دیالوگیسم در میان هتروگلوسیا فرآیند فرازبانی بازتاب: براندازی امپریالیسم فرهنگی و زبانی استعماری
- Razieh Eslamieh*
1
- Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature, Department of English, Faculty of Humanities, Islamic Azad University Parand-Robat Karim Branch, Parand, Iran
Revised: 2020-06-15
Accepted: 2020-06-15
Published 2020-01-01
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Abstract
Journal of
Language and Translation
Volume 10, Number 1, 2020, (pp.1-14)
Dialogism amid Heteroglossia of the Translinguistic Process of Relexification:
The Subversion of Colonial Cultural and Linguistic Imperialism
Razieh Eslamieh1*
1 Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature, Department of English, Faculty of
Humanities, Islamic Azad University Parand-Robat Karim Branch, Parand, Iran
Received: 14 January, 2020 Accepted: 28 March 2020
Abstract
Most postcolonial African writers choose English as the language of their literary works for the reason of
wider audience reception but come to indigenize it to decolonize the colonial tool, i.e. colonial language.
The translinguistic process of relexification means subverting colonial cultural imperialism and colonial
linguistic imposition through the dialogic interaction opened in the wake of using colonial language to
represent the voices of the dispossessed amid a heteroglotic milieu. Relexification is the linguistic reflec-
tion of polyglotic multilingual postcolonial milieu. Studying relexification in Chinua Achebe’s rural nov-
el, Things Fall Apart, the present paper intends to delineate that while colonial literary discourse is mostly
monologic as it voices mainly the colonizer, postcolonial literary discourse is the dialogic bringing to-
gether of voices and forces from both sides. The synchronic study of relexification can reveal that the hy-
bridization strategy triumphs on three axes of linguistic transposition, rhythmic transposition, and folklor-
ic transposition. The paper is limited to linguistic transposition. First through the theoretical saturation
method, samples of lexical borrowing, cushioning, and code-mixing were spotted in the corpus. Next the
samples were thematically analyzed to derive implications of relexificatin in textual context. Discourse
analysis revealed broader dialogic and subversive implications of relexification in postcolonial polyglot
discourse. Implementing literary relexification in his novels, Achebe extends the frontiers of English by
creating a new English literary form.
Keywords: Code-mixing; Cushioning; Lexical borrowing; Linguistic transposition; Relexified language
INTRODUCTION
Post-colonial studies are particularly sensitive to
language, since language played an obvious lead-
ing role in colonization, so it must have had a key
role in decolonization. Colonial language was
mainly imposed by colonial literature as the re-
sult of which postcolonial literary discourse
emerged as a response to colonial literary
discourse. Colonial literary discourse is monolog-
ical as it is marred by intentional omissions, gaps
and silence about Africa. Criticizing Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness (1899), Achebe in “An Image
of Africa” writes:
It is clearly not part of Conrad's
purpose to confer language on
the "rudimentary souls" of Afri-
ca. In place of speech they made
"a violent babble of uncouth
*Corresponding Author’s Email:
rz.eslamieh@piau.ac.ir
2 Dialogism amid Heteroglossia of the Translinguistic Process of Relexification:…
sounds." They "exchanged short
grunting phrases" even among
themselves. But most of the time
they were too busy with their
frenzy. (p. 4)
African writers felt unhappy about the way
their stories were told by the colonizers, about the
way their identities were constructed in colonial
monologic discourse and hence they embarked
on presenting their own story in their own partic-
ular language. Chinua Achebe (1975) writes that
while he was at the university he read “some ap-
palling novels about Africa (including Joyce
Cary’s much praised Mister Johnson), and decid-
ed that the story we had to tell could not be told
for us by anyone else, no matter how gifted or
well intentioned” (p. 123). Henceforth, he tried to
innovate a new literary language, anew African-
ized literary style appropriate to impart African
experience in response to colonial tendencies
which meant to efface Africanness from literary
discourse.
Once Achebe decided to describe his African
experience in English, he realized that he has to
delineate “situations or modes of thought, which
have no direct equivalent in English way of life”
(C. Achebe, 1973, p. 7). Rather than containing
what he wanted to say within the limits of con-
ventional English, he tried “to push back those
limits to accommodate his ideas” (C. Achebe,
1973, p. 12) through his experimentation and im-
plementation of relexified language. Relexifica-
tionextends linguistic borders for the purpose of
accommodating new concepts. As such the tech-
nique is more recurrent in novels with native eth-
nic aura which mean to simulate a local setting.
For his new literary experiments, Achebe is truly
called the “producer of a new African literature
and the inventor of new forms through which
African culture can adequately be represented”
(Gikandi & Gikandi, 1991, p. 7).
