Norman Fairclough’s Model as a Research Tool in the Critical Discourse Analysis of Poem ‘If You Want to Know Me’

Abstract

Noemia De Sousa, an African poetess, in her poem, if You Want to Know Me. She explores the postcolonial themes of revolution, cultural identity and abrogation of the English language. The present study covers most of the aspects of the cruel treatment of White Men over Africans. The qualitative research approach is used as it is a systematically predefined set of procedures to answer the research questions. Norman Fairclough’s model of Critical Discourse Analysis has been used to reveal the power misused by the colonizers and the resistance of power by the colonized in postcolonial Literature, the main aim of CDA is to analyze the enactment and resistance of power in the given text. With the help of Fairclough’s model, the Postcolonial context of the poetess, ideology and power relations have been explored in the text. Fairclough’s approach to discourse analysis focuses on the language of the text as well as concerned with what happens in a particular text. These two concerns are made through the way in which texts are analyzed in CDA. The study reveals the cultural identity crisis and white hegemony and suffering of Africans as key features in colonial discourse. Language is just a tool to deconstruct the prejudice against Africans which is used by the poetess to protest against the colonizers in this poem.