الفهرس 
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Abstract
This study aims at building a critical discourse analytical framework through which it will be attempted to explore different discursive practices within social groups that reflect ideological power relations between different social classes. Critical discourse analysis is a tool to resist and struggle against domination, depression, inequalities, and other forms of discriminations in its linguistic form. It is a type of analytical research that studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality enacted, reproduced and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context (van Dijk, 2008). This framework is placed within a social context through which dominant social groups subjugate and control subordinate groups discursively and ideologically. Such a social context is examined through the text of the post-colonial novel Weep Not, Child by Ngugi Wa Thiong’O. This study is concerned with the qualitative analysis of particular linguistic features in the discourse of the focus text of Weep Not, Child in an attempt to portray the ideologies of the powerful vs. the powerless. This is done by linking syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features to the strategic functions of legitimation and delegitimation. Moreover, van Dijk’s triangular model(2009) is adopted by examining the cognitive, event and contextual dimensions in the novel. The semantic and pragmatic levels of analysis simulate van Dijk’s event and context models respectively in an attempt to scrutinize local and global meanings and also place the focus text in its social context of communication. Meanwhile, ideologies are the interplay between van Dijk’s event and context models catering for the cognition dimension in his triangular model. The syntactic level of analysis added to this study helps in the realization of the strategic function of legitimation implemented by the British colonizer. The semantic level, on the other hand, realizes the strategic function of delegitimation while the pragmatic level realizes both strategic functions.