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Nation and the Mother Tongue(s)

Session 5 - Sunday 8:00-9:30am
Henry Hall 202
Presiding Officer: 
Regina Yung Lee
  1. Al-Andalus and Polylingualism in Amin Maalouf’s Léon l’Africain. Eleonore Veillet, Johns Hopkins University

    Focusing on polylingualism in Amin Maalouf’s novel Léon l’Africain(1986), this paper examines how postcolonial interpretations of al-Andalus (Medieval Iberia) resist notions of nationalism involving the codification of national languages, territorial (re)conquest and mutually exclusive identity labels.

  2. A Nation Divided: Language and Identity. Mary-Angela Willis, Notre Dame University, Louaize, Lebanon

    Lebanese literature is represented by texts written in Arabic as well as other languages. The rejection of the mother tongue is considered by many as a critique of the social, political, gender, and religious structures of a society that have contributed to gaping divisions among its citizens and dividing the nation.

  3. Algerian White: Nation, Narration and the War of Mother-Tongues. Diviani Chaudhuri, Binghamton University, SUNY

    Examines the critique of discourses of linguistic nationalism in Assia Djebar's Algerian White and interrogates the extraterritorial discursive space of grief that she attempts to create as a possible resolution to the "war of languages" (between French, Arabic and Berber) engendered by Algeria's heteroglot situation.

  4. An Investigation of Attitudes towards the Different Varieties of Spoken English in a Multi-lingual Environment. Hamad Aldosari, King Khalid University

    Students listened to readings by a Standard British English native speaker and a Standard Indian English speaker. Participants rated each speaker's perceived accentedness and comprehensibility. Results confirm that speaker accent influences listener perceptions.

Session Type: 
Special Session
Session Status: 
Closed