Critical Discourse Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Play “Othello“

Abstract

This article deals with William Shakespeare's play "Othello" (1603). The purpose of this study is to analyze the linguistic features of the play. The primary purpose of this paper is to examine the use of power, inequality, and dominance behind words. The most recognized research model of CDA by Fairclough (1989) has been utilized for the analysis of the play. The corpus of the play is examined by keeping in view the textual, discursive, and societal levels of text. This is a mixed-method study because the data is analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The software AntConc (version 3.5.9) was utilized for analyzing the corpus of the play. The keywords, wordlists, and concordances have been taken out. The key findings from the study are that most of the negative lexical items explain the hidden ideologies that have been going on there, for example, racism, interracial marriage, war, manipulation, etc. The positive and negative lexis also express emotions such as love, hate, jealousy, revenge, etc. Moreover, pronouns illustrate the character's identities, and found that most of the characters are self-oriented. The concordance of specific keywords helped us find out the broader implied theories that Shakespeare presented in the play "Othello." The study is limited to describing the keywords, wordlists, and concordances. Further, it is beneficial for future researchers or students to understand the significant issues of the Shakespearean period.