“Ae Thoosand Tongues”: Language and Identity in Psychoraag

Abstract

Suhayl Saadi’s 2004 novel, Psychoraag, asks important questions about language, nation, and identity in twenty-first century Scotland.This article analyzes the ways in which language and music shape identity in the novel; explores the tensions that exist between the novel’s competing languages; studies the narrator’s personae; and examines his search for psychic, emotional, and linguistic wholeness. It argues that Psychoraag is an effective commentary on the inherent limitations of exclusionary conceptions of Scottishness, for the novel demonstrates that it is only by transcending traditional notions of Scottishness and embracing linguistic disorder that contemporary Scottish identity can be fully articulated.