Writing Between Languages: Linguistic Hybridity and the Reconstruction of Female Identity in Xiaolu Guo’s A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers and Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between linguistic hybridity and female identity in Xiaolu Guo’s A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers and Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words. Although both works have received considerable critical attention for their treatment of multilingualism, translation, migration, and identity, scholarship has largely examined Guo and Lahiri separately or has situated them within broader studies of translingual and migrant writing. The present study contributes a focused comparative reading of these two works by examining how movement between languages becomes a process of female self-reconstruction. the present study offers a comparison of these two works by examining how movement between languages becomes a process of female self-reconstruction. Using Homi K. Bhabha’s idea of the Third Space, Yasemin Yildiz’s critique of the mother-tongue paradigm and studies on translingualism and self-translation, the study results that linguistic displacement works as a productive condition, in both works, and not just a form of cultural loss. Guo’s protagonist, Zhuang rebuilds identity by imperfectly learning English. In contrast Lahiri chooses Italian deliberately after Lahiri has already made a name for herself as an English-language writer. Guo’s protagonist,