Oldal 76 [76]
LITERARY CODE-SWITCHING
And further:
The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message
best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of
international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning an English which
is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience."
In Achebe’s rather normative statement lies the core to non-native English
writing: By using the world’s most spoken language as the matrix language for
one’s expression while remaining aware of one’s own multiplicity and unique
experiences that likely divert from those of native English speakers (or other
communities), one can use this global language as a catalyst and multiplicator
for one’s message(s), thoughts, ideas. The goal is neither to mimic the target
language nor to master it perfectly; the intention is to ‘do something with’ the
language, to transform it in a lexical, orthographic, semantic, morphologic,
and syntactic way,”’ so that it becomes renewed in a sense of becoming true to
one’s own literary voice.
CORPUS AND METHOD
For the scope of this paper, my analysis is limited to creative nonfiction essays
and poems by ESL writers which have appeared in the online literary magazine
Tint Journal. Since its inaugural issue in 2019, the magazine has exclusively
published prose and poetry by writers who write—possibly among other lan¬
guages—in English as their second language. Among these writers, a voluntary
survey has been conducted via an online form with the aim of narrowing the
field down to those who (1) have experienced one or more processes of migra¬
tion, and (2) switch to their first language at least once in their text(s). Of those
who filled in the survey, ten fulfilled the criteria to fit (1) and (2), predomi¬
nantly nonfiction writers and poets.
In order to gain an insight into the authors’ migration experiences, they
were asked to indicate in how many countries they had lived" and to share
more details on their migration backgrounds.” They were also asked whether
they had left their country of birth voluntarily or involuntarily, and whether
they had ever been a refugee. Concerning their language backgrounds, they
were asked to give their first language(s) and their second language(s) and
16 Achebe: English, 29.
7 Ottmar Ette: Writing-Between-Worlds. TransArea Studies and the Literatures-without-a-fi¬
xed-A bode, trans. V. M. Kutzinski, Berlin—Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2016, 185.
8 Used definition for “living”: resided in a country for at least one year.
5 The survey included questions such as, “Please briefly describe your migration journey (in
which countries have you lived and for how long)?” and “For which reason(s) did you leave
your country of birth?”
+ 74 +