Analyzing Pragmatic Markers of Gender and Power in James Joyce's Araby

Abstract

The objective of this research is to investigate the pragmatic markers in James Joyce’s Araby in connection with language and power. This pragmatic analysis explores the speech acts, and inferred meaning when the protagonist of the play interacts with other characters. Analysis reveals the protagonist’s youthful idealism as a result of the immediacy of conveyed information and socially constructed notions of gender. The study reveals how requests, directives and refusals are used in communicating power relations. The study also analyses how these pragmatic markers facilitate disillusionment of the hero and how Joyce framed the problem of perverted desires, power and established norms. This reading of Araby as a pragmatic study of communication as a social accomplishment provides a powerful appreciation of how language is used as a resource not only for symbolic interaction but also for manipulation of the gendered power dynamics in the story’s social setting.