The discourse of civic pride: Hawleri identity as one of the oldest Kurdistani cities in the Middle East

Abstract

Local identity and civic pride have not been comprehensively taken into consideration as the main parameters in the previous studies related to discourse and identity, especially in most of the developing countries. In other words, discourse analysts have not thoroughly studied the mentioned parameters, and systematic data on this path are very scarce. For that purpose, a critical discourse analysis approach was used to study the city identity of “Hawleri” people of Erbil city which is the capital and the most populated city in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, and known as a center for the worship of the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar. Thus, the ultimate goals of this study are to first understand how urban residents tend to group themselves according to the cities and communities they live in, and then to show how they proudly affiliate themselves to geographical regions. The data are taken from the city social media and through a survey distributed among people in Erbil. In order to achieve the goals of this study, the author attempted to investigate (i) how civic pride and urban identity are formed, (ii) in what ways people try to group themselves in the cities, (iii) what is the role of culture in shaping the community identity, (iv) who is called Hawleri, and (v) does the language variety have an impact on speakers’ civic identity, through studying the place, experience, emotions, history, culture, beliefs and language variety of Hawleri people. Additionally, the total number of participants is 809 people (236 people from the online community and 573 people from the survey). This study concludes that civic pride and city identity are found in the discourse of most people. Hawleri people, as the residents of the oldest city in the Middle East, tend to show this feeling and belonging through speaking a local variety of Kurdish language, their textiles and their common culture, history and geographical birthplace. These sentimentalities sometimes lead to discrimination, bias and racism among different ethnicities living in the city.