The Multiethnic City: Cultural Translation and Multilingualism in Monica Ali’s *Brick Lane*

The aim of this paper is to analyse how, in *Brick Lane*, the narrative and linguistic devices adopted by the author enable her to conjure up an image of London where the multiethnic character of the city finally wins over any attempt to silence its most challenging elements (both from a postcolonial and a feminist point of view), resulting in a positive affirmation of various forms of hybridity. Beginning with a discussion of the interrelated issues of language and identity, the paper moves towards a closer examination of linguistic and sociolinguistic issues. Thus, while suggesting that Ali’s treatment of linguistic and cultural issues is sometimes naïve and somehow fails to develop adequately the potentials intrinsic in the subject matter at hand, the analysis of the way language is used by the various characters demonstrates how the relationship initially posited between “silence” (understood here as the refusal of the English language) and the preservation of one’s “most authentic” identity – albeit justifiable from a psycholinguistic/Lacanian perspective – can only be disrupted by what we could call, paraphrasing Freud, the “Pragmatics of Everyday Life”.