A Pragmatic Analysis of the Interior Monologue in Layla Al-Atrash’s “La Toshboh Thatoha”

Abstract

The present study aims at addressing the issue of self in Layla AlAtrash ‘s ‘La Toshboho Thatoha” through applying a pragmatic analysis of her interior monologue relying on the personal deictic expressions of an Arabic discourse used to understand the authorial intentions of the writer. The pragmatic analysis particularly will shed some light on how the protagonist of the novel deployed the personal deictic expressions in her interior monologue to represent her love story and how her husband has his plan and intention of marrying her. In literature, an interior monologue is a type of monologue that exhibits the thoughts, feelings, and associations passing through a character’s mind. In other words, the interior monologue is the expression of a character's thoughts, feelings, and impressions in a narrative. In the selected novel, Al Atrash creatively deployed the personal deictic expressions through employing a unique approach in presenting her novel’s protagonist depending on the interior monologue in which there is one dominant voice, the voice of the narrator ‘the protagonist’ depending on using the singular pronoun (I) was used to represent her issue. The use of (I) leads to the presentation of the narrative imitatively where we hear her voice from her perspectives. Doubtlessly, there are other conversations between the novel’s characters presented by the protagonist within the interior monologue. The researcher will rely on the model of Fillmore (1997) who argued that deixis is the reflection of the relationship between language and context. Deictic expressions fall into the following categories: person deixis, spatial deixis and temporal deixis, consequently, the study aims to analyze the pragmatic features of Arabic narrative discourse used by Layla Alatrash in the selected novel to represent her love story through utilizing the person deictic expressions. The results showed that the writer was an innovator in deploying the personal deictic expressions to represent the image of women who are utilized because of their heroic ancestors and their magnified attributions.