Exploring Identity Crises in Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers: A Conversation Analysis

Abstract

This paper intends to foreground the identity crises of the Pakistani born immigrants living in Britain with the amalgamation of western culture in Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam employing Burton’s model of Conversation Analysis (1980). The data selected for study comprises 16 exchanges or 87 clauses. It has been shown that the characters in Aslam again and again break up with their culture and remain identity less till the end. Aslam’s characters attempt to select the essential linguistic strategies to make their criticisms and violate cultural ties and bounds: they attempt to choose the linguistic means which will make them able to attain their conversational ends. It has also been pointed out that Burton’s framework has verified to be valuable in disclosing the ambivalent nature of the power relations which form the hybrid correlation among characters by indicating that conversational roles and topic control are exchangeable and that every character can become prevailing or be subjugated.