ABSTRACT
Prospero’s language was a medium of slavery because it enabled him to give orders that could be understood and obeyed on pain of torture. But the language was hegemonic in a much more subtle way: it gave Caliban a world by constructing a particular kind of reality for him, showing him how to “name the bigger light and … the less”, naming his island with the names that signified Prospero’s control. Prospero’s language also provided Caliban with a hierarchy of values, a fabric of distinctions and associations predicated on a particular way of seeing the world and hence a clear understanding of his place in the colonial relationship.
