Translingual Writing and Code-Switching in South Asian Anglophone Literature

Abstract

This paper examines the phenomenon of translingual writing and code-switching in contemporary South Asian Anglophone literature, analyzing how writers from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh deploy multilingual textual strategies to represent the linguistic realities of postcolonial societies. Through close readings of works by Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Mohsin Hamid, and Shehan Karunatilaka, the study identifies distinct modes of translingual practice, including lexical borrowing, syntactic calquing, script-switching, and strategic untranslatability. The paper argues that these practices constitute a politics of language that challenges the monolingual norms of Anglophone literary culture and asserts the legitimacy of multilingual consciousness as both a literary subject and a mode of literary expression.