NEHA
DOI: https://doi.org/This study applies qualitative content analysis to four works by Jhumpa Lahiri. The corpus comprises Interpreter of Maladies (1999) and The Namesake (2003). It also includes Unaccustomed Earth (2008) and The Lowland (2013). The analysis treats authored fiction as patterned content data, not as character testimony. Five themes emerge: onomastic stress, gastro-nostalgia, domestic heterotopia, generational inversion, and affective withdrawal. Each maps onto an established acculturation construct. Each also surfaces affective-somatic dimensions that current self-report instruments do not register. Berry’s fourfold model anchors the deductive frame. Benet-Martínez’s Bicultural Identity Integration construct extends it. First-generation characters exhibit separation–integration tension. Second-generation characters display assimilation–marginalization patterns. Five testable hypotheses follow. The paper demonstrates that literary corpora can serve as hypothesis-generating resources alongside quantitative tools.
