A Cross-Linguistic Study of the Language of the Privileged and the Deprived: A Case Study of Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' and its Variant in Albanian Language

The paper presents the results of a cross-linguistic study on the language of the privileged and the deprived in Margaret Atwood 'The Handmaid's Tale' and its Albanian translation. Being fully aware that such a novel lends itself to multiple analyses, within the limitations of the current study, we focused on those cases that illustrate the language used specifically from characters that seem to be on different spectrums of the dimension 'privileged vs. deprived' and we observed how language and communication alters as the events unfold. The exploration of language in this novel is also an exploration of power hierarchy and a reflection on how totalitarianism is expressed in linguistic choice to reflect deeper issues of oppression, manipulation and propaganda. The paper is composed of three parts: in the first part we describe main features of dystopian literature and The Handmaid's Tale. In the second part we describe the reciprocal relationship between language and power and in the third part we bring concrete examples from the novel and its translation into Albanian in order to observe whether such expression of power through language is still preserved in Albanian.