Essam Farag, Hasnaa

Research Interests:

Gender, Style, Performance, Stereotypes, Fiction, Discourse Analysis, Sociolinguistics

Geographical Area:

Egypt

Current Project:

Style and Gender Performance in Arabic Fiction and Media

My qualitative study explores the linguistic portrayal of gender and social class in the context of Arabic fiction, film and TV series. Within this context, a purposive sample from contemporary novels, well-known films, and a TV series released by Egyptian male authors are analyzed linguistically. The study approaches the texts as corpus of performed language in order to demonstrate male authors’ stereotypical perceptions of gendered linguistic style and its relation to social class. Furthermore, Egyptian women’s reactions to some selected excerpts written by these male authors will be investigated, asking them to identify the gender and social class of the characters in order to determine the significance of a number of stereotypical linguistic features for inferring social gendered identity. The study promotes a deeper understanding of gendered style and stereotypes in Arabic and raises social awareness of stereotypical linguistic portrayals in an attempt to reconstruct social perceptions apart from categorization.

Further information (CV, conference contributions)