Issue Details: First known date: 2015... 2015 Encountering Language Difference in Australian Memoirs of Living in France
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

Travel memoirs tend to be premised on the transformation of the self through spatial translation. This paper explores the roles language might play in this transformation, and the possibilities of a linguistic translation of the self among memoirs of Australians in France. Among the recent rush of memoirs by Australians of their sojourns in France, the encounter with French language is invariably evoked. Its depiction, however, differs from that identified in ‘language memoirs’ by migrants and other language learners, which have been seen to emphasize the renegotiation of identity through inhabiting a new language. More often, in the Australian memoirs, either language difference is portrayed as having a limiting effect, diminishing the author to a shy shadow of the familiar self, or the author's proficiency in French smooths over language difference, concealing it. Only in rare instances is language represented as the very means of transformation of the self, reforging the author's experience. One such instance is Ellie Nielsen's memoir Buying a Piece of Paris, which paradoxically details the process of language learning while at the same time deflecting attention from it and attributing the transformation of the self to an altogether more tangible operation. The article analyses this double game and its implications for identity and belonging. [Author's abstract]

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Life Writing vol. 12 no. 1 2015 8343009 2015 periodical issue 2015
Last amended 24 Feb 2015 15:36:19
Encountering Language Difference in Australian Memoirs of Living in Francesmall AustLit logo Life Writing
Subjects:
  • c
    France,
    c
    Western Europe, Europe,
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X