Exophony Explained

Exophony is the practice of (normally creative) writing in a language that is not one's mother tongue.[1] While the practice is age-old, the term is relatively new: French linguists such as Louis-Jean Calvet discussed "littérature exophone" since 1979,[2] [3] while the German equivalent, Exophonie, was used within the field of literary and cultural studies by Susan Arndt, Dirk Naguschewski and Robert Stockhammer in 2007.[4] In English, Chantal Wright proposed its more widespread use in 2008,[5] wrote a paper on it in 2010,[6] and went on to teach a course at the University of Warwick in 2016/7.[7]

Some exophonic authors may be bilingual or multilingual from their childhood years, even polyglots, while others may write in an acquired language. In some cases the second language is acquired early in life, for example through immigration, and it is not always clear whether the writer should strictly be classed a non-native speaker. However, by no means all bilingual/multilingual writers are exophonic: for example, J. M. Coetzee has commented that despite being bilingual in English and Afrikaans and having "a fairly wide-ranging acquaintance with Spanish" he has "absolutely no competence as a writer" in that language, and even his "command of English, spoken and written, feels like the kind of command a foreigner might have”.[8] He further says "the versions that my translators produce are in no way inferior to the original” and even "the Spanish translation of 'El Polaco' reflects [my] intentions more clearly than the original English text does", adding that he likes being “read in a language in which I feel myself to be a somewhat more humorous writer than in the original”.[9]

In other cases, the language is acquired through exile or migration: "Exophonic writing, the phenomenon of writing literature in a second language, is increasing across Europe due to labour migration".[10]

It is one form of transnational literature, although the latter also encompasses writing that crosses national stylistic or cultural boundaries without being written in another language. "Extraterritoriality and exophony are indeed important notions, not only for comparative literature but in general for the question of the status of the literary text [of] the 21st century".[11]

It also overlaps with translingualism, and translingualist writer is one of many terms that has been coined to describe the phenomenon. Related concepts in English include transculturalism/transculturation, axial writing, postnationalism and postcolonialism, and in German, Exophonie, Anders-Sprachigkeit,[12] Interkulturelle Literatur ('intercultural literature'), Gastarbeiterliteratur ('guest worker literature'), Ausländerliteratur ('foreigner literature') and Migrantenliteratur ('migrant literature').[13] In Japanese the term used is 越境文学 (ekkyō-bungaku, lit. border-crossing literature). The scholar Yuri Kumagai wrote that it "is said to shatter the myth of unique difficulty of Japanese, and bring new perspectives and creative power into the language", and that it can challenge "categories that mark what/who is inside and outside".[14]

Motivations for becoming an exophonic writer may be manifold: to make a political statement (for example, Yoko Tawada attempted "to produce exophony both in her mother tongue [Japanese] and her acquired tongue [German] ... to dismantle ... the ultranationalistic concept of a 'beautiful' Japanese language"),[15] to adopt/avoid stylistic elements of particular languages ("for Tawada, a native speaker of a language whose grammar makes no distinctions of gender, case, definite and indefinite articles, or singular and plural ... each Western word, phrase or idiom becomes a conundrum",[16] "I grope for some unlikely expression in my native language, trying to find the proper equivalence in translation for an English word or phrase"),[17] to evade the risk of being lost in translation, or to gain a wider readership – translated literature in the UK and US accounts for only a small percentage of sales, so "it makes commercial sense".[18] When asked why he didn’t write in his native language, Joseph Conrad replied, "I value too much our beautiful Polish literature to introduce into it my worthless twaddle. But for Englishmen my capacities are just sufficient."[19] It may defy definition: when Chika Unigwe was asked whether her writing felt Belgian or Nigerian, she said it "depended on the time of day ... some stories needed to be written in English, whereas others could only be told in Dutch".[20] Argentinian podcaster and author Zoe Gomez Cassardo has commented that in addition to the reasons above, she writes in English because she doesn't know "which Spanish" to write in, the number of variants and lack of standardization conversely making her mother tongue a harder choice.[21]

Some exophonic authors are also translators, including (in some cases) of their own works.[22] The phenomenon of translating into a second language - including non-literary works - is generally referred to as "L2 translation", and there was once "strong resistance to it on the grounds of it being perceived as unprofessional and inherently deficient […] although the academic dispute about [its] validity seems decidedly milder now".[23]

Conversely, translation of exophonic works can present problems due to the "defamiliarisation of the new language through stylistic innovation".[24]

Recognition

Many exophonic authors have won recognition for their writing via top literary awards, as well as a variety of national honours and distinctions. The was specifically awarded to novels in French by 'non-first language' authors, as was the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize for non-native German works. Even awards that have been historically limited to native speakers for decades, such as the Akutagawa Prize, have now begun to be awarded to non-natives and even non-nationals.[25]

Some examples (by no means exhaustive):

