Power, Discourse, and Language

The book ‘Power, Discourse, and Language (Mechanisms of Power Flow in the Islamic Republic of Iran)’ by Ali Asghar Soltani is published by Nashr Ney. The book is divided into various sections, starting with a brief discussion on theories related to power, discourse, and language to demonstrate how these theories explain the interplay between these concepts. It examines the studies and theories of individuals whose ideas and efforts gradually paved the way for contemporary discussions about the socio-political roles of language, leading to the development of different discourse analysis approaches. The roots of these new approaches can be traced back to two distinct perspectives on language and discourse. The first perspective is fundamentally rooted in structuralist and functionalist linguistics, where discourse is viewed as language above the sentence or language in use and is thus considered smaller than language. This perspective does not address ideology and power.