This presentation will focus on the ways in which heterolingual texts reveal their author’s rapport with the languages they use and speak, through a case study of Cia Rinne’s work. Heterolingualism refers to the practice of using multiple languages simultaneously within a single text (Grutman, 1997), also referred to as translanguaging with code-switching as the norm rather than the exception (Domokos, 2021). Louis de Saussure speaks of a “particular relationship” speakers develop with the languages they speak, based on degrees of familiarity and intimacy (Saussure, 2024). Linguist Aneta Pavlenko has stated that emotions have been severely undertheorized in the study of multilinguals (2006) and questions that arise in heterolingual literary theory may be a step in addressing this gap. Recent literature on language memoirs and linguistic autobiographies (Sampagnay, 2024) has delved into how multilingual writers such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Xiaolu Guo and Elif Batuman engage with their languages in narratives explicitly addressing how they learn and use their languages, and how they feel about them, but the subject matter need not be so explicit for this “relationship” to become apparent. This talk will argue that it can be glimpsed through heterolingual texts, which are capable of giving insights into their author’s linguistic autobiographies, through tone, theme, vocabulary…

Within the contemporary heterolingual poetry scene, few poets in the last years have been as vocal about their practice as the prolific Cia Rinne, who has written, curated, and performed many of her pieces around Europe and across the world. Her minimal, visual and audio pieces consist of interlingual sound play and striking list-like layouts. She has attended several interviews in which she addresses her own creative practice and motivations for her unique practice. However, these explicit accounts of her own process aren’t necessary for a reader to grasp how Rinne interacts with, relates to and considers her own multilingualism, or for the study of heterolingual texts in general. This presentation will perform a case study of Cia Rinne’s work, applying the framework of Suchet’s notion of ethos (2014) – the way in which an author implicitly presents themselves through their writing – to demonstrate some of the ways heterolingual poetry is revealing of their author’s rapport with their languages.

The presentation adopts the term “linguistic landscape” to refer to a part of a writer’s linguistic identity, how they’ve interacted with languages throughout their lives – either geographically, thematically, or contextually –, and how their own subjective experience of language contact inspires their writing.

Karolina Pavlova (1807-1893), Russia’s foremost female poet of the nineteenth century, was a polyglot writing in Russian, German and French. Her native trilingualism facilitated a fluid and performative ethno-linguistic identity at odds with the tenets of monolingual nationalism that pervaded at the time. While Pavlova has received considerable attention from feminist critics, her multilingualism remains an understudied topic. This paper addresses Pavlova’s polyglot upbringing, her multilingual romance with the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz, the strategic stakes of her career as a trilingual poet and translator, the perception of her as a non-Russian by her Slavophile contemporaries, and her own conflicted attitude toward her Russianness. In a wider sense, the paper argues that the nineteenth century should be put on the map of the emergent field of literary multilingualism studies.

The interdisciplinary project Rájácummá – Kiss from the Border (2017–2018) by Niillas Holmberg, Jenni Laiti, and Outi Pieski merges environmental community art, poetry, and visual media to address themes of language contact, cultural identity, and sovereignty. Comprising eight poetic lines installed within the Deatnu River valley—the borderland between Finland and Norway—alongside eight photographs and a lithograph, the project critically examines the dynamics of Sámi self-governance and the sustainable use of land and waterways.

This work positions language as a bridge between culture and environment, emphasizing reciprocity and respect as foundational principles for life in the border region. Through its poetic and visual narratives, Rájácummá reimagines mobility and coexistence, rejecting the rigidity of national borders in favor of practices rooted in the region’s natural and cultural characteristics. By granting equal status to nature and humanity, the project advocates for a model of sustainable living informed by Sámi traditions and perspectives.

This presentation will explore how Rájácummá reflects language contact not only in its multilingual Sámi and Nordic context but also in its broader cultural and ecological implications. It highlights how literature and art can transcend linguistic and national boundaries, fostering dialogue about environmental justice, cultural resilience, and decolonial futures.