Achebe’s “new English” (C. Achebe, 1975, p.
62) produces a dialogic discourse which gives
voice to the so far excluded or silenced Africans,
but at the same time does not withhold giving
voice to European colonizers. In his new literary
language, utterances are entangled in dialogic
interaction with their colonial complements as
they triumph on what Bakhtin calls “addressivi-
ty” (M. M. Bakhtin, Holquist, & Emerson, 1986,
p. 170). Achebe's linguistic register is a response
to colonial language and in turn demands re-
sponse; that is it has the capacity to elicit a never-
ending dialogue. According to Bakhtin, our indi-
vidual speech utterances are tied indissolubly to
all previous and future acts of language in the
never-ending act of dialogue with others: “There
is neither a first nor a last word and there are no
limits to the dialogic context (it extends into the
boundless past and the boundless future)” (M. M.
Bakhtin et al., 1986, p. 170).
This paper studies the ways containment of
Ibo elements in English by Achebe responds to
colonial discourse, opens a dialogue with it and
subverts colonial cultural and linguistic hierarchy
practiced in colonial literary discourse. It is
noteworthy that while Zabus (1990) theorizes
relexification others the colonial language, this
paper suggests relexification, as a linguistic re-
flection of polyglotic multilingual postcolonial
milieu, causes the dialogic interaction of colonial
and colonized languages.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Relexification: Causes of Emergence, Defini-
tion and Characteristics
The dominance of English in the wake of British
colonization changed the linguistic ecology of the
ethnic local scene in a way that English became
an integral part of the colonized socio-cultural-
linguistic milieu. The domination of English
caused hierarchical linguistic diversity. English
became “a tool of power, domination and elitist
identity and of communication across continents”
(Kachru, 1986, p. 291) which inevitably marked
native language with locality, illiteracy, and
backwardness. The double functions of English
as the administrative language of the colonized
bureaus as well as the language of wider commu-
nication, which binds together different tribal
communities with different languages, posed se-
rious threats to local languages:
Journal of language and translation, Volume 10, Number 1, 2020 3
The enthusiasm for English is not
unanimous, or even widespread. The
disadvantages of using it are obvi-
ous: cultural and social implications
accompany the use of an external
language. But the native languages
are losing in this competition.
(Kachru, 1986, p. 8)
One major cultural disadvantage of using an
“external language” is the importation and domi-
nation of its literature. The dominance of English
in colonized territories brought with it English
literature and consequently English writers, Eng-
lish stereotypical models and above all English
modes of thought which molded the colonized
subconscious after colonial frameworks.
Brathwaite (1984) writes:
And in terms of what we write, our
perceptual models, we are more
conscious (in terms of sensibility) of
the falling snow, for instance-the
models are all there for the falling of
snow- than of the force of the hurri-
canes which take place every year.
In other words, we haven't got the
syllables, the syllabic intelligence, to
describe the hurricane, which is our
own experience, whereas we can de-
scribe the alien imported experience
of the snowfall. It is that kind of sit-
uation that we are in. (p. 263)
In other words, language is a dynamic tool
capable of constructing one’s mental images and
more importantly modes of thought.
From the linguistic viewpoint, relexifiction,
also referred to as relabeling, is one of the three
major processes in language genesis and lan-
guage change (Lefebvre, 2004). The other two
processes are reanalysis and dialect levelling.
Relexification is an important tool in the creation
of mixed languages (Bakker, 1997; Lefebvre,
2006) and in the formation of Pidgin and Creole
languages. One of the earliest theorists of relexi-
fication asserts that “we do accept the possibility
of relexification as a mechanism in forming a
new language in a bilingual situation” (Muysken,
1981, p. 77). Lefebvre (2004) explicates that
“Relexification essentially alludes to the assign-
ing of new labels to the lexical entries of a given
lexicon. The lexical entries so formed have the
semantic and syntactic properties of the original
entries with labels drawn from another language”
(p. 2). It appears that, as a linguistic strategy,
relexifiction refers to the importation of words in
one language from another language.
Though grounded in linguistic relexification,
this paper argues literary relexification, born in
polyglot postcolonial milieu, involves more than
the entrance of lexical entries in another language
rather it means to Africanize the Europhone text.
Unlike the linguistically oriented definitions
(Appel & Muysken, 1987; Bakker, 1997;
Lefebvre, 2006) definitions of relexification pro-
vided by Todd (1982) and Zabus (1991) are re-
lated to the domain of literature.
