An Analysis Of Identity Construction Through Code Switching In Khaled Hosseini’S The Kite Runner
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This article examines code-switching and its role in constructing identity in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner (2003). Code-switching, the alternation between two or more languages within a single communicative event, is treated here not as a sign of linguistic deficiency but as a social and ideological resource through which characters negotiate, assert and transform their identities across cultural, ethnic and national boundaries. The study combines the sociolinguistic theories of John Gumperz (1982) and Carol Myers-Scotton’s (1993) Markedness Model with the postcolonial and diasporic identity theories of Stuart Hall (1990, 1996), Homi Bhabha (1994) and Avtar Brah (1996). Using a qualitative, close-reading design and a purposive sample of approximately twenty passages containing Dari, Pashto and Arabic-derived expressions within the English narrative, the analysis identifies four functions of code-switching. First, it marks class and ethnic hierarchy, especially between Pashtun and Hazara characters. Second, it expresses the diasporic condition of Afghan immigrants in the United States and their shifting relationship with both homeland and host society. Third, it registers trauma, guilt and the possibility of redemption in the narrator, Amir. Fourth, it enacts a hybrid identity that is neither wholly Afghan nor wholly American. The article concludes that code-switching in the novel is more than a realistic representation of a multilingual society: it is a narrative technique that represents social relations, preserves cultural meaning that translation would erase, and dramatises identity as fluid and in-between. The findings contribute to scholarship on language, identity and literature in postcolonial and diasporic fiction. Keywords: Code-switching, Diaspora, Ethnicity, Hybridity, Identity Construction
Source: Perspectives in Social Sciences
Institution: Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Women University Peshawar
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7225672947