The Invention of Monolingualism

Product Description

The Invention of Monolingualism harnesses literary studies, applied linguisitics, translation studies, and cultural studies to offer a groundbreaking investigation of monolingualism. After briefly describing what "monolingual” means in scholarship and public discourse, and the pejorative effects this common use may have on non-elite and cosmopolitan populations alike, David Gramling sets out to discover a new conception of monolingualism. Along the way, he explores how writers―Turkish, Latin-American, German, and English-language―have in recent decades confronted monolingualism in their texts, and how they have critiqued the World Literature industry’s increasing hunger for “translatable” novels.

Review

"An extraordinary and illuminating book, spanning literary and cultural studies, applied linguistics, social and cultural theory, and more. Original, brilliantly presented, provocative, and extremely timely, The Invention of Monolingualism is likely to be a blockbuster with its far sighted argument―a little in the vein of Michel Foucault's The Order of Things in terms of scope and boldness. It will be of great interest to not only literary and cultural studies readers, but also to applied linguists and social scientists as well." - Claire Kramsch, Professor of German and Education, University of California, Berkeley, USA

"Every now and then a book comes along which is simply compelling with its breadth and depth of argument, its dazzling examples and its sheer boldness of vision. This is one of the most important books to be written on languages, monolingualism and multilingualism I have read. It will make you think about monolingualism and about languages in quite new ways." - Alison Phipps, Professor of Languages and Intercultural Studies, University of Glasgow, UK

About the Author

David Gramling is Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of German Studies at the University of Arizona, USA. His research focuses on the intersections of social multilingualism, literary translation, mass migration, queer studies, nationalism, and critical theory. With Deniz Göktürk, Anton Kaes, and Andreas Langenohl, he is co-editor of two major sourcebooks on migration and multiculturalism in Germany since 1955: Germany in Transit (2007) and Transit Deutschland (2011). He is also a working literary translator, and a member of the American Literary Translators' Association.