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Gramling, David. The Invention of Monolingualism, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 53, Issue 3, July 2017, Page 374, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqx024
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Monolingualism is here understood not in a negative or deficient way, but rather as an idea that anything can be expressed in any one specific language and that this practice is not a form of nationalism. The book considers four fields in its approach to discussing monolingualism: applied linguistics, literary studies, comparative world literature, and citizenship studies. Consequently, the four chapters focus on each field in more detail and are bookended by an Introduction and an Afterword. The Introduction considers scholarly approaches to the topic, whereas the use of the word ‘monolingualism’ outside the academic setting is examined in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 draws an analogy to Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier: through the equal temperament in the tuning of pianos, we find exchangeability to other keys and instruments. Similarly, a language must be transposable to other languages today. Thereafter, literary works are discussed that relate in one way or another to monolingualism, either in that they explicitly discuss monolingualism or in that the authors are multilingual but write in only one language. In Chapter 3, the focus is extended to world literature. Books nowadays must have ‘world-readiness’ (p. 141), i.e. they must be written in a way that allows easy translation, otherwise they will not get the attention of major trade publishers. Chapter 4 turns to civic-political aspects. It is stressed that prospective citizens today must be competent in the nation’s language, as citizenship is tied to language competence and no longer to blood-rights or territory. In sum, the book is highly up-to-date with regard to the discourses and difficulties we face currently concerning migrants and refugees, security issues due to 9/11 and terrorism, language and cultural competence (courses in cultural values) as a prerequisite for citizenship, language policy in the EU, the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) and language learning in general, the German-only language policy in schools, translation and translation technologies. Being multilingual is still important we find, and as (European) citizens we are encouraged to be multilingual, but first of all we must demonstrate our monolingual competence.
