Opening with Salih’s Season of Migration, the chapter uses an imaginary library devoid of Arabic books to question Arabic’s place in world literature. It rejects two temptations – adding Arabic as a simple supplement or isolating it as exceptional – and proposes modern Arabic literature as a field that reshapes questions of time, language, geography, and media. Surveying scholarship and canon formation, the editors trace and critique Nahda-origin periodizations, fuṣḥā/ʿāmmiyya binaries, nationalist gatekeeping, and regional frames such as Mashriq, Maghrib, Gulf, and exile. The volume’s four sections examine shifting temporalities, contested linguistic registers and translation, transnational geographies, and media histories from print to poetry and the novel. A final provocation reads Ahmed Naji’s prison library to ask why Arabic literature matters now, foregrounding contemporary reading, translation, and experimentation against state-sanctioned canons. Across case studies, the Companion offers methods and close readings that unsettle inherited categories while opening future paths for studying modern Arabic literature.

This chapter interrogates the marginalization and recent resurgence of Darija (Moroccan Arabic) and Tamazight as legitimate literary languages in Morocco. Historically sidelined by Arabization policies and the dominance of the Franco–Arabic literary binary, these Indigenous languages have been mostly excluded from national literary historiography. This chapter traces how postindependence nationalist ideologies suppressed Morocco’s multilingual, literary heritage, privileging fuṣḥā and French while dismissing Darija and Tamazight as purely oral languages. Combining close readings of novels with institutional developments, the chapter highlights the emergence of a new literary consciousness that reclaims linguistic plurality as a pillar of Moroccan literature. It argues that despite institutional resistance, the rise of fiction written in Darija and Tamazight signals a transformative shift in Moroccan literature, challenging hegemonic narratives and redefining the language of the novelistic genre. It ultimately advocates for a reconfiguration of scholarly frameworks to reflect the multilingual realities of Moroccan cultural production.

This chapter re-examines the concept of Maghrib literature, moving beyond the reductive binary that equates it solely with Francophone output. It underscores the Maghrib’s diverse heritage – Berber, Arab, African, Ottoman, and European – and its rich multilingual literary traditions through historical, linguistic, and literary analysis. Béchir Khraïef’s novel Barg Ellil (Barq al-Layl) (1960) serves as a central example, showcasing a creolized poetics rooted in Tunisia’s deep historical and regional connections. The novel embodies Édouard Glissant’s “poetics of relation” through its multilingualism, hybrid characters, and themes of displacement and resistance. The chapter critiques the marginalization of Arabic-language literature in favor of French-language texts, advocating for a comparative, inclusive approach that acknowledges the Maghrib’s linguistic and cultural complexity. Ultimately, it argues that Maghrib literature is defined not just by language or geography, but by its capacity to reflect and reimagine the region’s layered identities.

Both linguistic and psychological constructionist approaches to emotion research recognize the crucial role of language in shaping emotion experience and communication. Multilingual individuals navigate multiple languages, and often multiple cultures, making it essential to understand how emotions are perceived, processed, experienced, and communicated in first and later learned languages. This chapter reviews previous findings from linguistics and psychology, shedding light on the complex and multifaceted relationships among emotion, language, and culture. While it is clear that multilinguals perceive, process, experience, and communicate emotions differently across their various languages, the chapter outlines possible directions for future research to further explore the impact of multilingualism and multiculturalism on emotions.

The Introduction establishes the aims and bounds of the study, which examines attitudes towards, and uses of, the written word in Kent, Mercia and Wessex from the 830s to the 920s. The Introduction provides an overview of scholarship that has informed the study, as well as the new perspectives that it seeks to provide. The structure of the study is also explained.

Chapter 4 opens Part II of the study with an overview of literary activity during the late ninth and early tenth centuries, and the political backdrop of the emergent kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons. A summary of the kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons itself is provided, followed by discussion of three categories of evidence: epistolary correspondences, the corpus of Alfredian Old English literature, and Asser’s Life of King Alfred. Throughout, several points of continuity with earlier decades of literary activity are stressed, particularly the continued importance of letter-writing and international communication. It is also emphasised that contemporary investment in vernacular literary production was extraordinary, yet Latin remained a valued commodity as well. Just as there would have been competing political visions within the kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons, so too there would have been preferences for literary patronage of Latin or Old English. The decision specifically to compose the Life of King Alfred in Latin is assessed, particularly in light of Asser’s intended audiences. The overview provided by this chapter sets the scene for the case studies explored in the subsequent two chapters.

