A CRITICAL STUDY OF INTER-DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS OF LANGUAGE IN NOVEL TEXTS

Abstract

ABSTRACT Thesis Title: A CRITICAL STUDY OF INTER-DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS OF LANGUAGE IN NOVEL TEXTS This qualitative research aims to explore how language use constructs identity, gender and power relations inter-discursively in the two novel texts – ‘Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco and ‘Trespassing’ by Uzma Aslam Khan. It also examines implications of inter-discursivity and its effects upon meaning making. Chapter 1 critically unfolds the inter-discursivity as deeply linked with interdisciplinarity and intertextuality. It also illustrates assumptions concerning discourses of the texts and research questions. Chapter 2 carefully builds a theoretical framework basing on analytical perspectives of Cultural Studies (CS) and Critical Feminism Discourse Studies (CFDS) and inter-discursive notions of Foucault, Bakhtin, Kristeva, Fairclough, Wodak, Mills, Blommaert, Jorgensen and Phillips, Cixous, Pecheux, van Dijk, Nietzsche, Hutcheon, etc. In Literature Review, specific and relevant views have been critically examined to assess the scope for further research and understanding of perspectives and positions from which the novel texts under study can be explored. Chapter 3 presents the research design that is based on analytical strategy of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), epistemological bearings of analytical perspectives of CS and CFDS and the multidirectional and interdisciplinary model, Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) of Ruth Wodak. The novel texts are extensively analysed and interpreted in chapters 4 and 5 respectively to explore the research questions using Wodak’s DHA that mainly focuses on the contexts and the important five discursive strategies used generally in the discourses to affect specific meanings for the construction of identity, gender and power relations. Based on the intensively carried out analysis and interpretations of the two texts, insights and understandings about inter-discursivity and certain issues of language use are noted and discussed in Chapter 6. Limitations of this study are also discussed in this chapter with the view that inter-discursivity does not stop making further connections, hence the readers of this research can go further to explore and enrich the field of inter-discursivity.