in hand with the topos of Defiance. While the discursive construction of Defiance is linked to legitimisation of the position of Self, belligerent and hostile communication from the Other is recontextualised within the topos of Threat and Invasion as natural characteristics of Our enemy. In the meantime, reconciliatory remarks by officials of the Other camp would be recontextualised as reconfirmation of Our power within the topos of Defiance. In other words, this topos uses history (real or constructed) as an automatic conclusion rule in dealing with language used by the Other. It postulates that ‘We are right because history shows (or is constructed as showing) that’. This relies heavily on a historical narrative which legitimises Self via strong negative representation of the Other.

Example 4

Europeans have constantly been creating crisis and damaging our interests within the last 27 years. The nuclear case is just a pretext to silence voices against their looting of Middle Eastern resources and reinforcement of their illegitimate systems like Israel but rest assured that the Iranian government will not help them in this.

(Kayhan, 14/01/06)

Example 5

[Their] hollow and phony aura, [their] experience of accumulation of exploitation and atrocity, and [their] potential to change colour from the era of the cannon boats to modern colonisation, are no longer enough tools [for the colonisers] to force the nations to unquestionably submit to them.

(Kayhan, 15/01/06)

Micro legitimation via topos of rights and laws

‘We are right because the law is (constructed as) saying so’

Although not the main aspiration of Kayhan, as a newspaper it is bound to reflect some aspects of the micro-legitimatory approach expressed by some officials. The micro-legitimatory argumentation is focused on legitimation of the Self per se, by treating the conflict as an isolated, temporary and technical disagreement. It emphasises the legal rights and lawfulness of the Iranian stance and refrains from framing it within a macro-ideological and global conflict between Us and Them. It attempts to de-historicise and de-politicalise the issue by merely focusing on the issue as a diplomatic disagreement between the two sides, where Iran is attempting to settle a dispute with some specific countries (the Troika of the UK, France and Germany) and international bodies (the European Union (EU) or the IEAE), rather than making macro-political references to a vague and fluid Other or the West. It refrains from inter-discursive reference to historical and other current political grievances regarding perceived clashes between Iran and the West or Islam and the West. This local strategy heavily engages in details of negotiations and litigious nuances within NPT and diplomatic practices. Micro-legitimatory arguments of Iranian discourse on the nuclear programme, unlike macro arguments, concentrate on positive representation and legitimation of Self rather than de-legitimation of the Other. They appear to target a non-Iranian audience – or a type of Iranian audience who may not (want to) share the dominant macro-political, ideological frames in arguing for a legitimate Iranian stance.

Example 6

He stated that cooperation of the Islamic Republic of Iran with the Agency is a continuous process and asserted that: the Agency’s obscurities should be resolved and we, as a member country, consider cooperation with the Agency within the international regulations our duty and, of course, expect to realise our rights as well.

(Kayhan, 28/01/06)

The main thrust of this set of arguments is to construct and represent an honest, cooperative, logical and lawful Self identity within the stipulated rights of Iran via the IAEA and NPT, in other words, the right to have access to and use peaceful nuclear technology. Politically speaking, Kayhan is not automatically geared towards this strategy; nevertheless, this trend is visible in the news coverage and commentaries coming from Iranian chief negotiators and Foreign Ministry officials. The bulk of predicational themes found in Kayhan represent Iran as being cooperative, being peaceful, being committed to international laws or acting logically, having a strong rationale. This bundle of micro-legitimatory arguments aims for the restricted goal of achieving Iranian rights within international frameworks, apparently regardless of enmities and other grand political frames.

Example 7

The nuclear research which has started is based on paper 3 of the Agency’s charter and paper 4 of the NPT and the Additional Protocol and part of the inalienable and confirmed rights of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a member country of NPT. These activities will be completely under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

(Kayhan, 16/01/06)

This localised discursive strategy of legitimation constructs the lack of progress in negotiations as a sign that the Other is being political with hidden macro agendas. In a circular manner, while macro-legitimatory arguments openly construct the stand-off as a global ideological and political conflict between a legitimate Self and an illegitimate Other and view the nuclear issue as part of a wider network of synchronic and diachronic conflicts and conspiracies, micro-legitimatory arguments contextualise any similar grand political gestures from the Other as evidence for discrediting the Other as not being really interested in solving the issue and being politically driven. The micro-legitimatory strategy systematically emphasises cooperation, negotiation and a willingness to avoid conflict, while the macro arguments seek legitimation in the grand political frame by defying the very same Other-West (topos of Defiance), flaunting the power of Self (topos of Strength) and legitimating Self as the resistance force in conflict (topos of Resistance).

Conclusions

The Kayhan newspaper as an influential radical conservative paper represents a strong Us versus Them categorisation of the world in all its domestic and international discourses, including the one on the nuclear programme. This tendency is substantiated at all levels of linguistic/discursive operationalisations, including discourse/topics, referential, predicational and argumentative strategies. The paper’s positive Self and negative Other presentation is mainly communicated through presuppositions, both via linguistically marked presuppositions – for example, existential presuppositions at referential level, such as references to the Other as ‘the international arrogance’ – and in assuming the existence of a certain body of (old)knowledge/attitudes/judgements among its targeted audiences. Some level of new information is communicated in the form of old background information which would be needed for a topos to resonate with the audience. Various short-cut conclusion themes, namely topoi, represent political knowledge (e.g. who is Them) and stances (e.g. how do we feel about Them) in the form of assumed/taken-for-granted warrants in their enthymemic structure. For example, the topos of Defiance presents a conclusion rule where the mere fact of defiance would lead to legitimation and positive representation of the Self.

