LANGUAGE, POWER AND IDEOLOGY: A CRITICAL LINGUISTICS ANALYSIS OF GENDER REPRESENTATION IN STRETCHES OF AN AFRICAN FEMALE PROSE FICTION

Abstract

The current paper posits that our ideologies shape the way we use language to maintain (unequal) power relations between social groupings, particularly between men and women. It seeks to unravel how some discursive practices (or language use) can contribute to producing, sustaining and changing social relations of power between male and female. For that purpose, some stretches of discourse are drawn from a fictional narrative (notably Faceless) authored by a contemporary female writer (Amma Darko). The analysis of those discourse samples from a critical linguistics perspective has revealed that in its everyday use, language contributes to the domination of women by their male counterparts, maintaining between them an unequal power relationship based on common-sense assumptions or ideologies.