Power, Ideology, and Discursive Practices in Contemporary Fiction: A Critical Discourse Analysis of American Dirt

Abstract

This study explores the construction of power, ideology, and discursive practices in contemporary fiction through a Critical Discourse Analysis of Jeanine Cummins’ American Dirt. Employing a qualitative research design, the study is grounded in Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis and supported by van Dijk’s socio-cognitive perspective. Purposively selected textual extracts are analyzed to examine how linguistic features such as agency assignment, lexical choices, narrative voice, and silence function as social practices. The analysis reveals that power is discursively produced through asymmetrical representations in which institutions and violent actors are foregrounded as dominant agents, while migrants are linguistically positioned as passive and marginalized. Ideological meanings related to migration, authority, and gender are embedded through representational strategies that emphasize fear, vulnerability, and maternal sacrifice. The study concludes that American Dirt operates as a discursive site that both questions and reproduces dominant ideological frameworks, highlighting the significant role of language in shaping contemporary literary representations of power and migration.