Search Results

Reinventing Vox Americana

Joshua L. Miller

in Accented America: The Cultural Politics of Multilingual Modernism

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 ... More

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

Conclusion: On the Literary Common

Nergis Ertürk

in Grammatology and Literary Modernity in Turkey

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 ... More

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

Monolingualism of the Global

Kaira M. Cabañas

in Learning from Madness: Brazilian Modernism and Global Contemporary Art

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 ... More

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

introduction: Beyond the Mother Tongue?: Multilingual Practices and the Monolingual Paradigm

Yeasemin Yildiz

in Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition

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 ... More

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 Uncanny Mother Tongue: Monolingualism and Jewishness in Franz Kafka

Yeasemin Yildiz

in Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition

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 ... More

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

The Foreign in the Mother Tongue: Words of Foreign Derivation and Utopia in Theodor W. Adorno

Yeasemin Yildiz

in Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition

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 ... More

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

A Jewish Poetics of Exile: Benjamin Fondane’s Exodus

Julia Elsky

in Writing Occupation: Jewish Émigré Voices in Wartime France

Benjamin Fondane lived through two displacements: first when he immigrated from Romania to France in the 1920s; and then again when he went into semihiding in Paris under the Occupation. Although he ... More

Benjamin Fondane lived through two displacements: first when he immigrated from Romania to France in the 1920s; and then again when he went into semihiding in Paris under the Occupation. Although he had come to French in search of a literary community through language adoption, in his wartime poetry he questions the possibility of a monolingual language. This chapter focuses on Fondane’s revisions of his poetry during the war, and in particular on L’Exode, his literary representations of the June 1940 flight toward the Southern Zone. Fondane writes in many languages at once: he not only incorporates the names of Hebrew letters and transcriptions of prayer in his French text but he also states that even if only one word existed in the world there would still be no one language. In this chapter, Fondane’s texts are also put into dialogue with Jacques Derrida’s Monolingualism of the Other.Less

Languages and langages

in Introduction to a Poetics of Diversity: by Édouard Glissant

This chapter in fact covers a range of subjects: the need for literature to express the ‘world totality’; the difference between ‘atavistic’ and ‘composite’ (i.e., creolized) communities; the ... More

This chapter in fact covers a range of subjects: the need for literature to express the ‘world totality’; the difference between ‘atavistic’ and ‘composite’ (i.e., creolized) communities; the ‘Chaos-world’ (Glissant’s term for the unpredictability that he sees as characterizing the modern world); the transition from written to oral expression; and the rejection of ‘monolingualism’ – i.e., the recognition that even if we only speak one language, we nevertheless write ‘in the presence of all the world’s languages’, and this awareness transforms the way we use our own language. There is an important distinction between a language (Creole, French, English, etc.) and a langage (for which there is no equivalent term in English), which is defined as the speaker’s or writer’s subjective relationship to the language that he or she uses. Speakers of different languages can share the same langage: thus there is a langage that is common to the Caribbean as a whole. Finally, Glissant discusses the art and the importance of translation.Less

The Imagination of Languages

in Introduction to a Poetics of Diversity: by Édouard Glissant

Glissant and Gauvin discuss languages: the fact that language is no longer linked to identity, and the harm done by monolingualism. It is wrong to defend Creole ‘monolinguistically’: ‘créolité’ is an ... More

Glissant and Gauvin discuss languages: the fact that language is no longer linked to identity, and the harm done by monolingualism. It is wrong to defend Creole ‘monolinguistically’: ‘créolité’ is an essentialist movement, unlike creolization. The imagination of languages allows us to see how languages meet up in the Chaos-World; it exists in some Western literature of the 20th century (e.g., Beckett, Pound, Joyce). Exoticism can be either positive or negative. Glissant himself has been influenced by the memory of Creole folk tales and also the work of Faulkner. For Antilleans, the French language has frozen into a kind of dead perfection. The shift from oral to written has necessitated the immediate construction of new forms of language in both Creole and French. ‘Subverting the language’ takes place through creolization and rejecting monolingualism. Prose is less able to do this than poetry and this leads to a dismantling of the traditional genres.Less

From Contact to Conflict: How Assimilation Mechanisms Underpin the Exploration and Adaptation Stage in Bicultural Development

Paul R. Smokowski and Martica Bacallao

in Becoming Bicultural: Risk, Resilience, and Latino Youth

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 ... More

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

Sky-Birds & Dead Trees On Two Images in Edmond Jabès

Yasser Elhariry

in Pacifist Invasions: Arabic, Translation & the Postfrancophone Lyric

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 ... More

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

Conclusion: Results and Prospects

Norbert Francis

in Bilingual Competence and Bilingual Proficiency in Child Development

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 ... More

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

Spectral Comparisons: Cortázar and Derrida

David Kelman

in The Marrano Specter: Derrida and Hispanism

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 ... More

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

Foreign Languages and Mother Tongues: From Exoticism to Cannibalism in Katherine Mansfield’s Short Stories

Elisabeth Lamy-Vialle

in Katherine Mansfield and Translation

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 ... More

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

Deconstruction in Algeria (Derrida ‘himself’)

in Deconstruction and the Postcolonial: At the Limits of 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 ... More

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

Towards a New Sociolinguistics: A Memoir of P.B. Pandit

J.P.S. Uberoi and Patricia Uberoi

Khalid Tyabji (ed.)

in Mind and Society: From Indian Studies to General Sociology

This is a joint paper with Professor Patricia Uberoi that was originally written as a tribute to Prabodh B. Pandit following his untimely death. It discusses the idea of India as a sociolinguistic ... More

This is a joint paper with Professor Patricia Uberoi that was originally written as a tribute to Prabodh B. Pandit following his untimely death. It discusses the idea of India as a sociolinguistic area, the alternative Western methods that have been applied to its study, that is, melting pot or apartheid. A major theme is the question of bilingualism, multilingualism and dialects within the Indian experiment of functional multilingualism or unity in variety. Included here are subjects such as standard and dialectical forms in language, the implications of this for language planning in India, and the structure of cultural pluralism. It ends with the outline of a new theoretical framework for Indian sociolinguistics.Less

Translation Being Between

Brian Lennon

in In Babel's Shadow: Multilingual Literatures, Monolingual States

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 ... More

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