Saudi Universities Theses & Dissertations

The lexicon gives an insight into some of the substantive universals of language, gender and culture, which reveal distinctive features of each. Through examining the lexical choices of married women in the English and Arabic cultures, the researcher intends to show how cultures that are generally viewed as divergent are in fact similar in some aspects of thought and communication. The study revisits the field of language and gender through the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis. It sheds light on some of the common aspects of the written discourse of married women in these two different cultures building on previous works in the field with a genuine illustration of applying Critical Discourse Analysis on marital discussions across-cultures. It is a comparative study of the lexical items used by Arabic-speaking females and English-speaking females in posting problems into agony columns in published magazines. Data is collected from English and Arabic printed media- well-known magazines published during 2008 in particular. The agony columns are selected from four magazines for the purposes of the study, which are Zahrat Al-Khalij, Sayidaty, Oprah Magazine and Woman's Own Magazine. The agony columnists in these magazines are famous figures in the Arab and Western cultures. A selection of analysis tools provided by Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis like lexical relations, lexical phenomena and connotations as well as lexico-grammatical aspects like pronouns, modals and connectors are implemented to serve as the research methodology. Lexical relations are limited to the analysis of synonyms, antonyms and hyponyms. Lexical phenomena include fixed expressions like idioms and collocations, colloquial expressions and euphemistic expressions. Connotations are divided into positive connotations and negative connotations as extracted from the words in context. The analysis of these linguistic features is based on the three values proposed by Fairclough, which are the experiential value, the relational value and the expressive value. Within this framework, some of the used lexical items are examined to reveal similarities and difference between the lexical choices of the women understudy. The study, also, proves the influence of culture in the constitution of power relations and ideology on these women in written discourse. The study is divided into four chapters. The first chapter is dedicated to the theoretical preliminaries and review of the previous literature that laid the foundations of this study. The second chapter is dedicated to the analysis of lexical items found in texts written by Arabic-speaking females. The third chapter is a parallel of the second with a shift of focus to the lexical items found in the texts written by English-speaking females. The fourth and final chapter summarizes findings using quantitative analysis in order to answer the proposed questions of the study. It also highlights the importance of the study in terms of pedagogical implementations and suggestions for further studies.

Saudi Universities Theses & Dissertations

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