GENDER, CLASS AND IDENTITY: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE

Abstract

Fantasy Fiction unifies supernatural elements and life with the help of imagination to build something novel. Though it is considered far removed from the primary world, it remains a reflection to reality. George R. R. Martin, an American Writer, created a whole new world as a setting for his Fantasy Fiction series, A Song of Ice and Fire. This he did, not only in the geographical sense but also in the social, political and religious sense. Martin invented religions, customs, traditions, legal systems, and languages to suit these, in order to make his world authentic. His inspirations from Medieval Europe are seen in the architecture, attire, food, mannerisms, social rules, language, and so on, which he constructed for his texts. The series has a complex structure and plot, with more complex characters. It is meant to be a heptalogy, but two more volumes are yet to be published. Gender, Class and Identity are some major concepts being discussed in academics. In this article, understanding of these key terms will be established. Subsequently, select instances from the text will be used to demonstrate how these concepts resonate in the selected text. For this purpose, Critical Discourse Analysis will be used as a method to examine the language used in the select instances. Critical Discourse Analysis is a transdisciplinary tool developed borrowing thoughts from fields like Sociology, Psychology, Linguistics, and Criticism. It is also a part of Hermeneutics as discourse analysis is used to explore the possible interpretations of a text and is, in itself, not a substantiating theory