沉默背后的交际意图——析《忆起了巴比伦》

The Communicative Intention of Silence in Remembering Babylon

澳大利亚作家戴维·马洛夫的小说《忆起了巴比伦》自出版以来,在广受赞誉的同时也受到了部分质疑和批评。有评论家认为这部小说在土著问题上忽略了他们遭受的压迫,"将政治一笔抹煞"。这样的批评主要源于对小说中三种沉默的误读,忽略了沉默背后的交际意图。该小说的真正意义蕴藏在沉默背后,借助会话沉默与主题沉默,马洛夫揭露和批判了历史上澳大利亚白人在建构家园的过程中对土著所采取的直接暴力和文化暴力,同时他还通过文本沉默向读者展示了土著文化的深邃质朴,指出只有向土著学习,白人才能成功在此建构家园。

Remembering Babylon is one of the representative works of David Malouf,the famous Australian writer.The novel brings Malouf not only great fame and many awards but also severe attacks and criticism.In some critics' view,this book ignores the Aborigines' suffering and leads to 'an erasure of the political'.Such criticism arises from a lack of consideration of the author's communicative intention behind the three types of silence in the novel.Through conversational silence and thematic silence,Malouf unveils the direct violence and cultural violence the whites have imposes on the Aboriginals.Malouf also conveys to the reader the essence of Aboriginal culture with description of textual silence.He points out that the whites cannot adjust to the environment until they learn from the Aboriginals.