This study investigates the discursive construction of authority, modality, and obligation in online administrative notices issued by Iraqi universities. Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and adopting Norman Fairclough’s (1995) [7] three-dimensional model, the research analyzes a corpus of Arabic-language notices collected from official university websites and social media platforms. The analysis is conducted at three levels: textual (linguistic features), discursive practice (production and distribution), and social practice (ideological and institutional context).
The findings reveal a systematic reliance on strong modal expressions such as يجب (must) and يمنع (prohibited), along with imperative forms, to construct non-negotiable obligations and enforce institutional authority. Additionally, the frequent use of impersonal constructions and nominalizations serves to depersonalize directives, presenting them as objective rules rather than subjective commands. At the discursive level, intertextual references to ministerial regulations enhance the legitimacy of the notices, while digital dissemination maintains a predominantly one-way communicative structure. At the social level, the discourse reflects an underlying ideology of discipline, compliance, and hierarchical control within Iraqi higher education institutions.
The study concludes that Iraqi university administrative discourse is characterized by a “culture of directives,” where language functions as a key mechanism for reproducing institutional power and regulating behavior. This research contributes to expanding CDA into underexplored Arabic institutional contexts and provides insights into the linguistic realization of authority in non-Western academic settings.