Critical Stylistic Study of Transcultural Identity in Pico Iyer's Global Soul

Abstract

This study aims at examining and elucidating on how transcultural identity is portrayed and constructed in the travel book of Pico Iyer entitled: The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home (2001). The study adopts Jeffries’ critical stylistics (CS) as its analytical framework. Three extracts are selected from the travel book mentioned above and analyzed according to four CS tools namely: Naming and Describing, Representing Actions/Events/States, Equating and Contrasting, and Presenting Time, Space, and Society. The importance of the study resides in being the first study that attempts to linguistically analyze the concept of identity transculturation. The analysis of the data shows that the four CS tools utilized in the study make a suitable framework to approach the linguistic construction of transcultural identity in narrative travel accounts, especially Naming and Describing.