The Inherited Lexicon: Where the Matrubhasha Meets the Rajabhasa in the Search for an Odia Self

This article investigates the role of the “inherited lexicon”—the embedded presence of English vocabulary within Odia literary writing—and argues that such linguistic borrowing functions as a historically situated literary practice rather than a mere stylistic choice. By situating Odia-English hybridity within the political history of the Odia language, from its contested recognition in 1936 to the lexicographic ambitions of Gopal Chandra Praharaj’s Purnachandra Bhashakosha, the study demonstrates how questions of linguistic autonomy and cultural authority shape literary expression. Through close readings of texts ranging from Fakir Mohan Senapati’s Chha Mana Atha Guntha to contemporary works by Pratibha Ray and Akhil Mohan Pattnaik, the article analyzes how English loanwords, code-switching, and hybrid compounds map social hierarchies and reveal authors’ negotiations among linguistic purism, social realism, and postcolonial identity formation. Drawing on Bakhtin’s heteroglossia, Bhabha’s “third space,” and sociolinguistic theories of diglossia, the article contends that Odia-English hybridity constitutes a deliberate literary technology that articulates the layered complexities of postcolonial selfhood. It concludes by advocating for an ethically attentive, creatively generative hybridity that expands Odia literature’s expressive possibilities while challenging the exclusionary privileges embedded within inherited linguistic structures.