Women’s representations in Turkish folk song lyrics: A critical discourse analysis based on Fairclough’s Three-Dimensional Model

The lyrics of folk songs in the Turkish Folk Music repertoire constitute an important body of cultural data for examining how women’s identities are represented through social roles, cultural values, and gender discourses. This study aims to reveal the social roles, thematic structures, and discursive practices through which women’s identities are represented in the lyrics of folk songs included in the TRT Turkish Folk Music repertoire. The study was designed within a qualitative research framework and employed a two-stage analytical model. In the first stage, 500 folk songs randomly selected from the TRT repertoire were examined using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) thematic analysis model. In the second stage, the themes identified were interpreted at the levels of text, discursive practice, and social practice in accordance with Fairclough’s (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis approach. Intercoder agreement was calculated at 86%. The findings indicate that women’s identities are predominantly represented through the roles of beloved/lover (yar) (58%), bride (16%), wife (11%), daughter (7%), and mother (6%). Forms of social, familial, and male-dominated pressure directed toward women were identified in 23.8% of the folk songs, while body-centered representations and discourses of objectification were found in 18.2%. Within a repertoire dominated by male narrators, songs voiced from a woman’s perspective accounted for only 7.6%, while positive or idealized representations of women remained at a relatively low level of 4.4%. Nevertheless, some female-voiced narratives contained discursive markers indicative of female agency and resistance. The critical discourse analysis further demonstrates that women are predominantly defined in relation to male narrators’ desires and expectations and within socially prescribed roles, while women’s identities are discursively reproduced through relational roles, bodily discourses, and family-centered identities. By contrast, the relatively limited number of female-voiced folk songs create alternative discursive spaces that render visible women’s experiences of oppression, violence, forced marriage, separation from home (gurbet), and longing. The study therefore suggests that folk songs should be understood not merely as aesthetic and folkloric products, but also as cultural texts that may contribute to the discursive reproduction of patriarchal gender norms, constructions of womanhood, and cultural memory. The study makes an original contribution to the literature by systematically examining the TRT repertoire on a national scale, integrating thematic analysis with critical discourse analysis, and evaluating representations of women within the frameworks of feminist musicology and gender theories.