Weaponizing Language and Asserting Identity in the Plays of Derek Walcott and Bate Besong

This paper examines the role of language in postcolonial literature and argues amongst other things that language was a veritable weapon for colonial oppression and domination. It also focuses on the attempts made by Derek Walcott and Bate Besong to reassert their cultural identities through the innovative and experimental use of language. To effectively impose their dominance over the colonized people, language became a tool for the spread and propaganda of the colonial agenda. This paper uses Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of language to stress on concepts of hybridity and heteroglossia and how they manifest themselves in the plays of Derek Walcott and Bate Besong. The analyses stress that the playwrights’ successfully recreate, through language, the sensibilities and fractured postcolonial outlook of the societies they represent. Also, the playwrights both make a conscious attempt to indigenize and contextualize their plays through their use of language. Thus, the paper holds strong to the thesis that for any reader to better grapple with the different levels of meanings in the works of Walcott and Besong, particular attention has to be given to the playwrights’ experimental, instrumental and innovative use of language which in itself becomes a veritable weapon and a counter discourse to standardize (colonialist) English. As revolutionary playwrights therefore, the Walcott and Besong adopt the colonial language and manipulate it consciously not only as a mean of cultural assertion but most especially, to project their individual and collective experiences and identities.