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Showing 9 results for Travelogue

Laleh Atashi, Alireza Anoushirvani,
Volume 5, Issue 20 (12-2012)
Abstract

This research is the analysis of the contact zone and the tensions in western women’s travelogues. Travel writing as a genre has always been marginalized within the domain of literary researches, but travelogues by women have been doubly marginalized due to gender. In patriarchal societies, the literature produced by women has never been received as seriously as that by men. Western women, who were colonizers by race and colonized by gender, cannot use the omniscient point of view revealed in men’s travelogues, nor can they assume the objective pose that man travel writers usually boast of. Women, who had an unsure position between the discourses of colonialism and that of femininity, reveal such tensions in their writing that are mostly absent from men’s travelogues. These tensions and the role they play in the self-fashioning of British women can be traced in the images that they offer of the orient in the 19th century.

Volume 8, Issue 4 (12-2020)
Abstract

Imagology or representation of the “other” provides the opportunity for the nations to see their face in the mirror of the “other”. Through imagology, the conversations begin, and identification of the “other” leads to recognition of “self”. Alterity and the necessity of recognizing “other” are significant keys in self-awareness. Examining several layers of travelogues represents a way to discover the underlying meaning of the text, with regard to the imagological keywords such as I, the other, classified view, judgment, and stereotypical thinking. These layers are read in four stages in Sharh-e Zendegani-ye Man by Abdollah Mostowfi (1878-1950), in which he explains his journey to Russia. The first layer is read, regarding the difference between “I” and the “other”, and the influence of the “others” on the author’s life. In the second layer, the classified view of “I” (Mostowfi) upon “other” is studied. The third layer refers to Mostowfi’s consideration of the reality of Russia and the effect of his stereotypes and mental concepts thereon. The fourth layer includes his linguistic structure and descriptions. Ultimately, Mostowfi’s journey to Russia is affected by his view and mentality, and it is not an account of the absolute and certain reality. By clarifying his way of thinking and living, his time, and the political and cultural relations between Iran and Russia at that period, along with his presuppositions and mental concepts, we can grasp a relative understanding of Mostowfi’s picture of Russia.

Volume 10, Issue 1 (11-2018)
Abstract

Decline of political system have the signs. In the Ibn Khaldun’s perspective, Bedouin with the power of Asabiyyah (social cohesion or group solidarity) more than the Settled, become triumphant. Then, the victors prepare the conditions of the establishment of the political statesmanship. Afterward, the conquerors, acclimatize with the temperaments of the settled and urbanites and the nomadic diligence convert to conservatism. Thereupon, Asabiyyah or the power of social cohesion of urbanites become loose and weak. Hereafter, the weakness of group solidarity of the settled cause to defeat of the burgher and the conquest of the new Bedouin with the new Asabiyyah. Authors of the present paper with utilization of two methodological category (third question of regarding to the gain and loss of power, and the approach of the Ibn Khaldun’s theory of the rise and fall of political statesmanship) have tried to interpretative enumerate the signs of the decline of power (Qajar’s collapse) in the IbrahimBeig’s Travelogue.


Volume 10, Issue 4 (12-2022)
Abstract

Travelogues are among the sources of various literary styles that provide important information about the historical, cultural, artistic, and anthropological background of a country through the images recorded by the travelogue, so far as they have a great contribution in the social-historical reconstruction of a country. The simple and stereotyped definition of imagery or imagology, which has an interdisciplinary approach in comparative literature, is the study of another image in one's own literary texts and vice versa, that is, the study of one's own image in other literary texts. The more accurate the view of the travelogue writer is, the more comprehensive the report he presents in his travelogue is whcih increases its credibility. The correct transmission of this information also helps the accuracy of the travelogue. If a writer is not careful in any of these steps, knowingly or unknowingly, he will make a mistake in accurately recording the reports and the truth, or a part of it will be neglected. On the other hand, we cannot ignore the influence of stereotypes and mental sediments of the writer on what he writes. For these reasons, there is not much expectation from literary texts to reveal reality and facts, and in this sense, literary works cannot be compared with facts and scientific studies. Pollack's travelogue; Iran and Iranians includes the description of pictures that Pollock, an Austrian doctor, saw and wrote in Iran. These observations, which go back to the end of the Qajar period during the reign of Naser al-Din Shah, are divided into two general parts: the first part includes the number of people, geography, customs and eating habits, clothing, etc.; the second part includes the government system, the court, and court occasions, diseases, medicine and treatment methods, medicines, etc. Pollak's claim is that he wrote the contents of his travelogue accurately and without bias or mistakes; however, this study revealed that such as claim is not very accurate.
 