Our proposal focuses on contemporary “Basque” literature and the staging of contact between languages in a particular diglossic context, namely when the Basque-speaking community is divided along a Basque/Spanish and Basque/French border. We will question the literary and stylistic strategies of two works that respond in very different ways to the contact of different and rival idioms, caught in the competition of minor local languages and national languages with strong symbolic power on the global literature market. Frédéric Aribit’s novel Trois langues dans ma bouche (2015) highlights an example of linguistic autobiography that supports a more general reflection on the disappearance of minor languages on a global scale. The author compares the situation of the Basque language with local indigenous endangered languages. This comparison produces a hybrid writing between languages that plays on effects of sliding, polysemy, literal translation and etymological wordplay that are all ways of bringing into play the "contact" of languages. The originality of Aribit's writing consists in the maximum broadening of the contact between different languages. Basque/French bilingualism is only a starting point for the more general consideration that every language is constantly in contact with a plurality of other languages. The situation of the minor Basque language will be mirrored with a language in the process of extinction, Ayapaneco, spoken in Mexico. A stylistics anchored in wordplay and etymological roots allows other languages to emerge (Nahuatl, Taino), just as the Basque language will be imaginatively compared to Corsican and Japanese, in a form of exophony that can recall the writing of Yoko Tawada. A completely different strategy is chosen by Itxaro Borda for her truculent 100% Basque written and published in Basque in 2001 then self-translated or rather rewritten in French in 2003. This work (winner of the Euskadi Prize for Literature in 2001) is made up of a series of sarcastic texts on Basque identity, its clichés and stereotypes developed on and by the Basques. In the case of Itxaro Borda, it is the choice of self-translation as contact between two languages that is interesting. Frederik Verbeke was able to show to what extent the strict refusal of self-translation is frequent in the Basque literary field, Basque not having to rub shoulders either imaginatively or practically with Spanish or French. Although Itxaro Borda initially rejected any form of self-translation, in line with the ideological position so common in the Basque literary field, she ended up making the self-translation gesture and the contact between the dominated and the dominant language the place where she pursued her reflections on both the minoritized languages and the hypocrisy of Basque nationalism. A parody of “first contact” with a Martian also allows us to thematize the question of contact between historically and ideologically opposed idioms.

Many post-colonial authors, including Russophone ones, adopt strategies to minoritize majority languages by infusing them with realia, barbarisms, and innovative narratives. Varvara Nedeoglo’s multi-media work, however, resists easy classification within this framework. While Russian is her first and main language, her poetry presented alongside her visual art, estranges and fractures Russian through heterographics (Lock) - use of different scripts within one text with an emphasis on non-phonetic aspect of writing.

The paper will examine the use of multiple languages and scripts in Varvara Nedeoglo’s poetry. First, I’ll describe Nedeoglo’s heterographic experiments and will situate them within the broader context of linguistic and discursive changes in contemporary Russian language and literature.

For instance, typographic symbols like blank squares, tildes, and asterisk signs reflect practices of censorship and self-censorship, while Roman characters such as ‘Z’ and ‘I’ have acquired socio-political connotations tied to the war in Ukraine. Moreover, Nedeoglo’s “expanded alphabet,” which incorporates characters from minority languages such as Chukchi, Gagauz, and Komi, consciously blurs the distinction between major and minor languages.

Then, I’ll offer a close reading and translation of a few excerpts from Russkiie devochki konchaiut svobodnoi zemlei (Russian Girls Come (with/onto) Free Soil) published in 2023. One of the translation challenges stems from the central role of Slavonic languages in conveying the core themes of the volume. Modifying the Roman - or any other - script would reshape the narrative and tell a completely different story of violence, domination, and self-identification. Nedeoglo’s use of hybrid scripts counters the dominant discourse of purity revealing the inherent complexities and power differentials embedded in scripts. Her work invites a multimodal reading that merges interpretation with a purely visual engagement - an experience that should be preserved in translation.