Joshua L. Miller
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195336993
- eISBN:
- 9780199893997
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195336993.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This book is a study of prominent and less‐familiar works of U.S. literary modernism that reveals a long history of English‐only Americanism: the political claim that U.S. citizens must speak a ...
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This book is a study of prominent and less‐familiar works of U.S. literary modernism that reveals a long history of English‐only Americanism: the political claim that U.S. citizens must speak a nationally distinctive form of English. This perspective presents U.S. literary works written between the 1890s and the 1940s as playfully, painfully, and ambivalently engaged with language politics, thereby rewiring both narrative form and national identity. This consideration of the continuing presence of fierce public debates over U.S. English and domestic multilingual cultures demonstrates their symbolic and material implications in naturalization and citizenship law, presidential rhetoric, academic language studies, and the artistic renderings of novelists. Against the backdrop of the period's massive demographic changes, this book brings into conversation a broadly multiethnic set of writers, including Gertrude Stein, Jean Toomer, Henry Roth, Nella Larsen, John Dos Passos, Lionel Trilling, Américo Paredes, and Carlos Bulosan. These authors shared an acute sense of linguistic standardization during the interwar era and the defamiliarizing sway of radical experimentation with invented and improper literary vernaculars. Mixing languages, these authors spurned expectations for phonological exactitude to develop multilingual literary aesthetics. Rather than confirming the powerfully seductive subtext of monolingualism—that those who speak alike are ethically and politically like minded—multilingual modernists composed interwar novels as characteristically U.S. American because, not in spite, of their synthetic syntaxes and enduring strangeness.Less
This book is a study of prominent and less‐familiar works of U.S. literary modernism that reveals a long history of English‐only Americanism: the political claim that U.S. citizens must speak a nationally distinctive form of English. This perspective presents U.S. literary works written between the 1890s and the 1940s as playfully, painfully, and ambivalently engaged with language politics, thereby rewiring both narrative form and national identity. This consideration of the continuing presence of fierce public debates over U.S. English and domestic multilingual cultures demonstrates their symbolic and material implications in naturalization and citizenship law, presidential rhetoric, academic language studies, and the artistic renderings of novelists. Against the backdrop of the period's massive demographic changes, this book brings into conversation a broadly multiethnic set of writers, including Gertrude Stein, Jean Toomer, Henry Roth, Nella Larsen, John Dos Passos, Lionel Trilling, Américo Paredes, and Carlos Bulosan. These authors shared an acute sense of linguistic standardization during the interwar era and the defamiliarizing sway of radical experimentation with invented and improper literary vernaculars. Mixing languages, these authors spurned expectations for phonological exactitude to develop multilingual literary aesthetics. Rather than confirming the powerfully seductive subtext of monolingualism—that those who speak alike are ethically and politically like minded—multilingual modernists composed interwar novels as characteristically U.S. American because, not in spite, of their synthetic syntaxes and enduring strangeness.
Joshua L. Miller
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195336993
- eISBN:
- 9780199893997
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195336993.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter presents the major work of the most prominent literary critic and editor of the 1920s—Mencken's The American Language—in the context of the shift from juridical attempts to control ...
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This chapter presents the major work of the most prominent literary critic and editor of the 1920s—Mencken's The American Language—in the context of the shift from juridical attempts to control language to cultural efforts to define it. It suggests that Mencken's polemical philology was symptomatic both of the national turn toward linguistic concerns and modernist fascination with new forms of linguistic and symbolic expression. In synthesizing and distilling academic research and political foment, Mencken sought to recoup his own standing in the eyes of Americans, which had been badly damaged during World War I as a result of his rhetorical misfires. The American Language showed Mencken attempting to become the philologist in chief by championing a reinvented, innately modern “American language.” His intense engagement with this project, revising it or other writings on language almost continually from 1919 until 1948, showed Mencken to be a brilliant popularizer and prescient observer of the importance of language to U.S. nationalism. Ultimately, the arguments that Mencken advanced in The American Language helped secure the symbolic capital of English as the singular language of national culture during one of the most polyglot periods of U.S. history.Less
This chapter presents the major work of the most prominent literary critic and editor of the 1920s—Mencken's The American Language—in the context of the shift from juridical attempts to control language to cultural efforts to define it. It suggests that Mencken's polemical philology was symptomatic both of the national turn toward linguistic concerns and modernist fascination with new forms of linguistic and symbolic expression. In synthesizing and distilling academic research and political foment, Mencken sought to recoup his own standing in the eyes of Americans, which had been badly damaged during World War I as a result of his rhetorical misfires. The American Language showed Mencken attempting to become the philologist in chief by championing a reinvented, innately modern “American language.” His intense engagement with this project, revising it or other writings on language almost continually from 1919 until 1948, showed Mencken to be a brilliant popularizer and prescient observer of the importance of language to U.S. nationalism. Ultimately, the arguments that Mencken advanced in The American Language helped secure the symbolic capital of English as the singular language of national culture during one of the most polyglot periods of U.S. history.
