Post-colonialism and Critical Language Awareness (Chinua Achebe, L2, and Identity)

Norman Fairclough (1995) makes a critique of language awareness for the academic writing, where the past language and the new language appropriateness meet. The academic version of language awareness has relations of power that are implicit in its conventions and practices. On the other hand, Post-colonial literary practitioners are listed among academic writers whose L2 is English. By and large, however, these literary practitioners are mainly from ex-colonized countries that have chosen English for the production of their literary works as well. In so doing, in their L2, they have academic language awareness that lets them practice writing. Hence, to this scope of writers, this fluctuation is triadic in that for them there is mother tongue interference as a third party. This factor, too, colors creativity and self-identity of these writers. One of these well-known writers is Chinua Achebe, whose works are in English. This article, therefore, for its argument, has had a discursive analysis of Achebe's triadic language awareness. It was shown that such triadic awareness has colored Achebe's full-fledged creativity and self-identity in his works. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.