Glocalizing the Narrative: Linguistic and Cultural Mediation in Ammaraj Joshi’s Short Stories

Abstract

This paper discusses linguistic and cultural negotiation in A Nights Drama by Ammaraj Joshi in the wider framework of Global English and Expanding Circle World Englishes. Placing the text in the context of the emerging canon of Nepalese English Literature, the paper examines how Joshi uses the concept of glocalization as a literary practice to find a middle ground between the local faithfulness and the global intelligibility of the culture. The analysis is built on the Kachru’sideas of linguistic nativization and bilingual creativity and the Roland Robertson theory of glocalization that is set out to four significant stories An Uncertain Journey, The Bond of Blood, The Dying Father, and A Nights Drama. The results reveal that Joshi nativizes the English language in a strategic manner in three levels: linguistic, cultural, and discursive. Linguistically, he legitimates the creative independence of the Expanding Circle with the help of lexical borrowing, syntactic transfer, and metaphors carried within the culture and echoing the rhythms of Nepali speech. His stories serve culturally as acts of translation, delivering Nepali social reality, including caste structures, Ratedi folk practices, and rural life to transnational readers without exoticization. Joshi, discursively, makes use of the English as a global language to express sharp remarks on the Maoist insurgency, labor migration, and gender inequality. Finally, the paper states Joshi’s stories can be discussed as an illustration of the Nepalese English maturation as writers of the Expanding Circle are not passive receivers of Inner Circle norms but co-creators of their own, more globalized forms of literature.