Lingua inglese - The empire writes back

The Empire Writes Back

1. CUTTING THE GROUND

Critical models of post-colonial literatures:

• National or regional model [USA first to develop this; Charles Brown first who used British forms>radical alteration]
• Raced based model
• Comparative model (between 2 or more post-colonial literatures)
• More comprehensive comparative model (HYBRIDY and SYCRETISM)> collision between narrative mode, history, realist mimetic readings of the text.

3 types of comparison forming a base for a post-colonial discourse:

1. Comparison between countries of the white diaspora [US, Canada, Australia, N. Zealand]
2. Comparison between countries of the black diaspora [black people claim to have different time-space relations]
3. Comparison between literatures from the West Indies with that of Australia.

IV. WIDER COMPARATIVE MODELS: "Commonwealth literature" aka new English literature, Post-Colonial literature (misleading) differences between writing in English and in an indigenous

<p><strong>Language&Place:</strong> place and displacement are major concerns of post-colonial people. Is it right to use the imported language over their native one? 2 groups of colonies: <strong>SETTLER COLONIES</strong> (land occupied by Europeans who dispossessed the indigenous population)> US, Canada, Australia; <strong>INVADED COLONIES</strong> (colonised but not forced to adopt a different landscape)> India, Nigeria.</p> <p><strong>Thematic Parallels:</strong> between colonised countries like the struggle towards independence, domination, unfamiliar landscape.</p> <p><strong>Coloniser&Colonised:</strong> relationship in any post-colonial area subject to a political/imaginative/social control. Is it possible to Decolonise a culture? Some say yes some say no.</p> <p><strong>Dominating&Dominated:</strong> emblematic US case: the shift from dominated to dominating gave literature greater affinities. Dominated literature tend to SUBVERSION.</p> <p><strong>2. REPLACING THE LANGUAGE</strong></p> <p><strong>Abrogation&Appropriantion:</strong> seizing the language in the centre and replacing it in a discourse fully adopted to the colonised</p>semantic, and syntactic patterns. It is a form of linguistic hybridity that reflects the blending of different cultural influences. Code-switching: the alternating use of two or more languages within a single conversation or text. It is a common linguistic practice in multilingual societies and serves as a means of identity expression and cultural negotiation. Borrowing: the adoption of words or phrases from one language into another. It is often used to fill lexical gaps or to express concepts that do not exist in the borrowing language. Translation: the process of rendering a text from one language into another. It involves not only the transfer of words but also the cultural and contextual meaning behind them. These various linguistic strategies are employed by post-colonial writers to challenge and subvert the dominance of the imperial culture. Through the use of language, they assert their own cultural identities and reclaim their voices in the face of colonial oppression.

Morphological and syntactical forms in the speech of the second-language speaker.

Syntactic Fusion: developing new forms of neologisms to emphasise the fact that words do not embody cultural essence. For this reason their success lies in their function within the texts. Neologisms are 'colloquial' and 'idiomatic' suggesting the usage of language in a particular time and place.

Code-switching and vernacular transcription: ability of switching between two or more codes also called double glossing.

Language in post-colonial societies: 3 main types of linguistic groups within post-colonial discourse:

Monoglossic > single language society using English as a native tongue

I. Diglossic > majority of people speaks two or more languages bilingual society (English for government and commerce)

Polyglossic (poly-dialectal) > multitude of dialects.

III. The Creole Continuum: it reminds us that a language is a human behaviour and consists in what people do. It's a metatheory

which takes linguistic variation as the substance. It’s extremely important because it demonstrates the way in which a post-colonial orientation can confront received theoretical norms.