Volume I Issue II April 2021

Name of Author : Maria George

Title of the paper : The Politics of Language and the Language of Politics

Abstract: The present study is an exploration of the politics involved in the language of the Indian-born Canadian writer, Rohinton Mistry. At the same time there is an exegesis of the context of the writer that details the language involvement in the politics of the time. Mistry’s effort to mix the language of the coloniser with the language of the colonised comes with its own conscious or unconscious statements. The usual appropriation of the colonial language as done by postcolonial writers is present in Mistry’s writings as well but in a different way. Mistry uses native terms in his English writings. But use of such terms attributes no particular power to them. Their very presence at certain places and absence from certain others spell their inferiority. A new historicist reading of Mistry implies that language in his novel allows subversion only to contain. Again politics works by distorting language. Language works to reveal its hierarchies of favoured and challenged agreements and contradictions discussions and disputes harmony and fissures. It creates a double bind for its own users from which an escape is only imaginary. In attempting to subvert the hold of language we are actually contained by the same hold. Mistry’s language-use grips the native tongue and women in this double bind. Presence of the native language is exposed to show its absence. Voice of the woman is recorded to re- emphasise her voicelessness.

Keywords : subvert, contain, appropriation, resistance, double-bind

DOI :

Page No. : 36-39