THE TRANSLATIONAL RECONFIGURATION OF IDIOLECT: HYBRIDITY AND CULTURAL MEANING IN MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN

Abstract

This paper uses a corpus-based methodology to analyse language variation, idiolect and cultural identity in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (1981). It aims to identify patterns of multilingualism, code-switching and lexical innovation in the compiled corpus, paying special attention to Hindi-Urdu insertions and hybrid structures inside the English narrative. Findings indicate that Rushdie's idiolect is characterized by linguistic hybridity, which also serves as a sign of postcolonial identity. This hybridity may be organized into three main categories: stylistic convergence, syntactic interference and lexical borrowing., resulting in a ‘third space’ that defies monolingual standards. Last but not least, the paper is intended to showcase how corpus-based methodology fits the analysis of cultural representation and narrative voice