Performing India in America through Pragma-Cultural Markers

Abstract

Intercultural Communication is marked in literary discourse in numerous ways. Diasporic literary discourse representing intercultural communication uses pragma-cultural markers such as food and music as tools of intercultural communication. This paper attempts to examine intercultural communication foregrounding these pragma-cultural markers as represented in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Queen of Dreams within the framework provided by Relevance Theory (:249). This paper foregrounds the manner in which writers like Divakaruni deploy pragma-cultural markers to express multiple linguistic and cultural perspectives in their literary narratives, thereby portraying an amalgamation of America and India and facilitating intercultural communication which is a dialectical process, as on the one hand the “America” that is in the hearts, minds, and words of these writers shapes their expressions and on the other, their growing presence in terms of their literary output is changing the definition of American art and culture.