Ideological Representation of Women's Oppression in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale
A Critical Discourse Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31973/aj.v3i138.1771Keywords:
Ideology, Critical Discourse Analysis, oppression, Van Dijk's ideological Square, The Handmaid's TaleAbstract
The abuse of women is an issue that persists throughout the ages till the present time because people are still living in a world of a dominated idea which is known as man is the self and woman is the other. So the objective of this research paper is to argue this global issue using Van Dijk's Ideological Square (1998) as a framework so as to examine the ideologies that underline the use of language in The Handmaid’s Tale. It is hypothesized that the ideology of oppression is exposed in the novel throughout using the ideological strategies of positive- self presentation and negative-other presentation. Ultimately, it concludes that the novelist employs both, male and female, characters to consistently ridicule and offer negative coverage about women and to increasingly align and offer favorable comments about men to present the world of patriarchy from a different perspective.
Downloads
References
Atwood, M. (1996). The Handmaid's Tale, London: Vintage.
Briggs, J. (2006). Cochrane Qualitative Research Methods Group. The Cochrane Collaboration, Available at: http://www.joannabriggs.eduau/ cqrmg/role.html.
Cook, G. (1990) Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hardiman, R., Jackson, B. W., & Griffin, P. (2010). Conceptual foundations. In B. Adams, Castaneda, Hackman, Peters & Zْniga (Eds.), Readings for diversity and social justice (pp. 26-35). New York, NY: Routledge.
Schiffrin, D. (2006). Discourse. In R. Fasold &J. Connor-Linton (Eds.) An introduction to Language and Linguistics (pp. 169-203). Cambridge: CUP.
Van Dijk T.A. (1998). Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach. London: Sage Publication Ltd.
Van Dijk T.A. (2011). Discourse, knowledge, power and politics: Towards Critical Epistemic Discourse Analysis. In Christopher J. Hart (Ed.), Critical Discourse Studies in Context and Cognition (pp. 27-63). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Van Dijk, T.A (1983) Discourse Analysis: Its Development and Application to the Structure of News, Journal of Communication. Vol. 33(2) pp. 20-43
Van Dijk, T.A (2000). Parliamentary Debates. Dins Wodak, R; van Dijk, T. A. (ed.) (2000) Racism at the top. Parliamentary Discourse on Ethnic Issues in Six European States. Klangenfurt, Austria, Drava Verlag.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright and Licensing:
For all articles published in Al-Adab journal, copyright is retained by the authors. Articles are licensed under an open access Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, meaning that anyone may download and read the paper for free. In addition, the article may be reused and quoted provided that the original published version is cited. These conditions allow for maximum use and exposure of the work.
Reproducing Published Material from other Publishers: It is absolutely essential that authors obtain permission to reproduce any published material (figures, schemes, tables or any extract of a text) which does not fall into the public domain, or for which they do not hold the copyright. Permission should be requested by the authors from the copyrightholder (usually the Publisher, please refer to the imprint of the individual publications to identify the copyrightholder).
Permission is required for: Your own works published by other Publishers and for which you did not retain copyright.
Substantial extracts from anyones' works or a series of works.
Use of Tables, Graphs, Charts, Schemes and Artworks if they are unaltered or slightly modified.
Photographs for which you do not hold copyright.
Permission is not required for: Reconstruction of your own table with data already published elsewhere. Please notice that in this case you must cite the source of the data in the form of either "Data from..." or "Adapted from...".
Reasonably short quotes are considered fair use and therefore do not require permission.
Graphs, Charts, Schemes and Artworks that are completely redrawn by the authors and significantly changed beyond recognition do not require permission.
Obtaining Permission
In order to avoid unnecessary delays in the publication process, you should start obtaining permissions as early as possible. If in any doubt about the copyright, apply for permission. Al-Adab Journal cannot publish material from other publications without permission.
The copyright holder may give you instructions on the form of acknowledgement to be followed; otherwise follow the style: "Reproduced with permission from [author], [book/journal title]; published by [publisher], [year].' at the end of the caption of the Table, Figure or Scheme.
How to Cite
