The Feminist Stylistics Analysis of Domesticity in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Abstract

This study involves a feminist stylistic analysis of domesticity in Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Through vocabulary and grammatical choices, the study aims to explore how domestic environments and experiences are linguistically and ideologically defined and created. The examination at the word level focuses on identifying and describing tactics, such as the nominalization patterns that either obfuscate or emphasize agency and the choice of nouns, particularly gendered, collective, abstract, and generic nouns. Additional focus is placed on the analysis of adjectives that contribute to the representation of emotional labour and domestic responsibilities, including empty, gendered, qualitative, diminutive, and qualifying adjectives. The study investigates how these linguistic components create gendered identities and place the female narrator inside the sociocultural realm of domesticity, drawing on an integrated linguistic model based on the research of Sara Mills, Lesley Jeffries, and

M.A.K. Halliday's systemic functional grammar. Via adopting a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach for analysis, it is vital that Angelou's story presents domesticity as a contested, emotionally charged, and ideologically complicated phenomenon that is introduced through intentional linguistic choices rather than as a passive backdrop. The results reinforce how women's autobiographical writing can reveal the multi-layered representation of domestic agency, resistance, and limitation through feminist stylistic lens.