Linguistic Sexism at Word Level in Ali’s The Book of Saladin: A Feminist Stylistic Perspective

Abstract

This paper is an investigation into the use of sexist language in Tariq Ali’s novel The Book of Saladin (TBOS) by using feminist stylistics word level model. Following a qualitative content analysis, the researchers collected the relevant examples through close reading method and the data have been collected in the form of words. The discussion and analysis of the data show the different aspects related to word level like generic pronouns, naming and semantic derogation of women. The findings of the study reveal that Ali (1998) has exhibited a biased attitude towards the representation of women in his writing where they are either eliminated from the linguistic landscape through the use of masculine pronouns as generic terms or they are just the nameless creatures introduced in relation to men in their lives. Moreover, their representation is mitigated when most prestigious jobs are allotted to men and they are also semantically derogated by the derogatory terms used for them at word level. The researchers have found the toolkit of feminist stylistics as relevant and useful to unravel linguistic sexism that is incorporated in literary texts.