Figurative language and gender construction: A corpus-based analysis of similes in Faruqi's The Mirror of Beauty

Abstract

The use of similes in the construction of women and men characters in a literary text has been a neglected area of research. Drawing on the assumption from attitude theory as proposed by Rosenberg and Hovland, and Fishbein Ajzen, the present study investigates the use of similes in Shamsur Rehman Faruqi's novel The Mirror of Beauty (TMOB) to determine the attitude of a male novelist towards gender depiction. The one novel corpus, TMOB, was run into AntConc to collect the required data utilizing the node words ‘like a’, ‘like an’, ‘like the’, ‘as*as’, ‘as a *’, and ‘like that of a/an/the’. The lists of similes based on the source domain were generated and then tabulated gender wise to evaluate in relation to their function and meaning with the help of concordance program. The study has found a total number of 112 similes with 6 source domains: flora (30), fauna (18), astronomical objects (08), inanimate objects (33), supernatural/royal characters (09) and human characters (14). Out of collected 112 similes, 71 (63 %) similes are used to represent women while 41(37 %) are used for men. The analysis based on functional features of these similes show that women are described through 8 ideologies while the similes for men describe them through 12 constructed ideologies. The findings indicate that the author is biased in his gender representation where he represents his men characters more positively as compared to his women characters. Male characters are described as handsome, spiritual, delightful brave, intelligent, kind, well learned, hardworking, powerful and strong while female ones are portrayed as physically beautiful, seductive and delicate creatures but with negative personality traits.