Making (and Un-making) Meaning in Alejandro Zambra’s Multiple Choice

Abstract

ABSTRACT Alejandro Zambra’s Multiple Choice is comprised entirely of multiple choice questions. Readers report deriving rich inferences from the text because of, rather than despite, the metafictional form, observing how Zambra strategically foregrounds the processes involved in inferring and deciding upon meaning, and ably incorporating this foregrounding into their interpretations. Zambra’s text directly and deeply engages with fundamental pragmatic interpretative principles and processes – the same pragmatic interpretative principles and processes which relevance theory attempts to account for and explicate. This article therefore uses relevance theory to analyse the inferential processes encouraged by the systems of meaning-making established (and sometimes also pointedly and poignantly collapsed) within each of the text’s distinct sections, the resultant available inferences, and how those inferences can be coherently integrated and developed into broader thematic interpretations. Additionally, this article discusses the significance of second-person address and disnarration to those pragmatic processes which Zambra meaningfully foregrounds, exploits and subverts.