When Stories Mirror the Truth: A Critical Stylistic Analysis of the Reproduction of Iraqi and American Local Societies in Selected Novels
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31185/wjfh.Vol22.Iss2.1817Keywords:
America, Critical stylistics, Iraq, local society, Sinan Antoon’s The Corpse Washer, Toni Morrison’s Tar BabyAbstract
The present study traces, qualitatively, how themes representing Iraqi and American local societies are reproduced. Jeffries’ (2010) ten textual conceptual functions (or tools) is adopted to analyse twenty-four extracts selected from Antoon’s The Corpse Washer (2010) and Morrison’s Tar Baby (1981). Antoon has criticised the Iraqi regime (1968-2003) and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, regarding them as the main reasons for the suffering of Iraqi locals, while Morrison has condemned the white hegemony, regarding it among the reasons for raping and enslaving the local societies, and her African American is one of them. The study finds that Jeffries’ functions have been used similarly in the two novels, even though there are instances of difference, and reports the percentages. The use of unmarked (direct and active) language, the main characters’ ambitions for change, the rejection of these changes by other members of their local society, the focus on using material processes, the use of existential propositions, and the extensive use of slavery and raping vocabularies are examples of textual and conceptual tools for such a conclusion.
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