Asian Research Thesis Index

Abstract

Identity and Power Issues: A Study of Voice in Discourses in Khaled Hosseini’s Novels This study is a critical exploration and evaluation of identity and power issues as discursively constructed, communicated and represented through multiple voices in Khaled Hosseini’s novels (Discourses): The Kite Runner (2003) and A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007). Using the concept of ‘Voices in Discourses,’ this enquiry aims at examining voices of the narrator and mostly major characters in discourses about the Pashtun identity, the Hazara identity issue, the Afghan national identity, the representation of the Taliban, power exercise and resistance in gender and ethnic relations, ethnic and sex/gender discrimination in the novels under study. Fairclough’s dialectical-relational analytical model namely Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is applied on the selected data for the analysis of the texts assumed as discourses, as discursive practices and as social practices. Moreover, the selected discourses are analyzed from the perspectives of critical discourse studies and feminist critical discourse studies at the macro level. The research unfolds the role and politics of voices in discourses, and it also unveils Hosseini’s ideological and political stance regarding the issues under study. Since CDA is problem-oriented and useful for viable research, therefore it is applied on the selected data to reveal the interplay between discourse and the issues under study. This critical discourse analytical study views language of the selected data as a non-neutral, ideological, political and subjective construction, communication and representation of the issues under study. The selected data consist of 40 passages (discourses) selected sequentially from the novels under study with focus upon the discursive construction and representation of identity and power issues. Hosseini’s works unfold the socio-political and historical saga of multi-ethnic Afghanistan in a chronological way covering the Afghan history from 1973 to 2003, i.e. Karzai government. However, the study has investigated the root causes of dynamic identity and power issues in Afghanistan, and has suggested some views for the future reader about the issues under study.

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