The Dynamics of Language in Select Plays of Mahesh Dattani

Abstract

The paper elucidates Mahesh Dattani’s attempt to create a living theatre through the use of language in his plays Final Solutions and Tara. In these two plays, he uses English as the link-language and the language of communication in order to reach out to the multilingual and multicultural reality characteristic of the country. The English language that he uses is not the standardized English which carry with it an aura of colonization and bears the imperialistic fervors. Dattani’s use of the English language is based on hybridization of English words, use of native Indian words that introduce his audience to the cultural and social milieu of the plays and the presence of colloquial English that English speaking urban Indians use in everyday life. The dynamics in the use of language is one of the method through which the playwright attempts to transform the face of urban theatre in post-colonial India.