Translingual Literary Practice: Literatures in Contact

Abstract

Abstract: A Translingual Literary Practice: Literatures in Contact The aim of this thesis is to explore literary translingualism. The translingual is a term that is becoming widespread in academia, but is still in need of fuller definition and of being distinguished from other terms with which it overlaps. This thesis uses the term translingual to refer to texts which use more than one language in specific interactive ways, emphasising the dynamic, fluid and generative qualities in texts which cross cultural and linguistic borders and boundaries, rather than defining such texts in a static and additive manner. Translingualism involves the capacity for languages in texts to influence and transform each other in the context of exchanges. Thus, the methodological approach used in this thesis integrates literary studies with findings in language contact studies, since its objective is to understand the way languages in contact in texts influence each other in transformative ways, rather than merely co-existing in the same diglossic space. This necessarily involves a text-focussed interpretive practice, which I term a translingual literary practice (TLP). This approach focuses on the ways linguistic elements are exchanged between or synthesised from two or more linguistic systems. On an aesthetic level, the languages may be used in such a way as to create innovations and produce a new type of literary text that challenges homogenous language systems or dominant discourses. A review of relevant extant secondary literature and a necessarily tentative definition of the translingual, whose purpose is to make clear the differences to similar-sounding terms which are often used indiscriminately, is followed by chapters addressing a wide range of examples of translingual writing from different genres, cultures and language combinations. Without claiming to provide definitive or final answers, the study's overall goal is to move forward the understanding of the translingual, its scope – what it is and what it is not – and its transformative force.