Forced Marriage, Early Marriage, and Setting a Legal Minimum Age of Marriage in Saudi Arabia: a Discourse Analysis
This paper is a part of the analysis of my thesis research. It aims to describe and understand the way that some people look at forced and early marriage in Saudi Arabia. This paper tries to address this issue through discourse analysis of a specific text. The paper describes how the text was constructed, what the main claims were and what ways were used to support the claims. This text was found on the internet, written by a woman to reply to one of the women’s rights activist who conveys the idea of setting the age of eighteen as a legal minimum age of marriage in Saudi Arabia. Analysis highlights how claims about religion and culture work alongside claims to experience (as a woman, a wife and mother) and presents images of western life, against the Saudi context is presented as preferable
