engleski

How do monsters communicate? Literary examples of "evil" and oppressive discourse

The paper focuses on communication strategies and the rhetoric of the representative literary embodiments of evil and disfigurement. For this purpose the author employs several linguistic and literary theories, in particular those pertaining to post-structuralism and postmodernism, and applies critical and semantic discourse analysis in order to establish patterns of “monstrous” discourse. Taking into consideration relations of power, status, as well as discursive and language manipulation (including creativity and play with words), a special attention is given to the attempted domination and “manipulative prototypes” of the monstrous “Other.” From Baba Yaga to the cartoonish Grinch, villains have over centuries also used words to oppress. Derived from the oral tradition of storytelling or the “language of the soul, ” monsters are a product of the collective unconscious, thus their presence projects universal truths and patterns of behaviour characteristic of the human kind as a whole. Due to the archetypal nature of literary monsters, their appearance can be detected in everyday events. Therefore, by analysing discourse ascribed to these figments of human imagination, this research offers meaningful knowledge for the detection and the disclosure of the monstrous in the public sphere of “real” life.

traditional literature, modern fantasy, deviation from the norm, critical discourse analysis (CDA), manipulation, manipulative prototypes

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