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The IUP Journal of English Studies :
Ruby Slipperjack’s Little Voice: How Does ‘Little-Phoneme’ Fill the Gap Between Ray’s Language and Idiolect?
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This paper is based on the novel Little Voice written by a native Canadian writer, Ruby Slipperjack. It discusses the significance of the mother tongue in the development of the identity. The narrator is a ten-year-old girl named ‘Ray’, and the incidents in her life are presented to show how culture and language are interwoven to create a search for her lost identity. She discovers her lost self in her own native phoneme ‘n’, and her realization and decision to drop the first letter of her name ‘Ray’, i.e., ‘r’, and to select ‘n’, is discussed from a linguistic point of view in this paper.

 
 
 

It has been an intriguing question for linguists to accommodate the variations among languages. They do not reach a consensus as to what they mean by the terms—language, dialect and idiolect. Due to this uncertainty in their views, there is absence of clarity for unidentified ‘voices’. Though descriptive linguists from time to time try to provide language data of an unknown language supplemented by a chapter devoted to sociolinguistic aspect of the language, this approach is by and large not successful in creating awareness among the people to understand the culture of the specific language. Therefore, the question of identities remains unsolved. Descriptive linguistics through linguistic grammar only captures the essence of various languages worldwide, but it fails to highlight the marginalized voices which can be stated in a cultural linguistic work. Little Voice reverses the whole process—it tries to write a cultural grammar instead, and this acquisition is represented by a 10-year-old girl. The sociolinguistic aspect is more important than the mere knowledge of the grammar of an extinct language. This paper also looks into the fact that in order to preserve the culture and let the people know about the culture, certain post-colonial writers have adopted an approach of quitting writing in English altogether. But this is not a solution. In order to generate an interest among the readers, it is essential to follow a path where more readers can be touched. Little Voice selects the voice of the many and explains the culture in a childlike simplicity. I have questioned the identity from different perspectives and tried to raise awareness for culture which is so varied and for that what we need is to realize the difference between the self and the other.

 
 
 

English Studies Journal, Ruby, Slipperjack’s, Little, Voice, How, Does, ‘Little-Phoneme’, Fill the Gap, Ray’s Language, Idiolect?