A Critical Discourse Analysis of Thakurmar Jhuli

Abstract

Storytelling has occupied an important place through time in cultures across the globe and, in each, has attained an important conduit of expression of their integrated socio-cultural ethos (Mitra 2007: 77). Bruner (1990) states that peoples’ understanding of the worldview is greatly determined by the stories to which they have been exposed and which they have internalized. Thakurmar Jhuli(1907), the classic Bangla fairy tale collection have already passed more than hundred years and till now is considered as the most widely anthologized Bangla fairy tales collection. However, though it has been entertaining Bangla speaking people for centuries, now it is time to pose the question whether the discourse of these stories is innocent or not. Since Stephens (in Jarar, 2009: 33) asserts that ideology is “inscribed in language”, therefore we need to investigate the ideological issues that are embedded in this particular book. The aim of this study is to find out the vulnerable or problematic issues that are discussed in the stories in Thakurmar Jhuli. In order to do this study addressed three central research questions: what are the common/ uncommon features of the stories in Thakurmar Jhuli?, what are the issues discussed in these stories? and to what extent life is fanciful in these stories? This study has conducted from a CDA perspective since CDA focuses on the hidden agendas of a particular society and makes people aware regarding the hidden structures embedded in it (Haque, 2008). This study has adopted Fairclough’s (1995) three dimensional approach to analyze the linguistic data and Kress and Leewuen’s (1996: 13) socio-semiotic approach to analyze the picture in the book. The findings of the study suggest that the stories of Thakurmar Jhuli deal with several vulnereable issues like patriarchy, misrepresentation of women, problematic concept of beauty, abuse of power and a fanciful representation of society. Experts’ opinions tend to suggest that the experts are also to some extent are not exposed to all of these issues. These problematic issues if not properly addressed, will definitely create long term effects on the readers especially children who are the target readers of these stories. Therefore, intervention must take place from the part of parents and teachers regarding the problematic issues in Thakurmar Jhuli.