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the market cry, or the way in which the street vendors reached out across racial, linguistic and cultural boundaries to interpellate the potential customer. In this chapter I explore the examples of transcultural and multilingual speech performance related to buying and selling that took place in my fieldwork. I first examine greetings and bartering in Neapolitan, and their importance for migrant street vendors seeking inclusion and acceptance on the city’s streets. I then turn to the frustrating process of bartering in English for Neapolitan street vendors at
2 A brief history of multilingualism in French cinema F rench multilingual cinema is primarily a contemporary pheno menon. Not only have vastly more multilingual films been released in France since 2005 than in any earlier period, but a far greater number of contemporary films engage with multilingualism in profound ways than ever before. Multilingualism is a central aspect of these films’ dialogues and narratives. However, it would be misleading to present multilingual cinema as a phenomenon invented in the twenty-first century. The twentieth century may
Multilingual communication in everyday police work Vignette 1: ‘Police are here’ The operational training takes place in the training halls on the grounds of the police academy. 1 The scenery is similar to a film
219 10 The multilingual English household in a European perspective: London, British Library MS Harley 2253 and the traffic of texts Rory G. Critten Compiled largely in the 1330s, London, British Library MS Harley 2253 transmits a collection of materials in verse and prose, ranging from saints’ lives, biblical paraphrase, and works of practical religion, to conduct literature, political satire, pilgrimage guides, a romance, lyric poetry in English (the ‘Harley Lyrics’) and French, and a selection of fabliaux.1 It contains texts in each of England’s main
For several years now, James Baldwin’s life, portrait, and work have enjoyed a central place in the public eye. Although social and audiovisual media have made significant contributions to Baldwin’s return to the cultural and political limelight, the circulation of his published writings remains a vital part of the author’s ubiquity. Moreover, since Baldwin’s omnipresence in bookstores transcends an American or even Anglophone context, this international and multilingual circulation contributes to Baldwin’s world literary standing, as befits the self-described “transatlantic commuter.” This article moves beyond the customary approach to Baldwin’s published success by tracing presently circulating European translations of his work. The article examines the historical developments in Baldwin’s European circulation-through-translation from the time of his death (1987) up until the present, including brief discussions of the French, Italian, and West German translations from the 1960s onward. Of special interest are the pioneering and dominant roles that French and Italian publishers have played since the late 1990s, and the acceleration in circulation that took place across the continent in the wake of the films I Am Not Your Negro and If Beale Street Could Talk. The article concludes with a few remarks on the translation strategies of several key publishers in France, Italy, Germany, and Romania.
would be a large part of their role. They also needed to be both fluent in Spanish and English to be able to work across the multilingual production team – and ideally from Colombia. When Diana Garcia, our lead animator, eventually joined the team, she was the missing piece in our puzzle. This has been an extensive introduction to the ‘who’ of the project and intentionally so because, to us, that is the project. The collective
proved useful in overcoming some language barriers, though others persisted ( Munro, 2013 ). The Haiti earthquake illustrates the multilingual nature of humanitarian crises and the importance of translation, as well as the close connection between language and humanitarian ICT innovations. These features are not unique to the Haiti earthquake, and many crises occur in contexts where linguistic diversity is greater. A recent example of the need for translation and interpreting
At a time when monolingualist claims for the importance of ‘speaking English’ to the national order continue louder than ever, even as language diversity is increasingly part of contemporary British life, literature becomes a space to consider the terms of linguistic belonging. Bad English examines writers including Tom Leonard, James Kelman, Suhayl Saadi, Raman Mundair, Daljit Nagra, Xiaolu Guo, Leila Aboulela, Brian Chikwava, and Caroline Bergvall, who engage multilingually, experimentally, playfully, and ambivalently with English’s power. Considering their invented vernaculars and mixed idioms, their dramatised scenes of languaging – languages learned or lost, acts of translation, scenes of speaking, the exposure and racialised visibility of accent – it argues for a growing field of contemporary literature in Britain pre-eminently concerned with language’s power dynamics, its aesthetic potentialities, and its prosthetic strangeness. Drawing on insights from applied linguistics and translation studies as well as literary scholarship, Bad English explores contemporary arguments about language in Britain – in debates about citizenship or education, in the media or on Twitter, in Home Office policy and asylum legislation – as well as the ways they are taken up in literature. It uncovers both an antagonistic and a productive interplay between language politics and literary form, tracing writers’ articulation of linguistic alienation and ambivalence, as well as the productivity and making-new of radical language practices. Doing so, it refutes the view that language difference and language politics are somehow irrelevant to contemporary Britain and instead argues for their constitutive centrality to the work of novelists and poets whose inside/outside relationship to English in its institutionalised forms is the generative force of their writing.
This comparative volume examines the sustained contribution of migrants to Europe’s literatures, social cultures, and arts over centuries. Europe has never been a continent bounded by the seas that surround it. In premodern times, migrants imprinted the languages, arts, and literatures of the places where they settled. They contributed to these cultures and economies. Some were on the move in search of a better life; others were displaced by war, dispossessed, expelled; while still others were brought in servitude to European cities to work, enslaved. Today’s immigration flows in Europe are not exceptional but anchored in this longue durée process. Iberia/Maghreb, Sicily/Lampedusa, Calais are the three hotspots considered in this volume. These regions have been shaped and continue to be shaped by migrants; by their cultures; their Spanish, Arabic, Italian, and Somali; their French, English and Mandarin languages. They are also shaped by migrants’ struggles. The scholars and artists who wrote Migrants shaping Europe, past and present compose a new significant chapter in the cultural history of European migration by reflecting on the forces that have put people into motion since the premodern period and by examining the visual arts, literature, and multilingual social worlds fostered by migration. This historically expansive and multilingual approach to mobility and expressiveness makes a crucial contribution: migrants as a lifeblood of European cultures.
In a world defined by the flow of people, goods and cultures, many contemporary French films explore the multicultural nature of today's France through language. In a cinematic landscape increasingly characterised by multiculturalism and linguistic diversity, a number of contemporary French films are beginning to represent multilingualism as a means of attaining and exerting social power. This book is the first substantial study of multilingual film in France. Unpacking the power dynamics at play in the dialogue of eight emblematic films, it argues that many contemporary French films take a new approach to language and power. The book begins in central Paris in Polisse and Entre les murs, then travels to the banlieue in Un prophete and Dheepan. It then heads to another culturally loaded but very different space with Welcome and La Graine et le mulet, whose border-crossing stories unfold in the port cities of Calais and Sete respectively. Then, in London River and Des hommes et des dieux, the book steps off French soil, travelling to the English capital and former French colony of Algeria. It explores characters whose lives are marked not only by France, but by former colonies, foreign countries and other European states. In its depiction of strategic code-switching in transcultural scenarios, contemporary French multilingual cinema shows the potential for symbolic power inherent in French, other dominant Western tongues, and many migrant and minority languages. The book offers a unique insight into the place of language and power in French cinema today.