See also

Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Exophony or Writing Beyond the Mother Tongue. warwick.ac.uk. University of Warwick Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies. 28 February 2017.
  2. Book: Calvet . Louis-Jean . Langue, corps, société . 1979 . 29 July 2023 . Payot . 9782228122702 . fr . une littérature endophone et une littérature exophone.
  3. L'Enseignement des littératures africaines à l'université: colloque . L'enseignement des littératures africaines à l'université . 1981 . Université Marien Ngouabi, Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines . fr.
  4. Book: Arndt. Susan. Naguschewski. Dirk. Stockhammer. Robert. Exophonie: Anders-Sprachigkeit (in) der Literatur [Exophony. Other-languagedness in/of literature]]. April 2007. Kulturverlag Kadmos. Berlin. 978-3-86599-024-2. German.
  5. Wright . Chantal . Writing in the 'Grey Zone': Exophonic Literature in Contemporary Germany . German as a Foreign Language . March 2008 . 30 July 2023 . New Brunswick . 54498181 . 1470-9570.
  6. Wright . Chantal . Exophony and literary translation . Target . 6 July 2010 . 22 . 1 . 22–39 . 10.1075/target.22.1.03wri . 31 July 2023 . 0924-1884. free .
  7. Web site: EN373 - Exophony or Writing Beyond the Mother Tongue . warwick.ac.uk . 31 July 2023.
  8. News: Harbour . Berna González . J. M. Coetzee: 'After many years of practice, I write good English sentences' . 29 July 2023 . EL PAÍS English . 13 September 2022 . en-us.
  9. Marshall . Colin . J. M. Coetzee's War Against Global English . 29 July 2023 . The New Yorker . 8 December 2022.
  10. Pugliese. Rosella. Exophonic Writing: a New Paradigm in Translation. Academic Exchange Quarterly. 2012. 16. 1. 161–166. 28 February 2017.
  11. Book: Zach. Matthias. Lassalle. Didier. Weissmann. Dirk. Ex(tra)territorial: Reassessing Territory in Literature, Culture and Languages. January 2014. Editions Rodopi BV. Amsterdam – New York. 978-90-420-3866-0. 217–230. https://brill.com/display/book/9789401211086/B9789401211086-s015.xml. 26 December 2023. Extraterritoriality, Exophony and the Literary Text.
  12. Book: Arndt. Susan. Naguschewski. Dirk. Stockhammer. Robert. Exophonie : Anders-Sprachigkeit (in) der Literatur [Exophony. Other-languagedness in/of literature]]. April 2007. Kadmos. Berlin. 978-3-86599-024-2. 28 February 2017. German.
  13. Wright. Chantal. Writing in the 'Grey Zone': Exophonic Literature in Contemporary Germany. German as a Foreign Language. 2008. 2008. 3. 26–42. 28 February 2017.
  14. Book: Kumagai . Yuri . The Global Education Effect and Japan . 2020 . Routledge . 978-0-429-29206-4 . 29 July 2023 . Ekkyō bungaku as crossing the border of language: Implications for learners of Japanese. 214–234 . 10.4324/9780429292064-13 . 216319618 .
  15. Book: Tachibana. Reiko. Slaymaker. Doug. Yoko Tawada: Voices from Everywhere. 30 September 2007. Lexington Books. 978-0-7391-2272-3. 153–168. https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0739162802. 28 February 2017. Tawada Yoko's Quest for Exophony: Japan and Germany.
  16. Perloff. Marjorie. Language in migration: multilingualism and exophonic writing in the new poetics. Textual Practice. August 2010. 24. 4. 725–748. 10.1080/0950236X.2010.499660. 144820478.
  17. Book: Matsumoto. Kazuhito. Haseltine. Patricia. Ma. Sheng-Mei. Doing English in Asia: Global Literature and Culture. 13 April 2016. Lexington Books. 978-0-7391-9200-9. 17–28. https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780739192016/Doing-English-in-Asia-Global-Literature-and-Culture. 28 February 2017. "Exophony" in the Midst of the Mother Tongue.
  18. Web site: Writing In A Foreign Tongue: Translation And The Commercial Sense Of Exophony.
    1. AmReading
    . 28 February 2017. 18 October 2016.
  19. News: Mikanowski . Jacob . Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet . 26 December 2023 . The Guardian . 27 July 2018.
  20. Bekers . Elisabeth . "Bearing Gifts of Words": Multilingualism in the Fiction of Flemish-Nigerian Writer Chika Unigwe . Challenging the Myth of Monolingualism . 1 January 2014 . 117–131 . 29 July 2023 . Brill . 10.1163/9789401210980_011 . 9789401210980 . en.
  21. Zoe Gomez Cass . What's Exophonic Writing? . The Exophonic Writer . 20 July 2023 . 26 December 2023.
  22. Web site: SAÏDEH PAKRAVAN . Saïdeh Pakravan . 29 July 2023 . en . a number of my novels have been translated in French (several by myself).
  23. Giczela-Pastwa . Justyna . Developing phraseological competence in L2 legal translator trainees: a proposal of a data mining technique applied in translation from an LLD into ELF . The Interpreter and Translator Trainer . 3 April 2021 . 15 . 2 . 187–204 . 10.1080/1750399X.2020.1868177 . 234128769 . 31 July 2023 . en . 1750-399X.
  24. Wright. Chantal. Exophony and literary translation: What it means for the translator when a writer adopts a new language. Target: International Journal of Translation Studies. 30 June 2010. 22. 1. 22–39. 10.1075/target.22.1.03wri. free.
  25. News: Ha . Thu-Huong . Could the Akutagawa Prize get its first American winner? . 29 July 2023 . The Japan Times . 17 January 2023 . en . Non-native Japanese speaking recipients … have been relatively few: The first was Yang Yi, born in China, who won in 2008, and most recently, Li Kotomi of Taiwan won in 2021. Khezrnejat would be the first ever winner from the United States since the prize was launched in 1935..

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