Chantal Zabus (1991) definesrelexification as
the linguistic process at work when a West Afri-
can writer tries to simulate the aura of Afri-
canness in a Europhone text, “using a seemingly
familiar language to convey an unfamiliar mes-
sage” (p. 101). Furthermore, Zabus (1991) adds
relexification is “the making of a new register of
communication out of an alien lexicon” (p. 102)
for the reason that the concept involves semantic
and syntactic aspects. In such process, the Euro-
phone text is intruded with indigenous African
myths, legends, folktales, fables, proverbs, meta-
phors, ideological beliefs, religious assumptions,
customs, traditional ceremonies, speech rhythms,
speech patterns, linguistic structures and lexis.
According to Zabus (1990) “Relexifiction is […]
an essentially literary, world-creating, diachronic
practice which differs from inadvertent calquing
in its ideological intention to simulate the linguis-
tic peculiarities of the repressed palimpsestic
original” (p. 106). The purpose is to generate
African concepts, thought-patterns and linguistic
features in the Europhone text. Todd (1982) for-
mulates the concept as “the relexification of
one’s mother tongue, using English vocabulary,
but indigenous structures and rhythms” (p. 303).
4 Dialogism amid Heteroglossia of the Translinguistic Process of Relexification:…
Stern (1980) theorizes that the new language is
an ‘interlanguage’ which resembles neither the
European target language nor the indigenous
source language.
Literary relexification, born in post-colonial
context, is the simulation, incorporation and as-
similation of indigenous African language in a
Europhone text for the dual purposes of cultural
decolonization and linguistic decolonization. Za-
bus (2007) writes that “Relexification… corre-
sponds to an artistic need to forge or create a new
literary medium” (p. 16). The strategy de-
familiarizes the colonial European language by
constant incorporation of indigenous African el-
ements. As such literary relexification “is
grounded in a specific ethnic and linguistic iden-
tity” (Verthuy, 1991, p. 208). That is to convey
literary relexifiction triumphs on valorizing in-
digenous ethnicity.
To summarize, it can be inferred that literary
relexification triumphs on five characteristics and
premises. First, it is an intentional hybridization
of two languages; usually a superstrate and a sub-
strate language in a way that a new "interlan-
guage” (Stern & Literature, 1980) is born. Se-
cond, it centers on reflecting the indigenous cul-
tural characteristics of the substrate language to
restore the lost valorized indigenous identity.
Henceforth, it is used as a linguistic strategy for
cultural decolonization. Third, it de-familiarizes
the Europhone text by depicting African experi-
ence. Henceforth, it is used as a means for lin-
guistic decolonization. Fourth, it is a narrative
strategy in postcolonial novels with the purpose
of simulating the aura of Africanness, and is not
used in postcolonial poetry or drama (Zabus,
1991). Fifth, Relexification is the byproduct of
linguistic and cultural contact henceforth it is
born in bilingual, polylingual or polyphonic sit-
uations and evolves mainly in contact literature
of postcolonial era.
Achebe, “the father of modern African litera-
ture” and the “literary icon of the 20th century”
(Emenyo̲ nu & Uko, 2004, p. xvii), relexifies Ibo
language into English. By incorporating the ele-
ments of Ibo language into English, Achebe cre-
ates a “new English” (C. Achebe, 1975, p. 62)
and appropriated “the world language . . . forced
down our throats” to be used as a “weapon of
great strength” (1962, p. 63). Using Okara’s
terms, Achebe’s relexified language is a new Ni-
gerian English which adds life and vigor to Eng-
lish:
There are American, West Indi-
an, Australian, Canadian and
New Zealand versions of Eng-
lish. All of them add life and
vigor to the language while re-
flecting their own respective cul-
tures. Why shouldn’t there be a
Nigerian or West African Eng-
lish which we can use to express
our own ideas, thinking and phi-
losophy in our own way? (Okara,
1963, pp. 15-16)
Achebe’s new literary language is a new Ibo
English literary style of writing which bears re-
semblances to both Ibo language and English, but
simultaneously different from both. To simulate
the aura of Ibo culture within colonial superstrate
language, Achebe makes use of transpositional
strategies which create double-voiced utterance.
Interpreting Bakhtin, Danow writes:
That word which is directed both
toward the object and toward an-
other's word is considered dia-
logical or 'double-voiced'. The
dialogical word requires not only
the presence of another but that
the other's semantic position be
assimilated into the speech of the
subject, whose own utterance is
at the same time attempting to
take into account the other's in-
tention. This is achieved when
either another's language is in-
corporated into one's own
speech, where it is accentuated
according to the speaker's criteria
and intentions, or when the lan-
guage of the other-while not it-
self incorporated- is seen active-
Journal of language and translation, Volume 10, Number 1, 2020 5
ly to influence the speaker's ac-
centuation or semantic orienta-
tion. (Danow, 1991, p. 61)
Transpositions incorporate the language of
the colonized in the colonizer's speech. Any
utterance made in relexified language assimi-
lates the semantic position of the colonized and
that is how double-voiced speech acts are con-
structed.