Nergis Ertürk
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199746682
- eISBN:
- 9780199918775
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199746682.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
The conclusion suggests that if the history of Turkish phonocentrism is in some sense a “mad” attempt to control communicability, Tanpınar’s, Safa’s, and Nâzım’s work recasts that history for the ...
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The conclusion suggests that if the history of Turkish phonocentrism is in some sense a “mad” attempt to control communicability, Tanpınar’s, Safa’s, and Nâzım’s work recasts that history for the affirmation of the impropriety of the Turkish language. The social promise of the “strange institution called literature” is not the promise of a dazzling spectacle of cultural diversity exhibited on a world stage, or that of a fetishistically rigorous “research” serving the ends of imperial conquest. The promise of literature is rather the practice of an alternative, non-identarian relation with the vernacular, cognizant and affirmative of linguistic and social difference.Less
The conclusion suggests that if the history of Turkish phonocentrism is in some sense a “mad” attempt to control communicability, Tanpınar’s, Safa’s, and Nâzım’s work recasts that history for the affirmation of the impropriety of the Turkish language. The social promise of the “strange institution called literature” is not the promise of a dazzling spectacle of cultural diversity exhibited on a world stage, or that of a fetishistically rigorous “research” serving the ends of imperial conquest. The promise of literature is rather the practice of an alternative, non-identarian relation with the vernacular, cognizant and affirmative of linguistic and social difference.
Kaira M. Cabañas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226556284
- eISBN:
- 9780226556314
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226556314.003.0006
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Chapter 5 considers the exhibition of psychiatric patients’ art in the global contemporary art circuit, a contemporary history of which Arthur Bispo do Rosário also forms a part. The chapter examines ...
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Chapter 5 considers the exhibition of psychiatric patients’ art in the global contemporary art circuit, a contemporary history of which Arthur Bispo do Rosário also forms a part. The chapter examines how psychiatric patients’ work has been included in international exhibitions (e.g., 11th Lyon Biennial in 2011, the 30th Bienal de São Paulo in 2012, 55th Venice Biennial in 2013) and considers why the outsider artist reappears at the moment when definitions of global contemporary art are at stake. In their turn to beauty, the poetic, and the encyclopedic as unifying themes, the author asks whether these exhibitions’ curators overlook the divergent histories of the critical and the clinical. As a countermodel to this trend, the chapter analyzes contemporary artists who in their work engage the history of radical psychiatry and the legacy of creative expression within it, among them, Javier Téllez and Alejandra Riera.Less
Chapter 5 considers the exhibition of psychiatric patients’ art in the global contemporary art circuit, a contemporary history of which Arthur Bispo do Rosário also forms a part. The chapter examines how psychiatric patients’ work has been included in international exhibitions (e.g., 11th Lyon Biennial in 2011, the 30th Bienal de São Paulo in 2012, 55th Venice Biennial in 2013) and considers why the outsider artist reappears at the moment when definitions of global contemporary art are at stake. In their turn to beauty, the poetic, and the encyclopedic as unifying themes, the author asks whether these exhibitions’ curators overlook the divergent histories of the critical and the clinical. As a countermodel to this trend, the chapter analyzes contemporary artists who in their work engage the history of radical psychiatry and the legacy of creative expression within it, among them, Javier Téllez and Alejandra Riera.
Yasemin Yildiz
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823241309
- eISBN:
- 9780823241347
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823241309.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This book is a study of the workings of a monolingual paradigm and of multilingual attempts to overcome it. It argues that monolingualism—the idea that having just one language is the norm—is a ...
