Oldal 76 [76]
OCR
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 languages—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 migration, 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), predominantly 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-fixed-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 +
