Memory, Power, and Patriarchal Silence: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Kanza Javed’s Rani

Abstract

This study applies Teun A. van Dijk’s socio-cognitive model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to Kanza Javed’s short story Rani. The analysis explores how discourse constructs and reproduces ideologies of patriarchy, gendered morality, class hierarchy, and silence within a rural Pakistani setting. Through a close textual reading aligned with van Dijk’s framework focusing on ideology, power, mental models, and discourse structures the study reveals how lexical choices, narrative strategies, and presuppositions normalize social inequalities while simultaneously exposing their violence. The story foregrounds memory, Alzheimer’s, and fragmented narration as discursive mechanisms through which suppressed trauma resurfaces. By examining gendered labeling, narrative positioning, and acts of symbolic punishment, this paper argues that Rani both reproduces and critiques patriarchal ideology. The narrator’s retrospective confession functions as discursive resistance, challenging intergenerational complicity and moral silence.

Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis, ideology, patriarchy, memory, power relations, narrative discourse, socio-cognitive approach.