Representation of the Kurds in 19th-Century Travel Narratives

Abstract

In the nineteenth century, European travelers spread across many parts of the world; Kurdistan was no exception in their plans. Many of the travelers focused on exploring Kurds from their perspectives. This research study aims to investigate how Kurds are depicted in the 19th- century travel discourse. For this purpose, the study adopts a corpus-stylistic method within a critical discourse analysis framework. In order to consolidate its analysis and interpretation, the study utilizes principles of the Orientalist framework by Edward Said. The study built a corpus of eight British narrative discourse accounts. By employing AntConc tools, the study constructed a body of text totaling over 1,100,934 tokens, and then analyzed keywords, collocates, clusters, and concordances. Results show that Kurds were repeatedly depicted as homogenizing people and frequently were linked to violence, lawlessness, and tribal people. The use of plural forms like “Kurds/Koords” supports the collective identity while neglecting the potential of individuals. Recurring clusters such as “Kurds are” and Collocates like “armed,” “ravages,” and “savage” indicated negative semantic prosody in line with Orientalist framework principles of Othering and binary oppositions. However, there were neutral and sympathetic representations; they were mainly shaped in comparison to other groups, thus preserving hierarchies that existed in imperial discourse. The study revealed that the corpus stylistic approach offers an experimental basis for detecting textual perspectives and ideological constructs, providing new insights into the connection of language, representation and imperial authority.