Gender and Feminine Identity in Present Songs of Iran

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran.

Abstract

The objective of this study was toexamine gender and the construction of feminine identity in contemporary love songs of Iran. The overall objective of this study was to examine the representation of femininity in Iranian songs, as songs are regarded as a significant artifact of media that has a significant cultural impact by attracting a large audience. In order to examine the paradigm of male-female roles that is embedded in the lyrics of the tracks, a qualitative approach was implemented, and the study is classified as a thematic analysis.
A statistical society was established by selecting 50 songs from the tracks of more renowned singers as the statistical sample, from a vast array of tracks in the market that are all sung by male singers in accordance with governmental regulations within the five-year period of 2017 to 2022. Coding was employed to conduct thematic content analysis, which concentrated on the themes of linguistic descriptions of feminine roles. The coding processwas conducted by three programmers. The Krippendorff’s alpha coefficient was utilized to evaluate the reliability of coders, and the coding demonstrated sufficient reliability. The analysis of the sample of love songs in terms of feminine identity revealed that gender is constructed with three primary roles: 1. Passive and under control, 2. Sexual object and seductive, and 3. Unfaithful and negligent. The findings suggested that the feminine gender construction was devoid of any indication of conscious action, power, or autonomous choice on the part of the female gender. This suggests that femininity is depicted in accordance with the hegemony of a patriotic discourse.

Keywords


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Volume 15, Issue 2
2024
Pages 219-234
  • Receive Date: 15 March 2022
  • Revise Date: 12 June 2022
  • Accept Date: 05 July 2022
  • First Publish Date: 20 April 2024
  • Publish Date: 29 July 2024