Volume 11, Issue 2 (3-2020)
Abstract

Reflections on the issue of marriage and divorce in Iran during the gajar era and the kind of society's view of it Relying on foreign travel logos Iran,
In period of gajar, saw the presence of Europeans for various commercial, political, religious, military, and tourist destinations. A group of these Europeans recorded their daily observations in the form of travel logs. The Iranian folklore, including beliefs and beliefs, as well as the customs of the Iranian people of the gajar era, can be viewed and extracted from the context of their notes. Travel writers for some reasons, such as the external look of Iranian society, Western curiosity, etc., have provided valuable material to researchers of the cultural and social history of the gajar period. For example, the Iranian perspective on the cultural issue of marriage and divorce, which is one of the most significant aspects of the Iranian identity of the gajar period, can be cited. The present research responds to the question of how European journalists from the gajar era have drawn one of the most important customs of Iranians, namely marriage and divorce. The purpose of this paper is to examine the status of marriage and divorce and the expression of the value and position of the woman and the kind of society's view as one of the most important aspects of Iranian identity of the gajar period from the viewpoint of gajar periodical travel writers, which is based on descriptive-analytical method Travel logs are written.


Volume 12, Issue 2 (2-2021)
Abstract

Abstract
The history of children is among neglected fields in historical studies of Iran. Historians of social and cultural history of Iran has been working on some aspects of children's life in Qajar dynasty, such as education, but a large part of the life of this group has not been investigated and had been set in the side of Iranian histography. There for, the present article examines the part of the life of children (their training) during the Qajar period. with accordance to the wide range of the subject and the lake of data about children in the official and public historical texts of the Qajar dynasty on one hand and also reflects of the various aspects of the children's life in itineraries of foreign explorers in Qajar dynasty on the other hand the present subject, is investigated based on the itineraries of the foreign explorers of Qajar dynasty. This subject Emphasizing the foreign travelogues of the Qajar era has been studied. Findings of the research show that children's education includes school education, elementary education, secondary education and advanced and university education. In terms of education and educational facilities, most children are not in a good condition and their education is very simple and elementary have been. But gradually the situation got better. The research method in this paper is a historical one with a descriptive-analytical approach and a library data collection method.


Volume 12, Issue 2 (9-2024)
Abstract

In order for a person to be able to see the fate of all human beings, God has advised to travel to the extent that he says, "Qol Siroo fi al-Arze" the world is so big and human beings are so diverse that every human being is erased from the creation of the world., which both of these authors have taken advantage of for their writing. In terms of writing style, they also have differences. It seems that Bastani Parisi has made his text more beautiful and simple by using jokes, anecdotes, memories, poems and proverbs in his book, which basically makes the audience of his travelogue not tired of reading and More interested than following the travelogue. His main goal of choosing this style was to focus on the audience and embellish the dry and soulless realities of travel and its events and turn them into a more literary and attractive text for the audience. On the other hand, it seems that only Shadiyag spoke about some issues, such as the issue of women and hijab, the employment of numbers and figures, the precise and detailed description of architectures, the travelogue-like reporting style that makes his travelogue even more to be noticed by the audience. It seems that this difference in the ideology of these two writers goes back to their worldview, which issues are more valuable and less valuable for each of them.
 

