Localization of English in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things

Abstract

Literatures in English produced today do not conform anymore to the official London based language. Personal choice as well as the writer‘s own culture, traditions, ethos etc. has come to influence the way how English literature is written today. Indian English is a socio-linguistic reality and has come to be an accepted linguistic code today. It is different from Standard English since both view the world from different angles and different perspectives. Many Indian writers in English especially of more recent origin tend to move away from the rules and regulations that govern the English language. Arundhati Roy in The God of Small Things makes use of the English language in her own style such as making new compound words, phrases, sentence structure, many words mingling to suit the colloquial tongue etc. She sometimes uses the language in a childish manner to describe the children‘s world. The paper argues that Roy uses the English language in her novel The God of Small Things to the local context.