Critical discourse analysis: Power exercise and resistance in selected texts

Rasha Tareq Awad Al-Zubaidi

Abstract


Language has a significant role in the representation of power relationships in discourse. The concept of “power” is a highly contested and debated topic in social sciences and humanities, studies of critical discourse analysis. The aim of the study is to analyse the concept of power through the use of linguistic devices in three different levels namely: text as a whole, sentence level, word level. The study employed a fully qualitative research design to collect the data from the “A thousand splendid suns” novel written by Khaled Hosseini. The theory of Critical Discourse Analysis and the theoretical framework of Thomas Huckin (1997) will be used as a mean to analyse the selected quotes of the novel to analyse the concept of power between characters. The findings showed that there are several types included in the novel namely: superiority of men, rich people, and government and, good values. The study revealed that power depends on the relationships between the individuals of society. The reasons behind the abuse of power are related to ideological, social and political and gender differences.  This study contributes to the limited number of studies of analysing the concept of power in the literary works.


Keywords


Critical Discourse Analysis; CDA; power; Huckin framework; textual Analysis; novel

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References


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