A Discourse Analytic Study of Vehicle Writings in the Iranian Context

Abstract

Language, nowadays, as a means of communication, is scrupulously overhauled and dealt with in all disciplines, from social sciences to politics, especially through the lens of critical discourse analysis (CDA), for deciphering encrypted power and prestige encoded by pragmatic features. This study aimed to examine vehicle writings and inscriptions as a discourse form by adopting a discourse-pragmatic analytical approach to extract the key features of language practices of Iranian drivers through the medium of writing. The inscriptions on cars and automobiles were examined for the pragmatic features built on the Gricean model to excavate the existing conversational implicatures and for the critical interpretation through the insight of CDA to unearth the subtle nexus of power, prestige, privilege, control, authority, resistance, dominance, hegemony, inequality and discrimination. The findings uncloaked the evolving turns of Iranian vehicle writings in terms of form and meaning au courant with the quotidian modus operandi. Tradition is seen to be enlaced with a la mode scripts. The traces of power practice in the discourse of the powerless were found as a means of projection on the roads. The blatant instances of flouting maxims were evidenced in all four types of the principles drawn on the criteria.