Language in Wonderland: Referentiality and Power in Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

Abstract

From the study of language creation, it is gathered that in most cases the relationship between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary, except in the case of those words which have a very clear echoic origin (e.g. bubble). Nevertheless, after a close reading
of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, the reader is encouraged to reflect upon this matter and to wonder who has the ability to establish this relationship and why; being this one of the main topics that this article covers. Additionally, some comments will be made on the procedure through which nonsense texts should be approached and the study will include some discussion on how the meaning of certain words may sometimes be intrinsic to the things themselves. Such would be the case of the nonsense poem, “Jabberwocky” and the names of the insects mentioned in Chapter III (e.g. Bread-and-butterfly). For all these reasons, throughout this work it will be studied up to what point is the name of things related to their nature; including cases in which the connection is lost, if ever (e.g. if a nonsense poem is analyzed and some sense is made out of it, is it still a nonsense poem?), as much as who is in charge of establishing those power relationships and what are the consequences of it in terms of power.