I will be looking at the postmodernist novel

Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth

Saturday 14 January 2012

Polyphony and heteroglossia!

  Mikhail Bakhtin

When reading a novel with heteroglossic or polyphonic text we immediately think of the originator of the concept Mikhail Bakhtin.  Bakhtin was a Russian formalist theorist who employed the term heteroglossia. Heteroglossia means ‘differentiated speech’ (Vice 1997) and is known to be Bakhtin’s key term for describing the ‘complex stratification of language; genre, register, sociolect, dialect and the mutual inter- animations of these forms’. (Vice 1997)  This just means that language is spoken differently by everybody.  Each person speaks with their own style of register and dialect. It is these ‘inter animations’ or ways of speaking collectively that contribute to heteroglossia. It can be seen that heteroglossia is a term used in the real world as the speech that is used is from everyday life. Bakhtin states that when heteroglossia is used in texts, it is seen as ‘textual polyphony, inter character dialogism, the unofficial carnival life of the people and the grotesque realism’ (Vice 1997) His theory of heteroglossia is synonymous with the carnivalesque. The literature of carnival that is known to be different in style and register compared to that of the conventional novel.  It is seen to ‘interrupt the texts ontological’ layers with ‘inserted genres’ (McHale 1987) like theatrical dialogues and mise en abyme.  The effect of using heteroglossia in a novel is to create confusion and chaos.  Bakhtin shows how reading a novel is not just about the words on the page but shows how the use of language, speech and register affect the way we read a novel.


 
Shields, C.M (2007) Bakhtin Primer. Peter Lang Publishing
Vice, s. (1997)  Introducing Bakhtin. Manchester University Press.
 

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