‘Tainted Pearls of Wisdom’ . A thematic analysis of the representation of women in Egyptian proverbs
Abstract
This article discusses the representation of women in Colloquial Egyptian proverbs (CEPs). Even though myriad studies have tackled the image of women in many linguistic genres, this is the first study to discursively examine such portrayal in Egyptian proverbs. Proverbs are usually laden with a moral legacy so instructive that it can steer the rudder of social ideologies. In patriarchal societies, however, sexist proverbs represent women negatively and sediment their submissiveness. The aim of this paper is to explore the major themes in the representation of women in CEPs. To this end, we conducted a thematic analysis of the data from a feminist critical discourse analysis perspective, employing Glick and Fiske’s (2001) Ambivalent Sexism Inventory with its two types of sexism, hostile sexism and benevolent sexism. The data revealed six major themes and 17 subthemes, all exhibiting either hostile or benevolent sexist depictions of women. The data showed that the CEPs were mostly designed to enforce male supremacy over women. Women were portrayed as a source of shame if they did not obey the rules of patriarchal society. While women were objectified and commodified, superficially valuing women for their stereotyped female attributes of domesticity and nurturing of their children, women’s worth is depicted as conditional upon men’s evaluation.
Keywords
Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis, representation of women, Egyptian Colloquial proverbs, hostile sexism, benevolent sexismReferences
ABDALLAH, E. (2014). دور الحكم والأمثال الشعبية كموروث ثقافي واستخدامها في طباعة ملابس الأطفال [The role of wise sayings and proverbs as a cultural heritage, used in printing children clothes]. At-tasmeem Ad-dawliya [International Design] Journal, 4, 157-167.
AL-ISDAWY, A. (2017). فن الأمثال ومجتمعنا القديم والمعاصر [The art of proverbs and our old and contemporary society]. Amman: Dar Ghayda’ for Publishing.
AL-SAHLI, M. (2002). بن القيم الجوزية :إرشاد السالك إلى حل ألفية ابن مالك [Ibn im Al-Jawziyyah’s Guidance towards expounding Ibn Malek’s One-thousand Verse Poem]. Adwa’a El-Salaf Publications.
BECKER, J. C. and WRIGHT, S. C. (2011). “Yet another dark side of chivalry: Benevolent sexism undermines and hostile sexism motivates collective action for social change.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101 (1), 62-77. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022615
BEGANY, J. and MILBURN, M. (2002). “Psychological predictors of sexual harassment: Authoritarianism, hostile sexism, and rape myths.” Psychology of Men & Masculinity Educational Publishing Foundation, 3, 119-126. https://doi.org/10.1037/1524-9220.3.2.119
BRAUN, V. and CLARKE, V. (2012). Thematic analysis. American Psychological Association.
CAMERON, D. (2005). “Language, gender, and sexuality: Current issues and new directions.” Applied linguistics, 26 (4), 482-502. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/ami027
CHIKWELU, E. J. (2017). Never marry a woman with big feet: The proverbial oppression of women in Igbo African culture: An investigation of the semantics of female devaluation in Igbo African proverbs. (Doctoral dissertation). University of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa.
CONNELL, R. W. (2020). Masculinities. Abingdon: Routledge.
CONNELL, R. W. and MESSERSCHMIDT, J. W. (2005). “Hegemonic masculinity: Rethinking the concept.” Gender & Society, 19 (6), 829-859. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243205278639
CONNELLY, K. and HEESACKER, M. (2012). “Why is benevolent sexism appealing? Associations with system justification and life satisfaction”. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 36 (4), 432-443. https://doi.org/10.1177/0361684312456369
CORNELL, D. (1991). Sexual Difference, the feminine, and equivalency: A critique of MacKinnon’s toward a feminist theory of the state. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
CROSS, E. J. and OVERALL, N. C. (2018). “Women’s Attraction to benevolent sexism: Needing relationship security predicts greater attraction to men who endorse benevolent sexism.” European Journal of Social Psychology, 48 (3), 336-347. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2334
CUDDY, A., WOLF, E. B., GLICK, P., CROTTY, S., CHONG, J. and NORTON, M. I. (2015). “Men as cultural ideals: Cultural values moderate gender stereotype content”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109 (4), 622-635. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000027
DARDENNE, B., DUMONT, M. and BOLLIER, T. (2007). “Insidious dangers of benevolent sexism: Consequences for women’s performance.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93 (5), 764-779. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.93.5.764
DYER, R. (1997). White. London: Routledge.
EL-MASRY, F. (1984). الشخصٌية المصرية من خلال بعض مظاهر الفولكلور [Egyptian character through some folklore manifestations]. General Egyptian Book Organisation.
EZZAT, A. (1997). الشخصية المصرية في الأمثال الشعبية [Egyptian character in proverbs]. Cairo: Dar El-Hilal.
FAKKAR, E. (2015). حوليات آداب عين شمس [Annals of the Faculty of Arts, Ain Shams University], Vol. 34.
FARRAG, T. and ANWAR, A. (2008). “من الأمثال الشعبية بالواحات” [Proverbs in the (Egyptian) Oases region]. Popular Arts Journal, 76, 113-136.
FOUCAULT, M. (1990). The history of sexuality: An introduction. New York: Vintage.
FREDRICKSON, B. L. and ROBERTS, T. A. (1997). “Objectification theory: Toward understanding women’s lived experiences and mental health risks.” Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21 (2), 173-206. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1997.tb00108.x
GAD EL-MOULA, M. (1986). المزهر في علوم اللغة وأنواعها [A compendium in language sciences and types]. Al-Maktaba Al-Asriyya Publications.
GADU, O. (1991). الأسرة والزواج في المثل الشعبي المصري [The family and marriage in Egyptian proverbs]. Popular Arts Journal, 34, 59-62.
