Knowing a second language entails some unease; it requires a
willingness to make mistakes and work through misunderstandings.
The renowned literary scholar Doris Sommer argues that feeling
funny is good for you, and for society. In" Bilingual Aesthetics"
Sommer invites readers to make mischief with meaning, to play games
with language, and to allow errors to stimulate new ways of
thinking. Today's global world has outgrown any one-to-one
correlation between a people and a language; liberal democracies
can either encourage difference or stifle it through exclusionary
policies." Bilingual Aesthetics" is Sommer's passionate call for
citizens and officials to cultivate difference and to realize that
the precarious points of contact resulting from mismatches between
languages, codes, and cultures are the lifeblood of democracy, as
well as the stimulus for aesthetics and philosophy.
Sommer encourages readers to entertain the creative
possibilities inherent in multilingualism. With her characteristic
wit and love of language, she focuses on humor--particularly
bilingual jokes--as the place where tensions between and within
cultures are played out. She draws on thinking about humor and
language by a range of philosophers and others, including Sigmund
Freud, Immanuel Kant, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hannah Arendt, and
Mikhail Bakhtin. In declaring the merits of allowing for crossed
signals, Sommer sends a clear message: Making room for more than
one language is about value added, not about remediation. It is an
expression of love for a contingent and changing world.
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