Linguistic utterances in relexified language
become meaningful only in relation to other
utterances rather than in isolation. According to
Bakhtin an isolated utterance lacks “semantic
fullness of value; and it has no capacity to de-
termine directly the responsive position of the
other speaker, that is, it cannot evoke a re-
sponse” (1986, p. 74). Relexified language re-
flects the struggle of diverse voices belonging
to the colonizer and the colonized. Holquest in
“Introduction” of Dialogic Imagination writes:
At the heart of everything Bakh-
tin ever did…is a highly distinc-
tive concept of language. The
conception has as its enabling a
priori an almost Manichean
sense of opposition and struggle
at the heart of existence.… The
most complete and complex re-
flection of these forces is found
in human language, and the best
transcription of language so un-
derstood is the novel. (M. M.
Bakhtin, Wright, & Holquist,
1981, p. xviii)
Depicting the dialogic interplay of voices,
relexified language reflects the polyglot milieu of
postcolonial era and “the literary heteroglossia
practiced by postcolonial writers” (Bandit, 2014,
p. 109). Moreover, amid the heteroglossic milieu
of relexified language, the colonized is granted a
voice to subvert the dominance of colonial lan-
guage as the “center of the ideological world”
(M. M. Bakhtin et al., 1981, p. 366).
METHODS
In colonial discourse, Africans are mostly depict-
ed as voiceless, passive and the other. Postcolo-
nial African novelists set it their own mission to
vocalize the silenced. The problem at stake was
to write back to the canon on the one hand and to
reach the voice of the voiceless to the interlocu-
tors of colonial discourse. For long, there was an
ongoing debate among African writers regarding
whether to write in African languages, which
have limited number of audience, or to write in
English which has wider audience. Some writers,
such as Chinua Achebe, chose the latter option.
The problem just turned more complicated as
writing in the language of the canon and using
the language of the colonizer could perpetuate
colonial imperialism. Patrick Scott (1990) writes:
“The particular linguistic or stylistic problem
thus enacts synecdochically the larger problem of
African cultural and economic resistance to con-
tinuing Western hegemony” (1990, p. 75). Relex-
ified language, the special language of Achebe’s
novels, subverts colonial cultural and linguistic
hegemony.
The present paper is a qualitative research
based on close textual analysis. Theoretical satu-
ration method was used to locate almost all sam-
ples of relexification in the corpus. Next, the
samples were compared with examples of relexi-
fication theorists and the ones near to the theo-
rists’ examples were selected. At the final step, a
venerable professor in the field of postcolonial
studies confirmed the collected samples.
The samples were later thematically analyzed
to signify the purpose of relexification of the se-
lected text and its implication in the textual con-
text. Next the samples were interpreted at the
level of discourse to derive the implications of
relexification in postcolonial dialogic milieu.
The following section rotates one axis of
relexification, that is linguistic transposition.
Though linguistic transposition in Achebe’s nov-
els may have become effective via diverse strate-
gies, the following section is limited to just three
strategies: lexical borrowing, cushioning and
code-mixing. And though relexification can be
6 Dialogism amid Heteroglossia of the Translinguistic Process of Relexification:…
studied in Achebe’s five novels, the following
section brings Things Fall Apart under closer
scrutiny.
RESULTS
Relexificaton and Linguistic Transposition
Zabus (1991) theorizes that relexification is a
diachronic process by which she means that the
historical evolution of single linguistic elements
should come under close scrutiny. However, it
can be argued though diachronic study of relexfi-
cation is worthy, synchronic study should be giv-
en priority. Relexification causes a polyglossic
milieu with diverse phones and voices at work.
Accordingly “A synchronic study of language is
a comparison of languages or dialects--various
spoken differences of the same language--used
within some defined spatial region and during the
same period of time” (Donnelly, 1994, p. 12).
Moreover, in polyglossic milieu of relexified lan-
guage what essentially come under study are the
composition of language and the composition of
linguistic components. That is rather than tracing
the historical changes of the language or dia-
chronic study (Aitchison, 2005), the description
of the language at its presented and present mode
are important. That is relexified language de-
mands synchronic study.
