Language, Discursive Self-Construction and Mobility: Identity Transformation Analysis Through Fairclough’s 3D Model and Sociolinguistics Theories of Narrative Identity and Mobility in Coelho’s The Alchemist and Eleven Minutes

Abstract

This research examines how identity is discursively constructed in Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist and Eleven Minutes using an interdisciplinary approach that combines Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with sociolinguistic theory. The study engages with more than simplistic thematic interpretations of “journey” and “self-discovery” by emphasizing the constitutive power of language in the construction of identity in mobility. The study employs Fairclough’s three-dimensional approach to discourse, as well as current sociolinguistic views on mobility, narrative and linguistic capital, to examine and analyze selected textual passages from each novel. It proposes that identity transformation is not an internal, pre-discursive transformation, but a shifting interaction between discourse, society and changing cultural contexts. Santiago and Maria, the main characters of the novels, are demonstrated to build their identities through different, yet interconnected, discursive regimes: spiritual, economic and embodied, all constrained by transnational circulation and ideological restrictions. This research confirms that Coelho’s texts reproduce and reinforce larger sociolinguistic paradigms of individual agency and achievement within a neoliberal framework, but also highlight the inequalities of agency along gendered and socioeconomic lines. This research adds to the burgeoning field of interdisciplinary enquiry by showing that literary texts are sites of sociolinguistic encounter and ideological reproduction.

Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), discursive, mobility, sociolinguistics.