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This book is a study of the workings of a monolingual paradigm and of multilingual attempts to overcome it. It argues that monolingualism—the idea that having just one language is the norm—is a recent invention dating back only to late-eighteenth-century Europe, yet has become a dominant, if overlooked, structuring principle of modernity. According to this paradigm, individuals are imagined to be able to think and feel properly only in one language, their “mother tongue,” while multiple languages are seen as a threat to the cohesion of individuals and communities, institutions and disciplines. The book argues that since reemergent multilingual forms and practices exist in tension with the paradigm, they need to be analyzed as “postmonolingual,” that is, as marked by the continuing force of monolingualism. Focused on canonical and minority writers working in German in the twentieth century, the individual chapters examine distinct forms of multilingualism: writing in one socially unsanctioned “mother tongue” about another language (Franz Kafka); mobilizing words of foreign derivation as part of a multilingual constellation within one language (Theodor W. Adorno); producing an oeuvre in two separate languages simultaneously (Yoko Tawada); writing by literally translating from the “mother tongue” into another language (Emine Sevgi Özdamar); and mixing different languages, codes, and registers within one text (Feridun Zaimoğlu). These analyses suggest that the dimensions of gender, kinship, and affect encoded in the “mother tongue” are crucial to the persistence of monolingualism and the challenge of multilingualism.Less
This book is a study of the workings of a monolingual paradigm and of multilingual attempts to overcome it. It argues that monolingualism—the idea that having just one language is the norm—is a recent invention dating back only to late-eighteenth-century Europe, yet has become a dominant, if overlooked, structuring principle of modernity. According to this paradigm, individuals are imagined to be able to think and feel properly only in one language, their “mother tongue,” while multiple languages are seen as a threat to the cohesion of individuals and communities, institutions and disciplines. The book argues that since reemergent multilingual forms and practices exist in tension with the paradigm, they need to be analyzed as “postmonolingual,” that is, as marked by the continuing force of monolingualism. Focused on canonical and minority writers working in German in the twentieth century, the individual chapters examine distinct forms of multilingualism: writing in one socially unsanctioned “mother tongue” about another language (Franz Kafka); mobilizing words of foreign derivation as part of a multilingual constellation within one language (Theodor W. Adorno); producing an oeuvre in two separate languages simultaneously (Yoko Tawada); writing by literally translating from the “mother tongue” into another language (Emine Sevgi Özdamar); and mixing different languages, codes, and registers within one text (Feridun Zaimoğlu). These analyses suggest that the dimensions of gender, kinship, and affect encoded in the “mother tongue” are crucial to the persistence of monolingualism and the challenge of multilingualism.
Yeasemin Yildiz
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823241309
- eISBN:
- 9780823241347
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823241309.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
The introduction provides the historical and conceptual backdrop to the argument that monolingualism is a more recent phenomenon than multilingualism and elaborates on the notion of the ...
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The introduction provides the historical and conceptual backdrop to the argument that monolingualism is a more recent phenomenon than multilingualism and elaborates on the notion of the “postmonolingual condition.” It charts the emergence of the monolingual paradigm in late-eighteenth-century Europe, with emphasis on the conceptual impact of the thought of Herder and Schleiermacher. The chapter also provides a brief history of the term “mother tongue” and discusses feminist, media theoretical, and psychoanalytic perspectives on this concept before offering a new reading of it as a “linguistic family romance.” It situates the present study in relationship to literary and linguistic scholarship on multilingualism, as well as in relationship to German, German-Jewish, and Turkish-German Studies. Through an analysis of the conceptual artwork Wordsearch: A Translinguistic Sculpture by artist Karin Sander, the chapter argues for the importance of a critical approach to multilingualism that takes the monolingual paradigm into account, even in an age of globalization and transnational flows.Less
The introduction provides the historical and conceptual backdrop to the argument that monolingualism is a more recent phenomenon than multilingualism and elaborates on the notion of the “postmonolingual condition.” It charts the emergence of the monolingual paradigm in late-eighteenth-century Europe, with emphasis on the conceptual impact of the thought of Herder and Schleiermacher. The chapter also provides a brief history of the term “mother tongue” and discusses feminist, media theoretical, and psychoanalytic perspectives on this concept before offering a new reading of it as a “linguistic family romance.” It situates the present study in relationship to literary and linguistic scholarship on multilingualism, as well as in relationship to German, German-Jewish, and Turkish-German Studies. Through an analysis of the conceptual artwork Wordsearch: A Translinguistic Sculpture by artist Karin Sander, the chapter argues for the importance of a critical approach to multilingualism that takes the monolingual paradigm into account, even in an age of globalization and transnational flows.
