Fictionalized Indian English Speech and the Representations of Ideology in Indian Novels in English Metadata

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Title

  • Main Title Fictionalized Indian English Speech and the Representations of Ideology in Indian Novels in English

Creator

  • Author: Muthiah, Kalaivahni
    Creator Type: Personal

Contributor

  • Chair: Chelliah, Shobhana L.
    Contributor Type: Personal
    Contributor Info: Major Professor
  • Committee Member: Duban, James
    Contributor Type: Personal
  • Committee Member: Peters, John G.
    Contributor Type: Personal
  • Committee Member: Holdeman, David
    Contributor Type: Personal

Publisher

  • Name: University of North Texas
    Place of Publication: Denton, Texas

Date

  • Creation: 2009-08

Language

  • English

Description

  • Content Description: 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.

Subject

  • Keyword: Indian English
  • Keyword: linguistics and literature
  • Keyword: fictionalized speech
  • Keyword: sociolinguistics
  • Keyword: Indian novels in English
  • Keyword: spoken dialogue
  • Keyword: ideology
  • Library of Congress Subject Headings: English language -- India -- Syntax.
  • Library of Congress Subject Headings: Anand, Mulk Raj, 1905-2004. Untouchable.
  • Library of Congress Subject Headings: Khushwant Singh, 1915- Train to Pakistan.
  • Library of Congress Subject Headings: Narayan, R. K., 1906-2001. World of Nagaraj.
  • Library of Congress Subject Headings: Mistry, Rohinton, 1952- Family matters.

Collection

  • Name: UNT Theses and Dissertations
    Code: UNTETD

Institution

  • Name: UNT Libraries
    Code: UNT

Rights

  • Rights Access: public
  • Rights License: copyright
  • Rights Holder: Muthiah, Kalaivahni
  • Rights Statement: Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

Resource Type

  • Thesis or Dissertation

Format

  • Text

Identifier

  • OCLC: 567430478
  • UNT Catalog No.: b3823775
  • Archival Resource Key: ark:/67531/metadc12168

Degree

  • Degree Name: Doctor of Philosophy
  • Degree Level: Doctoral
  • Degree Discipline: English
  • Academic Department: Department of English
  • Degree Grantor: University of North Texas

Note

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