Tthe inquiry of women discourse in high culture and popular culture through Woolf and Weldon translations in Turkish

Western culture has almost consisted of two categories as high culture and popular culture for two centuries. The studied Turkish translations of the canonical novel of the English author Woolf (Mrs Dalloway) and the popular novel of the English writer Weldon (The Spa Decameron) delineate the women discourse in the Great Britain in the two cultural strata. The distinction made as high culture versus popular culture has a late modern spirit and has a continental European perspective. The distinction has been well adapted to the studied English novels in which aristocratic and bourgeois English women are cornerstones. The works of late modern French thinkers, namely Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Touraine and others, have been referred, studied and discussed as part of literature review and they have been part of theoretical ground of the thesis. Women discourse is the social and cultural facet of womanhood. One is not born but made woman. The Turkish translations of the novels have been considered, inquired, and analyzed through critical discourse analysis of Norman Fairclough. The theoretical examinations of the translations through methodological analysis and the field study which also include other agents reveal and verify that women discourse in high culture and that in popular culture are distinctly different in class oriented British society. Accordingly, popular culture exploits women discourse commercially, rudely realistically, pornographically and pejoratively, whereas high culture glorifies, dignifies, and even idealizes women discourse. However, the canonical works of English novelists cannot affirm the women discourse in high culture as to be generalized and the popular novels of English authors cannot for always negate the women discourse in popular culture. Key Words: High culture, popular culture, women discourse, Great Britain, canonical literature, popular literature