Language As A Survival Strategy In Jennifer Makumbi’S Manchester Happened

Abstract

The study sets out to analyse language as a survival strategy in Jennifer Makumbi’s Manchester Happened (2019). The study interrogates the short stories focusing on the creative use of language to represent characters who depend on varied linguistic choices to survive in transcultural systems. In addition, the study examines cultural translation established through cross-cultural contacts as brought out in the primary text. The study evaluates the linguistic hybridity exhibited in the short stories in enunciating survival in cross-cultural systems. An evaluation of hybridity in the use of language in the short stories enables this research to explore the binary linguistic and cultural spaces occupied by immigrant characters. It also analyses the role of language as a survival tool for immigrant returnees. The study employs stylistics, postcolonial literary theory and concepts from translation studies as the interpretive matrix for analysis. Stylistics enhances the interpretation of the intersection between language and literary texts in articulating survival in varied spaces; post-colonial theory directs this study by focusing on the complexities of cross-cultural relations that characterise survival in the transnational spaces; and translation studies focuses on the significance of language, naming and renaming, and social structures in cultural translation as evident in the short stories under scrutiny. The study arrives at the conclusion that the short story is a rich genre that can be used to relay the myriad experiences concerning the survival of immigrants despite its brevity in form. The unified experience that is realised through an encounter with the short stories affirms the nature of the short story form in representing reality in totality. The conclusion that hybridity in the use of language is significant in negotiating cross-cultural contacts is arrived at by examining the fictional immigrants’ linguistic choices. The study establishes that social structures are contact zones for cross-cultural exchange.