A Pragmatic Analysis of Layla Al-Atrash’s ‘La Toshbeh Thatoha

Abstract

The present study aims at addressing the issue of self in Layla AlAtrash ƒ??s ƒ??La Toshboho Thatohaƒ? through applying a pragmatic analysis of her interior monologue relying on the personal deictic expressions of an Arabic discourse used to understand the authorial intentions of the writer . The pragmatic analysis particularly will shed the lights on how the protagonist of the novel deployed the personal deictic expressions in her interior monologue to represent her love story and how her husband has his own plan and intention of marrying her. In literature, an interior monologue is a type of monologue that exhibits the thoughts, feelings, and associations passing through a characterƒ??s mind. In other words, the  nterior monologue is the expression of a character's thoughts, feelings, and impressions in a narrative. In the selected novel, AlAtrash creatively deployed the personal deictic expressions through employing a unique approach in presenting her novelƒ??s protagonist depending on the interior monologue in which there is one dominant voice, the voice of the narrator ƒ??the protagonistƒ?? depending on using the singular pronoun (I) was obviously used to represent her issue . The use of (I) leads to the presentation of the narrative in an intimate manner where we hear her voice from her perspectives. Doubtlessly, there are other conversations between the novelƒ??s characters presented by the protagonist within the interior monologue. The researcher will rely on the model of Fillmore (1997) who argued that deixis is the reflection of the relationship between language and context. Deictic expressions fall into the following categories: person deixis, spatial deixis and temporal deixis, consequently, the study aims to analyze the pragmatic features of Arabic narrative discourse used by Layla Alatrash in the selected novel to represent her love story through utilizing the person deictic expressions. The results show that the writer was innovator in deploying the personal deictic expressions to represent the image of women who are utilized because of their heroic ancestors and their magnified attributions.