Monolingualism and Linguistic Exhibitionism in Fiction

Anjali Pandey

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781137340351
• eBook ISBN: 9781137340368
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

How are linguistic wars for global prominence literarily and linguistically inscribed in literature? This book focuses on the increasing presence of cosmetic multilingualism in prize-winning fiction, making a case for an emerging transparent-turn in which momentary multilingualism works in the service of long-term monolingualism.

1

The Place of Languages in the Space of Post-Globalism: Bilingualism, Bullhorns, and Blunders

Linguistic exhibitionism in the real world

We now inhabit a post-global world—well over a decade past globalization, and where it is increasingly apparent that the world is not completely “flat” (Friedman 2005). One of the most striking features of a post-global society is the inherent tension between the push and pull of on the one hand, monolingualism, and on the other, multilingualism. Using Orwellian aphorisms, we witness evidence that all languages are equal at the very same time that we experience evidence of a qualification—but some languages are more equal than others. With the emergence of deterritorialization of the nation-state and the rise of supranational spaces, we are witnessing what seems to be an apparent contradiction between the increased visual prominence of nationally-bounded languages—a linguistic exhibitionism of sorts—at the very same time that we are witnessing a strengthening of linguistic hierarchies—forms of linguistic monolingualism in which languages vie for value. No better instantiation of such linguistic workings occurs than in the seemingly innocuous display of actual exhibitionism at The 2010 Shanghai Expo. This ‘world’ trade-fair with its 149-year tradition of public-diplomacy par excellence witnessed a particular linguistic shift at the outset of this decade.

In a bid to stifle any rumors of American decline as a consequence of the 2008 financial meltdown, Ghattas (2013: 157) recounts that then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, raised enough corporate sponsorship to put up a 60,000-square-foot bunker exhibiting America to the world. Perhaps most striking was the space given to key languages at the expo—a careful, cosmetic orchestration and showcasing of diverse American attempts at linguistic inclusion recorded from citizens and celebrities alike. Ghattas (2013) a BBC reporter, provides copious details of some of the audiovisual material on display as experienced by the travelling press corps of which she was a part:

Suddenly, basketball legend Kobe Bryant from the Los Angeles Lakers appeared on the screen on the red wall on our left. “Ni hao,” he greeted the viewers in Chinese. Stunned silence. The video continued as ordinary Americans filmed on the streets of the United States were taught how to say “Welcome” in Mandarin. The Chinese giggled with laughter as the men and women tried, failed and ultimately succeeded in uttering a few words in Mandarin. Famous skateboarder Tony Hawk did a stunt and then spoke into the camera in apparently fluent Chinese, possibly picked up during his trip to the country a few days earlier to inaugurate a Woodward skateboard camp in Beijing. Olympic medalist Michelle Kwan slid up to the camera on her skates, speaking Cantonese. A group of white, Latino, and Asian firefighters standing in front of their red truck; two dozen schoolchildren of mixed backgrounds in a park; a black shop-keeper; stockbrokers on the trading floor—all of these Americans offered their greetings to China. Wild applause.

In the next room, courtesy of Citicorp, a giant Hillary was projected on the wall. “Ni hao,” she said, “I’m Hillary Clinton.” Warm applause from the crowd. (158)

Particularly intriguing in this account is the careful management of multilingualism in the governmentally sanctioned audiovisual display. Lest readers believe that this was the only language on exhibit, consider yet another seemingly innocuous millisecond detailing of the event that Ghattas (2013) provides of the opening events. She tells readers that the visiting crowd “was almost all Chinese, their eyes trained on the two young Americans in jeans speaking to them from bullhorns” (157). With details that only a journalist can muster, she describes the unfolding events.

These were the “student ambassadors,” two from a group of 160 college-age Americans, perfectly bilingual, not just linguistically but also culturally. The visitors were delighted to be greeted in their own language by smiling young Americans after they had waited in line in the heat, sometimes for three hours. (157)

What follows is a cinematic account of linguistic exchange par excellence—one in which we witness a careful, institutional showcasing of Mandarin at the very same time as there is plenty of bureaucratic space reserved for the spotlighting of English. Ghattas (2013) in transliterated form takes care to recount the role of these language ‘ambassadors’. In filmic fashion her verbal details close in on another seemingly, informal code on display—one which captures the aural power of another louder language on exhibit:

“Ni hen lihai,” the students said and then translated, “You are awesome!”

The audience was transfixed. Some of the Chinese visitors, who were coming from all corners of the vast country, had never met a foreigner before, let alone heard one speak their language. As best as they could, they screamed back, “You are awesome!”

