Wedding Invitation Genre: Communicating Sociocultural Identities of Iraqi Society

Abstract

The present study examined the genre of Iraqi wedding invitation cards (WICs) in terms of its textual and visual components, and the impact of the social norms and assumptions on the articulation of these components. Drawing upon three analytic tools, namely, genre analysis proposed by Swales (1990) and Bhatia (2004), semiotic analysis suggested by Kress and Van Leeuwen (2001), and critical discourse analysis advocated by Fairclough (2010), a sample of 250 WICs was selected to be considered for analysis. Corpus analysis showed that Iraqi WICs varied in terms of their non-linguistic features like printed forms, colors, layouts, calligraphy, graphics, and paper materials. On the other hand, the underlying schematic organization of Iraqi WICs was built around seven component moves. Furthermore, Islamic religious beliefs and Iraqi socio-cultural system were clearly encoded in these wedding invitation texts affecting their organization structure.

Arabic Feminist Discourse: Insights from Wedding Invitation Cards in Jordan

“…Most of the studies conducted on WICs are concerned with a general analysis of the structure of WICs. Most researchers were concerned in analyzing all moves (i.e., the components of WIC such as the opening, heading, and identifying the bride and groom) on the WICs (e.g., Al-Ali 2006, Momani & Al-Refaei 2010, Gomaa 2010, Sharif & Yarmohammadi 2013, Sawalmeh 2014, Sawalmeh 2015, Faramarzi, Elekeai & Tabrizi 2015, Al-Zubaidi 2017, Thani & Hei 2017, Sawalmeh 2018and Yasmin, Naseem & Sohail 2019. Besides analyzing the style of WICs in different countries, researchers often have tried to figure out the motivating factors for selecting a particular format.…”