Rebuilding the nation. A discourse analysis on the growing sentiment of preferences for sons in Armenia post-second Nagorno Karabakh war

Abstract

This thesis investigates the language of son bias in Armenia post-Second Nagorno Karabakh War. In the pursuit of this, this study employs the use of Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) and situates it in a theoretical framework comprised of Judith Butler's (2004) conception of gender as performance from their book Undoing Gender, Sandra Harding's (2024) Standpoint Theory, and Post-Conflict Demography. Following the end of the Second Nagorno Karabakh War, as well as continued skirmishes beyond 2020, previous scholarship has largely covered the legal, sociological, political, and historical perspectives of the conflict's gendered aftermath in Armenia. However, not much attention has been given to the discursive functions of language use across Armenian society that has normalized and disseminated son bias. This study therefore addresses this significant gap within the broader study of post-conflict son preferences in Armenia. Through analyzing the discourse produced by the vantage points of political, religious, media, professional, and ordinary citizens' discourse, this study examines the dominant Armenian narratives of motherhood, soldierhood, and post-conflict national recovery. Additionally, this study also places emphasis on how these dominant, repeated narratives are constructed and maintained in an interconnected nature across all societal levels. Thus, the research here rejects the idea of analyzing discourse from a singular, institutional site of power, and present power and knowledge as diffused across society.