Dialogism and Heteroglossia in Tash Aw’s The Harmony Silk Factory

• Main Authors: Ying-shyuan Sung, 宋盈璇
• Other Authors: Hsiao-chen Chiang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/gd9a2m

碩士 === 國立彰化師範大學 === 英語學系 === 101 === World War II is the most profound historical period for Chinese population. The historical background of The Harmony Silk Factory is set in Malaya during the 1930s and 1940s, while Malaya was colonized by UK and Japan. Tash Aw had stayed in the British Library for almost two years to study the history of Malaysia in World War II before finished The Harmony Silk Factory. Three isolated narrators present the plot of The Harmony Silk Factory. They freely speak out and therefore display a multi-voiced and multi-perspectives narrative structure. This thesis utilises Bakhtin’s dialogism and heteroglossia to explore the dialogic relationship among characters in The Harmony Silk Factory. Language is the central issue of his philosophy language. Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction to Tash Aw and The Harmony Silk Factory, as well as motivation and literature review. Chapter 2 first probes dialogism, focusing on double-voiced discourse and dialogic relation between self and others. The second section explains the relationship between centrifugal and centripetal forces. Chapter 3 chiefly explores utterance in the novel, probing double-voiced discourse and dialogic relationships in Aw’s The Harmony Silk Factory. Chapter 4 assesses application of heteroglossia; struggle between centripetal and centrifugal force of language exposes heteroglossia in The Harmony Silk Factory. In sum, this multi-voiced and multi-sided quality not only brings heteroglossia but also displays unfinalizability of the novel. Anything can happen in the future; I make an assumption that using Bakhtin’s dialogism and heteroglossia theory will prove that Tash Aw’s The Harmony Silk Factory make a successful post-colonial novel and reverse the image of traditional post-colonial novel.