An Outsider View / À vue d’aigle: Negotiating Linguistic Spaces in Multilingual Europe

Abstract

Written as an autoethnographic travel journal, this critical essay interrogates spaces of linguistic performance and subjectivity with/in discrete, arbitrary language contexts in four (mostly) European countries. Drawing on journal entries, academic conference discourses and quotidian experiences of and through language, the author queries the negotiation of linguistic spaces on the micro, meso and macro levels, in Europe and, to a lesser extent, in Canada. Using poetries, language fragments and codeswitching, its representation enacts tensions of the spaces it seeks to critique.

Cuvinte-cheie: performanță, subiectivitate, limbă, context, experiență, spațiu, nivel

REZUMAT

Prezentat ca note de călătorie, acest eseu autoetnografic explorează discret şi arbitrar, de pe poziţii de spaţiu, performanţele linguale, subiectivitatea şi contextele glotice din, cel mult, patru state europene. Referindu-se la evenimente cotidiene, discuţii academice în cadrul conferinţei şi experienţe linguale de zi cu zi, autoarea cercetează relaţia spaţiilor glotice (europene, în primul rând, dar, prin extensiune, şi a celor canadiene) din perspectiva nivelelor micro-, meso- şi macro-. Având la bază poeme integrale şi corpusuri fragmentare, studiul pune în valoare aspectele acestor spaţii glotice.

LANGUAGES OF PUBLICATION

English and French

UDC: 811.135.1`242

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Received: December 17, 2008 | Reviewed: February 2, 2009 | Accepted for publication: March 2, 2009

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