Critical discourse analysis of religious political discourse in some Iraqi election campaigns

This paper examines religious political discourse in Iraqi election campaigns, as presented by various Islamic parties with religious backgrounds. These include the Sadrist Movement, led by Saiyed Muqtada al-Sadr in the 2021 parliamentary elections, the Fatah Alliance, affiliated with the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), and the State of Law Coalition, led by Nouri al-Maliki. The categories proposed by Van Dijk (1997) topics, superstructure, syntax, lexicon, and rhetoric - as well as Norman Fairclough's three-dimension model serve as the foundation for the analysis. For his analysis, the researcher uses two instances of each party. The analysis's findings showed that the speeches' general structures were very similar, but there were some intriguing distinctions in certain areas. They also showed how Iraqi religious political groups employ allusions to Islam to support their political agendas. There were some similarities and differences between their speeches, but the similarities show how the topics and the situations at the time of the speeches were similar, while the differences show how each speaker approaches recognizing issues and offering solutions, as well as his own unique style of expression..