The Concept of Gender –Inequality in Sahar Khalifa's Muzakarat Imra'ah Gher Waqeai’a: Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Sahar Khalifa is well-known for being the first feminist Palestinian writer, and for her sensitive, economical and simple style in introducing women, especially the oppressed wife who suffers to keep on her home and accepts the false convention and tradition. The study aims to analyze the used language to represent the concept of gender inequality linguistically. Moreover, the focus will be on the problems of feminist women in their society in the light of Sahar Khalifa’s "Muzakarat Imra'ah Gher Waqeai’a".The researcher employs the Feminist critical discourse analysis as a tool to analyze the linguistic features of the language used by the protagonist ( Afaf), who is the only narrator in the novel. Therefore, the researcher will rely on Fairclough ‘s theory of discourse. The study aims to identify the narrative and feminist discursive strategies by focusing on the concept of gender inequality as represented by both lexical and syntactic choice of this discourse and the ideological and social implications. Consequently, this study is considered as the first study of its kind to focus on analyzing the used language by Khalifa linguistically in the light of the feminist CDA techniques such as lexicalization, figurative speech, colloquialism, personifications, and finally symbolism. The results show that Sahar Khalifa succeeded in utilizing her feminist discourse linguistically to introduce the problems that Palestinian women encounter without finding a solution and surrendering to reality.