Lexical Depiction of Trauma in Modern Fiction: A Study of Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West

Abstract

In the present study, Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West has been explored as a trauma narrative in order to analyze the lexical depiction of trauma. The study aims to explore how the author has dealt with the traumatic conditions of the characters’ lives and how such context have affected the linguistic patterns of the characters. The researcher has employed Cathy Crauth’s Unclaimed Experience and Michael Hoey’s Lexical Priming Priming as the theoretical framework for this study. Unspeakability, speakability, latency, repetition and testimony are the tropes of Crauthian theory and Lexical Priming refers to study the role of individual lexis in fictional and creative contexts. The purpose of this research is to explore how Mohsin Hamid uses lexical items to depict the trauma and how does he construct the meaning of trauma in Exit West. The study has followed a qualitative approach while the frequency of the sample of trauma lexis used in the novel has been checked through MS Word. The results attest that Exit West is a trauma narrative of Crauthian strain and the author has used lexical markers for trauma tropes. Trauma has been observed through the negation of non-trauma situation and trauma exemplification. The narration of the novel is about trauma and the study of disturbed meanings and grammars of lexical items has revealed that the narration is also traumatized.