ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which Williams' plays engage with a process through an analysis of the use of language. It draws attention to how Williams examines the tensions and possibilities that occur when cultural boundaries are blurred through how his characters speak and what they say. The language in Williams' works provocatively engages with racial stereotypes. Williams could be seen to be perpetuating such stereotypes by not drawing attention to their origination in colonial discourse. The African Caribbean gang's language highlights how subcultural identification has shifted away from Jamaican Rastafarianism of the 1970s and 1980s towards Jamaican inspired patois and African American 'ghetto' slang. According to Benedict Anderson, 'the nation was conceived in language, not in blood, and that one could be "invited into" the imagined community'. Williams explores whether the language of British nationalism has evolved and tests the extent to which racial differences still patrol the borders of national belonging.
