The Voice of Nature : Ecological Personification in Abulhawa’s Mornings in Jenin and Abdel-Fattah’s Where the Streets Had a Name: An Ecolinguistic Analysis

Sammanfattning: This study delves into the ways in which the displaced Palestinian characters in Susan Abulhawa’s Mornings in Jenin (2010) and Randa Abdel-Fattah’s Where the Streets Had a Name (2008) connect to their homeland through embodied metaphors, particularly through the personification of their native lands, which will be read with recourse to Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). By utilizing ecolinguistics as an analytical lens and applying CMT, this study illuminates how both literary works significantly underscore the urgency and cruciality of the human-nature interconnection and interdependence amid tragedy and dispossession. The authors’ use of metaphorical language to personify the land gives rise to the ontological conceptual metaphor NATURE IS A PERSON and other embodied metaphors, and these illustrate the profound interconnection between the characters and their ancestral lands. Subsequently, this study uncovers the ecological identities of the displaced characters, which ultimately leads them to attempt to establish physical and metaphorical connections with their ancestral villages. The physical connection is established through the concept of “eco-resistance”, which is crucial for their physical and psychological wellbeing, as well as the wellbeing of the land.