A Cognitive Grammar Analysis of Cultural Conflict, Identity, and Gendered Agency in Faïza Guène’s Men Don’t Cry

Abstract

This study examines how language constructs cultural conflict, migrant identity, gender relations, and individual agency in Faïza Guène’s Men Don’t Cry. Using Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar (CG), the study qualitatively analyses eleven purposively selected passages through construal, profiling, trajector-landmark alignment, grounding, reference-point relations, subjectivity/objectivity, force dynamics, and metaphorical expressions (Langacker, 2008). The findings show that Guène represents cultural conflict through competing perspectives on tradition, modernity, gender, religion, and family authority. Dounia’s gradual shift from an affected participant to an active trajector reflects her growing autonomy, while metaphors of containment, movement, and force represent restriction and liberation. The study demonstrates that cultural conflict is constructed not only thematically but also through grammatical and cognitive patterns, contributing to cognitive stylistics and the study of migrant and gendered identity in contemporary fiction.

Keywords: Cognitive Grammar; cognitive stylistics; cultural conflict; migrant identity; gender; agency; cultural hybridity; Men Don’t Cry