Being and Becoming Multilingual: Some Narratives

Contents: Introduction/Rama Kant Agnihotri and Rajesh Sachdeva. 1. Being Multilingual/Aditi Mukherjee. 2. My Languages/Shreesh Chaudhary. 3. A Personal Narrative of Multilingual Evolution/Robert Phillipson. 4. Growing Up as a Multilinguist/Probal Dasgupta. 5. The Growing Awareness of One’s Privileges/Tove Skutnabb-Kangas. 6. A Life of Language Consciousness/E. Annamalai. 7. I Write in Three Languages/G.N. Devy. 8. How I Became a Multilingual/Kamal K. Sridhar. 9. Living with Languages: My Tryst with Multilingualism/Ajit Mohanty. 10. How I Became a Multilingual: And how it Shaped My Research/S.N. Sridhar. 11. What is the Name of the Language You Speak?/Rajesh Kumar. 12. On Being and Becoming a Multilingual: Reflections of Self in Society/Rajesh Sachdeva. 13. Negotiating Multilinguality/Rama Kant Agnihotri. 14. My Multilingula Self/Udaya Narayana Singh. Being and Becoming Multilingual is a collection of personal narratives about growing up and inhabiting multiple languages and contexts. Written by a group of distinguished linguists and educators, this book offers nuanced insights into what they believe multilingualism is; how their professional lives have been deeply informed by their personal multilinguality; and the politics of language. These narratives recognise the centrality of the speaker in exploring the nature of language contact, providing real life accounts of language use in society and opening new vistas of understanding complex sociolinguistic phenomena in meaningful ways. While this volume provides novel theoretical insights into language acquisition and use, it is also a timely and relevant reminder of how dynamic human communication and linguistic awareness forge relationships that go beyond constructs and agendas. …