Does reading and enjoying multilingual literature require you to know other languages?

What is it about?

On what conditions can we say that multilingual texts (i.e., texts that use and foreground several languages) create multilingual readers? Three scenarios are illustrated with two examples each. So-called ‘shared multilingualism’ implies bilingual competence (and excludes monolingual readers) by juxtaposing languages with little overlap. Other texts exhibit more than one language yet construct a monolingual reader, while others still reward bilingual competence and at the same time accommodate monolingual incompetence.

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Photo by Eliott Reyna on Unsplash

Photo by Eliott Reyna on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Comparatively speaking, multilingual texts and multilingual writers have received much more attention than the relationship between texts foregrounding several languages and their readers, whether those be real or intended, targeted explicitly or only programmed implicitly. This contribution seeks to fill this gap concerning the place and role of readers in multilingual studies. At the same time, it tries to navigate between two simplifications: the idea that one has to know all languages that are put on display in a given work of literature and its opposite, the idea that no such knowledge is required at all to enjoy reading.