Chicana feminist literary and artistic cultural production since the second half of the

twentieth century is characterized with a critical sensibility commissioning the arts to

actively interrogate how cultural mores misconstrue female identity. By questioning the "miss"-representation of cultural myths and images, Chicanas expose the patriarchal

language and hegemonic discourse that code and sign cultural icons. Chicana feminist

interrogations of traditional representations of La Malinche illustrate how signs are a

construction, and thus, indefinite and plastic, like language. By combining various

methodologies such as semiotics, visual analysis, cultural and feminist studies, this study

underscores the significance of the development of feminist critical, poetic and visual

language to Chicana revisionist representations of the figure of La Malinche.

The theme of language use in Chicana reinterpretations of La Malinche offers an

innovative conceptualization to the advancement of Chicana language practices as a strategy

to critically examine the gendered and cultural aesthetics of identity. This dissertation

examines how Chicanas manipulate heritage through a "thick description" of the interpretation of culture in the signification of "language" (La Malinche) and in their own language use in order to alter interpretations of Chicana identity. The analysis of Chicana feminist representations of La Malinche is a study of how women traverse the borderlands of literary and artistic practices to gain visibility and voice.

I evaluate the interrelationships between Chicana critics, artists and writers, drawing

from art historians and literary critics to show how literature and art empowered women to

work toward a metalinguistic awareness of self. The relationships and intersections between

the textual and visual representation on La Malinche demonstrate an often-unrecognized

dialectical relationship among writers and artists and literary critics and art historians.

Ongoing representations of La Malinche reflect the continuance of innovative, original and

imaginative forms of speaking about Chicana identity that reveals the dialogic and heteroglot

nature of Chicana voices, as Chicana placas, a concept I call the development of a Chicana

lengua franca.