The effects of diglossia in the work of Lola Lemire Tostevin and Roy Kiooka
Date
2003
Authors
Kingston, Linda Christina
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Abstract
This thesis assesses how bilingual writers Lola Lemire Tostevin and Roy Kiyooka respond to diglossia, the subordination of their mother tongues, in their primarily English texts. Several approaches to hybridity, translation, and minority writing outline obstacles to creative expression and strategies that respond to power imbalances. The thesis proposes that bilingual writers in English Canada, as linguistic hybrids, occupy a resistant, yet dependent place in the dominant discourse. Through a close reading of three of each writer' s works, the thesis examines the strategies they use to undermine the cultural assumptions attached to the use of English. Specifically, the thesis argues that their tentative relationship to language manifests itself in linguistlc and generic transgressions m their texts.
The first two chapters explore how each writer recognizes their respectively marginalized positions m the hierarchy of language. A separate look at Tostevin's Color of Her Speech (1982) and Kiyooka' s Kyoto Airs (1963) indicates the writers' awareness of the untranslatable element in their texts as they grapple with the difficult1es of hybrid subjectivity and respond to linguistic, syntactic, aural and generic constraints.
The third chapter focuses on aspects of Tostevin's and Kiyooka's work that challenge existing frames of representation minhistory, art, and literature. The Fontainebleau Dream Machine 18 Frames from A Book of Rhetoric (Kiyooka 1975) and 'sophie (Tostevin 1988) level the boundaries of traditional genres. Both writers re-frame familiar works by splicing generic codes. Ktiooka turns to visual collage while Tostevin combines philosophy and the personal essay to explore how language and images embody values that exclude alternative experiences.
The last chapter moves to two later works in which both Tostevin and Kiyooka write in first person narrative prose. Narrative poses a challenge because, by its very nature, it creates an impression of authority and universal experience Frog Moon (1994) responds to the constraints of narrative by playing with the concepts of fiction and fact, while Kiyooka records his mother's tales m Mothertalk (1997). Both texts combine the legends and history of one generation, but in each case their stones are transposed onto a new socio-linguistic context, and refracted through their children's interpretations.