Proper English and Postcolonial Power in Americanah and Wizard of the Crow

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Department of English Language and Literature, Teacher Training University, Samarra University, Samarra, Iraq

10.22059/jor.2026.410223.2810

Abstract

This paper offers a comparative, linguistics-centered reading of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013) and Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow (2006). It argues that English operates as both an embodied discipline and a world-literary infrastructure. Using Alastair Pennycook’s theory of global Englishes as movement beyond imperial/pluralist binaries, the analysis traces how “proper English” functions as a technology of legitimacy in workplaces and intimate self-fashioning. It also draws on Aamir Mufti’s account of English as a “vanishing mediator” and world literature as a “border regime” to read Ngugi’s satire of propaganda, renaming, and The Ruler’s speech-loss after the Global Bank’s refusal as dramatizations of linguistic governance at the scale of the state and transnational capital. By juxtaposing microlevel speech performances with macrolevel institutions, the paper shows that English both enables mobility and extracts compliance. The study contributes a model linking sociolinguistic practice to world-literary mediation. In Americanah, accent and “professionalism” regulate belonging, while in Wizard of the Crow the manipulation of meaning, silence, and development discourse expose how sovereignty depends on linguistic performance. Together, the novels theorize postcolonial modernity through language.

while in Wizard of the Crow the manipulation of meaning, silence, and development discourse expose how sovereignty depends on linguistic performance. Together, the novels theorize postcolonial modernity through language.

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References

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Research in Contemporary World Literature
Volume 31, Issue 2
June 2026
Pages 287-305

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