Joseph Conrad's Multilingualism

What is it about?

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) was a Polish-born novelist writing in English. Polish was his first language (mother tongue); he started to learn French when he was five, and English when he was over twenty-one years of age. Language had special significance for him. It was a means of communication and self-expression, without which he would not have become one of the greatest writers. This analysis presents the impact of the three languages on Conrad’s private adult life and his writing. It discusses the circumstances and ways of acquiring consecutive languages, motivation accompanying language acquisition, and the results of his multilingualism, such as fluency, range and quality of vocabulary, grammatical correctness, and pronunciation in English. As for his artistic output, writing in a foreign tongue was a source of constant stress as well as various kinds of mistakes one can find in his works, often caused by interferences or (more or less conscious) calques both from Polish and French, but also creative use of the English language in which he introduced untypical collocations and created striking metaphors, often based on forms taken over from other languages he knew.

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Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The analysis shows different linguistic identities of Joseph Conrad, especially his two professional identities, first as a sailor, and then as a writer in English.

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