This chapter will introduce the reader to the study of third (L3) or further (Ln) acquisition. The circumstances surrounding the acquisition of language beyond the second conspire to make this a unique context, distinct from L2 acquisition. The L3 learner has at least partial knowledge of more than one grammar, previous experience with nonnative language learning and, in most cases, at least some metalinguistic knowledge. All these factors significantly condition both the starting point and the trajectory of L3/Ln language acquisition in ways that cannot be predicted from our understanding of L1 and L2 acquisition and reflect qualitative as well as quantitative changes in going from two to three or more languages. In this chapter, the reader will find an introduction to the basic concepts and themes of L3/Ln acquisition research, an overview of L3/Ln theories from a cognitive perspective – modeling the acquisition of both morphosyntax and phonology – an in-depth discussion of the role of previously acquired languages, and a brief introduction to some of the most recent work on L3 processing, including studies using electroencephalography (EEG) and semiartificial languages to address long-standing questions in the field while overcoming some of the most common methodological and logistic issues facing the L3/Ln researcher.

Roughly half of the world’s population are bilingual, that is, around four billion people. Worldwide, language learning is on the rise, driven by factors such as immigration, globalization, and an increased awareness of the value of learning another language. In this chapter we explain how we learn languages in addition to our mother tongue, that is, the language we grew up speaking from early childhood. How is learning a second language different to learning a first? What are some of the challenges people face when learning another language? We explore issues around translation, and the creative inventions of sci-fi like the babel fish and the Tardis, versus the capabilities and limitations of AI. We take a look at unique cases of true (and fake) polyglot savants, and we revisit those who suddenly speak with another accent, or even in an entirely different language. We also see what science says about the considerable cognitive and social benefits of learning a new language.

This chapter begins by describing the pre-history of southern China and the origins of colonial Hong Kong. It then proceeds to a discussion of English in the late nineteenth century and the formation of an English-speaking Chinese elite in colonial Hong Kong. Since the resumption of Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the government has promoted a policy of “trilingualism” (Cantonese, English, and Putonghua) and “biliteracy” (written Chinese and English). Recently, the national government has moved to assert tighter control over the territory, and there has been increasing importance placed on the learning and use of the national language, Putonghua. At present, English continues to be widely used in key domains of Hong Kong society, including government, law and many areas of employment. This is likely to continue in the future, despite Hong Kong’s increasing integration economically, politically, socially, and linguistically into mainland China.

The modern nation of Papua New Guinea is a colonial construct where English and its pidgin-creole daughter language, Tok Pisin, share an intertwined history and contemporary linguistic ecology, each with its official and unofficial roles and each influencing the other. Today at least half of all Papua New Guineans use Tok Pisin and/or English for day-to-day communication in this country with more than 840 distinct languages. Tok Pisin is the dominant medium of oral and informal communication, even as English remains the dominant medium of written and formal communication. The morphology and syntax of Tok Pisin show characteristics that are typical for the languages of its first speakers. Its lexicon is mainly English, but high-frequency words of German, Kuanua, and Chinese Pidgin origin are indicative of a complicated history. Papua New Guinea English has been heavily influenced by Tok Pisin.

The roots of London English go back – in the textual record – to the Middle English period and already in the 1300s exhibit features which reveal diverse and multilingual influences, e.g. from medieval French and Latin. The examination of morphological features characteristic of this urban variety in its early stages is helpful in constructing a linguistic profile for early London English. Data sources for this include guild certificates, accounts and company records, with London English in later centuries being recorded by orthoepists (in the 1600s) who list sounds characteristic of speech in the capital which later fed into supraregional varieties in the south of England in general. These phonological traits, and many which were specific to London, are attested in literary documents in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Chapter 5 broadly discusses language use in multilingual and multidialectal societies, codeswitching, language birth, and language loss. We include case studies of multilingualism in the Vaupès in Amazonia and the Maghreb in Africa, the intermingled nature of Maltese and Michif, and English-only movements in North America.