Stereotypical representation of the Non-West in Patricia McCormick’s Sold

Abstract

The present study analyses Patricia McCormick’s Sold in the view of Critical Discourse Analysis; in particular "Building Tasks" by James Paul Gee and "Social Actor Theory" by Theo Van Leeuwen.Both of these theories try to interpret any of the discourses through the critical lens. It goes through the use of language in the novel and finds that the writer has used the Americanized lens in gazing the non-western people, place and culture. Accepting the reality of advencement and modernization of the West in comparision to the East, the thesis asserts that the writer has activized her westernized mentality while creating the novel. In the surfave level, she seems to be working good for the abolition of of women trafficking, establishent of justice and equality and moreover, she seems to be publishing the problems and troubles that have been faced by the people of non-western region. But in reality, she is politicizing her own Americanized notion of superiority of the Westerns and the inferiority of the Easterners by assigning the negative and derogative stereotypes to easteners. Here, she is trying to prove her Orientalist version of ‘‘White man’s burden’’ to teach, to civilize and to rescue the uneducated Eastern people.