Discursive Heterogeneity in Chinese Literature: A Semiotic Analysis of the Construction of the Narrator and the Narratee

Abstract

In this paper we explore the marks of discursive heterogeneity in literary works produced in situations of language and culture contact. We analyze novels written by contemporary Chinese authors who live outside the People's Republic of China and produce their work in English and French: Qiu Xiaolong and Dai Sijie, respectively. We address marks of heteroglossia and discursive heterogeneity and explore the construction of the narrator and the narratee in their novels. In order to validate our analysis, we compare these authors with a Chinese writer who lives and produces his work in China: Mo Yan's on his French and Spanish translated novels. Taking into account the discursive strategies deployed and the polyphonic marks, we demonstrate that Qiu and Dai construct Chinese narrators and Western narratees, while Mo Yan constructs Chinese narrators and narratees. In our analysis we apply notions of polyphony from Bakhtin and Ducrot, rhetoric concepts from Olbrecht-Tyteca and Per elman, the notion of discursive heterogeneity by Authier, and the discursive ethos analysis proposed by Maingueneau.