A Critical Discourse Analysis of Gender Roles in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Selected Interviews

Abstract

This paper aims to do a critical discourse analysis of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s interviews in order to demonstrate how she represents women’s experiences as constructed by society and in the process deconstructs gender roles that work at the expense of women. The main objective of this research is to identify how Adichie’s discourses in her interviews highlight the struggle women go through in order to contribute to development in spite of the gender division of roles that limits their abilities and how these setbacks shape their worlds. The tenets of critical discourse analysis purported by Fairclough and Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics which aim to open up complexities and challenge inflexibilities and dichotomies is used as a theoretical lens to examine the different gender roles portrayed in these interviews. A qualitative design is thus used for the analysis of the selected excerpts extracted from Adichie’s interviews.  The analysis reveals that the challenges women face are grossly stimulated by gender stereotypes, language and social structures that relegate them to the background. Thus, minimizing the fact that roles have to be complementary between men and women.  Also, the analysis reveals how Adichie through her interviews deconstruct power relations that produce inequalities in gender roles division.