NARRATIVE DISCOURSE: HYBRID CONSTRUCTION AND DOUBLED VOICE IN EUDORA WELTY’S THE OPTIMIST’S DAUGHTER

Abstract

This paper deals with Bakhtinian concept of hybrid construction in The Optimist’s Daughter, a seriocomic novel written by Eudora Welty (1973). According to Bakhtin, literary language is stratified and “heteroglot.” The heteroglosia refers to the multiplicity of social voices in the discourse of the novel. In other words, Bakhtin says that the novel is an orchestration of the diversity of social speech, which is sometimes also the diversity of languages, and “the diversity of individual voices is artistically organized. The diversity of voices manifests in the pseudo-objective motivation and the double voice.