NEGOTIATING COLONIAL LEGACIES THROUGH LINGUISTICS RECLAMATION IN SOUTH ASIAN WOMEN'S FICTION

Abstract

This paper discusses the way of negotiation by South Asian women writers with colonial legacies by reclaiming language in their fiction. It posits that linguistic choice, code switching, vernacular inserts, and hybrid syntax as well as strategic translation can be viewed as resisting forces to the hegemony of colonial English. Through foregrounding native languages and culturally entrenched phrases, such authors disrupt the hierarchy in which standardized English is revered and rewrite marginalized identities into the literary space. The paper will examine the selected texts to show that language is a place of agency and that there is an intersection of gender, class, and postcolonial subjectivity. It also demonstrates that linguistic reclamation does not just recover oppressed voices, but it also transforms the authority of narratives so that women can express other histories and epistemologies. The paper contextualizes the practices in the context of postcolonial and feminist theory, which reveals how English reworking derails colonial power relations and promotes cultural continuity. In the end, the paper concludes that the fiction by South Asian women turns language into a dynamic decolonization and identity-forming and socio-political tool.