Department of Arabic Language and Literature

This study investigates how intersectional feminism is linguistically negotiated in the representation of the subaltern in selected contemporary women’s discourses, with a particular focus on scholarly and audiovisual genres. Grounded in feminist critical discourse analysis (FCDA) and multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA), the study also draws on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) approaches. These frameworks are employed to uncover how intersecting identities such as gender, race, class, and religion are mediated, challenged, and reconstructed through language. The corpus comprises chapters from a scholarly book and a documentary that foreground marginalized female voices from the Arab countries and in the diaspora, with attention to identity formulation and gender strategies. The research adopts a qualitative design informed by critical epistemology, enabling a nuanced examination of narrative strategies and representational patterns across modes and genres. By interrogating the thematic dimensions of feminist expression, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of how linguistic and multimodal practices sustain or resist dominant ideologies. The findings are expected to have significant implications for feminist theory, linguistics, and discourse analysis, especially in contexts that center decolonial and Islamic feminist frameworks.