Discourse Analysis Of Women As Football Fans In Iran

After the Islamic revolution that women have been banned to enter the stadiums for watching men s football matches, there has been some struggles to put an end to this prohibition. The purpose of this research is to identify, explain, understand and comment on the discourses that exist about the Women Fans of Football . In order to achieve the purpose of this research, the researcher has used discourse analysis procedure based on Laclau and Mouffe s theory, to analyze formal statements of religious, political and well-known characters and also checking people s comments on news websites and social media. After the research the collected data have been studied in 3 levels; first level, the conservative Islam authorities, the leader and the legislator. Second, the international level. Third, the civil society level. The researcher has successfully identified a general hegemonic discourse pattern related to women as football fans at first and after that he is trying to see how these identified levels are related to hegemonic discourse. At first level Formal Religious Discourse has been proved and identified as the major discourse which rejects women as football fans. At second level, international discourse challenges hegemonic discourse and also at the third level two certain types were identified that one of them refers to the atmosphere of the stadiums which is nothing but reproduction of hegemonic discourse and the other one deals with women s right to watch football matches live which challenges hegemonic discourse pattern.