Yeasemin Yildiz
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823241309
- eISBN:
- 9780823241347
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823241309.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter discusses the force and the inner contradictions of the monolingual paradigm by taking the situation of early-twentieth-century German-language Jews, whose claims to German as their ...
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This chapter discusses the force and the inner contradictions of the monolingual paradigm by taking the situation of early-twentieth-century German-language Jews, whose claims to German as their mother tongue were highly contested, as a point of departure. To this end, it analyzes nineteenth-century German discourses on Jews and language with particular attention to Richard Wagner's anti-Semitic pamphlet Judaism in Music. Drawing on the work of German scholars Stephan Braese and Andreas Gotzmann, as well as on Jacques Derrida's book Monolingualism of the Other, the chapter further distinguishes between strategies of appropriation and depropriation as divergent responses to this linguistic dispossession. From this vantage point, it approaches Franz Kafka's writings on Yiddish in his diaries, his letters, and in his 1912 “Speech on the Yiddish Language.” A section on the history of attitudes toward Yiddish in German-speaking lands, starting with Moses Mendelssohn, explains the stakes of Kafka's interest in this language. Although Kafka never considered writing in Yiddish, this chapter reveals that his writings about that language productively altered his relationship to German and allowed him to express the uncanniness of his “mother tongue.” It is also argued that French played a key mediating role in this negotiation.Less
This chapter discusses the force and the inner contradictions of the monolingual paradigm by taking the situation of early-twentieth-century German-language Jews, whose claims to German as their mother tongue were highly contested, as a point of departure. To this end, it analyzes nineteenth-century German discourses on Jews and language with particular attention to Richard Wagner's anti-Semitic pamphlet Judaism in Music. Drawing on the work of German scholars Stephan Braese and Andreas Gotzmann, as well as on Jacques Derrida's book Monolingualism of the Other, the chapter further distinguishes between strategies of appropriation and depropriation as divergent responses to this linguistic dispossession. From this vantage point, it approaches Franz Kafka's writings on Yiddish in his diaries, his letters, and in his 1912 “Speech on the Yiddish Language.” A section on the history of attitudes toward Yiddish in German-speaking lands, starting with Moses Mendelssohn, explains the stakes of Kafka's interest in this language. Although Kafka never considered writing in Yiddish, this chapter reveals that his writings about that language productively altered his relationship to German and allowed him to express the uncanniness of his “mother tongue.” It is also argued that French played a key mediating role in this negotiation.
Yeasemin Yildiz
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823241309
- eISBN:
- 9780823241347
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823241309.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter discusses words of foreign derivation (Fremdwörter) as constituting a form of “internal multilingualism,” which writers can potentially mobilize against the monolingual paradigm. It ...
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This chapter discusses words of foreign derivation (Fremdwörter) as constituting a form of “internal multilingualism,” which writers can potentially mobilize against the monolingual paradigm. It details the highly charged discourse on these words from the Early Modern period to the present, showing how the changing attributes of Fremdwörter and the general shape of language purism relate to particular political and cultural constellations. At the center of the chapter are Theodor W. Adorno's writings on Fremdwörter, from the early essay “On the Use of Foreign Derived Words,” and passages in Minima Moralia—where he calls them “the Jews of language”—to his 1959 essay “Words from Abroad.” The analysis charts the changes in Adorno's defense of these words and shows how he redefines his understanding of the (post-Holocaust) German language in the process, contrasting it with Martin Heidegger's. By investigating both Adorno's statements about Fremdwörter and his use of them in his writing, the chapter demonstrates how the interplay between “native” and “foreign-derived” words is part of his dialectical mode of writing.Less
This chapter discusses words of foreign derivation (Fremdwörter) as constituting a form of “internal multilingualism,” which writers can potentially mobilize against the monolingual paradigm. It details the highly charged discourse on these words from the Early Modern period to the present, showing how the changing attributes of Fremdwörter and the general shape of language purism relate to particular political and cultural constellations. At the center of the chapter are Theodor W. Adorno's writings on Fremdwörter, from the early essay “On the Use of Foreign Derived Words,” and passages in Minima Moralia—where he calls them “the Jews of language”—to his 1959 essay “Words from Abroad.” The analysis charts the changes in Adorno's defense of these words and shows how he redefines his understanding of the (post-Holocaust) German language in the process, contrasting it with Martin Heidegger's. By investigating both Adorno's statements about Fremdwörter and his use of them in his writing, the chapter demonstrates how the interplay between “native” and “foreign-derived” words is part of his dialectical mode of writing.