Volume 13, Issue 4 (10-2022)
Abstract

The socio-critical novel of Ibrahim Beg’s travelogue is a work in which the author criticizes his own society and its political and religious constitutions through Western domestication. In this discourse, the confrontation between Iran and the West is an attempt to bridge the gap between Us and Them by reversing their roles and reflecting Us more bizarre than Them.This paper tries to answer two basic questions by identifying the discourse methods and strategies of ideological representation in this novel: (a)How do discourse strategies convey the author's ideology? (b)How is the reversal of the discourse, which is the result of the process of Western domestication, manifested? The aim of this descriptive-analytical article is to investigate the representation of the West in this novel from the perspective of Van Dijk ideological square. The salient achievement of the research is that the image of the West in the Maragheh discourse, as a modernist intellectual author, does not depict the stereotypical image that may exist in Iranians’ mind about this phenomenon. In his discourse, he generally applies polarization strategy to accentuated the West positives as Us and highlighted the Iranian government negatives as Them. For describing Us, the author uses ideological strategies such as comparison, implicit, dramatization and irony in order to reflect the spirit of freedom, loyalty and hard diligent in the text. For representing Them, he applies the strategies such as actor description, hyperbole, and number game to demonstrate the characteristics of greed, tyranny, regression, and deception to his audience.

1. Introduction
If our conception of the West in the history of political and cultural developments in Iran has been stereotypically based on the "outsider", this historical conception has changed in the discourse of Iranian writers since the early twentieth century. After facing the advances of Western civilization, some of these writers, in a discourse turn, represented Europe and America in their minds and languages, no longer as "outsiders", but as "insiders". By doing so, they wanted to blame their governments for the problems and mismanagement, as an "outsider" group.
Based on what has been said, the main issue of the present study is to express how this discourse rotation is manifested in the story of Ibrahim Beyg's travelogue. Hence, the authors have tried to explain the quality of this new discourse by using Van Dijk's ideological strategies. To examine this issue, the following questions are first posed: 1.How is the author's ideology represented in this work? 2. What is the author's ideological discourse towards the West as one of the pre-revolutionary intellectuals? 3. Does the image of the West in his discourse represent a stereotypical and special image that exists in the minds of Iranians of Westerners? 4. In relation to the image of the West, how is the political system of the time represented in Iran, and how does this representation serve the author's ideology? In connection with the above questions, two hypotheses have been formed: 1.The author's discourse in this work prescribes a kind of complete homogeneity with the West. 2. In his discourse, the author seeks to strike at the Iranian government as an outsider. 

2. Literature Review
There are many articles, treatises and books that have used Van Dyke's theoretical foundations to analyze non-literary texts, and most of them are in the field of political and media texts. Here are some of them: Azad (2008), Khalouzadeh et al. (2012), Khajeh and Khan Mohammad (2009), Eris (2013), Ghiasian et al. (2014), Aghagolzadeh and Firoozian Pourasfahani (2016), Rezaeipour and Ahmadi (2016) ), Niazi et al. (2015) and Firoozian Pourasfahani et al. (2015). Due to the limited pages of the article and the importance of data analysis, we will suffice to introduce the same number of researches and refrain from further explanation about them. It is worth mentioning that in recent years, there are articles in which modern Iranian poetry has been analyzed using the Van Dijk model. These articles include the following: Critical Discourse Analysis of the Story of “Rostam and Shaqad” based on Van Dijk’s Ideological Square, Hamedi, Z. & Zarghani, M. (2014). Interconnection of nature descriptions and society situation in Mehdi Akhavaan Sales̕ s poetry by looking at critical discourse analysis, Mirahmadi, M. & Tajalli, A. (2017). Analysis of Implicit Critical Discourse and Ideology with Emphasis on the Poetry of Ahmad Shamloo Based on the Theories of Ferklaf and Van Dijk, Jahandide, S. (2016).
This result was obtained by examining the content of studies related to Van Dijk's theory: So far, no research has been done on the subject of the present study, ie the critical discourse analysis of the Iranian socio-political novel based on the ideological square model. Therefore, the present study addressed this issue and problem in order to compensate for the gap and deficiency in this type of research. 

