'Whatdoyoucallhim?': The naming system as a reflector of social dis-union between Bloom and the Dubliners

In this essay I shall take into account conversational instances of social DIS-UNION between Bloom, the perverted Jew of Hungarian origin, and the community of Dubliners which he comes across on 16th June 1904. In particular, I shall concentrate on the characters’ use of address and reference terms in two of the most socially connoted episodes of Ulysses: “Hades” and “Cyclops”. Attention will be given both to the Dubliners’ way of addressing/ referring to Bloom and to Bloom’s naming of them. Given that forms of address and reference can mirror the complex social relations of individuals in a speech community (Keshavarz 2001: 6), their usage will help our understanding of the characters’ attitudes towards each other.