Paul R. Smokowski and Martica Bacallao
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814740897
- eISBN:
- 9780814708798
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814740897.003.0003
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
This chapter examines the impact of assimilation mechanisms on Latino immigrant families, with particular emphasis on how acute assimilation pressures prompt Latino adolescents and their parents to ...
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This chapter examines the impact of assimilation mechanisms on Latino immigrant families, with particular emphasis on how acute assimilation pressures prompt Latino adolescents and their parents to explore and adapt to the host culture. It begins with a discussion of assimilation theory and two interpersonal and institutional mechanisms that drive assimilation in daily life: monolingualism and discrimination. It then considers monolingualism and discrimination in Latino immigrants' specific transactions with others in schools, workplaces, and churches. It shows that monolingualism was a strong form of interpersonal and institutional discrimination against Spanish speakers, and that discrimination regulated belonging by enforcing conformity with U.S. norms, appearance, and behaviors.Less
This chapter examines the impact of assimilation mechanisms on Latino immigrant families, with particular emphasis on how acute assimilation pressures prompt Latino adolescents and their parents to explore and adapt to the host culture. It begins with a discussion of assimilation theory and two interpersonal and institutional mechanisms that drive assimilation in daily life: monolingualism and discrimination. It then considers monolingualism and discrimination in Latino immigrants' specific transactions with others in schools, workplaces, and churches. It shows that monolingualism was a strong form of interpersonal and institutional discrimination against Spanish speakers, and that discrimination regulated belonging by enforcing conformity with U.S. norms, appearance, and behaviors.
Yasser Elhariry
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781786940407
- eISBN:
- 9781786945075
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781786940407.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Chapter 2 concerns two recurrent images from Edmond Jabès’s late works, Un étranger avec, sous le bras, un livre de petit format (1989) and Le livre de l’hospitalité (1991). While Jabès is well known ...
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Chapter 2 concerns two recurrent images from Edmond Jabès’s late works, Un étranger avec, sous le bras, un livre de petit format (1989) and Le livre de l’hospitalité (1991). While Jabès is well known within French literary circles, analyses of his early Cairene work— and to an even lesser extent the formative roles of orality and aurality from his pre- Parisian period—are few and thin. I first contextualize the figure of the Egyptian poet in relation to the history of Jabès scholarship, and then build on Tengour’s translational poetics of the classical Arabic literary archive in order to unravel a different, sublimated translational mode that links many of Jabès’s later books. In his late and final works, which he composed while living in Paris, Jabès’s poetic imaginary reprises word for word the tropes of early Arabic verse. When read together and in relation to the same archival corpus, Tengour and Jabès represent contrasting translational and intertextual modes for comparative poetic and translingual compositions in French. Through his aphasic refuge in French monolingualism following his exile from Cairo, and his late re/discovery of classical Arabic poetry in Paris, Jabès’s sublimated recourse to early Arabic verse retraces and performs the history of the old literary forms beneath a French language surface.Less
Chapter 2 concerns two recurrent images from Edmond Jabès’s late works, Un étranger avec, sous le bras, un livre de petit format (1989) and Le livre de l’hospitalité (1991). While Jabès is well known within French literary circles, analyses of his early Cairene work— and to an even lesser extent the formative roles of orality and aurality from his pre- Parisian period—are few and thin. I first contextualize the figure of the Egyptian poet in relation to the history of Jabès scholarship, and then build on Tengour’s translational poetics of the classical Arabic literary archive in order to unravel a different, sublimated translational mode that links many of Jabès’s later books. In his late and final works, which he composed while living in Paris, Jabès’s poetic imaginary reprises word for word the tropes of early Arabic verse. When read together and in relation to the same archival corpus, Tengour and Jabès represent contrasting translational and intertextual modes for comparative poetic and translingual compositions in French. Through his aphasic refuge in French monolingualism following his exile from Cairo, and his late re/discovery of classical Arabic poetry in Paris, Jabès’s sublimated recourse to early Arabic verse retraces and performs the history of the old literary forms beneath a French language surface.