“Nong lau jie guen eh,” said the young girl, offering another translation of “You are awesome.” Giggles erupted. A foreigner speaking Shanghai dialect! Then, led by the American students, in English, everybody screamed, “China. Is. Awesome!” The student ambassadors were constantly surrounded by a swarm of people. Everybody wanted a picture with them as though they were celebrities. (157– 158)

Apart from spotlighting a ‘feel-good’ national pride, this linguistic exchange manages to spotlight English in the space of Mandarin. Enacted via post-globalism’s speech-act of linguistic currency—semantic ‘equivalencing’—such languaging (García 2009) exemplifies moments of multilingualism now more prevalent than ever—a new normative of sorts. So, how was the expo received in the US? Ghattas (2013) reports that, “The travelling press kept rolling their eyes” (159) and back home, reviews were “scathing” (159). Venerated newspapers such as the Washington Post complained that the “message to the world” was “We’re bad at languages” (159). And yet, Ghattas is quick to note, “the queue outside the American pavilion was the longest at the expo except for China’s own pavilion” (159)—an exhibition which in a mere six months attracted 7 million visitors (163)—the second most popular pavilion after the host country.

What did the reporters back home miss one wonders? We encounter here astute deployment of the emotive as opposed to the intellectual potency of language. Proof perhaps of Nelson Mandela’s famous quip namely, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” (qtd. in Ginsburgh and Weber 2011: 201). This potent aphorism captures the covalent link between “the intertwined tropes of “pride” and “profit”” (Heller and Duchêne 2012: 3) increasingly being implicated in multilingual encounters of the 21st century—indeed, in our post-global world witnessing market deployments of multilingualism in the service of literary commerce—“as an offshoot of a branded heritage and tourist product” (Brouillette 2014: 3).

It is argued that contextual macro factors such as this account for the fusion in literary themes of sociopolitical relevancy. Norris (2006) for instance, notes “the Booker Prize’s uncanny ability to reflect the broader social, political and economic changes that have taken place in Britain” (140) in the past decades. It is no accident therefore that globally-spanning bestsellers such as the economically lucrative Harry Potter series, manage to “meld an old literary England—with touches of a new multicultural Britain” (Abravanel 2012: 162). The global phenomenon of the Harry Potter series, argues Abravanel (2012), is a consequence of an act of “the supreme marketing power” (162)—a carefully packaged cultural phenomenon successfully managing to thematicize “the power of literature and language” (162).

Evidence presented in this book points to a strengthening, rather than weakening, of market flows which remain staunchly unidirectional rather than bi-directional in both source and destination. As will be seen in the chapters that follow, the endorsement of locally appropriated literary talent in the form of prize consecration—an increasingly common scenario, and one even prompting some to conclude that this is evidence of “the rise of Indian writers in English in the western literary scene” (Narayanan 2012: 77), and proof perhaps of two-way cultural flows—needs reconsideration. So, while some see such shifts as canon-forming game-changers, and perhaps even a signal of “dramatic shifts in Western academia” (77) towards an appropriation of ‘peripheral’ literature, and consequently, prideful affiliation, Narayanan (2012) reports that manifestations of such ‘pride’ evidenced in nationalistic sentiments such as “Indians are now “global” players” (77) remain misplaced. The actual reality she notes occludes how such cultural appropriation plays into the larger economy of prestige. As we see in the chapters which follow, the prize industry in particular, functions via euphemization strategies designed to obscure the locatedness of such cultural acts of appropriation (Norris 2006).

So, what are the features of this post-global world? Recent accounts in global politics provide some defining features. Well-known journalist, Fareed Zakaria (2008) has characterized some of the global shifts of the current decade in particular, using metaphorizations of decline. He alludes to a “Post-American World” (1) witnessing what he characterizes to be a challenge to the power of the west in the form of “The Rise of the Rest,” (1) and evidenced in “newly developed, emerging economic powers” (Ghattas 2013: 149)—the so-called BRICS nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Within such a context, it is easy to see why there would be such an overt interest in showcasing ‘key’ languages—what many in government like to label ‘critical’ languages.

We are told for example in her first state visit to China, “Clinton charmed her impassive hosts with her knowledge of Chinese proverbs” (Ghattas 2013: 49). Aiming to impress counterpart diplomats she is reported to have signaled unity in the form of: “When you are in a common boat, you need to cross the river peacefully together.” (49) This form of “proverb diplomacy” notes Ghattas (2013), “would become a constant in Clinton’s exchange with China” (49). American foreign policy has recently seen a “pivot” to Asia (Clinton 2014). This showcasing of languages then should come as no surprise, and reflects similar deployments of multilingualism in the service of marketable literature in the post-global era.

