3 Multilingualism

Defining Multilingualism

Multilingualism is the ability to use different languages or dialects in our everyday lives. While American academic writing conventions privilege English, most of us tend to either not use these conventions outside the academic essay or use a variety of different languages when communicating with each other. The linguistic choices that we make depend on our social, cultural, racial, and gender backgrounds.

Code Meshing

Code meshing is a socio-linguistic concept that can fall under the broader heading of multilingualism. This means the ability to move between different linguistic and grammatical systems, often in the course of a single conversation.

What do you notice about the examples? Examples 1 and 2 mix different languages, while example 3 uses all English words, but the grammatical syntax is that of Indian English which mixes English with Indic languages such as Bengali and Hindi. People will often code switch or code mesh to address a particular audience, to discuss a specific topic, to express one’s group identity, or to fill a lexical gap. Code meshing is performed by multilingual speakers and writers, but also by those who switch between dialects and vernaculars within the same language. In this linked video, Vershawn Ashanti Young, a leading scholar of African American English and code meshing, describes the concept and the power dynamics involved in moving between languages (watch from the 51 minute mark till 1 hour 1 minute mark).

Language and Power

We write and speak as social individuals engaging with specific contexts and with particular ends in mind. We bring the various linguistic systems that we embody to our language performances. However, this does not mean that all languages and dialects are given the same privilege at all times. We are mostly conditioned to think that certain languages are more “proper” or “better” than others, and hence we tend towards them in some social settings such as in the classroom, at interviews, and in jobs. What might the social settings mentioned here have in common?

Standard American English (SAE), for example, is perceived to be the normative way of speaking and writing in formal settings because it is considered “neutral.” However, remember that this perception, too, is a social construct. This means that the idea of what is standard or neutral is not a naturally occurring phenomenon, but rather a result of decisions made by groups in power choosing to impose their form of language as the norm.

Embodied Writing

These aspects of multilingualism reveal written communication to be the product of an embodied individual. We bring our various linguistic experiences, affinity groups, voices, and identities to our writing. Some of these we bring as conscious choices, while others show up subconsciously, or even in spite of our intentions. For our purposes, it is important to keep in mind that we all inhabit multiple languages and linguistic systems. We write as bodies living in the physical world, and our writing reflects this reality.