Language In Chimamanda Adichie's Half Of A Yellow Sun
The use of language in relation to translation is evident in the manner in which Olanna Ozobia’s eloquent dialect. She continuously makes use of code-switching and code-mixing to identify herself with various people of various social class, genders and even race. Ultimately, this results in the shifting of identity as well, as it is dependent on your surroundings. This protagonist is a privileged and educated woman who was born in Lagos. She later decided to move to a small university town, Nsukka to be with her ‘revolutionary lover’ and teach at the university. In her novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Adichie evidently portrays how language can define an individual and collective sense of identity. In the beginning of the novel, the …show more content…
This is especially evident in the manner in which she communicates with her immediate family and her extended family, her Aunt Ifeka and Uncle Mbaezi. However, as the Biafran war soon takes its effects, she can no longer make use of her enviable English dialect to place herself “above others.” This is due to the fact that the effects of the war, inevitably forces her to change the way that she portrayed herself and adapt to the social changes occurring around her. There is an unmistakeable transformation in Olanna’s character, from a confident women to one that is broken-down. The author, Adichie, makes a point of displaying Olanna’s middle-class frame of mind. Upon visiting her family, she is disgusted at the sight of cockroach eggs (page 37) in her cousin’s house and she shows a reluctance to allow Baby to play with the village children, due to the fact that they have lice. At the end of the novel, the reader can conclude that her privileged outlook has ultimately been changed by the 1960 Biafran war. The characters are thrown into the cross-fires of the Biafran war, where speaking the wrong language could result in your death. In the event of a character speaking a different language, Adichie is careful to note this change, whether it be Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo or English. This emphasizes the importance of language in this
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