{"id":752,"date":"2021-01-28T18:49:40","date_gmt":"2021-01-28T17:49:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.u-bourgogne.fr\/aci2020\/?page_id=752"},"modified":"2021-02-13T15:25:21","modified_gmt":"2021-02-13T14:25:21","slug":"beyond-the-mother-tongue-bilingualism-as-cultural-capital-in-migrant-literature","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blog.ube.fr\/aci2020\/beyond-the-mother-tongue-bilingualism-as-cultural-capital-in-migrant-literature\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the Mother Tongue: Bilingualism as Cultural Capital in Migrant Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lea Sinoimeri – Universit\u00e9 Paris Diderot, France<\/span><\/p>\n

Keywords<\/strong><\/p>\n

bilingualism, migration, literature<\/p>\n

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Abstract<\/strong><\/p>\n

Several recent works in language, migration and postcolonial literature emphasize hybridity, fluidity, and mobility in migrant language practices. In the introduction to Routledge Handbook of Migration and Language, Suresh Canagarajah advocates for a \u201chybrid\u201d and \u201cmobile\u201d perspective on language and migration: \u201cScholars are considering languages unbound\u2014that is, they are endeavoring to understand the flows across time and space of semiotic resources, unfettered from an imposed structure\u201d. [1]The \u2018hybrid\u2019 or \u2018mobile\u2019 turn has challenged the ideologies of native languages, monolingual national identity and linguistic assimilations. Literary criticism has shown how world literature undermines monolingual paradigms and calls for new, transnational reading practices.[2] Among others, Rebecca Walkowitz\u2019s ground-breaking study Born Translated addresses translation not primarily as a craft that grants access to other literatures but as a vital component of twenty-first- century world literature, understood not as a canon of excellence but as a complex and ever-changing system of circulation and reception. While finding merit in the dynamic notion of migrant multilingualism and linguistic practices, the paper intends to resist the temptation to unconditionally celebrate hybridity, fluidity, and multilingualism in the context of literature of migration. Drawing on recent criticism,[3] the paper will ask why, and how bilingualism came to have the cultural, symbolic, and, crucially, economic value that it does under neoliberalism. As Pascale Casanova states: \u201cA language is dominant if (and only if) it is a second language used by bilinguals or polyglots around the world. It is not the number of speakers that determines whether it is dominant or not (otherwise, Mandarin would be the dominant language). The criterion is, rather, the number of plurilingual speakers who \u201cchoose\u201d it\u201d. The paper aims at investigating the shift of paradigm from a monolingual to a \u2018hybrid\u2019 model by analysing bilingual and multilingual strategies in migrant literature in English. It shall delve on contemporary novels (e.g. Exit, West by Mohsin Hamid and Crossing by Pajtim Statovci) that thematise, enact, or anticipate migration as part of a collective creative process illustrating how bilingual writers challenge myths of monolingual or national languages and display multilingual subjectivities. Yet, it will aim to show that bilingualism\u2019s cultural\/social status is complex and investigate the way in which bilingual authors often display a \u201ccosmopolitan\u201d literary and linguistic style that embraces cultural difference insofar as they do not challenge a neoliberal order. In a broader perspective, it will thus wish to call for the need of researching multilingual experiences in migrant literature that are excluded from the discourse of language hybridity and from the cultural capital of successful, bilingual authors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Anjali Pandey, Monolingualism and Linguistic Exhibitionism in Fiction, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Jeehyun Lim, Bilingual Brokers: Race, Literature, and Language as Human Capital, Fordham University Press, 2017.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[1] Suresh Canagarajah, Routledge Handbook of Migration and Language, New York, Routdledge, 2017.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Rebecca L. Walkowitz, Born Translated. The Concetmporary Novel in an Age of World Literature, 2017. [2] Yasemin Yildiz, Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonoligual Condition, New York, Fordham UP, 2012.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[3] Pascale Casanova, La Langue mondiale. Traduction et domination, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 2015; <\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Author\u2019s Bibliography<\/o:p><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sinoimeri, L. \u201cI\u2019m one mass of mud: Redefining self through the mess of the senses in Dorothy Richardson\u2019s Pilgrimage\u201d, Synaesthetic Border Crossings, Universit\u00e9 Sorbonne Nouvelle \u2013 Paris 3, 2018.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sinoimeri, L. \u00ab \u201cill-told ill-heard\u201d: Aurality and Reading in Comment c\u2019est\/How It Is \u00bb, Sjef Houppermans, Dunlaith Bird (dir.), Samuel Beckett Today\/Aujourd\u2019hui, 24, Rodopi, 2012, pp. 321-333.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sinoimeri, L. \u00ab Ecritures, r\u00e9sistances et exil: Samuel Beckett et Fatos Kongoli \u00bb, Yann M\u00e9vel, Dominique Rabat\u00e9 (dir.), Samuel Beckett Today\/Aujourd\u2019hui, 23, Rodopi, 2012, pp. 197-214.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Lea Sinoimeri – Universit\u00e9 Paris Diderot, France Keywords bilingualism, migration, literature Abstract Several recent works in language, migration and postcolonial literature emphasize hybridity, fluidity, and mobility in migrant language practices. In the introduction to Routledge Handbook of Migration and Language, Suresh Canagarajah advocates for a \u201chybrid\u201d and \u201cmobile\u201d perspective on language and migration: \u201cScholars are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3223,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-752","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ube.fr\/aci2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ube.fr\/aci2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ube.fr\/aci2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ube.fr\/aci2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3223"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ube.fr\/aci2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=752"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ube.fr\/aci2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1018,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ube.fr\/aci2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/752\/revisions\/1018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ube.fr\/aci2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}