A Corpus Stylistic Analysis of Abulhawa's the Blue between Sky and Water

Abstract

Palestinian literature received significance after Nakba (1948 Palestine-Israel war) and Naksa (1967 Arab-Israel war) and it laid an impact on Palestinian writers and there emerged a new form of literature called Palestinian American literature which got recognition in the 1990s internationally. After Nakba and Naksa many Palestinian families migrated to America. These Palestinians wrote literature in English that is called Palestinian-American literature. The aim of the stylistic analysis of Abulhawa's work to trace out how the writer constructs reality through lexical categories. This thesis also analyzes the work of Palestinian-American writer Abulhawa's novel, The Blue between Sky and Water, and focuses specifically on how the writer achieves her aims. At the same time, this stylistic analysis of The Blue between Sky and Water shed light on the use of Arabic words in English fiction which represent the culture and identity of the Palestinian nation. It explores the dilemma of Palestine that they become a foreigner in their native land. The researcher employed a mixed-method approach to conduct the present study. The researcher used Corpus stylistics tools to analyze the novel. The researcher traced around 6288 concrete nouns and 1634 abstract nouns from the sample respectively. The extensive use of concrete nouns showed that the main purpose of the writer was to get homeland and this piece of writing was not only art for art sake rather art for life's sake. The researcher traced out around 1400 adjectives from the sample of study.