New York: Fordham University Press.Thanks to the universal medium of modern technology, the world has become a smaller place as virtually any type of information can be found in a matter of seconds.īut as far as spoken and written communication is concerned, the world is still a patchwork of largely monolingual nations that speak and write only in one language.
Beyond the mother tongue: The postmonolingual condition. The language cringe of the native speaker. English and the discourses of colonialism (Politics of language). Journal of multicultural discourses 11(1), pp. Multilingualism research in Anglophone contexts as a discursive construction of multilingual practice. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 227: 119-137. Competing language ideologies about societal multilingualism among cross-border workers in Luxembourg. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. Monolingual cringe and ideologies of English: Anglophone migrants to Luxembourg draw their experiences in a multilingual society. why even language professionals ditch their focus on mistakes when using a "foreign language".objectification of "native English speakers" in a multilingual EU institution and.You can also check our further research on: If you are interested in this topic and want to find out more, Julia de Bres and Veronika Lovrits invite you to read their article: ‘Monolingual cringe and ideologies of English: Anglophone migrants to Luxembourg draw their experiences in a multilingual society’. In other words, performing ‘monolingual cringe’ both arises from the social dominance of English worldwide and serves to maintain it. In the end, it keeps use of English socially acceptable in contexts where other languages could be pushed for otherwise. Self-deprecating talk about the plight of monolingualism thus allows English-speaking migrants to excuse their lack of performance in local languages. Pre-emptively adopting a stance of linguistic inferiority can stave off potential reproaches for speaking English only, despite years of living abroad. It helps the migrants save face in situations where they might risk being denounced as lazy or incompetent by their multilingual peers. A disclaimer of shame or language incompetence can mitigate the unpleasant awareness that English privilege is personally unearned.
While these reactions may seem surprising among speakers of a highly valued global language, such monolingual cringe has clear functions in talk. If they could not use the local languages, they openly displayed linguistic insecurity, self-deprecation, and regret about living as monolinguals in a multilingual society. Their reflections on the privileges they enjoyed due to knowing English were regularly accompanied by shame, embarrassment and expressions of being ‘bad at languages’. An interesting ambiguity emerged in the results.ĭespite the high prestige of the English language and its significant presence in Luxembourg, the participants expressed unease, bitterness or downright distress when talking about using English as opposed to other languages. But how enjoyable is their position if they speak English only? Researchers at the University of Luxembourg spoke to twelve English-speaking migrants who have settled in Luxembourg to find out about this, analysing interview data and drawings of multilingual experiences. The number of languages spoken in public is even higher due to migration, with people of non-Luxembourgish nationality making up nearly half the population!Įnglish is widely used alongside other languages, so that people who have moved to Luxembourg from English-dominant countries don’t necessarily need to use other languages to get by.
It is a very multilingual place, with Luxembourgish, French, German, and German sign language as official languages. Luxembourg is a small European Union country with about 630,000 inhabitants. A recent phenomenon of interest is the habit of ‘monolingual cringe’ among English-speaking migrants in Luxembourg. Investigating the language experiences of migrants in multilingual societies like Luxembourg can shed light on principles of international encounters in global cities. Illustration by Julia de Bres research summary written by Veronika Lovrits, BM Luxembourg member and PhD researcher at the University of Luxembourg
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