Exploring Multilingualism

Linguistic diversity is a fact of human life – as is the imbalance in status between languages.

In the current context of globalisation, this imbalance is manifesting itself most strikingly in the rise of ‘global’ English as the universally recognised lingua franca, and the pressure this in turn puts on other less globally ‘useful’ languages.

The features in this section will present findings from our evolving research on the interaction between multilingualism and creativity, but also address aspects of the context in which our research is taking place. From the difficulties and opportunities of Modern Languages in schools to insights into the impact Brexit will have on languages and their status in the UK, we will be looking at social and political issues to better understand how we can make linguistic diversity more visible, valued, and vibrant.

Research update: Nature in Name, Metaphor and Myth

Bringing together scholars from linguistics, anthropology, ornithology, and conservation practice, our international and inter-institutional research team is investigating the relationship between creativity in human languages and the diverse environments in which they are spoken.

Research update: tracing prismatic rays of translation

In a poetry workshop, a 9-year old child thinks of a word. She writes it: ‘oguek’. When she begins to explain what it means to her, the sentences form the beginning of a poem :

‘My dad always calls me that,
and it tastes like sweet, sweet
yoghurt.
The colour that it brings
is green, and when my dad says it
it makes me laugh …’

Conference review: Performing Multilingualism in World Literatures

Strands 4 (Creative Economy), 5 (World Literatures) and 6 (Prismatic Translation) crossed paths on 20-22 September 2018 at the second international conference organized around Performing Multilingualism in World Literatures: Aesthetics and Activism held at Exeter College in Oxford.

Are creative or functional teaching approaches more effective in the language classroom?

The contents of your pencil-case, the furniture in your bedroom and what your best friend looks like ‒ not exactly the most riveting conversation-openers. Yet such tired topics are not uncommon in classrooms up and down the country. But it doesn’t have to be that way!

Photo of multilingual concert at Sheldonian

Multilingual concert wins award

We’re absolutely delighted to announce that our multilingual concert, We are Children of the World, has been awarded a prize for Excellence in Cultural Music at the Oxfordshire Music Hub Gala Awards.

My Mother is Crying: a multilingual poem

Professor Rajinder Dudrah, Strand 4 Lead, ‘Languages in the Creative Economy’ introduces a multilingual poem written especially for Creative Multilingualism by Amerah Saleh and Bohdan Piasecki from Free Radical.

Photo of Flights of Fancy performance at Curiosity Carnival

From research to performance: the making of Flights of Fancy

Last year, Creative Multilingualism commissioned Pegasus Theatre and The Conker Group to create a performance based on our 2nd strand’s research into Nature in Naming, Metaphor and Myth.

School presentation: foreign languages are not as foreign as we think

We spoke to a large audience of year-9 students at The Cherwell School in Oxford about the empowering fact that foreign languages are not as ‘foreign’ as we think.

The talk was inspired by our strand’s work on exploring and encouraging mutual intelligibility across languages, aimed at increasing awareness of the following issues:

1) Multilingualism is not unusual – it’s what most speakers experience in their life.

Children singing at the multilingual concert

Film: We are Children of the World

Watch the film below to relive the joyful, uplifting singing from the 500 children who took part in the first ever performance of Lin Marsh’s We are Children of the World and hear from the team who made it all happen: Lin Marsh, composer, Jon Cullen, Musical Director, and Professor Katrin Kohl, lead researcher on the Creative Multilingualism project which commissioned the composition.

Creative translation in the classroom

The Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation has just closed for the fifteenth time, with over thirty languages represented. The prize is one of the ways in which the Stephen Spender Trust celebrates multilingualism, along with our education programmes.

Creative Multilingualism (OWRI) funded projects

In Spring of this year, we ran an OWRI funding call for projects related to the following areas:

1) Interaction between linguistic diversity and cognitive creativity

2) Creativity at the interface between languages and STEM

3) Linguistic creativity in the performing arts

4) Multilingual Performance in Schools

Thank you to everyone who submitted an application. We're delighted to announce that the following projects have been successful in their bid for funding (see below for details of each project).

On the road: Prismatic Translation’s Swahili workshop

Swahili is spoken by up to 100 million people worldwide. The language is mostly spread across the African Great Lakes region and other parts of eastern and south-eastern Africa. Surprisingly though, I experienced Swahili first-hand not in Africa (my home continent), but rather as a Postdoctoral Research Assistant in a classroom at Oxford Spires Academy in England in April 2018.