Hard and Soft Multilingualism
Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: Based in analyses of the work of the Egyptian poet Ahmad Shawqi (1868-1932) and the Iraqi Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati (1926-1999), this essay questions the heuristic and historical stability of the category “multilingual,” and suggests that the last century saw the rise of “a globalization of soft monolingualism.” In particular, Noorani suggests that Arabic-language poetry in the 20th century underwent an assimilation toward international norms of poetic expression and nationalist messaging, and that modern and postmodern national language repertoires in general may indeed be the product of such streamlining of linguistic forms through colonization and nation-building.
Source: Critical multilingualism studies
DOI: 10.2458/cms.6701
Author: Yaseen Noorani
Institution: University of Arizona
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W1602997100