Representations Of Malay Women In Dina Zaman's Selected Short Stories: A Feminist Stylistic Analysis

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Date
2008-02
Authors
Versay Kudus, Nazima
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Abstract
This study attempts to find out how Dina Zaman uses language to represent Malay women characters in the selected short stories. In addition, it aims to assessnwhether the author has challenged or reinforced stereotypical representations of her characters. The theoretical framework engaged in this study includes feminist literary criticism and stylistics and the combinative tools as proposed by Sara Mills (1998) that is Feminist Stylistics. Theories that underpin this framework are linguistic theories of M.A.K. Halliday's Social Semiotic Theory of Language (1978) and Roger Fowler's Critical Unguistics Theory (1979). In investigating their representations, the tripartite linguistic levels of analyses (the word, the clause and the discourse) as proposed by Mills (1998) have been adopted. The linguistic features investigated in selected short stories comprise naming, transitivity and characters/roles respectively. From the analyses at various linguistic levels and linguistic options, it is clearly revealed that the author has deconstructed the ways in which the Malay women characters are usually represented in narrative texts. Finally, I recommend the related stakeholders to utilise the proposed methodology so that they not only
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Women in literature
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