Abstract

Language, nationality, and power have a mutual and influential relationship together, as society and its culture influence language and its words. Language also affects society, its culture, and the prevailing idea in it. Language changes according to the male gender or the female nationality. We see in men’s language words and styles that usually indicate power, anger, and violence, while we usually see in women's language words and styles that indicate softness, gentleness, and affection. This article studies the dialectics of the mutual relationship between language, nationality, and power in the novel “Night Mail” using a descriptive and analytical method. The article concluded that the novelist used, in the words of male characters, methods of command, prohibition, appeal, repetition, and the use of words associated with masculine characters to indicate the dominance of men over women, power, violence, anger, arrogance, and selfishness. As for the feminist characters, Muwafaqa used words and methods that indicate regret, compassion, crying, contempt, softness, and kindness, charged with emotions filled with a sense of contempt, weakness, expulsion, and migration through the use of the interrogative style to invite contemplation about the class antagonism between men and women, to remove them from society, and to show compassion through painful words to help women and raise her status and care for equality, then the simile method to indicate the participation and unity of Lebanese women in eliminating injustice and the rule of men over them, and on the other hand, the participation and unity of Lebanese citizens in the pain, misfortunes, self-destruction, humiliation, expulsion and displacement. Also, nouns and adjectives were used by the feminist characters more than verbs due to women’s tendency to describe and be flexible in proportion to their emotions, with the frequent use of the pronoun “y” in messages about women to indicate the ultimate uniqueness of women in society and their lack of status in it, while it was used by the male characters. Verbs, more than nouns and adjectives, indicate movement, strength, doing work, and managing matters.
Keywords: Language And Society; Language and Nationality; Hoda Barakat; The novel “Night Mail”; Authority.
 
Extended summary
 

Introduction

Language, nationality, and power have a mutual and influential relationship together, as society and its culture influence language and its words. Language also affects society, its culture, and the prevailing idea in it. Language changes according to the male gender or the female nationality. We see in men’s language words and styles that usually indicate power, anger, and violence, while we usually see in women's language words and styles that indicate softness, gentleness, and affection.
 Society and language are interconnected, influencing each other. Men's language varies from women's to reflect their emotions, thoughts, and spiritual states. We see this issue in Hoda Barakat’s novel “Night Mail” which won the Arabic Booker Prize in 2019. In it, the novelist tells the story of the homeless Lebanese immigrants as a result of the social and political conditions prevailing in Lebanon, such as male supremacy and capitalism, which elevates the status of the wealthy and degrades the status of the poor, linking it to power as a mechanism of power over women. If we look closely from the historical perspective, we see that they do not allow women to do work outside the home to earn money, and this matter indicates to a large extent their power over them through their financial dependence on men and their inadequacy in themselves. Because financial self-sufficiency reduces men's power over women, we see in the novel that women, more than men, are afflicted with extreme poverty, to the point that they are forced to serve in the homes of the wealthy to earn money to meet their needs. The wealthy thus take on their human identities, and the novelist critiques these prevailing conditions. The research aims to examine the relationship between language, nationality, and power, given the influence and impact they have on each other. The research question lies in the fact that language, society, conflict, and power are dialectically intertwined, as they influence each other, and power in society is manifested through language. This research aims to examine the dialectical relationship between language, nationality, and power in the novel "Night Mail" using a descriptive and analytical approach.

Materials and Methods

The novelist in the novel "Night Mail" successfully used language through the male characters, using terms and styles that typically denote power, anger, and violence. Meanwhile, through the female characters, she uses terms and styles that typically denote softness, kindness, affection, and relationships. Language changes according to the male or female gender, and power is revealed through the language associated with male gender. The novel is filled with diverse masculine and feminine styles that align with the speaker's ideology. The novelist uses imperatives, prohibitions, calls, and repetition to assert and assert authority over women. She uses terms associated with male characters to signify men's dominance over women, power, violence, anger, stubbornness, and selfishness to the point of transgressing laws, principles, and norms. As for the female characters, she uses similes, interrogatives, nouns, adjectives, female first-person pronouns, and terms expressing regret, compassion, weeping, contempt, softness, and kindness, all of which are charged with emotions filled with feelings of contempt, weakness, expulsion, migration, and violation, as expressed by the female characters in their sexual relations.

Research Findings

This is particularly evident in the frequent use of interrogatives. Because the question invites the recipient to reflect on the class contrast between men and women in order to remove it from society and to express compassion through painful words to help women, raise their status, and foster equality and the participation of men and women in matters commensurate with their nationalities, so that the status of women in society is not overlooked. Then, the method of simile through which the novelist indicates the participation and unity of Lebanese women in eliminating injustice and men's dominance over them, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the participation and unity of Lebanese citizens in the pain, calamities, broken spirits, contempt, expulsion and displacement. Through it, she stirs the hearts of Lebanese women and men and calls them to unite, resist and revolt against tyranny because of this pain and desolation they share, so that they can obtain a luxurious life far from injustice and colonialism and foster equality between men and women after removing male dominance. The novelist moved the hearts of the Lebanese to strive to change the prevailing ideology through vocabulary and methods to a new ideology that opposes male supremacy and elevates the status of women to the same level as men, to take into account gender equality and eliminate this supremacy, injustice, contempt, violence, migration and expulsion of women. On the other hand, the novelist used nouns and adjectives more than verbs through the female characters, with a surge of the first-person pronoun "I" in the messages about women to indicate the extreme uniqueness of women in society, their unity and their lack of status in it.
 

Discussion of Results and Conclusion

We also see in the novel the multiplicity of female characters in the novel, as the novelist seeks to elevate the status of women by mentioning the multiplicity of female characters, and this is consistent with the repeated use of the pronoun "I" through the female characters to indicate the unity, uniqueness and existence under authority of women; Because singularity refers to subordinates under authority due to the lack of authority, while the abundance of characters agreeing together indicates that they possess power and authority, while verbs are used on the tongues of male characters more than nouns and adjectives; because women tend towards description and flexibility in proportion to their emotions which are appropriate for description, women have a vision that deepens and scrutinizes in describing matters, details and colors, while men have more physical ability and logical thoughts compared to women and tend to carry out work and manage family affairs like a leader and guardian, they possess more vitality and activity to carry out work, so the use of verbs for men is appropriate to indicate movement, strength, undertaking work and managing affairs.