Articles

The one, the many, and the Other: Representing multi- and mono-lingualism in post-9/11 verbal hygiene

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Abstract

This paper argues that 21^st-century Britain has seen an unprecedented rise in English-only sentiment, predicated on de-ethnicized post-multicultural discourses of “community cohesion.” Whereas 20^th-century verbal hygiene and other forms of linguistic prescriptivism in the UK had been relatively indifferent to multilingualism and how it was expressed, speakers of Arabic and other UK-based non-anglophone languages have recently taken on the symbolic status of “folk devils” in British society, though most convicted perpetrators of terrorism, such as in the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005 are proficient speakers of English, and sometimes themselves monolinguals. Cameron expands in this essay on her 1995 concept of “verbal hygiene” to include linguistic landscapes ranging from Welsh, Polish, and Bengali to English, Arabic, and Mandarin.

Keywords: 9/11, monolingualism, terror, Arabic, verbal hygiene, language policy, education, citizenship, naturalization

How to Cite:

Cameron, D., (2013) “The one, the many, and the Other: Representing multi- and mono-lingualism in post-9/11 verbal hygiene”, Critical Multilingualism Studies 1(2), 59-77.