Abstract
This paper introduces and explains a fresh adaptation of linguistic hybridity. This creative strategy is common among postcolonial, transnational and transcultural writers, who would import linguistic features from their first languages to hybridise their prose and paint it with a distinctive identity. I aim, however, to demonstrate that my English text can be hybridised without looking outside the English language, but rather by looking within it. The English language, as I argue, is already a hybrid language, populated by thousands of words borrowed from various languages, including Arabic. The words of this latter, if used intelligently and selectively in my prose, should provide the desired effect of linguistic hybridity. I term this process the de-indigenisation of English, a meta-hybridisation process. Four linguistic strategies represent it and are elucidated and exemplified in this study. The result is an idiosyncratic English that only exists on my page and bears my personal thumbprint.
Recommended Citation
BENSALAH, FAYSSAL
(2023)
"The De-Indigenisation of the English Language: On Linguistic Idiosyncrasy,"
Journal of Creative Writing Studies: Vol. 8:
Iss.
1, Article 2.
Available at:
https://repository.rit.edu/jcws/vol8/iss1/2
Included in
Arabic Language and Literature Commons, Arabic Studies Commons, Fiction Commons, Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons, Other English Language and Literature Commons