Articulation of Labor Discourse in Iran; A Case Study of the Semantic Discourse of the Tudeh Party in 1976

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

Department of Social Welfare, Faculty of Social Sciences, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran

10.22059/jisr.2025.387107.1568

Abstract

A critical analysis of political parties claiming to represent workers is one of the missing links in discourse studies in Iran. Some of the existing analyses also suffer from the same shortcomings as other discourse analyses—namely, theoretical over-elaboration and a lack of rigor in analysis and interpretation (Gholamreza Kashi, 2006), as well as the absence of suitable analytical tools at the micro-linguistic level. This article aims to address these issues by employing appropriate techniques and a developed analytical model derived from Laclau and Mouffe’s theory.
As a case study, this article first utilizes the poststructuralist technique of Derridean referential signification to describe the discursive articulation of the Tudeh Party (1976). Then, using this description, along with techniques of deconstruction and intertextuality and analytical tools from Laclau and Mouffe at the meso and macro levels, it critically analyzes and interprets the discourse.
At the descriptive level, the findings indicate that the party articulates its discourse both relationally and antagonistically through a network of referential signifiers. At the analytical and interpretive level, the findings show that this discourse seeks to construct workers’ identity in an antagonistic manner, with an essentialist and fundamentalist emphasis, and by means of various discursive logics, strives to present itself as something objective, truthful, and in the interest of all, aiming for hegemony.
Despite these efforts, the narratives of this discourse are neither objective, nor truthful, nor in the interest of all. Rather, these essentialist and fundamentalist emphases—especially when the formation of identity is grounded at the level of politics—can lead to the formation of the state as something objective and truthful, which, like Hobbes’s Leviathan, results in the elimination of other identities, the absorption of the political, and the closure of the space for political contestation.

Keywords

References

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Social Studies and Research in Iran
Volume 14, Issue 3 - Serial Number 56
September 2025
Pages 369-388

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