Textual Coherence as Cultural Insights in Prologue of the Holy Woman and Epilogue of Unmarriageable

Abstract

This qualitative study relates to the textual coherence in the Prologue of The Holy Woman by Qaisra Shahraz and the Epilogue of Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal, in relation to linguistic features that provide cultural implications in the relevant texts. As this research shows through the deconstruction of the narrative strategies and thematic contents of sections, imagery, dialogue and the subject-verb-object construction all contribute to the stylisation of cultural ethnicity and social decencies. The Prologue of The Holy Woman enforces and questions the rigid gender roles and religious expectations in a Muslim family; the conclusion of Unmarriageable questions the rigid culture of marriage and identity of Pakistani women. Thus, the present paper, adopting an inductive thematic analysis, features literature stressing connections between linguistic cohesiveness and cultural matrices as well as providing readers with an understanding of the everyday realities of South Asian women. Results highlight the connection between language, cultural, and social issues and point to the possibilities for a critical view of gender, marriage, and freedom in literature. The study helps in establishing the diminished link between language and culture in postcolonial tradition and provide the scholars with ways in which these authors engages in using the language tools to broker the cultural relevancy today from the culture of the past.