Is European multilingualism monolingualism in disguise?
Public roundtable, day one
This event is part of a demonstration of what Lera offers for running knowledge events. Its content is written with care and draws on real sources, but the conference has not taken place, and apart from the convener its participants are fictional.
Europe has many languages and talks about them a great deal. But Gramling (2016) has reminded us that "monolingualism" is itself a modern invention: the idea that each nation has one language, each person one mother tongue, and each text one original language. Yildiz (2012) called this condition "postmonolingual": an age in which multilingualism is everywhere but is understood and governed under the shadow of that same monolingual paradigm. Europe places twenty-four official languages side by side, yet imagines each of them alone, within the border of its state.
Meanwhile the language in which European knowledge is actually written and evaluated has become more and more singular. Phillipson called this process "linguistic imperialism", and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, years earlier and from the position of a Kenyan writer, had seen the colonisation of the mind in the language of the school. The question of this roundtable is simple and sharp: is what Europe calls multilingualism anything more than a set of monolingualisms placed side by side, over which one shared language of power rules?
The participants approach this question from four different places: the philosophy of language and the experience of postcolonial Africa, the politics of minority languages within the Union, the language rights of Kurds in Türkiye and in migration, and publishing and translation in the Arab world. The aim is not to reach agreement; the aim is to make clear which disagreements are real and which arise from misunderstanding.
Format
The roundtable is moderated by Thandiwe Dlamini. Each participant gives a five-minute opening position, followed by forty minutes of open conversation among the participants; the final thirty minutes are given to questions from the audience in the hall and from those taking part remotely. The roundtable is held in English, with simultaneous interpretation into Persian.
Opening positions
- Wanjiru Mwangi: real multilingualism means that knowledge can begin in any language, not that it is translated into several.
- Inés Castellví: Europe's problem is not a shortage of languages; it is that it has tied the right to a language to the state.
- Yusuf Demirtaş: for millions of Kurds, Europe's multilingualism has no room for their language, neither in the country of origin nor in migration.
- Layla Haddad: Europe sees Arabic either as a language of threat or as a heritage language, and never as a language of knowledge today.
References
Gramling, David. 2016. The Invention of Monolingualism. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
Yildiz, Yasemin. 2012. Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition. New York: Fordham University Press.
Phillipson, Robert. 1992. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. 1986. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Currey.