Norbert Francis
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780262016391
- eISBN:
- 9780262298384
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262016391.003.0010
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics
This chapter examines, within the framework of modularity, whole-language and naturalistic approaches to literacy and second language (L2) learning as well as the proposed model of bilingual ...
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This chapter examines, within the framework of modularity, whole-language and naturalistic approaches to literacy and second language (L2) learning as well as the proposed model of bilingual competence and bilingual proficiency. It also considers aspects of language loss as a shift affecting an entire speech community and future prospects for advances in the field of bilingualism. It first explores how the evolution toward bilingualism, and then toward a new monolingualism, affects domains of knowledge associated with the displaced language. It then looks at what is natural and unnatural in language learning, reading subskills and specific reading disability, first language (L1)–L2 autonomy, and L1–L2 interaction. The chapter concludes with some reflections on language and culture.Less
This chapter examines, within the framework of modularity, whole-language and naturalistic approaches to literacy and second language (L2) learning as well as the proposed model of bilingual competence and bilingual proficiency. It also considers aspects of language loss as a shift affecting an entire speech community and future prospects for advances in the field of bilingualism. It first explores how the evolution toward bilingualism, and then toward a new monolingualism, affects domains of knowledge associated with the displaced language. It then looks at what is natural and unnatural in language learning, reading subskills and specific reading disability, first language (L1)–L2 autonomy, and L1–L2 interaction. The chapter concludes with some reflections on language and culture.
David Kelman
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780823277674
- eISBN:
- 9780823280643
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823277674.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Language
How can a certain monolingualism help theorize comparative literature? What does Hispanism have to say about comparison? By comparing texts by Julio Cortázar (on the cuento or short story) and ...
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How can a certain monolingualism help theorize comparative literature? What does Hispanism have to say about comparison? By comparing texts by Julio Cortázar (on the cuento or short story) and Jacques Derrida (on the limit), Kelman suggests that the mode of communication called “Hispanism” is structured like a cuento: every focus on a delimited text in Spanish would also present another text that never fully appears. Cortázar especially invites us to think about a ghostly “comparative literature” at the heart of Hispanism. This spectral comparison—or a comparative literature in secret—would then touch the sovereignty of the Hispanist, even and especially when the emphasis remains limited to the monolingual.Less
How can a certain monolingualism help theorize comparative literature? What does Hispanism have to say about comparison? By comparing texts by Julio Cortázar (on the cuento or short story) and Jacques Derrida (on the limit), Kelman suggests that the mode of communication called “Hispanism” is structured like a cuento: every focus on a delimited text in Spanish would also present another text that never fully appears. Cortázar especially invites us to think about a ghostly “comparative literature” at the heart of Hispanism. This spectral comparison—or a comparative literature in secret—would then touch the sovereignty of the Hispanist, even and especially when the emphasis remains limited to the monolingual.
Elisabeth Lamy-Vialle
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474400381
- eISBN:
- 9781474416054
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474400381.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter discusses the way Katherine Mansfield uses the French language in her short-stories, and specifically in the stories set in France. Mansfield does not only use the French language as a ...
