The Ideological Implications of Ethnic Identity Constructions in N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn (1968): A Critical Stylistic Analysis

Abstract

Historical and ideological conflicts contribute significantly to communities' evolution and cultural identities. Ethnic identity, a group-based social identity, reflects an individual's affiliation with a group sharing common patterns, customs, cultural and historical experiences, race, religion, and cookery, evolving across a person's lifespan. Despite extensive former literature on the melting pot dynamics and cultural pluralism of Native Americans in literary studies, there is a notable gap in linguistic analyses that examine the formation and crises of ethnic identity in Native American literature. Therefore, this study employs a critical stylistic approach to explore the conceptualization and ideological implications of ethnic identity constructions within Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn (1968). The analysis focuses essentially on uncovering implicit ideologies encoded through linguistic choices and textual strategies. By examining selected key extracts, the study reveals how ideational and textual meanings are constructed to articulate underlying ideologies associated with Native American identity. The findings demonstrate the role of linguistic tools in shaping the collective ethnic identity of Native Americans and emphasize the text's contribution to addressing cultural identity in the United States