Against myself. Writing in a second language.
It is proven by recent studies that the language we speak shapes the way we think. It means that every language has specific cultural characteristics which affect how we understand and describe reality. For instance, as Lera Boroditsky has argued in recent research at Standford and MIT, some Aboriginal communities replace the words “left”, “right”, “forward”, and “back” with cardinal-direction terms like “south”, “north”, “east” and “west”. This is the reason why they are used to saying sentences like “There’s an ant on your southeast leg” or “Move the cup to the north northwest a little bit.” It is not just a formal issue, but a completely different way to think, more focused on orientation. We might go on to cite many examples of how different languages lead to different ways of thinking about abstract concepts like space, time, numbers, emotions, morality, etc.
A few years ago, as a professional writer and former researcher in Italian Linguistics, I discovered the pleasure of writing in English as a second language. I just wanted to understand if my thoughts could be reshaped by this activity and how.
My cheeky Italian writing gets shy in English. This is the core of my exercise. Turning off the ego. Being reborn. This is how I can dismiss the Latin mannerism of my historical person, a graduated-young-Italian-white man from the middle class with his bourgeois background and so many useless cultural frills.
According to a friend of mine writing in a second language is a masochistic activity. And she might be right. Indeed, I am trying to fight against myself and my cultural roots. In English, my writing lacks the sound of my inner voice which has always been shaped by Italian: so decorative and complex, always available to rhetorical stunts. It is like my whole personality changes in English, by showing an “I” utterly unknown to me, a plainer “I” way distant from the histrionic character I am used to being.
It mostly happens for two reasons. First, because English is a beautiful plain language in itself, then, of course, because I am not a native English speaker. This means that I need to use my best narrow linguistic resources to express both the most complex thoughts as well as the simplest ones. By doing that I finally see how simplicity and clarity replace complexity by increasing the value of speech. A well-known concept for good writing which I would like to extend to whatever I do.
Indeed, it is not just a writing exercise. It is something that concerns my whole life. It’s a kind of redemption from a cultural and linguistic behaviour that I feel is redundant.
Italy — in its current geopolitical structure — is a young country, speaking a Latin-roots language based on Literature. Indeed, until the end of the nineteenth century, when Italy still did not exist as a united country, Italians spoke regional dialects. Italian was the language of the literate people only and it has been just a literary written language for a long time since the Middle Ages to the first Unity in 1865.
During the last century, thanks to public schools, political parties, newspapers and television, Italians finally learned to speak their official language which has been changing under the influence of either history, dialects, foreign languages or speakers’ innovations. But a lot of its literary original characteristics remain stuck in the Italian language, at least as an aesthetic habit.
For instance, we Italians despise writing as we speak. We love highfalutin words and reckless syntactic structures, always uselessly trying to enhance the speech. This is why the language of academics, politicians and institutions is often unclear. Everyone is more concerned about how to say rather than what to say. It is our own caprice. A literary memory that often has consequences more serious than a ridiculous style.
While speaking and writing in Italian I have always been trying to fight against the excess of my innate cultural mannerisms, I find that I can easily bypass it with both spoken and written English. I can talk almost about everything with faster cognitive reactions and more linear communication. I am focused on the meaning of my thoughts and on the best way to express them clearly using just a few words. I prevent ambiguity by using shorter sentences and decreasing the number of metaphors and other rhetorical devices.
Somehow it is like being another person. Such a psychological switch. It means that this exercise — writing in English — clears my mind and helps me to not only be less of a narcissist old-fashioned speaker/writer but also a more pragmatic and open-minded human being.
If a language switch can imply a different approach to reality and a different way to see the world, in my story, it might be connected to a bigger breakthrough that started six years ago when I moved abroad and decided to change my life, not only language.
