APPROPRIATION OF LANGUAGE IN TWILIGHT IN DELHI

• Published in: New Horizons Vol. 12; no. 1; pp. 41 - 149
• Main Authors: Akram, Zainab, Ayub, Alia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Karachi Knowledge Bylanes 30.06.2018; AsiaNet Pakistan (Pvt) Ltd
• Subjects: Adaptation; British colonialism; Culture; Language; Muslims; Postcolonialism; Writers; Writing; India; Quetta Pakistan; Pakistan
• ISSN: 1992-4399; 1992-4399
• DOI: 10.2.9270/NH.12.2(18).03

English, which emerged as a colonial language is now the lingua franca of the world. In a colonized country like Pakistan, English has dominated and enjoyed the rank of official language even after the independence. It is rightly said that the British have gone but are successful in keeping their hegemony through their language. The colonial language has subjugated the undertakings of the subcontinent and dominated other native languages. The present study tries to explain the concept of the Twilight in Delhi, written by an Asian author, who intend to prove that the condition in language adaptation and adoption in Pakistan was not miserable. The author of the novel possesses the strength to present English as a lingua franca of Pakistan, with the indigenization and amalgamation of the local terms and native jargons. The four strategies of language appropriation as pointed out by Kachru (1983), and five by Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin (2002), are inquired in this study and the data is collected in correspondence to these strategies. The data is collected from the text of the novel, Twilight in Delhi. The findings reveal that the alterations in the language under language appropriation are evident to such an extent that the localized English has the potential and prospective of embedding them and facing the literary world with a new powerful dimension against the political language dominance of the British.