The discourse of Kurdish traditional textiles

Verbal communication is not the only way by which people can interact; people communicate with each other throughdifferent signs, colours, cultural symbols and costumes. One of the ways that people can communicate through isclothes or textiles. The language of textiles and its covert discourse have not been studied profoundly. Each bit of textilehas its specific meaning. Through the discourse of their clothes, people try to show their nationality, age, gender, socialstatus, geographical belonging etc. Kurdish traditional clothes are believed to be culturally rich, since they are dressedby a large number of people in the past and present. This study is an attempt to examine the relationship betweendiscourse and clothes. It tries to study the hidden discourse of Kurdish traditional textiles. The study seeks to answerseveral questions, including: What do the clothes say about the people who wear them? How different types of clothesshow different forms of people’s identity? How do clothes reveal the people’s nationality, age, gender, geographicalterritory and social class? The principles of discourse analysis, more specifically Foucault’s approach of materialdiscourses, are used to investigate the collected data. The study uses a mixed approach of quantitative and qualitativemethods. The data are collected in three ways: by analysing the photo albums, a survey and a site visit to Kurdish TextileMuseum in Erbil. The study concludes that the pieces of textiles can be seen as linguistic elements in communicationsand Kurdish traditional clothes embraces specific cultural codes and symbols that can be used to reveal the discoursesthey embrace.