Another well-known example of such state-managed linguistic exhibitionism comes in one of Hillary Clinton’s first encounters with her Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov. In her biographical account of the events, Clinton (2014) recounts the events as an example of the importance of humor in foreign diplomacy efforts. The exact story is that she had her staff design a button with the ‘right’ Russian word, namely “reset,” (232) emblazoned on the top as a good-humored gift. This, in a bid to signal a fresh diplomatic start with Russia during her tenure as Secretary of State. She recounts what happened when she presented the gift to Lavrov:

I presented him with a small green box, complete with a ribbon. While the cameras snapped away, I opened it and pulled out a bright red button. […] It was labeled with the Russian word peregruzka. We both laughed and pushed the button together. “We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?” I asked. The Foreign Minister took a closer look. The other Americans in the room, especially the Russian-speaking ones who had chosen the word, held their breath. “You got it wrong,” he said. Was this light moment about to become an international incident? I just kept laughing. Then so did Lavrov, and everyone relaxed. “It should be perezagruzka,” he explained. “This means overcharged.” “Well,” I responded, “we won’t let you do that to us, I promise.” (232)

For her, this diplomatic blunder was but a linguistic gaffe—“a spelling error” (232)—and, as she eagerly underscores, not exactly “the finest hour for American linguistic skills” (232). Why such an attempt to showcase languages? This, in spite of knowing that “Lavrov, perpetually tanned and well-tailored, spoke fluent English” (231)? Why such an attempt to spotlight the materiality of multilingualism, and that too in such a public space? This episode, which while used by the press as yet another instance of American incompetence in languages, failed yet again to comprehend the multilingual moment being exemplified, indeed, the careful, a priori and thoroughly deliberative linguistic planning at work in such “21st century statecraft” (Clinton 2014: 545).

These seemingly unrelated linguistic encounters exemplify at the state level, linguistic strategies similarly being iterated in the creative economy, but at a more subterranean level—strategies in which the visible prominence of multilingual ‘languaging’ takes center-stage. We see here the workings of what Nye (2011) labels the unfurling of smart power, a strategic combination of soft power and hard power, and what Clinton (2014) formulizes as “Engagement and pressure” (434)—two words which undergird Obama foreign-policy, particularly in post-globalist cultural manufacture in the 21st century.

In a secret meeting held by BRIC nations during a climate change conference in Copenhagen which Clinton and Obama “crash”—or in her words “forced our way into”—she is eager to note that as she looked across the table, at “the leaders of India, Brazil and South Africa” (499), she comes to two realizations: namely, that these countries “represented about 40 percent of the world’s population” (499), and secondly, that an age-old global chasm was slowly disappearing—indeed, that a somewhat dated and prior given binarism—“the division between developed and developing countries” (500) was dissolving.

A post-global turn?

With the election of Barack Obama, the first African-American president in the United States many portended “the rise of a post-racial period in American history” (Remnick 2010: 551). In an article on the rise of pop-music global icon, Pharrell, pop-journalist, Friedman (2015) tails the artist for a whole day. This timely ethnographic project takes the writer to the clothing store, Uniqlo, an experience prompting him to confess, “You could find a worse metaphor for Pharrell than Uniqlo. Post-racial, post-gender, kind of post-national” (53, 104). Pharrell typifies in the pop-music world, a cultural trending of sorts, a hyper-synthesis of market and multilingualism in the manufacture of ‘culture’ packaged for distribution to the entire ‘globe.’ It might be underscored that Pharrell opened his 2015 Grammy performance of the world-wide, list-topper “Happy” with a multilingual mélange. Once again, the materiality of multilingualism itself (Pandey 2014a) was on jumbotronic display—linguistic exhibitionism at its finest—not as state-managed craft, but as cultural commerce. More on this in the concluding chapter.

