The metafictional form of Alejandro Zambra’s text Multiple Choice explicitly presents interpretative challenges to the reader. It strategically foregrounds the inferential processes and guided choices involved in deriving and deciding upon meaning, in such a way as to lead readers to infer thematic significance from this salience. Without intending text, he is nonetheless directly and deeply engaging with precisely the interpretative principles and processes which relevance theory attempts to account for and explicate. This article therefore uses relevance theory to analyse in depth how Zambra’s multiple choice questions can be made meaningful within the context of a work of fiction, in the hope that it can offer insights into the potential inferential processes of readers, the ways in which to suggest that Zambra is in any way consciously engaging with relevance theory in this they are guided by the workings of this text, and how they lead towards broader thematic interpretations. Additionally, this article reflects on the significance of second-person address and disnarration to the pragmatic processes which Zambra meaningfully exploits, foregrounds and subverts.
Macrae, Andrea
Department of English and Modern Languages
Year of publication: 2022Date of RADAR deposit: 2022-02-07