Orientalist Perspectives in Ellis’s Breadwinner Trilogy: A Postcolonial Critique

The study critically engages with the issue of continuity of the orientalist rhetoric in the contemporary literary yields. To establish and substantiate the argument, the researchers have analyzed Deborah Ellis’s Breadwinner Trilogy (2009) that comprises Breadwinner, Parvana’s Journey, and Mud City. All the three fictional narratives claims to have represented the life of the Pakistani and Afghani characters who have been shown to face the existential threats in the wake of the insecurities that have engulfed the region. However, the study contends, the Canadian writer has also given way to the parochial psychological and sociological schema that has been held as the prime representational trope regarding the East, that is, Orientalism. The qualitative and textual approach has facilitated the researchers to negotiate the identified thematic patterns with the interpretive freedom. In this regard, framing the fictional representation into the Saidian critique of the orientalist discourse, the study explicates the reductive approach of the writer and exposes the latent ideological triggers working under the manifest humanist projections. Thus, the study strengthens the postcolonial stance and, therefore, will sharpen the Pakistani students’ understanding of the current socio-literary debates.

Dialectical Materialism and Discourse: A Comparative Study of Aravind Adiga and Claude Brown

This research analyses the selected texts of Aravind Adiga and Claude Brown to investigate the Marxian social dialectic as reflected linguistically. The study explores the socioeconomic power at work behind the discourse of the dominant social class and the way this power is used for hegemonic practices. It ascertains the cognitively manipulative role of the socially established identities, as constituted by caste and race, in establishing and maintaining the socioeconomic supremacy of the powerful. It investigates the discursive reaction of the dominated individuals to the socioeconomic monopoly of their exploiters and the way this reaction results in the material progress of the former. This qualitative content analysis establishes its ontological premise on Marx’s dialectical materialism and van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach. The study uses van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach as model as well. It selects two different writers, who, through their distinct linguistic choices, represent two different societies with different cultural conditions and different eras, to investigate whether Marx’s concept of social dialectic which involves an endless historical process of the oscillation of the socioeconomic power between the two social classes is linguistically valid. The analysis reflects that the discourse strategies of the powerful social group determine and are also determined by the hegemonic practices of this group for its material interests. It reveals that the semantic features as used in discourse by the powerful class manipulate the dominated cognitively through the socially constituted ideologies. It also shows the realization by the dominated about their manipulation and their subsequent resistance through the same discourse strategies, which results in their socioeconomic amelioration. The study compares the two authors of two different societies and eras and finds that caste as a social identity in the South Asian Indian society is more susceptible to discursive manipulation as compared with race in the African American society and also that the South Asian Indian society offers greater scope discursively for the socioeconomic improvement to the dominated individuals. The study also concludes that Marx’s proposition about the endless historical process of the socioeconomic competition, which causes the oscillation of power between the two social classes, is linguistically effective.