The Idealistic Discourse of Traditionalist Women: A Faircloughian Critical Discourse Analysis of My Share and The Lonely Girl

Document Type : Original Article

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1 Department of Persian Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan

2 Department of Persian Language and Literature, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan, Iran

10.22034/lda.2026.145508.1127

Abstract

The literary narrative of women has long served as an arena for depicting the tension between individual ideals and patriarchal systems of domination. Within this space, language operates not merely as a neutral medium of communication but as an active site of social meaning-making that reflects gendered hierarchies and ideological constraints. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), following Norman Fairclough’s model (2010, 2013), posits that linguistic choices are never ideologically neutral; rather, they are structured by and help reproduce social relations of power.
This study addresses a gap in previous scholarship, which has largely focused on thematic, sociological, or psychological aspects of women’s narratives, without examining the linguistic mechanisms that encode gendered power and resistance. The research applies Fairclough’s approach to two female-authored novels—My Share (Perinoush Saniee, Iran) and The Lonely Girl (Edna O’Brien, Ireland)—to investigate how traditionalist women articulate idealistic aspirations such as love, education, and autonomy within restrictive patriarchal contexts.

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