Othering of multilinguals in society

Abstract

This contribution describes ways of Othering of multilinguals in public discourse. Based on a corpus of 49 texts from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, I first demonstrate that multilinguals are characterized as different from the ‘We’ group and labelled with terms that disregard their multilingual capabilities and instead portray them as geographic, national or religious others. This ‘being-different’ from ‘Us’ is regularly evaluated in negative terms, with multilinguals being blamed for, e.g., antisemitism or homophobia in ‘Our’ society. The data also shows that these labels and the underlying distinctions between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ persist against criticism and that they are used to explain new social phenomena (like the development of a pandemic). Taken together, this study not only allows us to understand how Othering of multilinguals proceeds in the investigated societies, but also to reconstruct a very narrow concept of the perceived ‘We’ group. As academia in general, and linguistics in particular, is influenced by the societal context in which it operates, such folk concepts of ‘Us’ vs. ‘Them’ have the potential to influence linguistic research – as evidenced by the contributions to this volume.