Challenging Phallogocentrism; A Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis of Rafia Zakaria’s and Bina Shah’s Newspaper Article

Abstract

This study is done to explore the two dimensional feminist discourse (Lazar 2005, 2007) in newspaper articles by Rafia Zakaria and Bina Shah. The purpose of research paper is to destroy the stereotypes in a patriarchal society. How language can create gender strata in a society is one of the major themes of this thesis. Considering the following two dimensions “gender power relationships and gender as ideological structure and practice”, the research methodology applies linguistic and thematic analysis and utilizes Lazar’s (2005, 2007) FCDA model as data analyzing tool. This is a qualitative based research approach and it has descriptive research design. The selected articles are analyzed under Textual, Discursive and societal level of discourse given by Fairclough CDA model with feministic point of view suggested by Lazar. In other words these levels are descriptive, interpretative and explanatory stages of the Fairclough’s model. For purpose of ‘discourse’ different units of language from utterances to paragraphs are selected to highlight hidden ideologies and power structure embedded in the language. All of these units comprehensively tell us of women portrayal in our society. Women have no safe space in this society. They have to be more bound to the norms and values of the culture than those of men. The findings deduct that gender power relations are ideological and societal based. Gender and social practices are linguistic discursive. It tells that how misogyny is negative connotative term and how it justifies men are superior to women. Misogyny is an ideology and enhances right wing ideas which are unhealthy for any society. The research would enable readers to understand how misogyny works and how the women are marginalized through the discourse of the society. In this paper readers will find different phrases and terms which are building the ideological andgender power strata in the society.