Dear Readers,
Contemplate this thought: “the ability to read literature in lots of languages.” Really think about that proposition for a moment. Interpret it as you like and react to it. “The ability to read literature in lots of languages.”
Does that thought appeal to you, leave you cold, or repel you?
Perhaps you’re thinking, “What a waste of time and energy! Languages are outdated relics that only serve to divide us. The sooner we get with a single world language, the sooner we can get on with international cooperation. English is it for the moment, so let’s go with that.” Perhaps your response is, “No, thank you. I don’t read a lot anyway, and I’m not interested in language study.” Or maybe, “If you’re giving out the ability for free, I’ll take it. I probably won’t use it, though – it’s just not relevant to my life right now.”
Most people in the world will probably have a response like one of the above. But if you are reading or listening to these words, you are most likely one of the substantial minority who might say instead, “Sign me up.” Perhaps this has always been a goal of yours, but you didn’t know others were on board with it, too; perhaps you’re interested in language-learning, but never dared to aim that high. Perhaps you’ve never thought about it, but find the idea instantly appealing. Whichever of these reactions is yours, you are in prime position to benefit from knowing about and engaging with polyliteracy at various levels of intensity.
This 2024 video is an update to a video of a keynote presentation that I gave at the Society of Geolinguistics in 2013, where I made the case for establishing polyglottery as a field of study. In the decade since, I have not only gained more experience and perspective, but also spent time as director of intensive immersion programs for another institution and, most significantly, actually started my own academy two years ago. Over those two years, I have continued to develop my ideas for polyliteracy in light of the needs and interests of the people who have been participating in my academy. Unsurprisingly, they are a very educated group: many hold terminal degrees (Ph.D.’s M.D.’s, J.D.’s); many others are in or planning to attend graduate school.
Inspired by their support, today I want to present my current understanding of polyliteracy and my vision for developing it. I will begin by defining, explaining, and clarifying some terms and definitions that I have coined and use frequently. Then I will talk about different uses of the word polyliteracy, in particular for the various stages of polyliteracy. After that, I will describe the activities I envision for an institute of polyliteracy, as well as its facilities and some sample curricula of study.
To begin with the more general definitions, by polyglottery I have always meant the systematic and disciplined process of developing oneself into a polyglot. Other scholars – including colleagues at universities in Moscow and Innsbruck who are investigating polyglottery as a discipline – use the term more broadly, as an adjective relative to the state of being a polyglot. A polyglot is someone who knows many languages – typically five or six, with the term hyperpolyglot sometimes applied to those who know ten, twelve, or more languages. While the terms polyglot and multilingual are sometimes used interchangeably, I see an important difference between the two: multilingual people grow up acquiring two to six languages to various degrees from their environment; polyglots learn their languages as foreign languages by conscious study and application later in life. Finally, I define a foreign language as a language that one learns outside of its environment by application of intelligence.
One might suspect that being multilingual by upbringing would propel people onward into polyglottery, but it is often those of us who are originally monolingual who seem to find foreign languages most fascinating. The condition of finding foreign languages inherently interesting, of fantasizing about speaking or using a number of different languages – to find the idea not only intriguing, but appealing – is indicative of polyitis, which is just that – a tongue-in-cheek term for being bitten by the language-learning bug, for finding the prospect of learning lots of languages strangely compelling. Polyitis, when harnessed, can lead to great productivity, but undisciplined can lead to frustration and self-recrimination. It follows that an institute, an asylum for those who have polyitis, is in order, to teach them the discipline needed to channel their impulses, and to shield them from the negativity and discouragement that can so often come both from the broader world and from one’s own slow progress.
If you believe you may have polyitis, then you should know that activating your condition as a springboard for language-learning is an endeavor rewarding on more levels than the obvious linguistic one. Polyliteracy in particular – my topic for today – is a way for those with both polyitis and a scholarly bent, especially towards the humanities, to harness their drive to develop their scholarly abilities in a more rapid – and less frustrating and isolated way – than I experienced when I was starting out on my own.
