Multilingualism in fiction

Multilingualism is a fact that has shaped and is shaping the linguistic set-up of our societies. Fictional texts also have a long tradition of drawing on polyglottal means, a fact that has been studied in many different disciplines. This chapter sketches the different research traditions that explore the phenomenon. It touches especially on the techniques of incorporating different languages in the same fictional text, such as attempts at presenting authentic multilingual renditions as well as simplifying the multilingual situation in processes that draw on the potential of linguistic indexicality, translation and contextual embedding. The main focus lies on the potential pragmatic effects that the texts can achieve, such as scene creation/enrichment, character creation, the creation of humor, the display of social criticism, realism and ideological debates of difference and belonging. For a text to work it is rarely necessary to transpose multilingual reality entirely in all its complexity into a fictional text. However, the ways in which multilingualism does occur in fiction deserve to be studied in their own right.

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