Exploring rhetorical-discursive practices of Rouhani’s presidential campaign and victory of his prudence-and-hope key: a discourse of persuasion

Sentence structure in Rouhani's political discourse

Parallel lines

Parallelism is the application of similar syntactic structures and gives harmony and power to the speech (Biria & Mohammadi, 2012, p. 1298). Below is an example of parallelism used in Rouhani's speech. Parallelism can include a contrasting of the two opposing ideas given in adjacent phrases. A parallel structure drawn upon sentences is at work to group items together and to unify them to reflex the notion of related elements through the following parallel lines:

Barnameh-e dolat-e tadbir-o omid ta'amol-e sazandeh ba jahan ast, va na taghabol, va jay-e in taghabol ra ta'amol khahad gereft.

The government of prudence and hope's plan is to dialogue constructively with the world, and not to confront, and this confrontation will be replaced by dialogue.

An antithesis parallelism is drawn across an alliterative utterance in which a contrast is made between the paralleled elements (Woods, 2006). What the government of prudence and hope plans to do is contrasted with what it plans not to do, and “taghabol” (confrontation) is contrasted with “ta'amol” (dialogue). Through a parallel structure, the elements are grouped, and the audience is engaged in comparing the two ideas (confrontation with dialogue).

In Goffman's idea of participation frameworks and production formats a particular instance of speech can be broken down into animator, author and principal. As the ultimate animator, author and principal, Rouhani represented the conflict between the moderation party's political views or agenda and that of the fundamentalist party.

In terms of text distribution, Rouhani uses already existing texts to create his speech. In Fairclough's (2010) view, for any particular text there is a set of other relevant texts and voices which are potentially incorporated into the text. Fairclough observes the relationships among different discourses and relates text analysis with social structure. Intertextuality opens up difference by bringing other voices into a text. Resorting to intertextuality, Rouhani embedded the fundamentalist's voice into the text implicitly. This intertextuality accentuates the dialogicality of a text (Fairclough, 2003), the dialogue between Rouhani's voice as the author of a text and another opposing voice. As can be seen, confrontation and dialogue are in marked contrast to each other. Focusing on the current government's foreign policy, he replaced Ahmadinezhad's wording by his ideologically contrastive assertion i.e., this confrontation will be replaced by dialogue. The following example is a parallelism which was used to group and contrast different ideas: “strong prudence not beautiful sentences” with “action not claims”, and “objective truth not advertising movies” with “resistance in insight and providence not the colorful posters and lustrous headquarters”. The paralleled structures and ideas combine to create a unified sense and powerful impact.

Faghat az mardom mikhaham keh na be jomalat-e ziba keh be tadabir-e mohkam, na be edea'aha keh be amalkardha va na be filmhay-e tablighati keh be vagheiyat-e e'ini na be se- tadhay-e por zargh o bargh o posterhaye rangi balkeh be esteghamat dar nazar va ayandehne- gari ra'i dehan. (3^rd debate).

I only ask people to vote for strong prudence not beautiful sentences, action not claims, and the objective truth not advertising movies, strength in insight and foresight not the colorful posters and lustrous headquarters.

Rouhani discreetly invited the audience to assume that the strong prudence, reliable action and strength in insight and foresight are his qualities as a president and reflected in his policies.

The visual symbol in Rouhani's political discourse

Last but by no means least, acting in a creative way, Rouhani signified his metaphorical political message simply by a familiar visual object, a key, implying that everything is locked, and he has the key to resolve Iran's problems. Using the key symbol, as a visual interpretation of his campaign objectives, he tried to reach out to all sectors of the society, especially the grassroots, influencing their views and helping them more easily envisage his campaign's central message.

Beyond words, visual representations and symbols can be employed by political leaders to affect the electorate's emotions. Rouhani's presidential campaign symbol was a “key” he pledged it would solve Iran's problems, namely, failed nuclear negotiations, the collapsing currency value, and the sanctions. The key represented a metaphor to make the audience hopeful about practical solutions for Iran's future. It enabled him to embody his message in “hope” and “prudence”, and it was a major boost for him to reach out to voters in the society through this visual symbol. The strength of ideology expressed by Fairclough (1989, p. 208) as “the camera doesn 't lie” (Fairclough, 1989, p. 208). The key allowed political advertising to more effectively create a world which the audience may be lead to inhabit and played a significant role in Rouhani's victory.

Concluding remarks

In this study, we examined Iran's 11^th presidential campaign discourse and looked into Rouhani's use of rhetorical and persuasive linguistic devices which enabled him to present his political ideology and, potentially, had a positive role in his subsequent election victory. Linguistic-discursive elements of political discourse were analyzed in a bottom-up style to build up a picture of how these elements might have contributed to Rouhani's political discourse characterization. A CDA approach, drawing upon Fairclough (2010), was adopted to explain the socio-cultural, religious, and political values underlying the rhetoric documented in the dataset.

The main purpose of political speeches is “primarily persuasion rather than information or entertainment” (Dedaic, 2006, p. 700). These speeches are considered as purposeful interaction between the political figure and the electorate, in which the speaker's goal is to influence the electorate to accept the speaker's views and support him/her with their ballots. To be able to achieve their goals, politicians use a variety of rhetorical strategies to construct a trustworthy image of themselves, responding to the concerns of their voters, and showing inclusiveness and solidarity with them.

Our findings indicate that Rouhani's political discourse was spiced up with different rhetorical devices, aiming at making the audience accept his views, thoughts, and policies. He criticized the current socioeconomic and cultural situation of Iran by virtue of different devices to embed his messages deep into the electorate's mind i.e., Iran has many problems and the blame is on the existing government mismanagement and wrong policies. Being considered as a critic of the current situation, and a person who emphasized to put an end to it, Rouhani was able to increase his chance to win the election. The central pillar of his success was his political performance. He separated himself from the current situation and then challenged it and gained the support of those who said no to the existing situation.

Moreover, Rouhani's campaign could possibly be seen as a social struggle at the institutional level, and as a more general struggle at the societal level between moderates and fundamentalists. Rouhani's points of view which were represented all over his speeches, debates, interviews, messages, and slogans were his administration's standpoints. He did not deliver them as an individual, but rather as a representative of a certain party, the moderate party. Rouhani's goal was more than trying to influence the electorate and their knowledge about what is best for them to do to get rid of the current plight and misery ensued from the fundamentalist party's wrong policies. He aspired to put an end to the status quo by enforcing his agency and the assertive tone and structures in his speeches.

The findings can be of interest to those interested in discourse analysis. Having a critical attitude offers a new perspective on language, which considers language use as a questionable and problematic issue, and reflects social and ideological processes and constitutes a resource to act upon those processes. However, it is worth mentioning that the area of CDA, in general, and political discourse analysis, in particular, is a vast area, and this case study is by no means a complete account of how CDA can be employed to dissect the different types of discourses that have the manipulative power to marginalize some and empower others for further research it is suggested to investigate the upcoming presidential election in 2017, to compare Rouhani's campaign strategies with findings of this study and potentially trace the shift in his next campaign cornerstone. Researchers can also do a comparative study between the moderate ideology advocated by Rouhani's campaign speeches and fundamentalist's ideology advocated by Ahmadinezhad's speeches.

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