The synchronic study of relexified language
should define not only the relation of every ele-
ment to other elements but also how it is that
some particular lexis, lexicons, rhythms . . . ra-
ther than the others are used. Studying Achebe’s
relexified language synchronically, it can be hy-
pothesized that such translinguistic process hap-
pens at three levels:
1. Linguistic transposition
2. Rhythmic transposition
3. Folkloric transposition
This study merely focuses on linguistic trans-
position for matters of integrity and brevity. In
linguistic transposition, the interposed elements
are linguistic ones.
In Achebe’s works, among a totality of Eng-
lish linguistic codes some African words pop up.
In Things Fall Apart, there exist 179 instances of
Igbo lexicon (Larson, 1972, p. 12). These words
are mostly local words with no equivalent in
English language as far as they derive from deep
recesses of Igbo culture.
There are a considerable number of references
to Ibo traditional ceremoniessuch as Uri ceremo-
ny performed when the dowry is paid to the
Bride’s family, Umuada ceremony which is the
gathering of daughters when the female turn back
to their village of birth, isa-ifi ceremony which is
a ceremony performed when a wife is to be unit-
ed with his husband after a period of separation,
or ozo ritual performed once a man is to receive a
title. There are also citations of Ibo religion-
bound terms such as Chukwu which isthe highest
god in the Igbo hierarchy of gods, chi or a man’s
personal god, Ani or the earth goddess who pos-
sesses all land, Amadiora orthe god of thunder
and lightning, Idemili or the river god, Agbala or
the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves, and nso-
ani a sin against the earth goddess. References to
hierarchical Ibo titles just accompany religious
and ritual-bound terms. In Ibo culture, Ogbue-
fi isa person with a high title and ozo isa class of
men holding an ozo title.
The Europhone text is peppered with diverse
Ibo foods and drinks such as alligator pepper or
offe which is a small brown fruit with hot seeds.
The ground seeds may be served with kola nut in
ritual welcome ceremonies. Other food or drink
names are cassava plants which are edible root
sticks, coco-yam (a woman’s crop) which is
spherical and is eaten like potatoes or ground into
flour, cooked to a paste, or fermented for beer,
egusi melon seeds prepared for a soup, kola
nut which are indeedthe seeds of the cola, contain
caffeine and are used as welcoming snack, often
with alligator pepper. There are lots of references
to yam foo-foo (which is pounded and mashed)
and yam pottage which isa watery gruel made of
yams.
The importation of Ibo musical instruments
which are unfamiliar for Europeans defamilarizes
the English text in the Europhone world. Ibos
have particular musical instruments such as
ekwe which isa drum or ogene which is a kind of
Journal of language and translation, Volume 10, Number 1, 2020 7
gong or udu which is a drum made of pottery.
Achebe also subtly refers to Ibo particular calen-
dar. Market is Ibo week which unlike European
week, has four days. The four days are Eke, Oye,
Afo, and Nkwo. Week of Peace is a sacred week
in which violence is prohibited. Ibo culture has a
particular way of counting. As a case in point,
there is no particular number for thirty. Thirty is
twenty and ten.
Imposing all above-mentioned culture bound
items on the English text, Achebe makes English
impart his African experience:
I feel that the English language
will be able to carry the weight
of my African experience. But it
will have to be a new English,
still in full communication with
its ancestral home but altered to
suit new African surroundings.
(Achebe, 1975, p. 62)
It can be claimed that the imposition of the
colonized culture on the colonial language, has
caused heterogeneity in the otherwise homogen-
ious language of the colonizer and hence has
opened room for the voices of the dispossessed.
By transposing Ibo words in otherwise Eng-
lish linguistic codes and italicizing these words,
Achebe highlights the fact that Ibo words, and
above all African culture, can never be assimilat-
ed in English context:
Many words stubbornly resist,
others remain alien, sound for-
eign in the mouth of the one who
appropriated them and who now
speaks them; they cannot be as-
similated into his context and fall
out of it; it is as if they put them-
selves in quotation marks against
the will of the speaker. (M. M.
Bakhtin et al., 1981, p. 293)
This paper proposes that linguistic transposi-
tion, in Achebe’s rural novels, comes to be effec-
tive via strategies such as lexical borrowing,
overt cushioning, code mixing, covert cushion-
ing, code-switching, transliteration and imposing
the syntactic, stylistic, linguistic and literary pat-
terns of the author’s native language on colonial
language.
Strategies of Linguistic Transposition
The first strategy of linguistic transposition is
lexical borrowing. In lexical borrowing, just a
term or lexicon from another language is import-
ed in and a glossary or dictionary at the end of
the literary work can help understanding the
meaning of the lexical item. Sometimes textual
clues should be derived across the pages. On
page 91 of Things Fall Apart we read: “The
crime was of two kinds male and female,
Okonkwo had committed the female, because it
had been inadvertent”. Having such background
in mind when in page 95 we read “The old man
listened silently to the end and then said with
some relief: “It is a female ochu” ” we under-
stand that ochu should come to mean crime.
