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<p>This study applies Bakhtin’s concepts of dialogism, heteroglossia, and polyphony to Caryl Churchill’s <i>Seven Jewish Children</i>: <i>A Play for Gaza</i>, to explain how the play defies a single interpretation and disrupts monologic speech. Dialogism is evident in the play’s systematic succession of directives, which structure and organize progress: every statement refers to, modifies, restricts, or refutes another and is addressed to the absent and central addressee, her. Heteroglossia does not just appear in tonal variation but in the clash of different social languages, such as the language of memory and victimhood, the language of protective pedagogy and family consolation, the language of security, the language of justification, and political language. These discourses overlap, cross, and drift throughout the play, resulting in ideological instability rather than coherence. The play does not treat Bakhtinian polyphony by means of entirely individualized characters but by the relative independence of conflicting speech positions that are never completely resolved or summed up in a single authorial definitive word. According to the article, the potential of <i>Seven Jewish Children</i> as a political text is found in its handling of address, silence and vocal confrontation. Moreover, it indicates that the ideas of Bakhtin, though developed in connection with the novel, are critically productive for dramatic writing characterized by the unsteady distribution of voices, ideological opposition, and anti-closedness.</p>

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Dialogic tensions in performance: a Bakhtinian reading of Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children

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  • 发表日期：

    2026年8月5日

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  • Abeer Alrefai,
  • Ayman Elhalafawy,
  • Mohammed A. Adel,
  • Heba Ash-Shura,
  • Samir H. Khalifa

摘要

This study applies Bakhtin’s concepts of dialogism, heteroglossia, and polyphony to Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza, to explain how the play defies a single interpretation and disrupts monologic speech. Dialogism is evident in the play’s systematic succession of directives, which structure and organize progress: every statement refers to, modifies, restricts, or refutes another and is addressed to the absent and central addressee, her. Heteroglossia does not just appear in tonal variation but in the clash of different social languages, such as the language of memory and victimhood, the language of protective pedagogy and family consolation, the language of security, the language of justification, and political language. These discourses overlap, cross, and drift throughout the play, resulting in ideological instability rather than coherence. The play does not treat Bakhtinian polyphony by means of entirely individualized characters but by the relative independence of conflicting speech positions that are never completely resolved or summed up in a single authorial definitive word. According to the article, the potential of Seven Jewish Children as a political text is found in its handling of address, silence and vocal confrontation. Moreover, it indicates that the ideas of Bakhtin, though developed in connection with the novel, are critically productive for dramatic writing characterized by the unsteady distribution of voices, ideological opposition, and anti-closedness.