Interpreting Identity From The Hybrid Language Of The God Of Small Things

Arundhati Roy’s English novel The God of Small Things has been widely praised since its publication.It is a classic book which won the Booker Prize and the National Book Award.The novel tells the story of a pro-British family in Ayemenem,a small town in the south of India,and becomes the epitome of India’s post-colonial society.Imperial colonization,caste system,male chauvinism and other social problems are reflected in the novel.In the colonial era,the Western Empire used language（mainly English）as the main medium to spread colonial culture,and pushed the value code and life interests it carried to the colony,thus constructing a “standard” language paradigm,achieving the goal of weakening and marginalizing all “native languages” and forming a clearly opposite power hierarchy.After the independence of the colony,Imperial Standard English is still very powerful,and as a general language paradigm,it continues to dominate the language and culture of the post-colonial world.In order to dispel the hegemony of standard English left over by the empire,Roy abandoned and misappropriated it in the novel The God of Small Things,forming a hybrid language different from standard English,so as to inspire the Indian people to identify with their own culture and build their own cultural identity.From the perspective of Post-colonialism,this paper discusses the political relationship between hybrid language and identity in The God of Small Things.Starting from the social and cultural background of India at that time,this paper combs the influence of caste system,colonial control and other multiple power orders in the novel on Indian society,especially the obstruction of imperial colonial hegemony to India’s correct cultural orientation.Facing the collusion between language and power of western powers and cultural colonization with imperial English as the colonial standard language,post-colonial writers can still abandon and misappropriate imperial standard English through hybrid strategies,making it a political force against imperial language hegemony.The novel which named The God of Small Things adopts language strategies such as embedding Malayalam into standard English,subverting orthodox English grammar norms,and reading English in reverse,so as to meet the need of the text to express the theme,thus forming a kind of hybrid language.The formation of this language is closely related to the author’s social status and language strategy.This is a way for the author to challenge Imperial Standard English,to express the political and cultural aspirations of the Indian people,and also an attempt to establish a multicultural identity in India.Finally,the conclusion points out that the hybrid language of The God of Small Things deconstructed the language paradigm of standard English,and also challenged the colonial cultural conception and imperial discourse system based on English,and became the “place” of Indian cultural identity.