Victimization in Walker’s The Color Purple: A Critical Stylistic Analysis

Abstract

The current paper investigates woman’s victimization in Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple from a critical stylistic perspective. It aims to show how victimization is realized linguistically in terms of some toolkits mentioned in Jeffries’s (2010) framework. Additionally, it aims to reveal the ideological implication of these toolkits in the data under study. The study adopts a mixed method of qualitative and quantitative approaches in the analysis. The researchers find out that woman’s victimization is recognized in The Color Purple through various syntactic triggers that symbolize Jeffries’s conceptual tools. Moreover, the study concludes that the tool of Representing Actions, States, Events is the most common among others as it is thoroughly interconnected with the brutal acts that lead to victimization. Further, Walker devotes these toolkits to reveal various negative ideologies that accompany victimization like slavery, oppression, ethnic discrimination and domination.

Internalized Sexism And Androcentric Ideologies: A Critical Study Of Uzma Aslam Khan’s Novels

“…Their study examines the exploitation of linguistic resources in the construction of certain ideologies. Similarly, Sallomi and Obied (2024) have carried out a critical stylistic analysis of The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker in their research study. They found that "women's victimization is recognized in The Color Purple through various syntactic triggers that symbolize Jeffries' conceptual tools" (Sallomi & Obied, 2024, p. 98).…”

“…They found that "women's victimization is recognized in The Color Purple through various syntactic triggers that symbolize Jeffries' conceptual tools" (Sallomi & Obied, 2024, p. 98). Their study concludes that among the conceptual tools provided by Jeffries, the tool of 'representing actions/states/events' is the most common among others as it is interconnected with the violent acts that lead to victimization of women in the novel (Sallomi & Obied, 2024).…”