"We must speak by the card or equivocation will undo us" -A Bakhtinian Reading of Hamlet and its Pedagogical Implications for Second Language Teaching

Abstract: In this study, I analyse Shakespeare’s revenge tragedy Hamlet with a Bakhtinian close reading. Using Bakhtinian concepts, such as carnival, dialogism, polyphony and heteroglossia, together with contextualising materials, I analyse Shakespeare’s use of ambiguous language as contextual communication. I also discuss the pedagogical implications of my analysis for ESL in Upper Secondary School in general and the Swedish curriculum in particular, by drawing on sociocultural theory. My findings suggest that Shakespeare consistently enacts carnivalesque elements through heteroglossia, manifested in ambiguous language filled with juxtaposition and sociohistorical allusions. Moreover, the Bakhtinian perspective enables a reading where even the soliloquys become expressions of dialogism as emotions, explicit or implicit, are played against each other in a polyphony also populated by voices, living and dead. My findings also shed light on the analysis’s consistency with sociocultural theory and the pedagogical potential in an approach that embraces the plurality of arguments and complexity of contexts in relation to teaching Hamlet.