We Filipinos Are Mild Drinkers: a Post-Colonial Text Exemplifying Multiplicity of Meanings

Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) Vol.5.Issue 1. 2017 A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal (Jan-Mar) http://www.rjelal.com; Email:[email protected] RESEARCH ARTICLE WE FILIPINOS ARE MILD DRINKERS: A POST-COLONIAL TEXT EXEMPLIFYING MULTIPLICITY OF MEANINGS DOMINADOR L. PAGLIAWAN DA LitCom Chair, Languages and Literature Unit Leyte Normal University, Tacloban City, Philippines Email: [email protected] ABSTRACT Typical literature teachers have been rather selective and prescriptive in determining the meanings of literary works. They limit those meanings to their own perceptions, draining the texts of more insights, and not welcoming other meaningful possibilities. Inputs that are not agreeable with their own, particularly from the students, are deemed DOMINADOR incorrect. To assert the multiplicity of meanings extant in good literary works, this study L. PAGLIAWAN was pursued subjecting, as a method of inquiry, Alejandro Roces’ post-colonial work We Filipinos Are Mild Drinkers to critical analysis based on mimetic, expressionistic, formalistic, affective, and historical theories. Appraisal zeroed in on the above short story. The results of the study exemplify how stories yield various insights from different critical lenses. Teachers, then, should discard that pedagogic treatment which deprives the texts of multiple meanings. Keywords: Textual meaning, multiple meaning, mimesis, expressionism, formalism, reader-response, historicism ©KY PUBLICATIONS Introduction of a language (Driedger, 1983). Such idea of It has been a tendency of literature singularity in meaning is widespread that the teachers to be sort of prescriptive when they teach possibility of multiple meanings in a text is not only literary pieces to students. Their interpretation of viewed as absurd but is likewise improper, hence its works is one that limits the meanings to their own outright rejection. perceptions, not welcoming other views that may This pedagogical tendency has prompted unravel the text. Insights that are contrary to their this study. Adhering to the idea of indeterminacy own, particularly from students, are deemed where multiple interpretations is encouraged to incorrect. address authorial lapses and gaps (McHale, 1992), As a result, schools have been producing this inquiry had resolved to prove the “limited readers with narrow perceptions of literary works. meaning” wrong, and the best way to do that is to They think that a text simply yields a single meaning provide a sample of work that is viewed from which, when finally unearthed, drains the text of different angles yet the meanings drawn from it more ideas. The notion is akin to the plain meaning never run out. This would explain the significance of rule, or literal rule, which is a traditional statutory this study as it would show the inexhaustibility of construction used in English courts wherein statutes meanings in texts when viewed from various critical are read and interpreted based on ordinary meaning standpoints. 551 DOMINADOR L. PAGLIAWAN Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) Vol.5.Issue 1. 2017 A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal (Jan-Mar) http://www.rjelal.com; Email:[email protected] This paper then theorizes that Alejandro materialistic society combines itself with that sense Roces’ We Filipinos are Mild Drinkers yields multiple of foreboding for an inevitable collapse. meanings, like other literary works do, as it is viewed Formalism, the next theory, is a school from various critical lenses. These theories used to of literary criticism and literary theory having to do analyze the story are the mimetic, the mainly with structural purposes of texts. It covers expressionistic, the formalistic/objective, the critical approaches that interpret, analyze, and affective/reader-response, and the historical evaluate inherent features of a text such as theories. grammar and syntax, and also literary devices like Theories at Work tropes and meter (Lemon & Reis, 1965). It reduces A critical and philosophical term that the importance of a text’s historical, biographical, carries a wide range of meanings, mimesis and cultural context. includes imitation, representation, mimicry, imitatio, Having assumed prominence in the early receptivity, non-sensuous similarity, the act of twentieth century, Formalism commenced as a resembling, the act of expression, and reaction against Romanticism, which centers on the presentation of the self (Taussig, 1993). artists and individual creativity, and underscores the It was, in ancient Greece, an idea that text itself to manifest its indebtedness to forms and governed the creation of works of art, in particular those works which preceded it. Two