Multilingualism and Creativity in World Literature(s) – OWRI Creative Multilingualism Strand 5: Key words and concepts

Multilingualism and Creativity in World Literature(s) – OWRI Creative Multilingualism Strand 5: Key words and concepts

13 March 2017 Workshop

(1) What is language? What is multilingualism?

- Word

- Image

- Sound

- Body

(2) How do we speak of multilingualism?

- Location

• Text
• Subject
• Outside
• Production or reception

- Intelligibility

• Importance
• Multiple forms
• Multiple contexts
• Historical textures (pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial)
• As distinguished from multiculturalism
  • And from cosmopolitanism

- Communication (moving from intelligibility or understanding to C)

• Technology and new media (social media)
• Translation (can inform our understanding of different forms of Multilingualism)
  • Theory
  • Practice
  • Fields of Production
  • Collaboration/social v. individual practice

(3) Aesthetics and creativity

- Style, new styles

- Genre, new genres

- The fabric of the text

• A good example: theatre

(4) Expand the scope to cover:

- Sign language

- New language(s) produced in new social media and technology

- Children’s literature (genres)

- Education (cultural institutions)

- Global South (regions)