THE DECONSTRUCTION OF LANGUAGE IN LEWIS CARROLL’S ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
THE DECONSTRUCTION OF LANGUAGE IN LEWIS CARROLL’S ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

Summary/Abstract: Starting from the premise that postmodernism is a state of mind rather than a precise culturalperiod, this paper provides a lingustic deconstructive analysis of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures inWonderland. The language used in the most important scenes are analyzed employing not onlyWittgenstein’s and Sausurre’s deconstructive theories but also other postmodern concepts appearedlong after Carroll’s novel, which makes the inquiry realatively audacious. Language becomesintrumental in costruing aspects of the protagonist’s identity, including the way in which the narratorequipped Alice with a certain kind of thinking. The double-coded narrative reflected both at the textualand identitary level are merged into one, thus augmenting the fluid character of the fictional text; LewisCarroll manipulates both her appearance and musings in a playful and paradoxical manner. The freefloatingsignifiers and the language puns contribute to the blurring of the various boundaries within thetext and to the arbitrariness with which the story unfolds.

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