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A Ghost in the Language
from Part II - From the Mother Tongue to the Second Mother Tongue
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 June 2022
A writer, film director, photographer, and artist, the author’s reflection comprises the opening pages of an essay and an autobiographical fragment presenting his mixed-origin multilingual family. The short final section, ‘Border Tax’, extracted from the same essay, reflects on power relations strategies and the high economic and political stakes of multilingual verbal interaction. The economic metaphor of a border tax to convey the idea that an accent is the price to be paid for speaking a foreign language is striking as a reminder of the hybrid character of language: linguistic transparency and purity, and sharply delimited bilingualism, are delusions. Accents are described as markers of belonging; they are shown to convey fine nuances of identity, to carry with them distant or lost worlds. In contrast with the usual perception of accent as something to be erased, the author prizes accent as a remnant of the past in the present, or of far-off places in the here and now. The price to be paid to speak a second language well can be a high one, and our sights should not be set too high for our students, as we cannot know how high the price will be for them.
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