الفهرس 
CHAPTER ONEOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The present study aims at investigating the concept of social and psychological identity in Leila Aboulela’s The Translator (1999) and Minaret (2005) from the stance of cognitive linguistics (CL). The study raised four research questions: 1) How does language serve to substantiate the cognitive system of the principal characters, Sammar and Najwa, as depicted in The Translator and Minaret respectively? 2) What is the relationship between schemas and the personal conceptualization of the world as depicted in the selected data? 3) To what extent do cultural and educational background influence self-identification? 4) How does language reflect the underlying social and psychological representations of ””identity”” in the selected novels? Seizing the interdisciplinarity of CL, theories from sociology and psychology such as Tajfel’s Social Identity Theory (SIT) and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (MHN) were utilized. The study revealed the significant contribution cognitive linguistic theories provide along with other social and psychological theories in the exploration of identity-related issues. Consequently, it is recommended that future identity research adopt a more expansive approach by integrating cognitive methodologies