Anjali Pandey, Monolingualism and Linguistic Exhibitionism in Fiction. 2016. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-137-34035-1. 302 pp.: Reviewed by Noémie Nélis (University of Namur)

Abstract

Anjali Pandey’s Monolingualism and Linguistic Exhibitionism in Fiction investigates multilingualism in prize-winning English fiction, and explores the ways in which such fiction reflects and sustains global linguistic hierarchies and asymmetries. More specifically, it examines how literature ‘sells’ linguistic desire (p. 3) and how it seems to value one specific set of languages (Western languages, from the ‘centre’) over another (languages from the ‘periphery’). Pandey’s main goal is to demonstrate how ubiquitous media formats such as the global literary bestseller help to both construct and preserve the linguistic hegemony of, mostly, English, and how this is enabled by the enormous economic and symbolic value that literary prizes have quite recently acquired. Pandey’s approach is both macroand micro-oriented, focusing simultaneously on the socio-economics of production and on the internal formal and linguistic structure of the novels analysed. The framework adopted is inclusive of orientations in both linguistics and literary studies and is based, mostly, on literary sociolinguistics. Pandey’s first chapter offers a definition of the post-global world, a striking feature of which, she argues, is that, while multilingualism apparently enjoys an enhanced visibility, it is at the same time reduced to a standardized, monolingual norm: ‘other’ languages are soon made recognizable, equivalent, and transparent to monolingual speakers – most frequently, of English. Such momentary multilingualism Pandey calls ‘linguistic exhibitionism’ or ‘cosmetic multilingualism’ – features which, ultimately, only serve to spotlight the predominance and ubiquity of English across all domains of contemporary life. One such domain is that of literary creation, in which ‘foreign’ words are most often italicized, which makes their otherness visible – but only momentarily, and in a text that is otherwise in familiar, transparent English. Singularity, transparency and cultural equivalency, Pandey claims, are thus privileged over plurality, opacity and semiotic difference (p. 21). The hierarchies of value that such creations encode make perfect market sense, as they allow novels to appeal concurrently to both local and global audiences, the former attracted by an apparent authenticity and visibility, the latter by a trendy standardization and invisibility. In Chapter 2, Pandey details the workings of the business of literary production, focusing mostly on literary prize-consecration, canonicity, and academic