CRITICAL STYLISTICS & POWER-KNOWLEDGE DUALITY IN DYSTOPIAN NOVELS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25130/Lang.9.3.P2.16Abstract
The human struggle for the survival enters the ideological realm where language plays a crucial role. Through discourse, power is exercised, realities are constructed, and dominant systems are legitimized in favor of those who are in power. Thus, dystopian fiction illustrates this dynamicity showing how language normalizes oppression and redefines morality. The current study aims at identifying the textual conceptual functions of male and female’s speeches in English and Arabic novels. It also investigates the discursive strategies of power-knowledge duality of gender in both novels. This highlights feminist concerns about how patriarchal discourse marginalizes and controls women, especially through representations of the female body. The current study hypothesizes that man’s domination over women can be manifested both conceptually and textually. It also hypothesizes that despite the cultural differences, similar feminist features emerge in the image of women’s oppression in both English and Arabic novels. In order to test the hypotheses, the research follows the procedures of presenting a theoretical background about critical stylistics as well as power-knowledge duality in relation to the theme of power and feminism which concentrates on the traditional assumption that man is the norm, giving the priority of man’s domination over women. The study has selected American and Arabic novels, namely, the Handmaid’s Tale by Margret Atwood (1986) and Utopia by Ahmed Khalid Tawfik (2008).The choice of the extracts is based on their thematic relevance to the study of power and gendered oppression within totalitarian regimes. The models adopted are Lessly Jeffries’(2010) Critical Stylistics as well as Michael Foucault’s (1980) Power-Knowledge Duality. The analysis reveals significant stylistic and ideological differences between the Handmaid’s Tale and Utopia, highlighting how language reflects and reinforces each text’s vision of power, identity, and resistance. It also reveals that power is maintained by making individuals "knowable", that is, observable, examinable, and classifiable, thus rendering them governable.
References
Bell, H. (2000). Feminism is for everybody: Passionate politics. Libcom.org.
Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (4th ed., p. 32). Sage Publications.
Desai, M. (Ed.). (2014). Feminism and policy approaches for gender-aware development. In Feminism and development (p. 119). Routledge.
Fairclough, N. (1996). A critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language (p. 7). Longman.
Fairclough, N. (2010). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language (2nd ed., p. 69). Longman.
Fairclough, N., & Wodak, R. (1997). Critical discourse analysis. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse studies: A multidisciplinary introduction (Vol. 2, p. 276). Sage.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Random House.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977 (C. Gordon, Ed.). Pantheon Books.
Jeffries, L. (2010). Critical stylistics: The power of English. Palgrave Macmillan.
Nørgaard, N., Busse, B., & Montoro, R. (2010). Key terms in stylistics. A&C Black.
Tong, R. (2009). Feminist thought: A more comprehensive introduction (3rd ed., pp. 284–285, 289). Westview Press.
Tyson, L. (2006). Critical theory today: A user-friendly guide (2nd ed., p.78). Routledge.
