Monolingualism and Linguistic Exhibitionism in Fiction

Abstract

This important book by Dr. Anjali Pandey places her among the pioneers of linguistic and interdisciplinary research into the multilingual stylistics of postcolonial, or-as Pandey defines the period following "9/11" (in 2001) and the financial melt-down of 2008-post-global, literature in English. The study examines ways multilingual content from "other" languages are presented and how these strategies are influenced by mass production, popular tastes and the exigencies of transnational publishers, themselves under the hegemonic sway of the UK and the USA. She takes stock of an array of extant approaches from which she borrows and fine-hones her own analytical tools, to delve into several interconnected language issues of the utmost pertinence in the 21 st century, as the world's languages vie for prominence or struggle to survive in the face of the global hegemony of a few. Pandey's ambitious study further examines the economics and implications for world languages of the culture of literary awards for English. Her main focus is on works published in the decade from 2003 to 2014, written in English by five transnational writers with roots in the Indian subcontinent who have been winners or nominees for the most prestigious awards. The literary-linguistic and the socio-cultural phenomena Pandey describes are evolving fast and furiously, yet until now have received surprisingly little scholarly attention, least of all at the crucial interdisciplinary nexus of sociolinguistics, micro-linguistics, cultural studies, postcolonial theory and political and economic influences. The most prominent forerunners here must be Chantal Zabus' seminal work on the representation of African languages in Europhone West African fiction, The African Palimpsest: Indigenization of Language in the West-African Europhone Novel, (1991; 2007); and for the merchandising ideology underlying the award-culture, that of Graham Huggan: The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins (2001). My own book, Emerging Traditions: Towards a Postcolonial Stylistics of Black South African Fiction in English (2011), inspired by Zabus,' traced the impact of historical, cultural and political changes on the stylistics and multilingual content in black fiction in English. Pandey develops insightful, broad-based arguments regarding both causes and effects of the stylistic choices under scrutiny. She shows how the literary-linguistic and the socio-cultural phenomena that she addresses through her analysis of instances of multilingualism in the writings of multicultural authors writing in English reflect and sustain Western hegemonic monolingual preferences and complacency. They

Re‐Englishing ‘flat‐world’ fiction

“…Data in this study is focused on evidence collected from the often neglected sub‐area of sociolinguistic stylistics – a core area of Kachru's prolific and impressive body of research spanning over three decades (Kachru, , , , , , , , , , ). What this paper then attempts to demonstrate is a trending away from prior century pluralingual orientations undergirding literary language use in the postcolonial context – a period premising Kachruvian analytical frameworks – to a more contemporary trending towards monoglossic orientations in literary languaging in the post‐global moment – defined as the late modernist period of interconnected, ‘flat‐world’ globalization (Pandey, ) – where center and periphery divisions remain just as central, and where world Englishes emerge inscribed in literary creations in the form of a diminished role of bi/multilingual depth, and concomitant enhancement and relevancy of reterritorialized endonormativity and Inner Circle native‐speakerism. These emerging typifications of language use in ‘world Englishes literature’ (Varughese, , p. 15; ) serve as crucial evidence for the need to opt for more conjunctive frameworks of analysis premised on both the form and context of creation in literature (Pandey, ).…”

“…For writers such as Varughese (, p. 17) we have arrived at a stage deemed to be ‘beyond the postcolonial.’ According to her, ‘World Englishes writers are less and less interested in their putative subalternity to a former colonial power and more and more interested in what constitutes (often positively) – [her words]) the identity of the culture from which they write.’ In the current era of superdiversity and supermobility (Valentine, ) such a pendular swing to a focus on context over form makes market sense as these literary creations with roots in the so‐called periphery increasingly have transnational reach and relevancy, and consequently, as we see in the excerpts below, permit for a potent conduit in and through which to sell linguistic desire – increasingly embedded in the innocuousness of identity politics. This privileging of place geographies, or what Higgins (, p. 18) calls, ‘the Zeitgeist of the country’ over Englishes – in the classic Kachruvian paradigm of mantra over madhyama – has stark implications for the WE field for as we see below, there is now less and less a focus on showcasing the intricacies of linguistic plurality per se than there is on demonstrating linguistic ‘equivalencing’ (Pandey, ). In and through astutely marketed literary creations, we encounter carefully concocted literary scenes – effectuated via trendy affectivity‐embedded stance frameworks – in which shallow translanguaging in lieu of deep multilingualism ensures the pivotal place of endonormative standards in English usage – a deification of linguistic value like never before.…”

“…Evidence is provided from emerging frameworks in the sociolinguistics of mobility, pedagogical linguistics, and political economy to demonstrate the intellectual staying power of Kachruvian frameworks using data elicited from the sub‐field of literary stylistics. Analyses of literary works in world Englishes whether from the Inner, Outer or Expanding Circle are emerging to be a burgeoning sub‐field of analyses in WE studies particularly in the past two decades (Bokamba, ; Bolton, ; Pandey, ; Percillier & Paulin, ; Varughese, , ).…”

“…If anything, for the critical sociolinguist – which he was – these arrangements rather than having more of a muted role, operate in more subtle and ‘undergrounded’ form. We are reminded that, ‘coloniality is not solely covert subjugation, but also the West's enduring economic, political and epistemological presence and force’ (De Los Rios & Seltzer, , p. 59) which particularly in the post global moment (Pandey, ) of so‐called ‘flat‐world’ deterritorialization emerges especially significant. Utilizing evidence from literary stylistics, and in keeping with the Kachruvian tradition, this paper makes the case for WE scholars to remain vigilant of the move away from the revolutionary, heteroglossia, and de‐Englishing strategies hallmarking literary creation and analyses of post‐colonial writings from the margin – so apparent in Kachru's works – to a current era of monoglossic inspired re‐Englishing strategies underpinning the post‐globalist enterprise of so‐called ‘flat‐world’ fiction in which under the guise of linguistic ‘deterritorialization,’ center and periphery stratificational arrangements emerge somewhat mitigated – even obfuscated.…”

L’(im)mobilité de l’œuvre de Melchior Mbonimpa et L’esquive de la World Literature

“…De toute apparence, la concurrence sur le marché engendre une ligne de courant littéraire qui se conforme aux langues dominantes comme le français et l'anglais et à la culture globale et monolithique. Dans leurs approches respectives de la world literature, Birgit Neumann et Gabriele Rippl (2017), ainsi que Anjali Pandey (2016) et Aamir Mufti (2016), exposent et problématisent cette tendance à l'homogénéisation de la littérature en faveur de la culture occidentale.…”