View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ScholarBank@NUS THE DYNAMICS OF LITERARY REPRESENTATION AND INTERPRETATION IN A MULTILINGUAL ENVIRONMENT: A STUDY OF SELECTED MALAYSIAN AND SINGAPORE NOVELS IN ENGLISH ROSALY JOSEPH PUTHUCHEARY NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2005 THE DYNAMICS OF LITERARY REPRESENTATION AND INTERPRETATION IN A MULTILINGUAL ENVIRONMENT: A STUDY OF SELECTED MALAYSIAN AND SINGAPORE NOVELS IN ENGLISH ROSALY JOSEPH PUTHUCHEARY (M.A, in English Literature NUS) A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE & LITERATURE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2005 Content Page No. Acknowledgment ………………………………………………………………… i Summary …………………………………………………………………………. ii Introduction …………………………………………………………………….....1–26 Chapter One: Flowers in the Sky (1981) ……………………………………27–43 Chapter Two: The Return (1981) ……………………………..…………… 44–60 Chapter Three: Rice Bowl (1984) ….………………….……….….………… 61–77 Chapter Four: A Candle or the Sun (1991) .………………..……………......78–94 Chapter Five: The Shrimp People (1991) ………………….….…………...95–109 Chapter Six: The Crocodile Fury (1992) …………………….………….110–127 Chapter Seven: Green is the Colour (1993) ……………………………….128–142 Chapter Eight: The Road to Chandibole (1994) ………………….……….143–158 Chapter Nine: Abraham’s Promise (1995) ……………………………….159–173 Chapter Ten: Perhaps in Paradise (1997) ..……………………………..174–189 Chapter Eleven: Playing Madame Mao (2000) …………………………… 190–204 Chapter Twelve: Shadow Theatre (2002) ……….…………………………. 205–220 Conclusion ………………………………..………………………………….. 221–231 Works Cited …………………………….……………………………………..232–241 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am most grateful for the support and encouragement given to me by Dr. Ismail Talib and the invaluable assistance provided by the NUS Library staff and my son Sanjay. I would also like to thank my examiners for their constructive criticisms which made this work more comprehensive. R. J. Puthucheary i Summary The aim of this study is to make a close reading of the selected novels about region and proceed from there to evaluating the thematic connection to the methods of language appropriation, employed for the literary representation of the multilingual environment. It tries to establish the degree of artistic success each writer achieves to construct a multilingual environment using the strategies like lexical borrowings, ode- switching, code-mixing, mimetic translation, vernacular transcriptions and the use of different levels of Singapore-Malayan English. The introduction provides the rationale for the selecting of novels and the theoretical basis for the discussion of the text. A brief historical background for the formation of the linguistic communities and the development of creative-writing in English in Malaysia and Singapore is also given. I also discuss the challenges posed by the multilingual environment and the strategies available for literary representation of this region. Chapter One examines the strategies used by Lee Kok Liang in Flowers in the Sky to develop the parallel theme of spirituality and sexuality with the theme of communication. Chapter Two looks at the strategies used by K.S. Maniam in The Return, to explore the theme of alienation. Chapter Three examines the strategies used by Suchen Christine Lim in Rice Bowl, to dramatize the tension between the Mandarin-educated Chinese and the English-educated Chinese. ii Chapter Four looks at the strategies used by Gopal Baratham in A Candle or the Sun to explore the theme of betrayal and the dynamics of writing fiction. Chapter Five examines the strategies used by Rex Shelley in The Shrimp People to develop the theme of patriotism and portray the variety of English used by Portuguese Eurasians. Chapter Six looks at the strategies used by Beth Yahp in The Crocodile Fury to develop the theme of physical abuse and oppression. Chapter Seven examines the strategies used by Lloyd Fernando in Green is the Colour to develop the theme of racial hatred and religious intolerance. Chapter Eight looks at the strategies used by Marie Gerrina Louis in The Road to Chandibole to dramatize the theme of the marginalized women. Chapter Nine examines the strategies employed by Philip Jeyaretnam in Abraham’s Promise to develop the theme of identity crisis. Chapter Ten looks at the strategies used by Ellina binti Abdul Majid in Perhaps in Paradise to dramatize the theme of a girl in the process of becoming woman. Chapter Eleven examines Playing Madame Mao to evaluate the strategies used by Lau Siew Mei to explore the theme of freedom of speech and censorship. Chapter Twelve evaluate the strategies used by Fiona Cheong to develop the theme of child abuse in Shadow Theatre. The study of the selected novels reveal that the strategies of lexical