I use polyliteracy as a term referring to a branch of polyglottery that involves learning foreign languages with the principal goal of reading literature in them (literature being not just belles lettres but other culturally significant genres such as history, philosophy, essays, etc.) This branch does not necessarily engage the attention of most polyglots, many of whom are more interested in conversational usage than literary studies. In short, polyliteracy means developing and practicing the ability to read and discuss classic works of literature in a range of foreign languages. The main purpose a polyliterate person has for learning languages is not to communicate generally in those languages, but to read and discuss literature in them. This is the essence of polyliteracy as I have lived and practiced it myself these past 30 years. The kind of formation and education that I am now giving in polyliteracy to the students in my academy is based on the formation and education I have given, and am still giving, myself. I founded this academy to share the principles I have learned on my personal journey with those interested in following a similar path. I am humbled and happy to be able to say that a community of people interested in polyliteracy and related fields has already started to form.
Having opened my academy with this goal over two years ago now, let me offer polyliteracy to the world under various rubrics, which have arisen from my interactions with those who have come to study with me thus far:
First, polyliteracy takes as its starting-point the idea that well-written and important texts are best read in their original languages of composition. This idea, which underlies the pursuit of the ability to read great literature in a range of languages, is a very personal one for me. I grew up watching my father hold to this idea and develop the relevant language ability, so I knew it was possible. As I pursued my university education, I sought to develop this ability as well. While I met with encouragement for my efforts as an undergraduate and early graduate student, as I progressed in academia, my broader language study was discouraged in favor of refining a single narrow track. From experience, I can say that even in fields that positively require the learning of multiple languages, language study is seen as drudge work rather than something to be passionate about. Indifference and even hostility toward language learning is quite widespread, even at times inside academic fields that would seem to foster and require it.
Beyond this, many who have experience in learning and/or teaching a single foreign language assume – logically but erroneously – that learning more languages will involve reduplicating that time and effort over and over again, and so conceive of the project as terribly daunting, if not flat out impossible. Those with polyitis will want to be wary of such negative assumptions, and should aim to keep the basic idea of polyliteracy – that great texts are best read in the original – always in view.
Second, polyliteracy as an ideal holds that seeing things from a wide variety of perspectives of other languages, times, and cultures is the best antidote to the tunnel vision of seeing things from one narrow horizon. Polyliteracy thus aims to channel the comparative impulse, encouraging the acquisition of skills that will enable you to maintain a broad mind by developing alternate operating systems and seeing things through new cultural lenses and points of view. This ideal is why polyliteracy works hand in hand with the notion of Great Books education – it promotes reading and discussing of culturally significant works not only from Western Civilization, but also from Middle Eastern, Indic, and East Asian Civilizations, ultimately in as many original languages as possible. Polyliteracy as an ideal seeks to counter the voices that would deny its possibility, and calls out to those with enough drive to accept the challenge to raise the bar and attempt to achieve something that requires deep work and focus. It is even possible, and not without historic precedent, to expand this ideal to a societal level, hoping for a society in which all educated people would be able to read and discuss at least one of a wide variety of foreign languages.
Third, I see polyliteracy as a model for the delivery of continuous life-long education, the beginning of a movement against the narrowness to which we are so often confined by our institutions and ourselves. So often I hear highly educated people confessing, “We are not that highly educated after all!” I first heard this cry from inside myself: When I had “finished” my existing educational process and was told that I should devote the rest of my life to honing my expertise in what I had just done, I felt to the marrow of my bones that I was not “done,” that I still knew far too little to do what I wanted to do. This knowledge launched me into the pursuit of breadth on my own, first within my field, and now ever more expanding into other fields. From myself and from those participating in my academy, I hear the same cry: “We are not as well rounded as we would like to be!” But I hear another cry, which is: “And we want to do something about it.” People are answering the call of polyliteracy, saying: We may have had to accept the narrowing process to jump through the institutional hoops, but we were never happy about it. We regret compromising in this regard, and we recognize that now is the time to become better rounded.
