Resistance Through Language Appropriation to Create a Reality for Oneself in the Postcolonial Nigeria

Abstract

The paper explores the reasons behind appropriating the English Language to carry the native's experiences and the strategies deployed by the authors of Nigeria to reconstruct Africa's taunted imageries and cultures through their use of language. This article also examines the pattern that has been documented in Nigeria and re-evaluates some of the identified resistant strains that authors consciously or unconsciously integrate to ensure that their works are authentic. Author/Character/community or a nation is built through an indigenous choice of vocabularies that reflect the meanings of native society. Creative authors, especially with the postcolonial attitude, employ narrative strategies by using indigenous phrases and other signifiers to deviate from the standard variety to foreground the indigenized realities of the marginalized. Appropriations in the English Language help the colonized reconstruct their culture and history's lost and hidden truths. These strategies give the text an authentic identity representing the bare realities of the indigenous community. The indigenized medium of expression is also considered a form of resistance towards Eurocentric linguistic hegemony. The colonized writers articulate their native ideologies and beliefs without depending on the medium of a foreigner. The collection of criticisms in this paper will enable the upcoming writers to know and discover the elegance and inestimable elements in their native Nigerian literature than foreign literature with an alien culture that is hardly incomprehensive. The work also confirms the mimetic nature of Language and its interdependence with society.