Pukka English and the Language of the Other in E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India
A Passage to India differs from Kipling’s luscious use of Indian words or Conrad’s creativity; while Kipling’s Kim returns to the vernacular as a mother-tongue and Conrad uses linguistic distortion as a site of ethical ambiguity, Forster strays from the systematic inclusion of alien signifiers with...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
2013-09-01
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| Series: | Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/cve/973 |
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| Summary: | A Passage to India differs from Kipling’s luscious use of Indian words or Conrad’s creativity; while Kipling’s Kim returns to the vernacular as a mother-tongue and Conrad uses linguistic distortion as a site of ethical ambiguity, Forster strays from the systematic inclusion of alien signifiers with his text. E. M. Forster opts instead for a deconstruction of the English attempt to appropriate Indian signifiers as a token language positing the superiority of the Raj. Ironically subverting the use of signifiers like « pukka », Forster seeks to open up the text to the very otherness of Indian culture, moving beyond the annihilating echo of the caves to enhance what McBratney sees as the voice of the subaltern in the text, through the orality of songs. Echoing foreign words become a pocket of rhythm and sound, the very matrix of a meaning that escapes colonial discourse and points towards a polyphony that remains pregnant with meaning. |
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| ISSN: | 0220-5610 2271-6149 |