Memoria y polifonía en "Liceo de niñas" de Nona Fernández

The present paper aims to perform a polyphonic analysis of the play Liceo de niñas by Chilean author Nona Fernández (2016). The analysis was based on Ducrot’s hypothesis (1980; 1986) that the polyphonic dimension is not only a discursive and stylistic device, as had already been observed by Bakhtin (1968), but also defines an inner characteristic of language structure. Therefore, as well as being rejected at a discursive and textual level, the uniqueness of the speaking subject would also be denied at the microlinguistic level. As a case in point, pragmatical phenomena, e.g. descriptive negation, irony and the use of discourse particles, provide a clear account of how polyphony is ultimately constitutive of linguistic organisation. Moreover, the current study partakes of the observations of Ferrari et al. (2008), namely the fact that utterances represent an interface between the linguistic level and the level of textual composition. Hence, linguistic analyses based on a polyphonic perspective proved a useful tool in explaining major discourse aspects of Fernández work, such as the heteroglossic nature of the notion of memory and the significance of individual testimonies in dealing with accounts of the past. I performed a polyphonic study of pragmatic phenomena occurring throughout the text in order to highlight the abovementioned discourse topics in Fernández play Liceo de niñas. In this regard, the intrinsically polyphonic nature of descriptive negation, along with restrictions on the use of some discourse particles were endorsed, thereby corroborating Ducrot’s insights.