For many, developing enough skills in a single foreign language to enjoy reading and discussing literature in that language is a good enough step. But to speak for a moment to my fellow scholars in the humanities, I believe we should hold ourselves to a higher standard because we know the standard used to be higher. I find it encouraging when I hear other humanities scholars acknowledge that the bar has lowered; that a century ago, scholars in our position would have been polyliterate as a matter of course, and we are not. It is sad that this is no longer the case, but there is no reason why this norm cannot return. Its disappearance should be a challenge – a challenge to which polyliteracy is the solution.
The decline in standards involves not only languages, but other disciplines. We are not as well-rounded as our ancestors were, and I will be the first to confess my own sorry case. I would love to be a Renaissance polymath, but am woefully weak in mathematics and science. I try to remedy this by listening to scientific lectures on the Great Courses and the like, but without a broader contextual framework, I only really understand a small percentage of what I hear. Like all of us who are highly educated – that is, who have gone through the full process of educational formation, earning terminal degrees by the admittedly very valuable process of formulating, completing, and writing up a research project – I have developed expertise in one area at the expense of development in most other areas.
The narrowing process works incrementally, asking us to turn this way or that at a certain crossroads in our lives. We are asked to make this or that choice or sacrifice, to prioritize this over that, and do some things at the expense of others, all with the goal of becoming experts in one thing and one thing only. While we may play along to get that doctoral degree, we need not lie still and do nothing to combat this narrowing. It is my fervent hope and prayer that my academy for polyliteracy will serve as the model for other academies of lifelong learning, aimed at educating those who are already, in theory, highly educated – not through a narrowing and temporary process of full-time research training, but via continuous participation in a community for lifelong learning. If such an academy for mathematics and the sciences, paralleling my own for languages and literatures, were to open tomorrow, I would be its first student.
The model of ongoing education for the educated that I offer through my academy of polyliteracy has numerous justifications. There are at least four major reasons to extend the process of systematic lifelong learning over and against what was established in the past (i.e., full-time in youth, to a certain “finished” point).
1) We are living longer lives, which means that we have more years in which we could and should be learning.
2) There is more knowledge available, given increased access to other cultures, as well as greater numbers of people producing worthwhile works of scholarship.
3) The quantity and quality of knowledge imparted by the educational process has been consistently watered down, particularly in regards to language education. Though we have ready digital access to knowledge, we carry less of it in our heads, and so have less of a contextual framework for processing new information.
4) In our race to become experts, we have been excessively narrowed. After establishing ourselves in our specialty, we can and should return to the kind of door-opening educational experience that we hopefully had as college undergraduates, but now on a slow-and-steady long-term basis.
Fourth, beyond serving as a model for well-roundedness in other academic fields, polyliteracy ought to be viewed as a discipline for the intellect, paralleling spiritual or physical practices such as meditation or running. Like these other disciplines, polyliteracy is best cultivated by regular, slow, systematic practice over many years. The development of a habitual routine punctuated by specific practices, with regular motivational reinforcement built in, is not only critical to success in achieving polyliteracy, but will shape your character and be applicable in other walks of life as well. Participating in a weekly discussion of literature in a foreign language over many years can transform simple language learning into a deeper practice. Over the past two years, my academy has become a congenial place for like-minded, highly-educated adult learners to continue learning together. The accountability provided by participating in the academy and its community can help you stay focused on this project and therefore ensure return on your investment.
Fifth, polyliteracy should help create venues for language learning and practice centered around discussions of literature. Such centers of polyliteracy, like my academy, will serve participants at many different levels of engagement. Some participants will want to maintain a single language over the years; others will want to use the methodology and facilities to develop competency in a handful of languages. The weekly format for language-learning that has emerged in my academy is one of guided self-instruction, where the focus is as much on learning how to learn as it is upon learning the specific language. This focus not only results in more effective study, but is a transferable skill. With this approach, each new language facilitates the learning of the next, so that the process gets easier and easier with experience and know-how. After you have learned a certain number of languages (five or six), you should find that learning additional languages no longer poses the same type of challenge. This will be particularly the case if self-study is punctuated with a periodic week of immersion, which the infrastructure I envision for a physical language-learning academy will be designed to facilitate. (I will describe this kind of infrastructure below).
