LANGUAGE AS LIBERATION: A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF FEMALE VOICE AND SILENCE IN TONI MORRISON'S ‘THE BLUEST EYE’

Abstract

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison seeks to challenge the eroding sexual and racial prejudices affecting Black girls and women. This paper analyzes how Morrison employs language and voice and silence to portray how societal forces suppress Black women but to reveal that language is a tool for liberation and Black women’s creation of the self. Through a close reading of the novel, I demonstrate how linguistic manipulation works to devalue Black women’s voices and argue that the novel includes instances in which language allows them to speak against their suppression and to create their identities anew. With this study, I look at various sociolinguistic factors in this novel as the central point of focus to add to current understandings on power dynamics and linguistic transformation in both the literary analysis and general discussions.

In analyzing these elements and themes in Morrison’s work the paper utilizes the keywords Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, Language, Voice, Silence, Black Women, Feminism, Linguistic Analysis, Oppression, Liberation, Dialect.