Discourse Semantic Representations of Self and Others: Negotiating Discursive Identities and Power

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Combining literary criticism and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) for a transdisciplinary approach to text analysis, this article analyzes the Pulitzer award winning play, Disgraced, by Ayad Akhtar to investigate the discursive relationship between textual interpersonal voices and dialogic negotiations of semiotic power relations as represented in the dialogic exchanges among the main characters. First, this article locates interpersonal prosodic modality and textual voices within the purview of SFL and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), treating them as concrete lexico-grammatical and discourse semantic instances symptomatic of more abstract social and racial power structures. Next, it investigates the discursive use of modality and instances of appraisal instances, and discusses how textual voices as represented by ethnic and racial minorities and dominant characters in our data are created and maintained by unequal social hierarchical structures of race and ethnicity. On the basis of our analysis, we argue that a struggle for social semiotic power is a struggle for control of and access to interpersonal language resources.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Social Context and Individuation of Discourse
• 3. Data
• 4. Textual Voice and Modality
• 5. Conclusion
• References