In No Longer at Ease, Obi has hard time for
marrying Clara who is an osu because of the rea-
son that he is an Odigbo, and there is no textual
clue regarding the cultural history of the terms.
“What's the matter, Clara? Tell me.' He was
no longer unruffled. There was a hint of tears in
his voice. 'I am an osu ,' she wept. Silence. She
stopped weeping and quietly disengaged herself
from him” (C. Achebe, 1960, p. 54). 'Tell me,
darling,' he said, holding her hand in one of his
while he drove with the other. In another sen-
tence of the same novel we read “'Leave me,
ojare ,' she said, snatching her hand away” (C.
Achebe, 1960, p. 16). There is absolutely no tex-
tual clue to infer the meaning of the Ibo term
‘ojare’. Lexical borrowing contributes to meta-
textuality and African inthemotextualityby which
one text refers the reader to other African texts
for its being comprehended.
Lexical borrowing is closely related to another
linguistic strategy in literary texts called cushion-
ing. The “interpolation, or intercalation” (Bandia,
2014, p. 109) of the vernacular words and ex-
pressions into the colonial language is accompa-
nied by foregrounding the imposed words with
inside-text explanations. Various foregrounding
8 Dialogism amid Heteroglossia of the Translinguistic Process of Relexification:…
strategies are called cushioning by Peter Young
(1971, 1973). According to Young (1971) cush-
ioning is divided into two types; overt cushioning
and covert cushioning. The textual strategy of
overt cushioning happens where the explanation
for the lexical item is given in the text (and not in
a glossary at the end of the work) while covert
cushioning is “the fashioning of the immediate
co-text into a careful context or explanation”
(Young, 1971, p. 40). According to Zabus “When
African words or phrases describing culturally
bound objects or occurrences cannot be transpar-
ently conveyed…in the Europhone text, the writ-
ers resort to the methods of “cushioning” and
“contextualizing”” (1990, p. 351). Cushioning is
for the purpose of providing African identity for
the text (Bandia, 2014; Chishimba, 1985).
In Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, we read: “On
her arms were red and yellow bangles and on her
waist four or five rows of jigiida, or waist-beads”
(C. Achebe, 1959, p. 51), or “That was how
Okonkwo first came to know that agbala was not
only another name for a woman, it could also
mean a man who had taken no title” (C. Achebe,
1959, p. 11). In these two examples, the interpo-
lated Ibo term is followed by its meaning to di-
minish cultural burden of English language im-
position. Regarding Ibo ideology about efulefu or
a worthless man we read: “The imagery of
efulefu in the language of the clan was a man
who sold his matchet and wore the sheath to bat-
tle” (C. Achebe, 1959, p. 103). Another example
of overt cushioning is “Unoka was an ill-fated
man. He had a bad chi or personal god” (C.
Achebe, 1959, p. 18). The meaning of the Ibo
term, “chi”, is immediately cushioned after the
conjunction “or” to provide international over-
tones for Ibo cultural ideology.
In No Longer at Ease we read “On the other
side of the road a little boy wrapped in a cloth
was selling bean cakes or akara under a lamp-
post. His bowl of akara was lying in the dust and
he seemed half asleep” (C. Achebe, 1960, p. 14).
Or as another example “Every few yards one met
bands of dancers often wearing identical dress or
' aso ebi '” (C. Achebe, 1960, p. 15). In both ex-
amples, the meanings of the Ibo terms are pro-
vided immediately before or after the conjunction
‘or’. It can be conceived that, in case of all
above-mentioned overtly cushioned words,
though Ibo people readily understand the term,
Achebe provides the meaning of the word in the
text because as Walder has observed the novel
“was written primarily for an overseas audience”
(Walder, 2010, p. 11).
A prominent example of covert cushioning
can be seen in the sentence “Where did you bury
your iyi-uwa?....You buried it in the ground
somewhere o that you can die and return again to
torment your mother” (C. Achebe, 1959, p. 57).
The term iyi-uwa which is related to Ibo cosmol-
ogy and African mythology is not followed by
“inter-linear translation or an in-text explanation”
(Bandia, 2014, p. 111) as is the case for overt
cushioning. Rather, there is just enough contex-
tual information for the reader to infer the mean-
ing of the term but never come to be quite sure.
