A Critical Stylistic Study of Ambivalence in Margret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”

Abstract

Ambivalence is a term used by Homi K. Bhabha (1997) to present the conflict that individuals have when they are influenced by society. The two sides: good and bad about an issue appear and one of them is strengthened because of the conditions and effects of social influences.
Critical stylistics is a field that has been developed from the Critical Discourse Analysis by Lesley Jeffries (2010) to investigate the style that is used in literary and non-literary texts. Jeffries in her model gives the analysts strategies that can be followed to analyze any kind of text. The suggested strategies are ten, and each one of them concentrates on a different type of linguistic device that is used by the writer/speaker.
The study investigates the ambivalence theory, from a critical stylistic point of view, in a modern novel. The writer uses different types of styles to show the women’s suffering and how the surrounding conditions affect their way of thinking and acting. Women’s secondary position is faithfully mirrored in culture. Nothing defines culture as clearly as its language.
Naming and describing textual-conceptual function is analyzed in this study presenting its ideological effects and how this strategy reflects ambivalence.