Mono versus Stereo: Bilingualism’s Double Face

Abstract

Although literary scholars have started to acknowledge the dynamic character of literary language, little progress has been made in the field of its actual study since the heyday of sylistics. This paper offers an application of one major exception to this rule: Mikhaïl Bakhtin’s heteroglossia model, which tried to describe literature from a more diversified point of view. The analysis of two examples shows nevertheless that Bakhtin unilaterally celebrated the "stereo" qualities of language blending, and leaves no room for "mono" texts, which use polyglot devices as borders much more than as bridges between cultures.