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GATE 2025 XH2 (English) – Question 61

Comparative and World Literatures in English Translation · Multilingualism, translation studies and the politics of language in literary production · 2 marks · Multiple select

Which of the following political position(s) is/are advocated in Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’O’s work Decolonising the Mind?

  1. To use the colonizer’s language as a tool for acquiring agency and social mobility
  2. To do for African languages what Spenser, Milton, and Shakespeare did for English, what Pushkin and Tolstoy did for Russian
  3. To critique the coercive imposition of the colonizer’s language which alienates colonized subjects from their cultural lived experience
  4. To mimic the colonizer’s language and acquire a form of complex cosmopolitanism

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Show answer and explanation

Correct answer: (B) To do for African languages what Spenser, Milton, and Shakespeare did for English, what Pushkin and Tolstoy did for Russian; (C) To critique the coercive imposition of the colonizer’s language which alienates colonized subjects from their cultural lived experience

Explanation

Ngũgĩ criticises the imposition of colonial languages that cut people off from their culture, and urges writers to build African literatures in African languages.