GLICK, P. and FISKE, S. T. (1996). “The ambivalent sexism inventory: Differentiating hostile and benevolent sexism”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70 (3), 491-512. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.70.3.491
GLICK, P. and FISKE, S. T. (2001). “Ambivalent sexism.” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 33, 115-188. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0065-2601(01)80005-8
GRACE, A. P. (2015). Growing into resilience: Sexual and gender minority youth in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
GRAMSCI, A. (1971). “Selections from the Prison Notebooks.” In: HOARE, Q. and SMITH, G. (Eds.). The Applied Theatre Reader. New York: International Publishers.
HAYES, E. R. and SWIM, J. K. (2013). “African, Asian, latina/o, and European Americans’ responses to popular measures of sexist beliefs: Some cautionary notes”. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 37 (2), 155-166. https://doi.org/10.1177/0361684313480044
HUSSEIN, J. W. (2009). “A discursive representation of women in sample proverbs from Ethiopia, Sudan, and Kenya.” Research in African Literatures, 40 (3) 96-108. https://doi.org/10.2979/ral.2009.40.3.96
ISMAIL, E. (2012). الصورة النمطية للنوع الاجتماعي من خلال الأمثال الشعبية: دراسة تحليلية[Gender Stereotype via proverbs: An Analytical Study]. Faculty of Arts Journal, 6, 357-377.
LAKOFF, R. (2003). “Language, Gender, and Politics: Putting ‘women’ and ‘power’ in the same sentence”. In: HOLMES, J. and MEYERHOFF, M. (eds.). The Handbook of Language and Gender. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 161-178. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470756942.ch7
LAZAR, M. M. (2007). “Feminist critical discourse analysis: Articulating a feminist discourse praxis”. Critical discourse studies, 4 (2), 141-164. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405900701464816
LEAP, W. L. (2003). “Language and Gendered Modernity.” In: HOLMES, J. and MEYERHOFF, M. (eds.). The Handbook of Language and Gender. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 401-422. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470756942.ch17
LEMKE, J. L. (1993). “Discourse, Dynamics, and Social Change.” Cultural Dynamics, 6 (1-2), 243-275. https://doi.org/10.1177/092137409300600107
LOMOTEY, B. A. and CHACHU, S. (2020). “Gender Ideologies and Power Relations in Proverbs: A Cross-cultural Study”. Journal of Pragmatics, 168, 69-80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2020.07.001
MIEDER, W. (2014). Behold the proverbs of a people: Proverbial wisdom in culture, literature, and politics. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
MILLS, S. and MULLANY, L. (2011). Language, gender and feminism: Theory, methodology and practice. London: Routledge.
MOQADIM, F. (2017). “صورة المرأة في الأمثال الشعبية بولاية غليزان” [“Women’s image in proverb in Relizane”] Al-Kalim Journal, 1, 59-75.
NAYEF, H. and EL-NASHAR, M. (2014). “‘Dissecting the poisoned honey’ Sexist Humor in Egypt: A linguistic analysis of sexism in Colloquial Cairene Arabic jokes.” Anàlisi, 50, 131-146. https://doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i50.2324
PHILIPS, S. U. (2004). “Language and social inequality.” In: A. DURANTI (ed.). A companion to linguistic anthropology. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 474-495.
RAGHEB, F. (1943) حدائق الأمثال العامية [The gardens of colloquial proverbs]. Cairo: Amin Abdelrahman Publications.
RAMZY et al. (1992). اتجاهات الرأي العام حول مكانة المرأة من خلال الأمثال الشعبٌية [Public Opinion Trends over Women’s Status through Proverbs], National Centre for Social and Criminal Research.
RASUL, S. (2015). “Gender and power relationships in the language of proverbs: Image of a woman.” FWU Journal of Social Sciences, 9 (2), 53-62.
SCHLESINGER, P. (2010). “Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (eds.), Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci.” International Journal of Cultural Policy, 16 (1), 72-73. https://doi.org/10.1080/10286630902952421
SCHIPPER, M. (2006). Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet: Women in Proverbs from around the World. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
SHALAAN, I. (2010). العادات والتقاليد المصرية من الأمثال الشعبية في عهد محمد على: جون لويس بوركيهارت [Egyptian habits and traditions in proverbs in Mohamed Ali’s reign: Johann Ludwig Burckhardt]. General Egyptian Book Organisation.
SHALABY, M. (1992).المثل الشعب المصري والتركي (دراسة أدبية مقارنة) [Egyptian and Turkish proverbs: A comparative literary study]. (Ph.D. dissertation). Faculty of Arts, Ain Shams University.
SUNDERLAND, J. (2006). Language and Gender: An Advanced Resource Book. London: Routledge.
SZYMANSKI, D. et al. (2011). “Sexual objectification of women: Advances to theory and research”. The Counseling Psychologist, 39 (1), 6-38. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000010378402
TALBOT, M. (2003). “Gender stereotypes: Reproduction and challenge.” In: HOLMES, J. and MEYERHOFF, M. (eds.). The Handbook of Language and Gender. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 468-486. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470756942.ch20
TAYMUR, A. (2014). الأمثال العامية [Colloquial proverbs]. Cairo: Dar El-Shorouq, 3rd edition.
TODD, L. and HANCOCK, I. (ed.). (2005). International English Usage. London: Routledge.
VAN DIJK, T. A. (2001). “Critical Discourse Analysis.” In: TANNEN, D., SCHIFFRIN, D. and HAMILTON, H. (eds.). Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Malden: Blackwell, 352-371.
Published
Downloads
Copyright (c) 2024 Mohamed El-Nashar, Heba Nayef, Sally Samy Tayie, Rania Samir Youssef
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
