Annalisa Bonomo ‘Kore’ University of Enna “English and the ‘Multilingual Turn’.”
ABSTRACT
What if concepts like “liquid society” and the “complexity of the planetary era” were taken into account in the description of multilingualism and other language phenomena? 1 There is a growing need for possible answers to questions like this but the available evidence is that the term “multilingualism” involves different implicit and explicit language policies, urging pressures and resistances especially in reference to the spread of English and its dominant relationships with other national languages. These are the starting points of this work which considers the social value of communication as the basis of multilingualism and of the evolution of language systems. Thus, the data presented will show English in the middle of the double “listening” of cultural mediation and the imperfect “magnifying” glass of translation, both enforced powers of the so‑called “multilingual turn”.