Rape Trauma in Phonological Perspectives: A Study of Tess of the D’Urbervilles

This research is an interdisciplinary venture of Psycholinguistics, Applied Linguistics and English literature. The researchers have applied the insights of psychology and psycholinguistics to evaluate the work of literature for finding how Thomas Hardy has dealt with the theme of the rape trauma and its flashback through the phonological perspectives of the victim’s language in the novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles. The researchers collected qualitative data through close reading technique and then evaluated the collected data by textual analysis methods to discover the impacts of trauma on the phonological perspectives of the character’s language.  The collected data and its qualitative analysis endorse the premise that Hardy has artistically delineated the impacts of traumatic condition on the phonological perspectives of the selected character. The present study makes an excellent contribution in the fields of psychology and psychoanalysis with reference to rape trauma and its aftermath. The study is an exceptional endeavor to acquaint the readers with complex and intricate issues triggered by rape trauma like Rape trauma syndrome and Post Traumatic stress disorder. Phonological excerpts from the selected novel provide additional information to psychotherapist and psychoanalysts for curing the rape trauma victims.