The representation of the Other through predicational strategies (leading to argumentation topoi) relies overtly and substantially on macro-legitimatory assumptions which reconfirm or re-construct specific historical and situational knowledge, as well as an ideological shared understanding, such as that there is an ongoing war between virtue (Self) and evil (Other) and that We are defeating Them. For example, the macro-legitimatory argument founded on the notion of resistance maintains that We are on the right path because/as long as We resist Them. Such arguments are solely based on assumptions of old knowledge, for example who ‘We’ and ‘Them’ are.

Macro- and micro-legitimatory discursive strategies can be viewed in paradoxical relations when considered out of their contexts. The macro-legitimatory strategy foregrounds and constructs defiance and the inherent conflictual nature of relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the West. It constantly represents the nuclear stand-off within a broad ideological, political conflict and as only one among many issues in relations of Us versus Them. The micro-legitimatory strategy, on the other hand, is locally focused on the nuclear issue and foregrounds the cooperative and peaceful nature of the Islamic Republic identity. It isolates and de-ideologises (to some extent) the nature of this stand-off and emphasises the civil, honest, peaceful, cooperative aspects of the Self. Micro-legitimatory arguments can be taken as oxymorons to the macro-legitimatory ones because the latter challenge and defy general international norms and order (e.g. the UN is sometimes constructed as an illegitimate political tool in the hands of evil powerful countries), while the former seek legitimacy and positive Self construction through the very same systems. Such circular argumentation dynamics switch back and forth to fit all the reactions of the Other into one of several widely-spread topoi through a form of ideological recontextualisation – for example, if the Other discourse is belligerent and aggressive, it is recontextualised via topoi of Invasion and Threat; if soft and reconciliatory, it is recontextualised within topoi of Defiance and Strength.

It must, however, be emphasised that the macro- and micro-legitimatory strategies used in Iranian discourse on the nuclear programme are more often than not conflated, based on a number of factors including the type of audiences involved (e.g. addressing a religious gathering in Iran versus addressing Western press delegates), the official capacities of the commentators (e.g. an Iranian diplomat or the Iranian head of Basij militia) and personal and governmental orientations. Distinguishing between these two main strategies is not only useful for analytical purposes, but can also perhaps explain some of the disagreements among Iranian officials. For example, Iran’s head of the National Security Council and chief nuclear negotiator at the time, Ali Larijani, along with officials within or related to the Foreign Ministry, seemed to adopt a mainly micro-legitimatory strategy, while the head of the government, Ahmadinejad, adopted a macro-legitimatory strategy to an unprecedented degree, sometimes even when addressing the international audience.⁹

The Kahan’s discourse in general does not reflect a micro-legitimatory tendency in essence. Along with Ahmadinejad, the pro-government parliamentary majority, and pro-Ahmadinejad newspapers, Kayhan mainly adopts and propagates a major macro-legitimatory approach – that is to say that such micro tendency does not feature in the paper’s named content, such as in its editorials or op-ed articles. However, as some of the officials do use that strategy and the dynamics of the negotiations are highly newsworthy events, some part of this tendency is reflected in Kayhan’s discourse as well, although the paper is adamant about recontextualising even the smallest diplomatic commentary within a macro-legitimatory frame.

The Kayhan discourse on the nuclear programme, despite being unique to the paper, represents some of the overall trends of the macro discourse of the Islamic Republic establishment. This is certainly not to say that other approaches and perspectives do not exist among Iranian discourses both as newspapers and audiences. Nonetheless, as the results of the larger research show, the conservative newspapers and discourses on both sides of the conflict take the lead in mainstreaming the representation of Self and Other, despite the fact that there are complications and nuances in comparing the two sides. The present article has focused on the Kayhan newspaper as representing a (hard-line) conservative take on Iran’s nuclear issue, but in comparison to other selected Iranian newspapers and the analysed British newspapers, it emerges that the main focus of the conflict on both sides is on macro-political perceptions of the grand narratives which define the post-revolutionary Iran. There are, of course, crucial differences in degrees of explicitness in adopting macro-argumentative strategies in Iranian and British conservative discourses, yet the main legitimatory arguments seem to rely on a system of communicated messages which only make sense by assuming information on the recent history and identity of the Self and Other in both British and Iranian conservative discourses.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Author biography

Majid KhosraviNik is a lecturer in Media and Discourse Studies at Newcastle University, UK. His research interests lie in theory, methods and application of critical discourse analysis in a range of topics and media outlets, including the intersection of discourse and (national/ethnic/group) identity in old and new media. Majid has written articles on immigration discourse and methods of CDA which have appeared in Discourse & Society, Journal of Language & Politics and Critical Discourse Studies. His co-edited book, Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse (with Ruth Wodak and Brigitte Mral), was published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2013. Majid sits on the board of a number of international journals and is a co-founder of Newcastle Discourse Group. He is currently working on a manuscript on Iranian and Western discourses and exploring application of CDA on Web 2.0 and social media environments

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