The Orquestration of voices in Wenn Ali die Glocken läuten hört, by Güney Dal

Abstract

This article aims to analyse the novel Wenn Ali die Glocken läuten hört, written by Güney Dal, an important representative of ‘migration literature’ within the national literary field of German-language literature. In focuses on three different modalities of voice production within the discourses which form the novel: the misunderstood voice, the critical voice and the dominant voice. The investigation of the misunderstood voice deals with the immigrant’s difficulties to understand the messages he or she is confronted with in the new cultural context. The examination of the critical voice discusses the immigrant’s thoughts about the different cultural traditions and the foreigner’s as well as the native’s position within the new social context. The analysis of the dominant voice, at last, shows how the native sees the immigrant. In this sense, Dal’s voice as an author who chooses to write in Turkish about aspects of German society also articulates a voice and inserts it in a bigger context, contributing for the formation of a more extensive concept of German studies.