Multilingualism as a Concept for the Study of Culture. Interdisciplinary and Transnational Approaches

Vol. 16. Trier : Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2021.

Academic editor: N. Stamenković, T. Clucas, Maksimovtsova K.

The concept of multilingualism has produced a large body of scholarly literature across the humanities and social sciences in recent years. By opening up the dialogues between various disciplinary and national perspectives, this volume aims to develop multilingualism as a travelling concept for the study of culture, in the sense elucidated by Mieke Bal. The contributions in this volume examine multilingualism from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives. The volume investigates multilingualism in three main ways: first, as a socio-political condition and the point of conflict between different political forces, especially in the context of post-Soviet multi-ethnic societies in transition; second, as a method employed in multilingual classroom settings; and third, in multilingual literary works. The multilingual texts analysed in these contexts address various challenges of inhabiting ‘in-between spaces’. At the same time, they provide frameworks for addressing these challenges by showing how multilingual speakers and texts re-signify the beliefs, ideologies, and histories which shape the conditions of multilingual societies and the experiences of individuals. By exploring multilingualism through a variety of methods and approaches, the articles in this volume themselves comprise a multilingual project which encompasses a wide range of languages, disciplines, and texts from around the globe.

Keywords: языковая политика, multilingualism, мультилингвизм, language policy, дискурс анализ, discourse studies, Языковая политика и языковые конфликты в современном мире, bi- and multilingualism, Literary Texts, state language policy, литературные тексты