Cover not available

Article published In: Language, Culture and Society
Vol. 7:2 (2025) ► pp.196–223

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

Who gets the thumbs up?

Navigating polycentric desires in Iranian blind dates

ORCiD logo with link | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
ORCiD logo with link | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Published online: 13 January 2026
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lcs.25009.man
Abstract
This study explores Iranian “Blind Date” YouTube shows as discursive spaces where subjects navigate the tensions between patriarchal-Islamist values and global liberal-consumerist ideologies. Drawing on Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. University of Texas Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar concept of chronotopes and expanded through the frameworks of scales and polycentricity (Blommaert, J. (2015). Chronotopes, scales, and complexity in the study of language in society. Annual Review of Anthropology, 44(1), 105–116. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), the article analyses how participants construct hybrid identities in a liminal social condition, marked by the overlapping and often conflicting discourses shaping contemporary Iranian society. Through qualitative content analysis of ten highly viewed episodes, including coding of conversations, gestures, and aesthetics, the study reveals how everyday performances reflect deeply embedded gender norms, economic expectations, and cultural contradictions. The shows function as hybrid chronotopic spaces where traditional matchmaking rituals intersect with globalized reality TV formats, exposing scalar tensions between micro-level interactions, meso-level societal norms, and macro-level ideologies. This study argues that these online dating programs not only represent the sociopolitical dynamics of post-revolutionary Iran, but also actively reproduce and negotiate the discursive struggles around modernity, tradition, gender, and agency. Ultimately, Iranian blind dates offer insight into the evolving modes of subjectivity and power in an ideologically divided yet interconnected society.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Historical background
  • 3.Theoretical debate
  • 4.Data and methods
  • 5.Analysis of context in blind date shows
  • 6.Discursive practice in blind date
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
References (26)
Bibliography
Afary, Janet. (2011). Sexual Politics in Modern Iran. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Akhavan, Niki. (2013). Electronic Iran. Rutgers University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Attride-Stirling, Jennifer. (2001). Thematic networks: an analytic tool for qualitative research. Qualitative Research. Sage Publication.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bayat, Asef. (2013). Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. Stanford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2010). Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in Global South and North. Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. University of Texas Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi. K. (1994). The Location of Culture. Routledge. London.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blommaert, J. (2015). Chronotopes, scales, and complexity in the study of language in society. Annual Review of Anthropology, 44(1), 105–116. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2017). Commentary: Mobility, contexts, and the chronotope. Language in Society, 46(1), 95–99. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2018). Durkheim and the Internet: On Sociolinguistics and the Sociological Imagination. Bloomsbury Academic. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2020). Commentary: Chronotopes, synchronization and formats. Language & Communication, 701, 132–135. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. (2004). Undoing Gender. Routledge. London. UK. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cheves, Belle Devlin. (2023). Untidy Households: Kinship, Service, and Affect in Nineteenth-Century Qajar Iran. Doctoral dissertation. Harvard University.
Dunning, John. (1998). On the Air: The Encyclopaedia of Old-Time Radio. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jamshidi, S., & Rezaei, S. (2021). On the dissemination of the discourse of going: The case of Iranian for-profit study abroad institution’s chronotopic representation of ideal life there. Language & Communication, 801, 11–24. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Karimzad, Farzad & Catedral, Lydia. (2021). Chronotopes and migration: Language, social imagination, and behavior. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kermani, Hossein. (2025). Twitter Activism in Iran: Social Media and Democracy in Authoritarian Regimes. Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matin-Asghari, Afshin. (2018). Oxford Handbook of Iran. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mirsepassi, Ali. (2000). Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization. Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mottahedeh, Narges and Sara, Saljoughi. (2012). Rethinking Gender in Contemporary Iranian Art and Cinema. Iranian Studies. Vol. 45, No,4. Pp. 499–502. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Najmabadi, Afsaneh. (2005). Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity. University of California Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2004). The Morning After: Travail of Sexuality and love in Modern Iran. International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 36, No.3. Pp.367–385.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Panjebashi, Elahe. (2022). A Study of the Evolution of Traditional Iranian Marriage through the Presentation of a Qajar-Era Iranian Painting in the Bonhams Auction. Iran Anthropological Researches. 231, 181–208Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Parsa, Misagh. (2016). Democracy in Iran: Why It Failed and How It Might Succeed. Harvard University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shariati, Ali. (1971). Fatemeh is Fatemeh. Hosseinieh Ershad Press. Tehran. IranGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Williams, Michael & Tami Moser. (2019). The Art of Coding and Thematic Exploration in Qualitative Research. International Management Review. 15. 1.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue