Self-Society Conflict in Angie Thomas’ the Hate U Give: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Self-society conflict in Angie Thomas' novel The Hate U Give is currently found in many countries. Racism and police brutality are among the significant themes reflected throughout this novel. This study aims at investigating the process of self-society conflict in this novel by examining the discursive strategies used to create a positive or negative representation of society. Such rhetorical devices play an important role in the field of spreading tyranny and racism between white and black people, even though they live in the same city. Consequently, this study selects seven extracts to be critically investigated by the adoption of six chosen strategies from(T. A. J. A. n. a. i. d. a. Van Dijk, 2005) combined with (T. A. J. C. d. s. i. c. Van Dijk & cognition, 2011) to achieve the aims of this study. The findings of this study indicate that rhetorical devices are important in critical discourse analysis. They are used by the novel's characters to impose their political, economic, and social ideologies on society. Some themes represented by the macro-structure, such as racism, identity, self-society conflict, code-switching, and others, are used to impose white people's ideology on black people. The microstructure is achieved by using discursive strategies such as lexicalization, polarization, actor description, vagueness, metaphor, and victimization. It is concluded that lexicalization and polarization have the highest frequency, while metaphor has the lowest frequency, indicating a process of self-society conflict.