In his detailed analysis of the global linguistic flows of hip-hop culture, Alim (2009) argues for the need for “posttheories” to account for “particular moments of language use” (10)—a dynamicity of language use requiring newer, ethnographic, and synchronic, rather than prior, static and diachronic-based sociolinguistic accounts (Blommaert 2013). Such linguistic workings Alim (2009) argues, “poststructuralist and postmodernist” (10) accounts remain wholly deficient in explaining especially when it comes to accounting for current global-local cultural flows. We are in a period of “posteverything” (10) he declares. He might be right. Mendes (2012) too opens her book on Salman Rushdie by making a case for a “post-text based turn” (5)—what she calls a “postlinguistic, postsemiotic rediscovery of the picture as a complex interplay between visuality, apparatus, institutions, discourse, bodies, and figurality” (4). This, after Yildiz (2012) makes the case for a post-monolingual world.

In such a post-global world then, we encounter the diversity of visible forms of 21st century multilingualism increasingly being re-subverted to a monolingual mononormativity. Ultimately then, the seemingly contradictory forces of globalization have unleashed, or rather, “enabled a contestory visibility of multilingualism” (Yildiz 2012: 2). What do we mean by this? Particularly in seemingly deterritorialized supranational zones, then, we are increasingly witnessing “the existence of multilingual practices and [my emphasis] the continued force of the monolingual paradigm” (Ibid.: 6). One distinguishing feature of such a monolingual habitus (Gogolin 1994) is an increasing global imperative in literary forms specifically, and in other cultural creations generally, of a pressure towards transparency and equivalency. Singh (2014) labels this to be “the global tyranny of the transparent and the recognizable” (93).

So, as in the case of the Shanghai Expo, while the aurality of multilingualism, and its seeming opacity is indeed apparent, maybe even centrally spotlighted, never far away is another much louder aural signal—the familiarizing urge for transparency—encoded in English—and urging for equivalency. Is momentary multilingualism—linguistic exhibitionism—then the new face of linguistic taylorization in post-globalist trajectories towards supra-territorialized cultural expansion?

To understand the workings of multilingualism in the era of post-globalism then requires an understanding of the tenets of globalization of which “market monopolization” (Naglieri 2010: 167), “super-profitability” (159), “consolidation” (167), “ubiquity” (161), “standardization” (161), and, most importantly, “dominance” become not merely keywordings (Block, Gray, and Holborow 2012), but central processes in the manufacturing and remanufacturing of old and new asymmetries respectively. Naglieri (2010) defines globalization as “the spreading and modification of culture throughout the global system […] within an economic system indistinguishable from culture” (161). Even more intriguing is the manner in which this “coalescence” (162) of the social-cultural-political intertwine—“much like a braid” (161).

To lend credence to such a framework, we examine two interrelated areas of pertinence namely, the industry of prize-winning and the concomitant canonization of literature. These macro-social analyses-afford a glimpse into how pressures towards standardization, uniformity, taylorization—indeed monolingualism—rather than linguistic plurality, diversity—indeed, multilingualism—are in turn microlinguistically inscribed as ‘visible’ forms of linguistic exhibitionism in the creative economy of marketable fiction.

To understand why singularity rather than plurality is the preferred norm, one needs perhaps to understand some of the contextual tenets of a post-global society—a world after the so-called ‘leveling’ forces of connectedness—what Yildiz (2012) describes as an era of “blurred boundaries, crossed loyalties and unrooted languages” (8) have occurred, and what some have even optimistically characterized as the era of “deterritorialized” uses of language (Martin 2011: 167). One of the primary tenets of the post-globalist world, to borrow one of its very aphorisms, is that the world is not flat.

In line with such time-centric orientations, this book makes the case for a post-global turn in current affairs. An immediately apparent feature of this post-global turn of affairs is the hyper-interdependency between formally constituted nation-states. In this matrix of interconnectedness “global challenges” (Clinton 2014: 493), span a spectrum of issues including but not limited to: “pandemic diseases, financial contagion, international terrorism […] and climate change” (Ibid. 493). Ag...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Languages in Literature
• 1 The Place of Languages in the Space of Post-Globalism: Bilingualism, Bullhorns, and Blunders
• 2 Award-Cultures in the Era of Post-Globalization: Prize-Winning in a ‘Flat’-World
• 3 In-‘Visible’ Multilingualness: Linguistic Exhibitionism in the Post-Global Turn
• 4 Outsourcing English: Liberty, Linguistic Lust, and Loathing in Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger
• 5 Curried English: Flawed Fluency, Markedness, and Diglossia in Brick Lane
• 6 Language Liquidation versus Language Appropriation: Tracing the Trajectory of Linguistic Death and Unease in Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
• 7 Linguistic Insecurity and Linguistic Imperialism: Resuscitating Renaissance ‘Re-Linguiscism’ in Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence
• Conclusion: What Is Linguistic Exhibitionism Good For?
• References
• Index