A Socio-Cognitive linguistic analysis of Male Dominance in two selected memoirs: A contrastive study

This research investigates the socio-cognitive mechanisms of male dominance in the life of the two female authors Malala Yousfzai and Tara Westover as represented through the two memoirs entitled 'I am Malala, the girl who stood up for education and was shot by the Taliban' and 'Educated'. The theoretical preliminaries of the research center upon Van Dijk's Socio Cognitive approach that reflects the male dominance factor through a detailed macro and micro analysis to selected extracts. Male dominance is subjected to investigation through the writers' grammatical and lexical choices in the two memoirs. The study resulted in showing a striking difference between the attitudes adopted by the fathers of the two female authors. Malala's father was found to be very considerate and supportive to his daughter's educational path showing a strong father daughter relationship whereas Tara's father on the other hand showed to be a great obstacle in his daughter's educational path. The attitudes of the two male figures showed to be very contradicting and gave the researcher some insights about the eastern-western cultures differences as represented by the two female authors.