borrowings, code-switching, code-mixing and the use of different levels of Singapore- Malayan English have gradually replaced vernacular transcriptions. What makes a characteristically Singapore or Malaysian novel is the use of any of these strategies to iii represent the speech of a character. The artistic success that each of the writer achieves to construct a multilingual environment is through the selective use of these strategies. iv Introduction The last decade of the twentieth century witnessed a marked increase in novels written with a setting in Malaysia and Singapore by those who have grown-up in this region, some of whom have either migrated to other countries or are now living abroad. I have selected novels written about this region by non-European writers that offer possibilities for discussion. As my objective is to reveal the underlying relationship of the represented speech of the speaking person in a multilingual environment to the theme, I have selected novels that suggest multiple meanings are possible. In other words, the choice of the text depends very much on the dialogic quality of its language. The theoretical basis for the discussion of the text will be the notion of heteroglossia postulated by Mikhail M. Bakhtin and the inter-animation of languages through the speaking person. Bakhtin says that the novel “orchestrates all its themes, the totality of the world objects and ideas depicted and expressed in it, by means of the social diversity of speech types and by the differing individual voices that flourish under such conditions” (The Dialogic Imagination, 263). Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglossia gives an appropriate framework for analyzing the novels I have selected, because he sees the novel “as a diversity of social speech types (sometimes even diversity of languages) and a diversity of individual voices, artistically organised” (262). Bakhtin sees the “distinctive links and interrelationships between utterances and languages, this movement of the theme through different languages and speech types” (263) as the basic distinguishing feature of the stylistics of the novel. I will be looking at the methods of language appropriation in postcolonial novels, discussed in The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Postcolonial 1 Literatures, such as the use of untranslated words and code-switching and those discussed in The Language of Postcolonial Literatures, like code-mixing and speech presentation, since they play a dominant role in the literary representation of the different varieties of English. Appropriation is “the process by which the language is taken and made to ‘bear the burden’ of one’s own cultural experience” (Ashcroft et al. 39). Bakhtin’s insistence on the speaking person as the central dynamic of the narrative (332), offers a challenge to the multilingual speech communities, like Malaysia and Singapore, because of the linguistic composition of these societies. Formation of Speech Communities The formation of the multilingual speech communities in Malaysia and Singapore was an accident of history. Although Indian influence started some 1,700 years ago (Andaya & Andaya, 14) and contact with China from the fifteenth century (40) onwards, the “development of large and diverse speech communities in the Malay Peninsula took place in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century” (Platt & Weber 2), mainly because of the establishment of British Settlements at Penang, Singapore and Malacca. Immigrants were from different speech communities from India, China and the Malay Archipelago. And “large scale immigration continued into the twentieth century, due partly to the development of tin mining and, later on, to the rapid growth of the rubber industry” (Platt & Weber 2). The composition of each major ethnic group will indicate the complex nature of the speech communities. Tamils, Malayalees, Telugus, Bengalis, Punjabis, Gujaratis and Sindhis, each with a distinct spoken and written language, are classified as Indians. Hakka, Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew and Hainanese, each with a different dialect, come under the heading of Chinese. However they have a common 2 written script, Mandarin. The people from the Malay Archipelago were mainly Bugis, Boyanese, Achenese, Javanese, Sulawesis and Minangkabaus from Sumatra. They spoke different varieties of Malay. Munshi Abdullah in his travel accounts contrasts the ‘pure Malay language’ (Andaya & Andaya 119) spoken in the state of Johore with the dialects of Kedah, Kelantan and Trengganu. However, the Colonial Government’s identification of each ethnic group with “a specific economic role, affected early colonial policy towards education” (Andaya & Andaya 222) bringing about further divisions in the speech communities.