Dr. Hina Tahir,
Department of English, Maulana Azad National University, Satellite Campus, Srinagar, Budgam, Jammu and Kashmir, India
The most controversial aspect of post-colonial writing is the medium of expression because it serves as a means of resistance for the writers. Most of the writers opt for English to reach a wider audience. Since these writers are conscious that their choice of language deprives them of the linguistic resources of their own language for creative use, they try to add a local colour to their English. This serves as both a method and a decolonizing strategy to convey patterns and even linguistic features of the native language through the European tongue. Contrary to this, those writers who opt for native languages argue that the English language was a part and parcel of the colonizing mission and to use it as a medium suggests allowing the colonization of minds. A common observation from the Caribbean, Indian and African encounters with the English language is that all these writers have fought the hegemony of the Standard English language by creating their own variation of English. On the one hand, there are writers like Achebe who consider the English language richer than his mother tongue, Igbo, and on the other, writers like Ngugi who have not only decided to write in their native tongue but persuade others to do the same. The main concern is to resist the cultural imperialism of the English language that may enfeeble other languages and lead to their erasure. The present paper aims to examine the language strategies employed by writers in the Caribbean, Indian and African contexts to show how they play a pivotal role in resisting the colonial mindset.
Keywords: Post-colonial, Resistance, Writing Back, Decolonization, Appropriation, Abrogation, Language Question, Locally Modified English
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The Eighth International Conference on Languages, Linguistics, Translation and Literature (WWW.LLLD.IR), 14-15 February 2023, Ahwaz.
