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Analysis of Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl from the Perspective of Feminist Stylistics

Author(s)

Chen Suwan1,2

Affiliation(s)

1College of Liberal Arts and Communication, De La Salle University–Dasmariñas, Manila, Philippines 2Department of Library, Suzhou University, Suzhou, Anhui, China

Abstract

Girl is contemporary Antiguan-American writer Jamaica Kincaid’s autobiographical writing, which describes a girl dictated by the instructions of her demanding mother about how to behave properly like a lady. Through the narration of daily life between mother and daughter, the influence of colonial history and colonial culture on the family life of African Caribbean women is reflected in the work. With the analysis at three different levels of words, sentence and discourse from the perspective of feminist stylistics, the weak feminine role and the inferior social status of women in Antigua are explored. A traditional and typical Caribbean mother and daughter relationship of the controlling mother with the obedient daughter is revealed.

Keywords

Jamaica Kincaid; Feminist Stylistics; Lexical Level; Sentence Level; Discourse Level

References

[1] K. Jamaica. At the Bottom of the River[M].Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983. [2] S. Mills. Feminist stylistics[M]. Routledge, 1995. [3] M. Black. Models and metaphors: studies in language and philosophy[M]. Cornell University Press, 1962. [4] H. Sacks, A. Schegloff, G. Jefferson. A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-taking for Conversation [J].Language, 1974, 50(4): 696-735. [5] M. Short. Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose[M]. Longman, 1996. [6] H. P. Grice. Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (ed.) [J].Syntax and Semantics, Speech Acts, 1975, (3): 41-58.