Sixth and finally, I want to address polyliteracy as a field of study in its own right. My thoughts in this section are inspired not only by my own experience and vision, but by the aspirations of those for whom I have been leading reading and discussion circles these past two years. I have close to a dozen people taking four or five courses a week, and nearly a score of people who are taking two or three. Some have indicated a desire to study even more intensively, time and money permitting. Directing reading groups for these people has already led to the development of a rough and ready curriculum – but some more planning is in order. Thus, below I will outline curricula for several envisioned tracks.
To clarify the standing of polyliteracy as a field with respect to other academic disciplines, polyliteracy as I practice it is a form of comparative literature, as outlined in some of the foundational works of that field, like Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis. Polyliteracy also incorporates elements from other comparative disciplines – comparative historical linguistics, comparative philology, comparative history of religions – before integrating it all with Great Books / Classic texts reading and discussion.
If I indulge myself by imagining that, in the year 2124, polyliteracy will be an established field with its own full-fledged institute, then I imagine the life of a scholar there might be divided into two phases. First would be a period of going out into the world for original investigation and exploration of languages – for instance, by applying techniques of language transmission, mining, and extraction to document and learn from exclusively oral traditions, for example. My own exploration of the Korean verbal system was my version of such a project, and I anticipate others going on to even more significant and exciting discoveries. This first phase would be followed by a return to the institute to lead the next generation of scholars into its traditions. As will be clear from the features envisioned below, I see the life of such a scholar including a strong aspect of narrative performance, of storytelling, and the integration of other artistic and spiritual practices into his studies. I would hope that these scholars would work on large-scale, long-term projects – each scholar with a magnum opus in progress – and lead a lifestyle more akin to scholarly monasticism, than the academic life offered by most institutions at present, centered as it is around publishing, conferences, and administrative busy work.
A job description for such a position might read as follows:
Duties and Responsibilities:
1) Continued participation in circles led by most senior scholar;
2) Teaching languages, literature, and Great Books courses to non-majors;
3) Continued learning of languages, discussion of literatures
4) Internalization of texts through memorization and public/recorded recitation;
5) Serve as guide / mentor / role model for the next generation
6) Integrate some sort of spiritual and/or physical and/or artistic exercises with language study.
Additional duties, framed around more specific scholarly projects, might include:
7) Produce audio versions as well as translations of texts from the past, ideally in systematic format (e.g., Germanic Middle Ages; Sanskrit novels; etc.)
8) Investigate linguistic mysteries (undeciphered scripts, unrelated languages, families, protolanguages)
9) Work with anthropologists in field linguistics, focused on finding languages with strong oral traditions of literature:
a) learning those languages AND those traditions – translating and documenting them
b) learning from those traditions, the content itself, and also the techniques of internalization and memorization
10) Work with zoologists on animal communication, etc.
11) Host and participate in a center for worldview discussion and debate in sacred languages, regarding the establishment of a canon of classic texts from other civilizations to parallel and complement the Great Books of the West
12) Develop and staff the facilities to include an archive / language learning resource center / library of world classics / shadowing chamber for listening and exploring / language study yard and garden for kinesthetic learning / language immersion scenarios.
Most of the above projects require extensive facilities. Let me say a bit more on this point. Although, or rather because, the Academy has gotten off to a good start as a virtual entity, I am now eager to establish a physical base for the institute so that members of the community can really get to know each other, and I can teach them things that I can only teach in person. Ultimately, I would like for the academy to incorporate an in-person week once a quarter.
