A stylistic study of point of view in nawal el saadawi’s woman at point zero: A systemic functional perspective

Abstract

The pre-occupation of this study was to examine point of view in El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero from a systemic functional perspective. Specifically, it focused on investigating how transitivity is employed to inscribe both ideological and psychological points of view in the novel. This was motivated first by the general neglect of existing studies to explore El Saadawi’s creative style and second by the claims of both narratologists and stylisticians on narrative perspective and how it is rendered linguistically in novels. Based on the aims of the study, extracts from significant episodes in the novel were subjected to transitivity analysis. The study demonstrates that point of view constraints the linguistic choices of a writer. Also, it is shown that in the Islamic society that El Saadawi creates, men manipulate Quranic teachings to oppress and subjugate women. It is again revealed that Firdaus matures as the narrative progresses in terms of her understanding of herself and her repressive society. The study corroborates the view held by systemic functional linguistics that language users make systematic choices of linguistic items from the linguistic repertoire to present their version of reality as well as the narratological claim that focalization and narration and by extension focalizer and narrator are not necessarily the same. Moreover, it confirms the claim that the meronymic agency is a significant stylistic technique in prose narratives. The findings of the study and the conclusions drawn from them suggest the need to pay attention to the linguistic choices of writers in order to better appreciate their message.