In another example, drawing attention to xom-
plex traditional Ibo ceremonies, it is written that
“Sometimes another village would ask Unoka's
band and their dancing egwugwu to come and
stay with them and teach them their tunes” (C.
Achebe, 1959, p. 4). Although there is no direct
explanation of the Ibo term “egwugwu”, the
reader can infer the meaning of the term and its
relation to traditiona ceremonies and ancestral
spirits of the village. One motivation for covert
cushioning can be foregrounding the complexity
of the submerged Ibo culture, ideology, religion,
cosmology and mythology and the untranslatabil-
ity of Ibo cultural bound terms simply in one or a
few English words. According to Achebe “He
[African writer] often finds himself describing
situations or modes of thought, which have no
direct equivalent in English way of life” (C.
Achebe, 1975, p. 12).
The other literary linguistic strategy is code-
switching which is “one of the most studied and
maybe most important phenomenon in bilingual-
ism research and language contact” (Schmidt,
2014, p. 13). Code-switching is a term used when
two or more languages come into contact or are
Journal of language and translation, Volume 10, Number 1, 2020 9
used alternatively in the same utterance or the
same conversation (Grosjean, 1982; Josiane et
al., 1989; Milroy, Milroy, Muysken, Muysken, &
Foundation, 1995; Poplack, 2004; Wei & Li,
2000). In recent studies, the focus has been on
grammatical aspects of code-switching: “since
1975 the focus of code-switching research has
been put more on grammar and on the syntactic
aspects of code-switching” (Schmidt, 2014, p.
21). Carol Myers-Scotten (1993) speaks of
asymmetrical hierarchical relations of Matrix
Language (ML) and Embedded Language (EL) in
code-switching whereby the ML provides the
dominant grammatical framework and the EL is
assimilated. Her proposed theory sustains coloni-
al hierarchal linguistic policies.
In contrast to Myers-Scotten (1993),
MacSwan (2009) proposes a model of mixed
grammars in code-switching. MacSwan’s genera-
tivist minimalist approach is one of the most re-
cent approaches to code-switching in which the
two grammars co-exist: “the mixing of grammars
is effectively the mixing (or “union”) of two lexi-
cons, as the significant features of grammars,
including the parameters of variation between
grammars, are assumed to be located in lexicos”
(Gardner-Chloros & Gardner-Chloros, 2009, p.
98). In code-switching unlike, lexical borrowing,
the grammatical and syntactical aspects of the
other language are also imported, hence decipher-
ing demands more than glossary or dictionary. As
pointed out by Braj Kachru (1995) code-
switching “is not borrowing in the sense of filling
a lexical gap”, it involves the incorporation of
aspects of the grammar of the other language as
well (p. 65).
There are three types of code-switching
(Appel & Muysken, 1987; Poplack, 2004). The
first type, inter-sentential, is used for switches
between sentences whereby one sentence is either
in one language or another (Woolford, 1983). In
the second type, intra-sentential or code-mixing,
the shift happens in the middle of a sentence at
word level or clause level or phrase level. In the
third type, extra-sentential ortag-switching, a tag
from one language is inserted into an utterance
from another language (Romaine, 1995). In
Achebe’s rural novels, intra-sententialexamples
are quite frequent, while inter-sentential exam-
plesare less frequent andextra-sentential exam-
ples are quite rare.
InThings Fall Apart (1959), there are lots of
examples of intra-sentential items. Protesting
Ibo religion, Mr Brown says: "Chukwu is the on-
ly God and all others are false. You carve a piece
of wood--like that one" (he pointed at the rafters
from which Akunna's carved Ikenga hung), "and
you call it a god. But it is still a piece of wood."
(C. Achebe, 1959, p. 179). Ikenga which is in-
serted in the middle of an English sentence is a
translinguistic item at word level. In another ex-
ample, the Ibo term, obi, is mixed with English
terms “Ezinma had prepared some food for her
father ... She took it to him in his obi. He ate ab-
sent-mindedly. He had no appetite, he only ate to
please her. His male relations and friends had
gathered in his obi” (C. Achebe, 1959, p. 199).
The alteration of codes happens in the following
sentence “"On what market-day was it born?" he
asked. "Oye," replied Okonkwo” (C. Achebe,
1959, p. 78). In another sentence we read “Ezin-
ma did not call her mother Nne like all children.
She called her by her name, Ekwefi” (C. Achebe,
1959, p. 76). The insertion of an Ibo term among
English codes is seen in the following sentences
too. “If the clan had disobeyed the Oracle they
would surely have been beaten, because their
dreaded agadi-nwayi would never fight what the
Ibo call a fight of blame” (C. Achebe, 1959, p.
