Abstract: Roy uses altogether an extraordinary variety of English and that’s why she is successful to communicate to the world the culture that she represents. The richness of her novel lies in the use of Indian English and the varieties of techniques she uses. Roy uses English, which very often deviates from the standard conventions-use of words and sentences from regional language, the use of capital letters, use of italics, verbless sentences, misspellings, single word sentences, change of parts of speech, clustering of adjectives, nouns which are deviation from norm in the English language.‘With extraordinary linguistic inventiveness, Roy funnels the history of South India through the eyes of seven year old twins’, Gillian Beer, chairwoman of the Booker judges said’.‘The story she tells is fundamental as well as local; it is about love and death, about lies and laws. Her narrative crackles with riddles and yet tells its tale quite clearly.’ Roy has been bold enough of risks, using a number of different strategies in language—psychological, local, typographical, structural, and cultural to construct a powerful story. By examining these techniques the reader can see how Roy uses language to define her characters. Roy’s use of language throughout the novel helps the reader better understand her various complex characters, most importantly Estahappen and Rahel, the seven year old twins who are most affected by the events that take place within their family and community. The author’s play of language is not merely a tool for communication in the novel, rather it is an aspect of each character’s personality. Language play gives the reader a clear indication of who the character and the purpose.
Roy is quite intentional in her manipulation of words throughout the text. By breaking up later into syllables she calls attention to the weight of the meaning. Roy uses fragmentation in Lay. Ter. to call attention to the importance of the word—the reader can see through the word change and the subsequent description of the change the significance the break has to Estha. In breaking up the word later Esthappen gives the word more weight and more importance. Such use of language is particularly interesting given Roy’s use of a language that is not natively her own. Booker prize winner Arundhati Roy’s debut novel, The God of Small Things (1997), was met with critical acclaim. The first Indian woman to receive the prestigious Booker Prize for Literature. This paper envisages how Arundhati Roy uses language locally, psychologically, structurally and culturally in her debut novel “The God of Small Things”. For the purposes of this study “language” should be understood to mean not only the spoken or written word but also the way cultural groups understand and communicate to one another.
Title: LANGUAGE DEVIANCE IN ARUNDHATI ROY’S NOVEL “THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS”
Author: Dr. N. Prasanna Lakshmi
International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research
ISSN 2348-3156 (Print), ISSN 2348-3164 (online)
Research Publish Journals
