A Text Analysis of Iranian Ex-President's Response to Trump's Remarks on the Joint Comprehensive of Action

Abstract This study made an attempt to analyze the Iranian president’s response to the US president regarding Iran’s nuclear deal called ‘the JCPOA’ on the basis of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar. This study made an attempt to explore Mr. Rohani’s speech and functionally explore what linguistic features he had used to convey his message and impress the audience. This paper intended to analyze the speech from functional perspective and discover how metafunctions were dealt with and what kinds of processes Rohani had employed. This paper also intended to find out points of departures president Rohani had selected as the theme of his utterances. Rohani made an endeavor to remind Trump and also the Iranian nation of all the US hostility towards Iranian nation during forty years. By using very simple sentences and the frequent use of the pronoun ‘you’, he tried to heavily criticize president Trump and his administration for their alleged and possible exit of JCPOA. His use of modality was intended to challenge the US president’s decision about the nuclear deal. He also used modal verb of ‘will’ to express his threat, promises, and Iranian abidance by the deal. By selecting the expressions of ‘the US government’, ‘Iran’, ‘you (Trump), ‘the deal’, and ‘the revolutionary guard’ as his most frequent themes, he highlighted their prominence as they would play a great role not only in his speech but also in the Persian Gulf area. As an example of discourse analysis, this study may help readers to learn how linguistic factors help develop the textuality of the text, how they serve the political purposes of politicians, and how they enable the speakers to persuade or dissuade the audience and to instill their ideologies into the mind of them. Key words: Discourse Analysis, Iran, Nuclear deal, Systemic Functional Linguistics, Transitivity