The library is the first component of the institute that I would like to make tangible so that students could borrow materials from it during in-person weeks. This library would include not only classic texts in the original languages, but the widest possible variety of autodidactic language learning materials, preserved together with their audio components in a language laboratory or sound archive. This sound archive will be a venue for the preservation of didactic recorded materials from the 1920’s onward. These and other sound recordings will serve as a systematic documentation of language sound change over the years. In order to better shadow materials, dedicated shadowing booths will be provided. Visitors to the library should thus experience it as an interactive museum for language exploration.
When it comes time to construct living quarters for the in-person sessions, I want to implement what I learned about intensive immersion programs for adults while I was at the Regional Language Centre (RELC) in Singapore and at Concordia Language Villages (CLV) here in Bemidji. RELC had all its facilities inside one tall hotel building, whereas CLV gets its name from having culturally authentic villages peppered through the woods around a central lake. This last setting enabled me to jerry-rig the single most effective and rapid language learning experience I have ever had – you can watch a video of me on my channel struggling through a conversation about religion and philosophy after two weeks in the Finnish village.
When I say jerry-rigged, I mean I, as an advanced learner, was able to modify the program to apply all that I had learned about learning. In particular, I was able to perfect a technique that I call language mining or language extraction, a technique that I had been honing and practicing since my post-doctoral time in Germany. Language mining or extraction takes the generally accepted truth that 1-on-1 intensive engagement with a trained tutor is the best, most intensive way to activate a language, and gives it this twist: it is not the tutor who teaches, but the experienced and knowledgeable learner who guides the learning process, extracting or eliciting knowledge from the trained tutor as from a living reference manual, and ultimately engaging in a kind of language transfer or transmission.
Therefore, I would like to have residential facilities designed for intensive immersion programs, including language mining or extraction on the part of those who have learned how to learn languages well. Such facilities would permit me to model, demonstrate, and train people to be both knowledgeable teachers for those who need to be taught, and also sources for those who already know how to extract linguistic knowledge. Thus, these facilities could serve as language bubbles for immersive language learning and maintenance. As a finishing touch, there would be an adjacent outdoor study space for kinesthetic activities, such as a trail to shadow while walking.
By way of a conclusion, I have drawn up proposed sample curricula that will answer the practical questions of duration. What could one achieve after twelve years of participating in 5 circles a week? I choose twelve years simply as a parallel to the twelve months of a single year. As each individual year has 4 quarters, each quarter consisting of 3 months, so this full program will consist of 4 distinct quarters of 3 years each. Curricular tracks could ultimately include:
Classic etymological source language focus
Germanic and Romance Branch focus
Slavic, Celtic, Iranian, Indic focuses
Middle Eastern, South Eastern, or Far Eastern language focus
Field linguistic / Documentation focus, etc.
The first quarter (three years) would be the same for all tracks. This would consist of developing French and German to the point of comfortable discussion of texts in those languages, both of which are not only immensely important literary languages in their own right, but also vital scholarly languages for further learning in all fields in the humanities. This quarter would also include courses providing a theoretical framework for polyliteracy, alongside methodological workshops and training. More specifically:
Year 1:
Guided German
Guided French
Great Books
The Path of the Polyglot
Comparative Historical Linguistics
Year 2:
Intro to German Literature
Intro to French Literature
Great Books
Methodology Practicum – shadowing, scriptorium, rhythm and pacing, endurance, kinesthetic techniques, memorization, etc. - through self-study for French/German
Sound: phonetics, narration, voice-over training, recitation
Year 3:
German Literature
French Literature
Great Books
Principles of Polyliteracy
Field linguistics, documentation, etc.
From here, a sample Germanic/Romance focus might proceed as follows, with the “standard” goal of attaining the ability to read and discuss literature in as many languages as possible:
Year 4:
Swedish guided circle using German textbook
Dutch guided circle using German textbook
Spanish guided circle using French textbook
Italian guided circle using French textbook
Great Books using French and German counterparts to Adler’s collection
Year 5:
Swedish literature – German reference works, dictionaries, etc.