12). “"Do what you are told, woman," Okonkwo
thundered, and stammered.”When did you be-
come one of the ndichie of Umuofia?"” (C.
Achebe, 1959, p. 14).
Inter-sentential examples are also seen in
Things Fall Apart, though they are not as fre-
quent as intra-sentential items.“Onyeka had such
a voice, and so he was asked to salute Umuofia
before Okika began to speak. "Umuofia kwenu!"
he bellowed, raising his left arm and pushing the
air with his open hand. "Yaa!" roared Umuofia”
(C. Achebe, 1959, p. 202). "Umuofia kwenu!" is
an Ibo sentence among English sentences. In an-
10 Dialogism amid Heteroglossia of the Translinguistic Process of Relexification:…
other example we see the insertion of Nna ayi,"
among English sentences: “"Nna ayi," he said. “I
have brought you this little kola.” (C. Achebe,
1959, p. 19). Other switches between sentences
happen in the following sentences “The house
was now a pandemonium of quavering voices:
Am oyim de de de de! filled the air as the spirits
of the ancestors, just emerged from the earth”
(Achebe, 1959, p.87). “"I will come with you,
too," Ekwefi said firmly. "Tufia-al" the priestess
cursed” (C. Achebe, 1959, p. 101).
The frequency of transposed linguistic terms
is in accordance with the pace of the domination
and settlement of colonization. In pre-colonized
era, transposed linguistic terms are frequent.
However, such frequency declines in a way that
in Things Fall Apart, in chapter twenty four,
there are very few transposed items and in chap-
ter twenty five, the last chapter when coloniza-
tion is quite settled in Umoufia, there is no trans-
posed item. In accordance with the advance of
colonization, linguistic transposition is more fre-
quent in Achebe’s rural novels (Things Fall
Apart (1959) and Arrow of God (1964)) than ur-
ban novels which reflect post-colonized era. Ur-
ban novels such as Anthills of the Savannah, A
Man of the People and No Longer at Ease tri-
umph more on pidgin language and as such show
attrition or influence of English on Ibo lan-
guage.In all these novels, directly imposing
words from Ibo culture or overloading words
with such cultural background, Achebe establish-
es dialogical interaction as the concept of dialog-
ical word is established by the presence of other
person's word where intention of the subject
comes under the influence of the other yielding
“an intersection of two consciousness” (M. J. T.
Bakhtin & literature, 1984, p. 288).
Linguistic transposition can become effec-
tive through other strategies such as “transpar-
ence”, “transliteration”, “transference” and
“transmutation”. Studying these strategies may
demand another extensive research. As Zabus
concurs “Relexification is thus tied to the notions
of ‘approximation’ and of ‘transparence’. Yet it
also encompasses ‘transliteration’, ‘transference’
and ‘transmutation’” (Ashcroft, Griffiths, &
Tiffin, 2006, p. 287).
DISCUSSION
Colonial discourse is marred with intentional
gaps, omissions and silence about Africa which
automatically others, marginalizes and sub-
centers Africans. Moreover, colonial discourse is
written from the viewpoint of the white outsider,
unfamiliar with African culture and civilization.
And finally, colonizer’s language was used as a
dynamic weapon for colonization by constructing
the mental images of the colonized. If language
had a key role in colonization, it could have a
role in decolonization. Ngugi wa Thiong’o be-
lieves language is a powerful tool for decoloniza-
tion due to its function of image-making in the
mind (Thiong'o, 1986). Achebe, through his spe-
cial use of relexified language, could achieve
creating “the perceptual models… the syllables,
the syllabic intelligence” (Brathwaite, 1984, p.
263) with which African writers can describe
their own experience. Writing African literature
in English, Achebe uses the colonial language to
represent his African experience and hence up-
turning colonial purposes of mental image impo-
sition. Moreover, Achbe’s relexification provides
the black insider’s viewpoint and inevitably oth-
ers the white colonizer.
Achebe’s relexification is in essence literary
relexification, experimenting a new literary form,
a new literary style or a new literary language.
His new literary language serves the ends of the
“post-colonial West African authors to “in-
digenize” the European tongue, to bend it to the
African reality it must express” (Verthuy, 1991,
p. 207). Aceheb’s special use of relexification
indigenizes, Africanizes and Nigerianizes the
very English imposed as the colonial cultural and
linguistic weapon. His “indigenization” is used
“as a form of decolonization” (Verthuy, 1991, p.
208), as a way of disturbing Western hegemony.
Literary relexification, broader and wider than
linguistic relexification involves more than the
entrance of substrate language lexicon in the su-
perstrate language. Literary relexification gives
