Transversal Ecocritical Praxis by Murphy Patrick D.;

Author:Murphy, Patrick D.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Thus, for instance, in Grace’s Potiki an attentive reader has to recognize that not only do the Maori words in the text generate heteroglossia but so too does the New Zealand colloquial English and the hybrid speech of the characters. Such is the case as well in Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide where readers witness distinct differences in the Englishes of the American scientist and the Delhi translator alongside the multiple languages that appear in the text. Initial incomprehensibility is not only a matter of differences across languages but also differences within a language, and differences within a dialogue, particularly cross cultural ones where there are no historically settled contexts for denotation and connotation among participants.

In Animal’s People, another element is added to Animal’s own polyglot dialect worthy of inclusion here: the use of a common European language, French, to reduce the distance between the English of the first-person narrator, Animal, and the multinational reading audience. French is the fully alien tongue of the senile nun who is anticipating the end of the world. And through its difference, which the character named Animal must translate for his audience within the novel—whereas translation is not provided for non-English parts of his polylglottal dialect—the text establishes a differential similitude between English speakers/readers and the English-speaking characters through this zone of alien difference between them and the language of the French-speaking nun. At the same time, the American cosmopolitan character’s knowledge of French allows for a reduction of distance between her and the nun who has also been engaged in working among the Khaufpur toxic poisoning victims, as well as another link between her and Animal. It is also on the basis of her knowledge of French that the nun says of Elli that she is a “human being,” an interesting contrast to a remark made in Potiki, which I will discuss later.

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