The Geopolitics of Language and Literature Migration

Abstract

The notion of national languages, identifying a language with national unity, is a very modern idea, only about three centuries old and arising with the formation of modern nation-states. Before 1750, most people were bi- or multilingual, mixing whatever linguistic resources they needed in their lifeworlds. From 1780 to 1930 English speakers rocketed from twelve million to 200 million through language migration and settlements in Australasia, Canada, South Africa and the United States of America. The impact of colonial domination and empire through violence, exploitation, and resource extraction, and of the British industrial revolution from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, ensured that forms of transport (steamship, rail), communications (press, telegraph, telephone), science, and technology extended English’s reach as a global language. By the early twentieth century, American English emerged as the chief auxiliary language of world organizations (from the League of Nations to the UN) via massive investment in advertising, media, cinema, radio, tourism, Seaspeak and Police speak (international maritime and security communication networks), and the internet further extended the reach of specifically American English. The chapter traces the global circulation of English, driven by empire and neoliberal expansion, and its critique by decolonizing linguists, as contrasting views of English in the world, one instrumental and hegemonic, and the other more bottom up. I contrast colonial and neoliberal praxis with other models of civility, like hospitality, conviviality, decolonizing and devote the second half of the chapter to examples of black South African literature to illustrate the geopolitical afterlives of literary forms in translation/transnation.