ShodhPatra: International Journal of Science and Humanities

Code-Switching as Resistance: Linguistic Hybridity in Northeast Indian Fiction

This paper delves into the complex relationship between language, identity, and resistance in contemporary Northeast Indian fiction, foregrounding code-switching as a significant literary and political strategy. Situated within the intersecting frameworks of postcolonial theory, sociolinguistics, and discourse studies, this paper aims to explore how linguistic hybridity functions not merely as a reflection of multilingual realities but as a deliberate act of cultural assertion and ideological defiance. Writers from Northeast India frequently interweave English with indigenous languages such as Ao, Adi, Khasi, Mizo, Assamese, and Nagamese, thereby unsettling the authority of standardized Indian English and resisting homogenizing national and colonial linguistic structures. Through sustained textual engagement with selected works by Mamang Dai, Temsula Ao, Easterine Kire, Aruni Kashyap, and Rita Chowdhury, the study examines the narrative and political implications of lexical insertion, dialogic shifts, syntactic hybridity, and untranslatability. Drawing upon Homi K. Bhabha’s theorization of hybridity, Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia, and sociolinguistic theories of code-switching advanced by Gumperz and Myers-Scotton, the paper situates linguistic hybridity within broader debates on subaltern agency and decolonial aesthetics. By interrogating the politics of language in a historically marginalized region, the research contributes to contemporary discussions in Indian English studies and postcolonial linguistics, arguing for a reconceptualization of code-switching as a transformative literary practice rather than a peripheral stylistic feature. Keywords: Code-switching, Linguistic hybridity, Northeast India, Postcolonial, Heteroglossia, Identity construction.