A Critical Discourse Analysis of Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero

Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero holds a foundational place in feminist literature as a stark indictment of patriarchal violence in Arab societies. This article employs Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as both a methodological framework and feminist epistemological stance to re-examine the novel’s linguistic and ideological operations. CDA is treated not as a neutral linguistic tool, but as a critical social practice revealing how power, ideology, and inequality are produced and contested through language. Through close readings of key moments related to the protagonist, the article traces how her agency is linguistically muted, reconfigured, and constrained. It argues that the novel functions as a counter-discursive intervention exposing the normalization of violence while revealing the limits placed on resistance under authoritarianism. By bringing CDA into dialogue with feminist literary analysis, the study affirms the novel’s significance as a site of ideological struggle.