Norman Fairclough’s Three Dimensional Approach as an Analytical Model in the Critical Discourse Analysis of George Orwell’s Novel Nineteen-Eighty Four

Abstract

George Orwell’s political dystopian novel Nineteen-Eighty Four is one of the distinguished narratives in the twentieth century. Such literary genre uses fiction to reflect the atrocities committed against the public by those in power. This type of story is more accommodated with Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) among other methods of novel analyses compared to other types because of its specificity and unique quality and its close relation with social context and political events. Hence, the present study aimed to apply Fairclough’s three dimensional approach to examine its extent on such kind of novel. The research tackled the three dimensions of analysis which are: description, interpretation and explanation to scrutinise Fairclough’s methodology. To carry out the research, the present dissertation adopted the qualitative method approach in order to unearth the hidden ideologies embedded in the discourse of the novel. The findings of the study revealed that Fairclough’s approach to CDA could be applied on novels to highlight its different aspects. Thus, Fairclough’s model of analysis is a very useful method to illustrate the role of language in presenting particular ideologies. To conclude, the researchers observed that Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty Four embeds the political ideology of totalitarianism and hatred, besides the linguistic ideology of language imperialism.