BROKEN PROMISES AND BROKEN HEARTS. Analyzing discourse in English on the erasure of Afghan women’s identity

This volume explores the multimodal aspects of the gender apartheid imposed on women and girls in Afghanistan by the Taliban government. It shares heartbreaking real-life stories collected by the author and investigates how Afghan women express both their collective and individual identities in response to Taliban efforts to silence them. The volume examines the discourse surrounding the withdrawal of Western forces from Afghanistan in 2021 and its effects—the forced silence of Afghan women and the erasure of their identities. A socio-cultural discourse analysis of the U.S.-Taliban Agreement demonstrates the asymmetrical relationship between the two negotiating parties and how this imbalance has contributed to the current situation in Afghanistan. Within the overarching framework of systemic-functional linguistics, the volume also investigates how power is contextualized, gained, and lost, particularly in relation to cultural constraints affecting dress codes, which are considered meaning-making resources in socio-semiotic multimodal research. Despite the Taliban government's edicts to suppress women's voices, the study identifies various textual strategies Afghan women have employed to resist the suppression of their voices and identities. This work presents the concept of visual politics and examines the power of discourse, as well as power in and through discourse. Political events create discourse, but discourse, in turn, shapes political events. The volume emphasizes that the voices of Afghan women must continue to be heard, and we are their voices.