TONI MORRISON’S BELOVED: AN ATTEMPT TO OVERTHROW LINGUISTIC IMPERIALISM

Abstract

Toni Morrison, the Nobel Prize winner in Literature in 1993 has written many novels focusing on racial and gender discrimination. She has especially dealt with the Black American women in her works. Morrison tries to centralize her culture and world view through her works even though she uses the language of the imperialists as far as she is concerned. But writing in English, the dominant language, does not stop her from bringing forth her native culture and values and using the language in such a way that it becomes the vehicle to raise a voice against linguistic imperialism as well as other forms of oppression and overturns its role to dominate the readers’ consciousness.

This paper would be an attempt to explore the various dimensions of linguistic imperialism as it works out in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved as it tells the story of a journey from slavery to freedom and its aftereffects. The role that language plays in colonizing the mind cannot be denied and how writers like Morrison are able to turn the tables even as they use the language of the imperialists to reach a wider audience and make their voices heard is admirable and worth the exploration to understand not only Morrison’s way of using language but a lesson in how we Indians who are in a similar situation, can finally make English an effective vehicle of our values and culture.