CONSTRUING ACTS OF VOICING IN CHRISTINA DALCHER’S VOX THROUGH VULNERABILITY METAPHORS

Abstract

In the digital era, and especially in the context of the fourth industrial revolution, where everyone’s digitally mediated voice can, potentially, reach the entire world, Dalcher’s dystopian novel, Vox, expresses a very real fear of being silenced. In modern America,1 a purist movement voted into power has silenced all women and girls overnight. The novel investigates the intersection of physicality and the immateriality of spoken words. The narrator’s voice, sober but without restriction, contrasts sharply with the limitations imposed around her and uncovers the silent horror of a dystopian America where half the population has lost all rights of self-disposal, both physical and discursive. Employing the conceptual metaphor theory of Lakoff and Johnson (2003), this study explores metaphors in Vox that shape discourse(s) on voicing vulnerability and on voice as visibility through an interdisciplinary discourse analysis that draws on the fields of literature and linguistics