schools of with correspondence to the physical world formalist literary criticism developed: Russian understood as a model for beauty, truth and the formalism, and soon after, Anglo-American New good. Plato contrasted it with the narrative. After Criticism. him, the meaning of mimesis eventually shifted Formalism predominated academic literary toward a specifically literary function in ancient studies in the US from the end of the second World Greek society, its usage changed and re-interpreted War all the way to the 70’s, particularly as embodied many times thereafter. in Wellek and Warren's Theory of Literature (1948, Expressionism, on the other hand, attempts 1955, 1962). From the late 1970s, it was to portray the inner workings of a person's mind by substantially displaced by various approaches (often turning them ‘inside out’ and allowing mental states with political aims or assumptions) that were to shape their face, body, and the very world where suspicious of the idea that a literary work could be they live in (Gordon, 1987). This could be a reaction separated from its origins or uses. But recent trends against a comfortable, unthinking, uncaring and in academic literary criticism suggest that formalism increasingly mechanized society. Franz Kafka’s main may be making a comeback. characters, for instance, find themselves trapped Affective theory or Reader-response inside a vision of the world that’s rather distorted, criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses reflecting either their own psychological conflicts, or on the reader (or "audience") and his or her of the society where the readers live. experience of a literary work, in contrast to other The physical consequences of a distorted schools and theories that focus attention primarily situation in expressionist literature are followed on the author or the content and form of the work through as if they were completely real. Writers are (Tompkins, 1980). Literary theory has long paid quite divided as regards the latter’s final some attention to the reader's role in creating the consequences. Destruction of the character often meaning and experience of a literary text. Modern results from personal tragedies. But given the focus reader-response criticism began in the 1960s and on society’s status, positive ending can surface, the '70s, particularly in America and Germany, with the traditional human values ending up victorious. works of Hans-Robert Jauss, Stanley Fish, Roland Poetry eschews details of description and narrative, Barthes, Norman Holland, and others. Predecessors and attempts a lyrical intensity capable of conveying like I. A. Richards had analyzed a group of the essence of an inward experience. As with Cambridge undergraduates' misreadings in expressionist painting and drama, disgust over 1929; Louise Rosenblatt, in Literature as 552 DOMINADOR L. PAGLIAWAN Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) Vol.5.Issue 1. 2017 A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal (Jan-Mar) http://www.rjelal.com; Email:[email protected] Exploration (1938), had argued that teachers should which refers to the substance, content, or avoid imposing preconceived ideas on the proper interpretation of a work. Exemplified means way in reacting to any work. sampled, illustrated, enlightened, and something Reader-response theory recognizes the clarified by way of example. reader as an active agent who imparts some kind of An Expressionist Reading real existence to the work and completes its This part assumes that Roces’ award-winning meaning through interpretation. It argues that short story, We Filipinos Are Mild Drinkers, yields literature should be viewed as a performing art in traces of the writer’s presence, not just physically, which each reader creates his or her own, possibly but mentally and emotionally as well. The story unique, text-related performance, opposing the obviously reveals a vision that underlies the author’s theories of formalism and the New Criticism which idea, which is doubtless concerned with external or ignore the reader's role in re-creating literary works. objective incidents, thereby conveying his quality of Historicism is another critical analysis focusing on soul. the role of historical context to understand a text. If the meaning of a literary work could be With this, the critic creates a more cultural, or had from studying the psychology of the author anthropological criticism, conscious of its own status (Adams, 1971), then it should be easy to arrive at as interpretation, and intent upon discerning reliable conclusions as to what a literary work literature as forming part of a system of signs conveys, given one’s familiarity with its writer, and constituting a given culture (Wellek and Warren, the literary

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