Open AccessPERPETUAL STRIFE TO REARTICULATE DISCOURSE, MEANING, AND IDENTITY IN GORDIMER’S JULY’S PEOPLE: A DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
Author(s) -
HHanieh MehrMotlagh,
Maryam Soltan Beyad
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
folia linguistica et litteraria/folia linguistica et litteraria
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
0eISSN - 2337-0955
pISSN - 1800-8542
DOI - 10.31902/fll.25.2018.7
Subject(s) - dichotomy , sociology , identity (music) , critical discourse analysis , gender studies , materialism , discourse analysis , essentialism , patriarchy , objectivity (philosophy) , indigenous , white (mutation) , aesthetics , politics , epistemology , political science , ideology , linguistics , law , philosophy , biochemistry , chemistry , gene , ecology , biology
Specific utilizations of language have the capacity tofabricate power positions for individuals or to locate them in peripheralpositions. It is through on-going discursive practices that different discoursesstrive to foreground themselves and marginalize antagonistic discourses. As theprocess perpetuates, each discourse configures a particular identity andobjectivity the sustainability of which depends on constant rearticulations ofmajor concepts and preserving the previously settled meanings in acorresponding discourse. Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People (1981) recounts thestory of characters who are obliged to cope with identity crisis and uncertaintyinduced out of an envisioned end of apartheid. Pertaining to Laclau andMouffe’s discourse theories, the present study reveals that the characters’identities are shaped with regard to the sub-discourses of white, black,consumerism, materialism, patriarchy, and subjugated women. Discovering theorders of discourses in the novel renders that the discursive practices of thecharacters, the dichotomies in their identities, and the clashes in familystructures are rooted in the struggles between major discourses of white andblack, traditional and modern, as well as indigenous and foreign which havecreated divisions in the South African society. Finally, this study sheds light onunderstanding how the relations among discursive practices in a fictional textare associated with the conflicts among major discourses in the society.