3. Methodology
In this research, the data collection method is library and the research method is descriptive-analytical. After studying the background of the issue and the subject of the research, the authors, by referring to the text of the story, extracted its discourse-oriented sentences, in which 26 speeches were identified. In the next step, the collected discourses, which contained discourse-oriented constructs, were analyzed based on Van Dijk's ideological square. After qualitative analysis, using quantitative frequency analysis, the frequency percentage of each discourse strategy was presented. 
4. Discussion
The dual structure of the present discourse is elaborated by a comparison between the West and Iran based on "insider / outsider" polarization. The author, stating that the people of the West (insiders) with the help of the press and government criticism, have been able to eliminate corruption in their countries, considers the problem of the authoritarian Iranian society in the lack of transparency and intolerance of political rulers (outsiders). In general, using the strategy of polarization, the actors present in the discourse are divided into two poles, "insider" and "outsider", and it is on the basis of this polarization that the author's ideology is embodied. Examining the studied discourse, a total of 52 "polarizations" were found that form the semantic structure of the story. Using the strategy of "ambiguity", which is one of the strategies considered by Van Dijk in the category of meaning, the author has diminished the identity of the Qajar rulers in his discourse. In this discourse, actors are generally described in relation to their job, social status, and physical characteristics. Another common example in the author's discourse is the description of religious leaders in relation to their jobs. The author shows his non-religious ideology in speech 9, describing the job and characteristics of "Mullah Mohammad Ali". In his discourse, the author sometimes uses metaphors such as "treasure" and the like to make something more valuable or even more objective, such as Iran's natural mines and capitals. In connection with these metaphors, the author presents his ideology, which is generally a critique of the government in Iran. The author sometimes depicts the behavior of negative actors inhumanely through the use of derogatory metaphors. Metaphor in this author's discourse is not a decorative element, but a means of expressing ideology. In total, metaphor with 39 repetitions in this discourse is one of the most frequent strategies in this study.
For describing us (the west), the author uses ideological strategies such as polarization, comparison, implicit, dramatization and irony in order to reflect the spirit of freedom, loyalty and hard diligent in the text. Besides, for representing them (Iranian government), he applies the strategies such as actor description, hyperbole, and number game to demonstrate the characteristics of greed, tyranny, regression, and deception to his audience.

5. Conclusion
In this study, the issue of ideological strategies based on Ebrahim Beyg's travelogue was considered to show the author's method of positive representation of the West and negative description of the Iranian government. Based on Van Dijk's theory, the present text was examined and it was found that in it, the author, using polarization between two groups of insiders (West) and outsiders (Iranian government), paid attention to the general strategy of producing ideological discourse. Strategies such as polarization, comparison, implication, and dramatization were used to positively represent the "insider" group. And strategies such as actor description, Hyperbole, and number game have been used to describe the "outsider" group in the present discourse. Based on Van Dijk's ideological square, it was observed that the author emphasizes the strengths of the Westerners (insider group) and does not mention any negative features for them (except in relation to the colonial case). On the other hand, it highlights the weaknesses of the "outsider" group (the rulers of Iran) and lightly represents their positive characteristics



Volume 15, Issue 6 (3-2024)
Abstract

Travelogues are considered one of the most important sources for understanding one's "Self" in the mirror of the "Other." When the "Self" is represented in a travelogue, it always reveals a part of the "Other" reality to the readers. The selection of words in order to represent reality through "dialogism of naming" is related to the field of "praxematics." Praxematics, as a type of semantics, analyzes the production of meaning in language and the processes of transitioning from language to discourse through various social, cultural, and linguistic actions. In this regard, examining "reformulation" in a travelogue text can be seen as the main issue of research, shedding light on the mechanisms of auto ـ dialogism where the narrator engages in a conversation with their own discourse. Accordingly, the travelogue book "A Three ـ Year Voyage in Asia" by Arthur de Gobineau, a famous French writer, has been selected as the research source. The aim of the research is to uncover the linguistic dimensions and novel ways of introducing the "Other" into one's own language in the travelogue. In this article, while introducing praxematics theory, we attempt to examine the process of reformulation in Gobineau's travelogue and answer the following questions: How can reformulation be expressed at the linguistic level in introducing the "Other", and to what extent will this contribute to effective intercultural dialogue? The results of the research indicate that despite printing and expressive gaps, Gobineau strives to create a balance between the "Self" and the "Other" worlds at the linguistic level and largely maintains a naming process that is free from racial and colonial perspectives.


