English and Mobility: Linguistic and Stylistic Transformations in New Anglophone Literatures

Abstract

This article investigates the interconnected themes of language, mobility and identity and their narrative renditions in the anglophone context by providing an interdisciplinary analysis of some extracts from two recent novels, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (2008) and We Need New Names (2014), respectively written by Xiaolu Guo and NoViolet Bulawayo, who resourcefully elaborate new linguistic and textual forms to express the plural questions of identity. The helpful notion of ‘language and mobility’ discussed by Pennycook (2010) lends support to the argument that language, identity and mobility represent coterminous cultural forces at work in the constant shaping and changing of the contemporary globalised and postcolonial world

Keywords

• Language and mobility
• Language and transformation
• Englishes
• Identity
• Xiaolu Guo
• NoViolet Bulawayo