Stigmatizing Views of Ill Women in Kuwaiti Memoir of Arthritis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33806/ijaes.v25i2.884Keywords:
disability, Kuwaiti memoir, LIWC, writingAbstract
This study explored the portrayal of illness and disability in Kuwaiti author Kulthoum Dashti’s memoir Almost Faded: Rheumatoid Arthritis Journey specifically focusing on how health-based thematic categorizations intersect with perceptions of the external world. Using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC-2015) software program, a corpus specific to the novel was analyzed, retrieving thematic categories and contrasting them with the psychologically validated lexica. The analysis revealed the author’s strong authenticity in narrating her journey with arthritis, characterized by heavy use of function words contributing to reflective tone. Additionally, the marginal confidence and low emotional tone in the narrative reflected the author’s intention to share experiences without asserting authority, while social, temporal, and spatial references centralized the lack of familial support and accurate depictions of locations, shaping the narrative’s structure. This case study contributes to understanding how illness and disability are portrayed in Kuwaiti literature, shedding light on the psychological dimensions embedded within the disability narrative.
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