Negotiating Colonial Power and Identity in Shooting an Elephant through Critical Discourse Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70670/sra.v4i2.2218Keywords:
Colonialism, CDA, Identity, Orwell, Power, Postcolonial Theory, IdeologyAbstract
The research paper adopts a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach to study George Orwell's classic essay Shooting an Elephant (1936), which deals with the discussion of colonial power structure and subaltern identity in the structural language of the narrator's ideological conflict. The study is based mainly on the theories of Norman Fairclough, Michel Foucault and Frantz Fanon and questions the discursive processes by which imperialism legitimizes its domination, creates subjectivity and internal contradictions in the colonial subject. The paper poses two main research questions: How does Orwell's lexical and rhetorical strategies shape and challenge colonial power and how does the narrative discourse expose the fractured identity of the colonizer in the presence of the colonized? The study uses qualitative textual analysis design that is Fairclough's three-dimensional CDA model, which is textual, discursive and sociocultural to analyze the selected passages of the essay in terms of the following analysis indicators: analysis of the ideological positioning, analysis of transitivity patterns, analysis of modality, analysis of intertextual references. The results show how Orwell's essay serves as a confession, a critique and a continuation of the colonial ideology, revealing the great ambivalence of colonial discourse. The research demonstrates that Shooting an Elephant is a highly complex discursive text, which is simultaneously a personal memoir, a space for enactment and subversion of colonial power, and a valuable text for postcolonial and discourse analytical research.
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