The Joy of Multilingualism

This chapter serves as the introduction to the volume, The Palgrave Handbook of Multilingualism and Language Varieties on Screen, offering as it does a panoramic synthesis of the book’s approach and main topics. It must be stressed that the brand of multilingualism dealt with is that of scripted language variation rather than a true reflection of sociolinguistics in action, regardless of whether the scripts can be categorised as fiction or non-fiction. Thus, the purposeful presence of a language or a language variety (or more than one) used to contrast significantly one way or another with the main language of audiovisual texts and their translations is the focus of this volume. The topic, thus framed, has drawn the interest of scholars within various areas of research, including linguistics, audiovisual translation, film studies and translation studies, more and more, for the last two decades. Not only is language variation important, as presented in the chapters of this volume, for gaining insight into the very nature of fictional representation, but also for raising awareness of the importance of a whole range of specific topics, such as character portrayal and stereotypes, the use and presence of ancient languages or invented ones, the use of code-switching, social class contrasts, humour, otherness, and many others and how they are dealt with in linguacultural representations and in translation.