Self-Representation and Public Representation of Self through Dialogue in Aldous Huxley’s Point counter Point
Self-Representation and Public Representation of Self through Dialogue in Aldous Huxley’s Point counter Point

Summary/Abstract: The paper takes into consideration the concept of identity, trying to explore the relationship between self-representation (or personal identity) and public representation (or social identity) in everyday dialogue, as illustrated by Aldous Huxley in Point Counter Point. Literary criticism has largely emphasized the satirical dimension of this novel, which depicts English high society and intelligentsia in the 1920s. The main objective of our paper is to demonstrate that the essential source of the comical and satirical dimension of Huxley’s novel consists in the discrepancy between the culturally mediated image that characters want to project in social life and the representation that the others have of them.The theoretical framework used refers mainly to Goffman’s sociology, which described the individual within social ritualistic interaction, and the sociolinguistic theories of politeness, including Brown and Levinson’s (1978/1987) seminal theory, and especially Spencer-Oatey’s (2007) point of view regarding the concepts of face and identity.

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