Fictionalized Indian English Speech and the Representations Of
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FICTIONALIZED INDIAN ENGLISH SPEECH AND THE REPRESENTATIONS OF IDEOLOGY IN INDIAN NOVELS IN ENGLISH Kalaivahni Muthiah, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS August 2009 APPROVED: Shobhana L. Chelliah, Major Professor James Duban, Committee Member John G. Peters, Committee Member David Holdeman, Committee Member and Chair of the Department of English Michael Monticino, Dean of the Robert B. Toulouse School of Graduate Studies Muthiah, Kalaivahni. Fictionalized Indian English Speech and the Representations of Ideology in Indian Novels in English. Doctor of Philosophy (English), August 2009, 271 pp., 3 tables, 12 illustrations, references, 125 titles. I investigate the spoken dialogue of four Indian novels in English: Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable (1935), Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan (1956), Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayan’s The World of Nagaraj (1990), and Rohinton Mistry’s Family Matters (2002). Roger Fowler has said that literature, as a form of discourse, articulates ideology; it is through linguistic criticism (combination of literary criticism and linguistic analyses) that the ideologies in a literary text are uncovered. Shobhana Chelliah in her study of Indian novels in English concludes that the authors use Indian English (IndE) as a device to characterize buffoons and villains. Drawing upon Fowler’s and Chelliah’s framework, my investigation employs linguistic criticism of the four novels to expose the ideologies reflected in the use of fictionalized English in the Indian context. A quantitative inquiry based on thirty-five IndE features reveals that the authors appropriate these features, either to a greater or lesser degree, to almost all their characters, suggesting that IndE functions as the mainstream variety in these novels and creating an illusion that the authors are merely representing the characters’ unique Indian worldviews. But within this dialect range, the appropriation of higher percentages of IndE features to specific characters or groups of characters reveal the authors’ manipulation of IndE as a counter-realist and ideological device to portray deviant and defective characters. This subordinating of IndE as a substandard variety of English functions as the dominant ideology in my investigation of the four novels. Nevertheless, I also uncover the appropriation of a higher percentage of IndE features to foreground the masculinity of specific characters and to heighten the quintessentially traditional values of the older Brahmin generation, which justifies a contesting ideology about IndE that elevates it as the prestigious variety, not an aberration. Using an approach which combines literary criticism with linguistic analysis, I map and recommend a multidisciplinary methodology, which allows for a reevaluation of fictionalized IndE speech that goes beyond impressionistic analyses. Copyright 2009 by Kalaivahni Muthiah ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It has been said that it takes a village to raise a child; I needed just as much help and support to finish my dissertation. Everyone who made this project possible deserves my utmost thanks. First, I would like to thank Dr. Shobhana Chelliah, my dissertation advisor, for suggesting this dissertation topic and generously sharing her own research with me. This dissertation would not have been possible without her help and guidance. I owe my dissertation committee a big thank you too: It was in Dr. David Holdeman‘s modern Irish drama class that I first got the idea to combine literary close reading with linguistic analyses. Ever since then Dr. Holdeman has continued to encourage me to focus on this cross-disciplinary methodology and to make more thorough investigations. In Dr. John Peters‘ class I learned the value of widening my perspective when making any argument. By examining Jane Eyre along with Wide Sargasso Sea, Dr. Peters‘ aided me in seeing that any argument can have different, even conflicting, perspectives, and a careful researcher must be willing and able to identify, investigate and elaborate on all possible perspectives. Dr. James Duban provided meticulous comments on drafts of my dissertation chapters. Although I dreaded his ―so what?‖ question, it challenged me to find the value of my arguments to a wider audience. I would not have pushed myself to do this without Dr. Duban‘s honest feedback. But the help I received goes beyond my dissertation committee. I had the support of fellow graduate students, particularly Marlea Trevino, who urged me to keep at it, especially when I thought my research project was going nowhere. Vineeta Chand generously shared her list of Indian English features and gave me the idea of counting based on punctuation units, an idea that helped me enormously with my counting. I also would not have been able to start and iii complete my dissertation without the prompt and efficient help by the interlibrary staff who processed all my interlibrary loan requests in a timely fashion. Su-Chuan He from the Center of Interdisciplinary Research and Analysis always calmly listened to my panicked requests for help with my counting and unfailingly came up with a satisfactory answer. Jill Kleister, as the Graduate Reader, generously agreed to my requests for appointments and offered me a variety of options to solve my formatting issues. Finally, I owe my biggest thank you to three very special people: my aunt, who although being far away, called me on the phone frequently to soothe my fears—her recapitulations of entertaining events that constantly take place back home helped me to forget research and to take life less seriously, while her unfazed confidence in me kept me going. My mother stayed with me in the last year of my dissertation project to provide practical and emotional support and patiently worked with me to verify my counting methodology. And my husband, who was the unwitting victim of all my frustration, but who patiently bore it all and always stayed enthusiastic about my research. The three of you have put just as much into this dissertation: I did not earn this degree, we did. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS....................................................................................................... iii LIST OF TABLES .....................................................................................................................vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ......................................................................................................vii Chapters 1. FICTIONALIZED INDIAN ENGLISH SPEECH IN NOVEL DIALOGUE: MY THESIS AND METHODOLOGY ................................... 1 2. HISTORY OF ENGLISH IN INDIA AND THE INDIAN NOVEL IN ENGLISH ........................................................................... 37 3. OF BHANGIS AND BABUS: MULK RAJ ANAND‘S UNTOUCHABLE .................................................................... 47 4. HYPER-MASCULINITY AND EFFEMINACY IN KHUSHWANT SINGH‘S TRAIN TO PAKISTAN ......................................................... 63 5. THE WORLD OF NAGARAJ, NARADA, AND NARAYAN ...................................... 83 6. OF ZOROASTRIANS AND MAHARASHTRIANS: ROHINTON MISTRY‘S FAMILY MATTERS ............................................................. 100 7. VERNACULAR WORDS, CODE-MIXING, AND TRANSLATION IN INDIAN ENGLISH NOVEL DIALOGUE ............................................................. 120 8. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................... 141 APPENDIX: THIRTY-SIX INDIAN ENGLISH FEATURES ................................................ 146 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................... 263 v LIST OF TABLES Page TABLE 3.1: Percentage of thirty-five IndE features for eight characters in Untouchable ........... 49 TABLE 4.1: Percentage of thirty-five IndE features for six characters in Train to Pakistan ....... 78 TABLE 5.1: Percentage of thirty-five IndE features for five characters in The World of Nagaraj ....................................................................... 84 vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page FIGURE 3.1: Percentage of thirty-five IndE features for forty characters in Untouchable grouped according to social status .................................................................................. 50 FIGURE 3.2: Proportion of thirty-five IndE features for twenty-nine characters in Untouchable grouped according to positive, negative, or mixed (positive and negative) motives and actions ......................................................... 54 FIGURE 3.3: Percentage of IndE epithets and imprecations for twenty-nine characters in Untouchable grouped according to positive, negative, or mixed (positive and negative) motives and actions ......................................................... 57 FIGURE 4.1: Percentage of thirty-five IndE features for thirteen characters categorized as leaders in Train to Pakistan .................................................................... 67 FIGURE 4.2: Percentage of thirty-five IndE features for nine characters in Train to Pakistan grouped first according to positive or negative attributes and then according to active or passive characters .......................................... 72 FIGURE 4.3: Percentage of thirty-five IndE features for four passive characters in Train to Pakistan ..........................................................................................................