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This chapter discusses the way Katherine Mansfield uses the French language in her short-stories, and specifically in the stories set in France. Mansfield does not only use the French language as a semiological tool but confronts English-speaking readers with a foreign language that constantly interacts with their mother-tongue, imposing on them the Other’s tongue – Derrida’s ‘monolingualism of the Other’. She opens up an in-between space in which the two languages are questioned and unsettled, a process echoing the ‘becoming-other of language’ described by Deleuze. This chapter examines how the tension between English and French reaches a climax in the schizophrenic process at work in ‘Je ne Parle pas français’; language becomes, between the English and the French characters, a ‘cannibal-language’, the aggressive appropriation of the Other through his/her language in order to leave him/her speechless and powerless.Less
This chapter discusses the way Katherine Mansfield uses the French language in her short-stories, and specifically in the stories set in France. Mansfield does not only use the French language as a semiological tool but confronts English-speaking readers with a foreign language that constantly interacts with their mother-tongue, imposing on them the Other’s tongue – Derrida’s ‘monolingualism of the Other’. She opens up an in-between space in which the two languages are questioned and unsettled, a process echoing the ‘becoming-other of language’ described by Deleuze. This chapter examines how the tension between English and French reaches a climax in the schizophrenic process at work in ‘Je ne Parle pas français’; language becomes, between the English and the French characters, a ‘cannibal-language’, the aggressive appropriation of the Other through his/her language in order to leave him/her speechless and powerless.
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846310560
- eISBN:
- 9781846312922
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846312922.002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter discusses Young's essay ‘Deconstruction and the postcolonial’ by looking at several recent critical responses to Derrida's Monolingualism of the Other, with particular attention to the ...
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This chapter discusses Young's essay ‘Deconstruction and the postcolonial’ by looking at several recent critical responses to Derrida's Monolingualism of the Other, with particular attention to the concepts of singularity, universality, testimony, and the political.Less
This chapter discusses Young's essay ‘Deconstruction and the postcolonial’ by looking at several recent critical responses to Derrida's Monolingualism of the Other, with particular attention to the concepts of singularity, universality, testimony, and the political.
Brian Lennon
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816665013
- eISBN:
- 9781452946344
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816665013.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter presents a reading of “Beehive”, a plurilingual book that uses distinct national languages in the sequences of English, German, Dutch, French, Italian, Greek, and Latin, to examine the ...
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This chapter presents a reading of “Beehive”, a plurilingual book that uses distinct national languages in the sequences of English, German, Dutch, French, Italian, Greek, and Latin, to examine the effect of translating monolingual literary artifacts into plurilingual ones. “Beehive” alone merits the label multilingual, in the book, The Multilingual Anthology of American Literature’s table of content. The conflation between plurilingual and monolingual languages that are embodied in the plurilingual literary manuscript composition and the translative circulation of a structurally monolingual literary book obscures the material disciplinary-editorial practices that regulate the publication, and thus the dissemination, of contemporary literature.Less
This chapter presents a reading of “Beehive”, a plurilingual book that uses distinct national languages in the sequences of English, German, Dutch, French, Italian, Greek, and Latin, to examine the effect of translating monolingual literary artifacts into plurilingual ones. “Beehive” alone merits the label multilingual, in the book, The Multilingual Anthology of American Literature’s table of content. The conflation between plurilingual and monolingual languages that are embodied in the plurilingual literary manuscript composition and the translative circulation of a structurally monolingual literary book obscures the material disciplinary-editorial practices that regulate the publication, and thus the dissemination, of contemporary literature.
Sarah Leroy
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- October 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199573714
- eISBN:
- 9780191818011
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199573714.003.0020
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Phonetics / Phonology, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics
This chapter analyses a short discussion between two sisters, young students living in Chlef, a small town southwest of Algiers. They are both native speakers of Arabic and completely fluent in ...
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This chapter analyses a short discussion between two sisters, young students living in Chlef, a small town southwest of Algiers. They are both native speakers of Arabic and completely fluent in French. The conversation concerns the way young women can or must dress in this small town. From the point of view of syntax, the excerpt shows the difficulty of expressing temporal relations resulting in a heavy use of the present tense and a specific use of certain prepositions. The phonological system of the two speakers is characterized by a generalization of the loi de position, a tendency to merge the two posterior nasal vowels, and the lack of reduction of obstruent + liquids clusters.Less
This chapter analyses a short discussion between two sisters, young students living in Chlef, a small town southwest of Algiers. They are both native speakers of Arabic and completely fluent in French. The conversation concerns the way young women can or must dress in this small town. From the point of view of syntax, the excerpt shows the difficulty of expressing temporal relations resulting in a heavy use of the present tense and a specific use of certain prepositions. The phonological system of the two speakers is characterized by a generalization of the loi de position, a tendency to merge the two posterior nasal vowels, and the lack of reduction of obstruent + liquids clusters.
