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Institute
In narratology, a widely recognized method involves exploring the connection between implied authors and implied readers. It entails correlating abstract narrative components within a text to understand the conveyed message and the multitude of interpretations it can offer. The present study adopts an implied reader-oriented approach to analyze three selected novels from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—one Nigerian, one Caribbean, and one Kurdish. The aim is to explore the potential readings within these texts, considering the hermeneutic process of critical reading. The selected texts include Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, (1958), Same Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners, (1956), and Karwan Kakesur’s The Channels of the Armed Monkeys, (2011). This approach closely examines the communication between the author and reader of the text, with a special focus on the varying levels of communication between the components of the narration, including fictional and implied fictional communication.
The implied fictional communication occurs between a narrative agent known as ‘the implied author’ and its fictional counterpart ‘the implied reader’ rather than between the real, flesh and blood authors and readers. I argue that this level of communication is coded, and the act of decoding it is part of the reading process performed by the reader. Certain texts can propose different and sometimes opposing readings which are initially and purposefully designed by the implied author and addressed to different implied readers. These readings are not necessarily the results of different real readers but rather incorporated ones predetermined by the implied author only to be acknowledged and uncovered by the readers. In other words, the latent meaning is and always was an integral part of the text and is not something created by the imaginative reader or critic. The core interest of my thesis lies in identifying prompts and suggestions within the narrative of the selected texts and ultimately understanding the readerships prestructured in them. Identifying the different readers within those texts will provide new reinterpretations that can add undetected values to the reading process and sometimes suggests opposing readings to how those texts have so far been read. Additionally, it is the objective of this thesis to propose new ways that readers can interact with reading literature that would result in a more aesthetic and entertaining reading experience besides providing ways to be more informed and aware of the cues certain narrative texts contain.
There have been numerous critical studies on both narratology and postcolonial or minority literatures; however, there has been little scholarly work that attempts to utilize narratology as a theoretical foundation for understanding postcolonial and minority fiction.
This study examines fictional texts from Nigerian, Caribbean, and Kurdish literature, employing the narratological concept known as ‘Multiple Implied Readers’. By incorporating concepts from Brian Richardson’s ‘Singular Text, Multiple Implied Readers’, and Peter J. Rabinowitz’s ‘authorial audiences’, I explore the various readerships that the texts could encompass. This exploitation may lead to the discovery of new readings, interpretations, and meanings that would otherwise remain undetected. These structures introduce provocative indeterminacies that challenge the reader’s synthesis of information into coherent configurations of meaning. Consequently, this approach not only enhances the reading experience but also opens doors to new interpretations of the text. In some cases, these interpretations could even dismantle prior understandings and propose entirely new readings.
The concepts of the implied author and implied reader have been studied before in relation to various disciplines of narratology. However, by applying them in conjunction with the relatively less researched subject of multiple implied readers, I aim to shed light on important aspects of these readings. This exploration could prove beneficial for literature students as well as critical readers of literary texts, revealing the potential of these texts to accommodate more than one implied reader within their narratives.
Von A bis Å. (Fast) alles über die Frankfurter Skandinavistik. Ausgabe 6 ; Sommersemester 2023
(2023)
Restructuration des répertoires langagiers de migrant·e·s de la République du Congo en Lorraine
(2023)
Cette thèse étudie la complexité du plurilinguisme des migrant·e·s d’origine de la République du Congo en Lorraine à travers le prisme de la restructuration des répertoires langagiers. En affûtant la conceptualisation de la restructuration des répertoires langagiers par l’étude du plurilinguisme des migrant·e·s d’origine congolaise, cette recherche ouvre de nouvelles perspectives pour les recherches portant sur le plurilinguisme, notamment concernant les mobilités transgénérationnelles et la diversité des processus de restructuration façonnant les répertoires langagiers. En se focalisant sur les biographies langagières et migratoires de 15 individus migrants, sur leurs réseaux sociaux et sur leurs ressources langagières, cette étude révèle la diversité des processus et des facteurs au cœur des restructurations des répertoires langagiers à travers une étude ethnographique multi-située en Lorraine et au Congo. La compréhension de la diversité des dynamiques restructurant les connaissances langagières des enquêté·e·s passe par l’étude des situations de socialisation langagière au Congo dans leur historicité, des itinéraires de migration et des restructurations des réseaux sociaux ainsi que des répertoires langagiers dans l’installation en Lorraine. Les participations à la société lorraine et ses groupes sociaux imprègnent les identifications, les orientations sociales et les positionnements dans les réseaux sociaux et vice-versa.
Les répertoires langagiers apparaissent comme des enregistrements de la mobilité des individus et de celle des générations antérieures ainsi que de leur entourage. Les restructurations concernent entre autres les ressources associées au français, aux langues congolaises et à d’autres langues appropriées par la migration. Les ressources du français sont restructurées par les migrant·e·s en s’appropriant les ressources courantes dans différentes situations sociales en Lorraine, en marquant et/ou en dissimulant les ressources appropriées ailleurs et inappropriées dans ces situations. En même temps, un savoir de différenciation des ressources, dont font aussi partie les schémas de catégorisation et les stratégies communicatives, est développé et une (in)sécurité langagière se manifeste. Les ressources associées aux langues congolaises, leurs fonctions sociales et leurs représentations sont restructurées dans des processus d’attrition, d’actualisation, de transformation et d’élaboration langagière. Les ressources associées à d’autres langues européennes appropriées par la migration sont reléguées au second plan et se perdent lentement par manque d’usage. Enfin, les connaissances liées à la gestion du plurilinguisme, de la diversité culturelle et de l’altérité, appropriées dans les mêmes situations de diversité, aident au traitement interne des expériences des mobilités spatiales et sociales ainsi que des restructurations des répertoires langagiers.