Translanguaging and multilanguaging communicative practices of an idealized multilingual person (on the material of the Russian translation of the first chapter of U. Eco’s novel “Baudolino”)

Abstract

Introduction. Currently, the scientific and practical concept of translanguaging is gaining influence. It can be considered as an attempt to generalize previous terminological sets and theoretical developments regarding the multilingual people’s communicative practices of mixing several languages when generating oral or written speech. Such practices, primarily in the form of translanguaging, but also in the form of multilanguaging, are studied mainly in relation to mastering nonnative and foreign languages in the educational process. At the same time, there is both the experience and opportunities to expand this coverage to literary and artistic works.Materials and Methods. The research material, the first chapter of U. Eco’s novel “Baudolino”, has its own specificity. It is a text written in an unconventional form on behalf of a multilingual who is endowed, according to the author’s plan, with the ability to immediately master any language. This text thus becomes a sample of direct speech of an idealized multilingual person that could correlate with translingual and multilingual speech of real individuals. For the needs of the research, quasisyntactic units (phrases) in which translanguaging and multilanguaging communicative practices are implemented were singled out from the text of the chapter, and their analysis was carried out on a number of grounds, such as a lexico-grammatical class, a lexico-semantic category and a communicative situation.Analysis. According to the data obtained, the dominant form of mixing languages in the text is translanguaging. Foreign language inclusions predominantly play the role of a noun or represent a phraseological unit. They are used in most cases as names of persons or evaluative words, actualized in communicative situations of retelling the speech of native speakers of another language, describing notions of a different reality, addressing a native speaker of a different language, and following a speech or text pattern.Results. The results of the analysis of translanguaging and multilanguaging communicative practices of an idealized multilingual person correlate with results of previous studies of the same practices of real individuals, similarities and differences between the practices are determined.

Keywords

• translanguaging
• translingualism
• multilanguaging
• communicative practice
• fiction