Power Dynamics and Marginalized Voices: A Critical Discourse Analysis of “The God of Small Things”

Abstract

The research utilizes the three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) set forth by Norman Fairclough to examine “The God of Small Things”, a novel by Arundhati Roy vis-à-vis the linguistic construction of power relations, social hierarchies, and inequality. The selected excerpts are subject to qualitative analysis to explore how Roy’s narrative strategies and linguistic choices foreground submerged patterns of caste discrimination, gender violence, and social exclusion. Within Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework — textual analysis, discursive practice, and social practice, the research highlights how the language represented in the novel legitimizes and challenges societal structures that ensure inequity. This research provides a dimension that has remained unaddressed by previous scholars, emphasizing narrative discourse as a means to portray the experiences of people at the margins and deepening the insights about how literary language may elucidate the not-so-visible strata of social reality. The findings from this research bind the discourse-analytical part and literary studies by demonstrating the applicability of Fairclough’s model in interrogating the interaction of language, power, and society in fictional texts.