The Relationship Between Language And Power Of Black Men And Women In Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) came into being in 1970s in west-European countries with the critical linguistics as its source. The main representatives in this field are some linguists who are against the mainstream linguistics and some sociolinguists, such as N. Fairclough, G. Kress,R. Fowler and so on. Different from the discourse analysis in the general meaning, CDA researches how the discourse and conversation enforce, reproduce and resist the abuse and the control of the social power and inequality. According to Van Dijk (1997),"CDA is concerned with the study and analysis of written texts and spoken words to reveal the discursive sources of power, dominance, inequality, and bias and how these sources are initiated, maintained, reproduced, and transformed within specific social, economic, political and historical contexts"( Van Dijk,1997).CDA is not a new approach in the analysis of public discourses and official discourses, but it is the first time to apply CDA to the analysis of the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. This thesis analyzes Their Eyes Were Watching God from the perspective of the power's difference between black men and women within the theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis, so that readers can witness the rouse of women's self-awareness. Although there are many methodologies in CDA, Van Dijk's Sociocognitive Approach (SA) is adopted as the main method. After the explanation of the theoretical framework, it tries to analyze the difference and change of women's power and men's power under the guide of CDA; and then according to the change, it analyzes the development of women's self-awareness, which is the key target in the thesis.This research includes the following significances: firstly, with a new methodology in the analysis of this novel, readers can learn the purport of the novel, grasp the existing inequality between black men and women, appreciate Hurston's greatness in reflecting this inequality during her lifetime and understand why the novel is called the forerunner of feminism; secondly, this thesis provides a new perspective in analyzing literary works, which will be helpful for the researchers to discover more details in the analysis of literary works; finally, the research on literary works in the field of CDA would also enlarge CDA's scope and make the analytical materials more abundant.This thesis contains five parts altogether. In the introductory part it introduces the reasons of choosing the text and CDA as the analytical appliance, the objective and significance of this research. Chapter One is the theoretical framework. In this part, it elaborates the definitions given by different scholars of CDA, the theoretical foundation and the diverse methodologies of CDA. For each methodology, it gives a cursory introduction and then concentrates on the introduction of SA by Van Dijk, its theoretical foundation and theoretical methods. Chapter Two is the literature review that intends to give an introduction to the history and research status quo of CDA and Their Eyes Were Watching God, the brief introduction of the content of the novel as well. Chapter Three is the analytical part. It begins to analyze the language of the heroine Janie and her three husbands in terms of the properties of the context (including setting, access) and the properties of the text's speech itself (including topic, specificity and completeness, pronouns, argumentation, and rhetorical strategies) with the guide of SA. Through the analysis, readers can see the change of power for Janie and her husbands. Then there is the explanation section. In this section, it interprets the growth of Janie's self-awareness, the rise of her power and the decline of her husbands'power, with the help of the analysis we have done in the earlier sections. The conclusion part makes a summary of this thesis, and the major findings of the research; furthermore, there are still some limitations waiting for others'further study, which are listed in this part. Some personal suggestions are given for the later researchers.