Special Issue – 2/2025:
Swiss Literary Multilingualism: A Challenge to the Monolingual Paradigm

Switzerland represents a unique linguistic situation. On the one hand, the Swiss constitution enshrines four national languages (German, Italian, French, and Romansh), and multilingualism marks daily life for many people. On the other, however, it is entirely possible to exist in a monolingual milieu and have little real or sustained contact with another of the Swiss languages.

This volume seeks to explore multilingual practices and the tensions these reveal as manifest in Swiss literary writing. It aims to explore the rich presence of multilingualism in Swiss writing, and to focus on the dynamic multilingual exchanges that occur in Swiss literature. We are interested in writing that incorporates one or more of the Swiss national languages (or their dialects), as well as writing by Swiss authors in other languages, and writing by migrants to Switzerland that engages with multilingualism.

Contributions might include but are not restricted to the following questions:

• To what extent can Swiss literature be understood as existing beyond the ‘monolingual paradigm’ (Yildiz 2012)?
• How do Swiss authors and authors writing in Switzerland engage with multilingual literary practices (including, but not limited to, bi- and multilingual writing, self-translation, heteroglossia etc.)?
• Is Swiss multilingualism a myth? How can the specifically Swiss situation of literary multilingualism be understood?
• How have understandings of monolingualism and multilingualism shaped the development of “Swiss” literature?
• What new perspectives on Swiss writing are revealed by an exploration of multilingual practices?
• How do authors engage with the ‘larger’ linguistic and literary zones beyond Switzerland’s borders?
• How do migration, globalization and postcolonial contexts inform the work of migrant writers, who negotiate the relationship between the languages of their home country and the Swiss languages?

Informal queries are welcome, and contributors are asked to submit an abstract by April 1, 2024. Please direct queries to Rainer Guldin, Università della Svizzera Italiana (Lugano, Switzerland) and Richard McClelland, University of Bristol (United Kingdom).

Articles should be 6,000 to 10,000 words in length, and the deadline for their submission is October 1st, 2024. Acceptance of the final versions of articles is subject to double-anonymous peer review. Please send articles as email attachments to Rainer Guldin (guldin.rainer@bluewin.ch) and Richard McClelland (richard.mcclelland@bristol.ac.uk).