Bakhtin in Dialogue with Bhabha: Hybridization of Language in Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun

Abstract

The present research paper, by combining Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas on heteroglossia with Homi Bhabha’s hybridity, aims to examine the hybridization of language in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Half of a Yellow Sun. Hybridization is a process whereby separate entities create another entity which shares certain features with each of its sources but which is not purely compositional. Hybridization in language happens when two or more languages are frequently mixed. As a consequence, a new hybrid variety of languages emerged. The study claims that Half of a Yellow Sun, because of its diverse set of speech types and its characters who differ in terms of their race, class and gender, has a good potentiality to be discussed in matters related to hybridization of language, which is considered to be a kind of heteroglossia. The thing that the characters speak English does not mean that they are following the ideology of the British. Their English is imbued with Igbo words and phrases. Therefore, the hybrid nature of the English language used by the characters shows how the language is at the service of postcolonial identity formation. Based on Bhabha’s ideas on mimicry and mockery, the study concludes that the character’s mingling of English and Igbo language is a way of misrepresenting Standard English or, to use the Caliban paradigm, cursing the master’s tongue. As a result, the hybridization of language in Half of a Yellow Sun is an attempt on the part of Adichie to appropriate English language or to make it one’s own.