1. Introduction
The dialectical relationship between the "Self" and the "Other" in a travelogue relies on the reorganization of the "Other" to introduce them to the lector, which drives the author towards narrative and repetitive reiterations. This occurs either by reusing the same words or by transcribing the words of the "Other" into the language of the "Self." The choice of words to describe reality is connected to the "dialogism of naming," a domain within "praxematics." In this context, the travelogue “Trois ans en Asie” [Three Years in Asia] by Arthur de Gobineau, a renowned French writer, was selected as the research source. Gobineau is known in Iran following his orientalism studies. In his travelogue, he stated that he endeavored to avoid presenting any correct or incorrect views of the superiority of the "Self" over Iranians and, as much as possible, to view subjects from their perspective before making any one-sided judgments. Accordingly, it is assumed that the traveler also adhered to this principle during the reformulation process at the linguistic level. Thus, this article aims to examine the reformulation process that leads to the naming of the "Other" in Gobineau's travelogue using the praxematics theory. It seeks to answer these questions: How can reformulation lead to the introduction of the "Other" at the linguistic level, and to what extent does this facilitate intercultural dialogue? Hence, the examination of reformulation in the original version of the travelogue is conducted along three main lines: auto-dialogism reformulation, reformulation and dialogisation interdiscursive, and reformulation and dialogisation interlocutive.

2. Literature Review
Various studies have been conducted in the fields of semiotics of discourse. Among the most notable is Hamidreza Shaeiri's work titled “Tajziye va Tahlil-e Neshāne-Ma’nāsenākhti-ye Goftemān” [Analysis of semiotics of discourse] (2013), published by Samt, which examines discursive operations, the cognitive, perceptual-emotional, affective, and aesthetic dimensions of discourse, and ultimately the conditions for the production of meaning in different discourses. Regarding Arthur de Gobineau, research has been conducted on his fictional work “Nouvelles asiatiques” [The Asian short storys] in Iran. Mohammadreza Farsian and Somayeh Khabir, in their article "Barresi-e tatbiqi-e zanmadārāne qesse-hāye hezār o yek shab va dāstān hāye āsiyaāe Gobineau [Women in One Thousand and One Nights and Asian Novels of Gobineau: A Comparative Study]" (2018) in the Journal of Contemporary World Literature Research, analyze the manifestations of women in “One Thousand and One Nights” and Gobineau's “Nouvelles asiatiques”, discussing the author's influence from “One Thousand and One Nights”. However, to date, no study using the praxematics theory at the linguistic level has examined reorganization in literary texts in Iran. In this context, the research corpus is based on the original text of Count de Gobineau's travelogue “Trois ans en Asie” (1859).

3. Methodology
The praxematics is a linguistic theory that, within an anthropological and realist framework, focuses on the analysis of meaning production in language, examining the processes that transition from "language" to "discourse" through various social, cultural, and linguistic actions. The concept of action-semantics was introduced by Robert Lafont, a linguist, literary historian of Occitan literature, poet, and French novelist who coined the term "internal colonization" (Ruchon, 2018, p. 185). This theory documents the role of language within cultural and social actions and critiques Saussurean linguistics for its lack of interest in the conditions of sign production in languages (Ruchon, 2018, p. 185). Arthur de Gobineau, the distinguished French traveler and writer, visited Iran from 1855 to 1858 and penned the notable travelogue “Trois ans en Asie”. His work in Orientalism had a considerable influence in Iran. Therefore, among the reformulations gathered from the travelogue, certain instances were selected for analysis. Following the description of the types of reformulation, their linguistic value, and dialogic nature, the samples were categorized in statistical charts to reveal the traveler's tendency towards each type of reformulation and dialogism.

4. Results
The results of the research on the travelogue “Trois ans en Asie”, based on the praxematics theory, indicate that Gobineau often utilized alternating reorganization through the use of markers like "ou" and commas, which are based on the principle of balance. These markers maintain the equal status of both the source and target statements without creating any syntactic or cognitive hierarchy between them. Additionally, in almost all the instances found, the reformulation moves from the foreign towards the familiar, suggesting a value of generalization and an approach close to lexicography. This alternation and balance between the source and target statements facilitate intercultural dialogue between the "Self" and the "Other." Pragmatically, this type of reformulation is performed in an interlocutive manner and with an inherently educational purpose, as the dynamic act of generalization brings the "Other" closer to the "Self."

 


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