Creative Potential of Bilingual Writers

Explore how bilinguals can thrive crafting narratives in a second language.

‘You will never succeed as a creative writer in your second language,’ my father said while walking to the airport’s departure gates, ‘at least with journalism, you’ll learn a practical craft.’

It was the end of summer in 2014, and I was heading back for my final year of A-Levels in England. The choice between English Literature and Journalism for my bachelor’s degree was suddenly clear. Although I’ve been learning English since the age of eight, I started speaking it full-time at 17. Most of my writing, except for a few awkward poems, was in my native tongue. How did I dare to think that I could tame the language of strangers?

This well-meant fatherly guidance fed my inner critic for almost a decade, paralysing my creative self-expression in English. Not even an A** in Language and Literature, the highest grade among native speakers in an English college, encouraged my self-belief. I graduated in Journalism without a passion for news or current affairs. A few years into my career, I found myself with a severe burn-out, living a life that wasn’t mine.

Neuroscience of Language

I would be lying if I said it’s always easy to find the mot juste. Even though my vocabulary has reached the native speakers’ range, I process words at a slower rate. Both languages are always active inside a bilingual brain¹, regardless of the language they speak at the moment. I imagine it as a ‘language database’, and bilinguals simply have more data points to deal with.

Another cognitive hindrance bilingual writers encounter is the switching and mixing costs, a well-known phenomenon in the field of psycholinguistics. It is the mental effort required to juggle different languages that sometimes cause bilinguals to stumble over their words.

This puts us, non-native writers, at a severe disadvantage compared to our monolingual peers. Our wit for words is slower; our vocabulary range is thinner, we may struggle with dialogue, dialect, cultural references and context. Yet, numerous non-natives blessed the world with literary gifts in their second language. What magic did they use?

Non-English Sensibility

To answer this question, let’s look at the life and career of Joseph Conrad. He was a Polish marine captain and a 20th-century writer. Conrad started learning English as a third language in his late 20s², and, against all odds, became one of the most critically acclaimed novelists of the English language. His works are regarded as the finest examples of literary impressionism, inspiring numerous films and play adaptations.

Language wasn’t Conrad’s prime strength, at least at the start of his writing career. The editors of his debut novel, Almayer’s Folly, while impressed with the manuscript, were unsure that Conrad’s English was satisfactory for publication³.

Yet there was something else in Conrad’s work that captured their attention — his non-English sensibility, especially as he used colonial settings, drawing inspiration from his time in the British Merchant Navy. Conrad’s position as an outsider lent a distinctive authenticity to his take on the brutal nature of European colonialism. The magic in the pens of bilingual writers, hence, is the multitude of perspectives.

Cultural Frame Switching

The sensibility found in the English works of Conrad can elevate bilingual writers above their peers, and science agrees. Researchers suggest that bilinguals tend to develop superior abilities in understanding and navigating different cultural norms and practices. They can shift from one cultural mindset to another, a phenomenon known as ‘cultural frame switching’.

Imagine how valuable this ability can be for character development. At least three empirical studies showed that language activated cultural frame-switching for personality traits such as extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness. This means that bilingual writers may possess a profound capacity for creating more diverse characters, given that they intrinsically embody multifaceted personas shaped by the languages they speak. ‘Learn a new language and get a new soul,’ says a Czech proverb.

The cultural frame switching may also help in crafting authentic settings and devising an original metaphor, as language can partially control our perception. Take the Russian ‘голубой’, for example, which is a separate word for the English ‘light blue’. A 2007 study found that Russian speakers were faster at distinguishing the blue shades compared to their English-speaking peers. Bilingual writers, therefore, can tap into their rich emotive, cultural and visual palettes.

Integrating Bi-Cultural Identity

Yet how can writers integrate bicultural elements into their art? The answer lies in their unique creative processes. They may choose to work in both languages simultaneously or sprinkle them like a fine spice. They can play with the rhyme of their writing to express a more authentic version of a character’s voice.

There are plenty of bilinguals to draw inspiration from. For his article Inside Bilingual Writer Erik Gleibermann interviewed eight US writers who immigrated from abroad yet mastered the dance between the two tongues. They interweave English with their childhood language to accentuate intimacy; they use bilingual wordplay to intensify emotive moments. And most importantly, they tell unique stories about their culture and their lived experience of searching for the right words. As beautifully put by novelist and diarist Annaïs Nin⁵: ‘There are words in other tongues I must use when I talk about you. In my own, I think of: ardiente, salvaje, hombre.’

Final Thoughts

Almost a decade later, I have finally recognised bilingualism as my creative superpower and mustered the courage to assert to my father that he was wrong all along. “I can succeed as a creative writer in my second language,” I told him over the phone. “I know it won’t be easy, but it’s possible.”

And this sentiment I extend to all bilinguals out there — you are more competent than you think. You will likely struggle with words, but you will thrive in other facets of storytelling: characters, settings, plot building, and originality. Diverse, multicultural stories need to be told, so express your voice proudly.

Sources

¹ Albert Costa, The Bilingual Brain and What it Tells Us about the Science of Language, Penguin Random House, 2020

² Jeffrey Meyers, Joseph Conrad: A Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1991

³ Zdzislaw Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Life. Translated by Halina Najder, Camden House, 2007

⁵Anaïs Nin: Henry and June: From “A Journal of Love”: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986

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Creative Potential of Bilingual Writers was originally published in The Writing Cooperative on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.