Constructing Power and Resistance through Language: A Discourse-Historical Analysis of “The White Tiger”
Abstract
The paper uses the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in analyzing how The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga builds up, produces, and opposes power relations, social inequity, and mobility in post-liberalization India. Although branding, symbolic, postcolonial, Marxist, and neoliberal readings have been explored elsewhere previously, the discursive construction of ideology and power in the novel has been less discussed. To fill this void, the paper performs qualitative analyses of the chosen passages in terms of DHA tools (nomination, predication, argumentation, perspectivisation, and intensification/mitigation). It is possible to declare that the analysis recognizes Balram Halwai as a first-person narrator who serves as a focal discursive place where systemic oppression, moral conflict, and resistance are expressed. The metaphor of the Rooster Coop and some binary oppositions that we could discover, such as light/darkness, master/servant, and village/city, show that there were historically embedded inequalities in the Indian socio-political structure. Based on the findings, the novel is not only a mirror of social realities but also builds them by making inequality become normalized and, at the same time, creates a space to criticize it. On the whole, the paper demonstrates DHA as an efficient instrument of literary discourse analysis and makes a certain contribution to the interdisciplinary studies of power, language, and literature.
