Trauma und Mehrsprachigkeit in Gesellschaft und Literatur

Abstract

Language is neither a neutral nor an objective medium. The context of traumatisation immediately makes clear that languages are strongly connected to people’s emotional and psychological experiences. Multilingualism can help to regulate the emotional distance to stressful and traumatic experiences. At the same time, linguistic regimes, for example in the context of prestigious national languages and minority languages without prestige, have a direct impact on the psyche and self-esteem of individuals and groups. This article illustrates language ideologies in Carinthia/Koroska, places theories from psychotraumatology in the context of contemporary multilingual literature and (un)lived social multilingualism and concludes with perspectives on flight, asylum, and migration in the context of necessary sensitivity to multilingualism.