An Investigation of Sexism in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic in Khaled Al-Khamissi’s Taxi: A Feminist Stylistic Analysis

Abstract

Language is one of the most powerful tools of gender discrimination and maintaining sexism. The linguistic structures used by the speakers of a certain language reflect their view of the world as well as how they view themselves and others who belong to different social groups (e.g., women). This paper aims to investigate how Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA), as used by a considerable number of Egyptian speakers, reflects discriminatory attitudes towards women. The paper presents an analysis of Khaled Al-Khamissi’s Taxi which includes a collection of authentic dialogues between the author and a number of taxi drivers with whom he wandered through the streets of Cairo. The study adopts a Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis approach, using Sara Mill’s (1995) model of feminist stylistic analysis, in order to reveal the sexism embedded in the Egyptian Colloquial Arabic expressions used mainly by the taxi drivers in the book through analyzing such expressions on the lexical, syntactic and discoursal levels. The study aims to shed light on how such expressions, used mostly without speakers being conscious of their sexist content, reflect a certain view of women among Egyptians.