Language, Gender, and Power in The Color Purple: Theories and Approaches

Abstract

Alice Walker’s The Color Purple unfolds with the marvelous interplay of language, gender, and power. Walker’s conscious use of language produces new narrative strategies, discloses unheard stories of women, and transforms traditional concepts of gender roles. The manipulation of language empowers the speaker, while failure in voicing causes silence and a lack of control. Walker’s employment of Black_x000D_ English manifests her concern about the black cultural heritage and her challenge to the superiority of white people’s language. Her experiments with the epistolary novel make the silenced women heard in a double–voiced narrative. Walker also voices concern over the polarity between gender roles, an arbitrary division resulting from language construction. For her black characters, the hierarchal gender structure is further complicated by skin color and skin tone. Drawing upon theories on language_x000D_ and gender, this paper addresses three major topics in The Color Purple and proposes_x000D_ pertinent classroom activities: (1) Celie’s language: features and implications, (2) language and voice, and (3) language and gender.