Dutch literature – German reference works, dictionaries, etc.
Spanish Literature – French reference works, dictionaries, etc.
Italian literature – French reference works, dictionaries, etc.
Great Books in French/German
Year 6:
German, Swedish, Dutch Comparative Literature circles
Old Norse using G/S/D sources
French, Spanish, Italian Comparative Literature circles
Latin
Great Books in French/German
Year 7:
German, Swedish, Dutch Comparative Literature circles
Old Norse literature, G/S/Dutch sources
French, Spanish, Italian Comparative Literature circles
Latin
Great Books in other languages
Year 8:
German, Swedish, Dutch, ON circles
Comparative Historical English + Gothic
French, Spanish, Italian, Latin circles
Latin
Great Books in other languages
Year 9:
German, Swedish, Dutch, ON, CHE/G circles
Germanic branch growth
French, Spanish, Italian, Latin circles
Romance branch growth
Great Books in Latin
Year 10:
Germanic circle cycles
Romance circle cycles
Germanic & Romance branch cultivation
Greek, Koine
Great Books in Latin
Year 11:
Germanic circle cycles
Romance circle cycles
Germanic & Romance branch cultivation
Greek, diachronic
Great Books in Latin
Year 12:
Germanic circle cycles
Romance circle cycles
Germanic & Romance branch cultivation
Sanskrit
Great Books in Latin, return to Greeks and read originals
On the other hand, a field linguistic / world language curriculum, whose main purpose would be to prepare people to identify hitherto unrecorded languages that have strong oral literary traditions and to document, learn, and learn from these traditions, might proceed as follows to impart the widest possible base for linguistic comparison and effective language mining. Note that here the main goal is to develop and maintain conversational fluidity in the widest possible variety of languages (over against the “standard” goal of developing reading abilities in related literary languages):
Year 4:
Russian guided circle using German textbook
Russian guided circle using German textbook
Spanish guided circle using French textbook
Portuguese guided circle using French textbook
Great Books using French and German counterparts to Adler’s collection
Year 5:
Russian literature – German reference works, dictionaries, etc.
Russian literature – German reference works, dictionaries, etc.
Spanish Literature – French reference works, dictionaries, etc.
Portuguese literature – French reference works, dictionaries, etc.
Great Books in French/German
Year 6:
Russian, Spanish, Portuguese Comparative Literature circles
Swahili
Turkish
Arabic
Great Books in other languages
Year 7:
Swahili & Turkish cycles
Persian
Hindi-Urdu
Arabic
Great Books in other languages
Year 8:
Swahili & Turkish cycles
Persian
Hindi-Urdu
Arabic
Great Books in other languages
Year 9:
Swahili, Turkish, Persian, Hindi-Urdu cycles
Malay-Indonesian
Maori
Arabic
Great Books in other languages
Year 10:
Swahili, Turkish, Persian, Hindi-Urdu cycles
Malay-Indonesian & Maori cycles
Euskara
Tagalog
Great Books in Arabic
Year 11:
Swahili, Turkish, Persian, Hindi-Urdu cycles
Malay-Indonesian, Maori, Euskara, Tagalog cycles
Quechua
Ojibwe
Great Books in Arabic
Year 12:
Swahili, Turkish, Persian, Hindi-Urdu, Malay-Indonesian cycles
Maori, Euskara, Tagalog, Quechua and Ojibwe cycles
French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian cycles
Intensive cultivation practicum
Great Books in Arabic
Once again, these two preliminary tracks of study are suggested to me not only by my own thought process, but by the interests of and possibilities in the people I see being drawn to the idea of polyliteracy. If you have read this essay or listened to this talk all the way to the end, then I imagine you might also be intrigued by some of the ideas I have propounded. Please spread or share them with anyone you know who might be interested in them. Thank you very much for hearing me out and goodbye till next time.
With best regards,
Alexander Arguelles
