The Many Voices of Post-Colonial London: Language and Identity in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000) and Andrea Levy’s Small Island (2004)

Abstract

LANGUAGE HAS OFTEN BEEN A CENTRAL ISSUE in Caribbean novels of migration to London, crystallizing the problems of communication and of identity - both individual and collective - that affect the West Indian newcomers and their English 'hosts'. Accent, syntax, lexicon - all contribute to giving picture of who the characters are, even if, in the case of the Caribbean protagonists, they just speak varieties of the same idiom as the local English population, for, as George Lamming reminds us, English is a West Indian language.1 Probably the best-known example of the role played by the linguistic medium in the fictionalization of postcolonial London by Caribbean writers is Samuel Selvon's The Lonely Londoners (1956). Written in re-created idiom akin to English-based Trinidadian Creole, both in narrative and in dialogue, this novel renders the disillusionment of its protagonists, who end up, as Susheila Nasta puts it, setting up home in city of words.2 If English, particularly English place names, have contributed to the characters' mental colonization and made them view London as new Eldorado, their own creative use of the speech of the former master becomes mark not only of otherness but also of agency, limited yet nonetheless real. For Selvon, Nasta argues, is only through [...] the reclamation of an authentic for identity that [he] can begin to rescue his [...] community from the illusory myths of the imperial centre.3More recent novels on multicultural London by writers with Jamaican roots, Zadie Smith's White Teeth (2000) and Andrea Levy's Small Island (2004), are no exception to this almost traditional linguistic focus in Caribbean literature, even if they testify to change in perspective.4 Indeed, for the younger writers the issue is perhaps less question of mental decolonization, which it was for Sam Selvon and other authors of the 1950s and 1960s, than question of establishing the heterogeneous character of the city and, by extension, of the nation. I would like to argue in this essay that Smith and Levy are not so much interested in West Indian identity abroad as in the meaning of Englishness. Not only do they include in their writing 'englishes' that depart from the norm: i.e. from so-called standard British English, but they also draw attention to the linguistic processes that underlie intercultural encounters and human relationships in general.In what follows, I endeavour to show how the multiplicity of tongues in White Teeth informs mongrelized speech community, which demystifies the notion of purity and therefore stands in opposition to all forms of fundamentalisms, linguistic or otherwise. Small Island, too, interweaves several voices which, as I will demonstrate, convey the variegated configuration of postwar London and epitomize not only its sometimes painful experience of cross-culturalism but also its inherent human richness. Language variety is thus central preoccupation in both novels. However, while White Teeth seems to gesture towards the hybridity that this vocal multiplicity entails - what Smith has called, in an article on Barack Obama's flexibility of voice, our collective human messiness5 - Small Island, which is set around the Second World War, tends, rather, to focus on the difficulties arising from linguistic pluralism. It indeed presents, according to Cynthia James, language [as] battleground on which British and West Indian cultures and identities clash and make accommodations.6It should be obvious to any reader that the reflection on English identity at the heart of White Teeth is underpinned by conspicuous interest in linguistic matters. Not only does serve as deftly handled representational tool for the novelist but it is also an apt metaphor for world characterized by unpredictability and teeming with diversity. An examination of Smith's treatment of the linguistic question requires brief introduction to her impressive gallery of characters. …