The dynamics of literary representation and interpretation in a multilingual environment: A study of selected Malaysian and Singaporean novels in English

Abstract

This thesis evaluates the discourse of the speaking person that is the author's, the narrator's and the characters' speech of twelve selected novels by non-European writers from 1980 to 2002.I use Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia and the diversity of voices in a novel which places emphasis on the language of the speaking person. . I make a close reading of the twelve selected novels to establish the methods of language appropriation and the artistic significance of the strategies used by the writer. The methods of language appropriation like lexical borrowings, code-mixing, code-switching and varieties of Singapore-Malayan English are increasingly being used instead of vernacular transcription and mimetic translation. Different languages of the environment are represented through these strategies. These methods have a direct connection to how the writer conveys the multilingual nature of the environment through the speaking person while developing the central theme of the novel.