“What The Trans!?” – Postcolonial language appropriation and abrogation by Pakistani transgender activists on YouTube podcasts.

In the complex tapestry of postcolonial societies, marginalized communities employ appropriation and abrogation strategies to dismantle and decolonize the colonizers own language, ideologies, norms and discursive practices. By drawing on the analytic framework of postcolonial appropriation and abrogation (Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin, 1989, 2002) combined with multimodal critical discourse analysis (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006; Machin & Mayr 2012), the study analyzes how marginalized voices, especially Pakistani khwajasiras or transgender individuals, “appropriate” i.e. adopt and adapt language of the ‘center’ and “abrogate” i.e. reject or resist imposed linguistic or cultural norms. As highly contested techniques in the postcolonial canon, appropriation and abrogation have typically been limited to literary traditions – with caveats in a mediatized context. We analyze the tension between the dominant “centers” and the peripheral “margins” in identity construction analyzing ten YouTube video podcasts in English and, in Urdu – a language with pronounced gender distinctions. Examining visual and textual strategies by four Pakistani transgender activists, we articulate that ‘video podcasts’ in Pakistan boast a dynamic and nascent independent scene. For this paper, we examine podcast interviews with ‘guest’ transgender activists to reveal nuanced counterhegemonic discourses and representations. Our findings show that language becomes a site for both decolonization and appropriation, as three key themes emerge in the data: religion, spirituality and sexuality/gender. Activists employ rich vernacular expressions, metaphors, anti-West resistance, and local colloquialisms in their discourse. By challenging and also co-opting normative conventions, they draw on folklore, indigenous knowledge, religious terminologies and historical allusions to negotiate their contested identities.