Nalans (Jun 2020)
Ludic Linguistic Challenges in the Transtextual Dimensions of David Lodge’s Deaf Sentence
Abstract
The article highlights the issue of structural heterogeneity and linguistic creativity in David Lodge’s Deaf Sentence. The novel features the life of a retired professor of linguistics who struggles with the hearing loss and problematizes diverse transtextual dimensions and experiments with narrative patterns. The purpose of this article is to explore the correlation between the diverse textual dimensions and the ludic linguistic challenges in Lodge’s Deaf Sentence. The study foregrounds ludic linguistic challenges – stylistic manifestations of ludic concept of postmodernist fiction that facilitate a playful interaction in the triad “author-text-reader”. The study shows how a postmodernist text undermines the conventions of genre, networks intertextual inclusions, exploits metanarrative, forges new modes of literary communication that enhance multitude of interpretations. Self-reflective literary text of the novel also celebrates its pluralistic, yet cohesive status, embracing its intertextual, metatextual, paratextual, architextual dimensions. As the narrative about the academia unfolds, the reader encounters numerous playful linguistic means, such as puns, allusions and quotations that engage him into generating multiple perspectives of the fiction text.
