Innovation in Language Learning

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the case of the national poet of Modern Greece, Dionysios Solomos, whose Italian-Greek expression constitutes a case of bilingualism, which is probably unique in Modern Greek studies, if not in bilingual studies in general. Count Dionysios Solomos (1798-1857), a native of the Ionian island of Zakynthos, grew up in the environment in which diglossia was a fact of life, since the Ionian islands had been under Venetian rule for more than four centuries (1386-1797). In the case of Solomos, this state of diglossia coupled with the fact that he studied in Italy for ten years, from the age of ten to the age of twenty (1818-1828). In fact, Solomos’s manuscripts reveal unambiguously the interference between the two languages, Italian being the “dominant language” of his culture and Greek being a “mother tongue”, which was, however, acquired as a second language. This interference can be traced in a wide range of code-switched and code-mixed productions, a sample of which will be presented in the paper. Evidently, the depth of Solomos’s bilingualism goes beyond a merely linguistic approach to his idiom. It reaches all the way down, from the very conception of the poetic idea to the constitution of the poem (composition, diction, style). This is what makes Solomos’s bilingualism such a complex, yet critical issue. Solomos’s case constitutes an ideal case study, especially in the context of the multilingual and multicultural societies of our time. Firstly, his language raises significant issues in various disciplines of applied linguistics (i.e. sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and neurolinguistics), but also, and most importantly, it raises issues of identity: who “am I”, being a bilingual/multilingual. Secondly, Solomos’s manuscripts permit one to examine the creation process of an organically bilingual poet, which is of interest to both stylistics and editing (especially, genetic criticism). In conclusion, Solomos’s case study, I believe, could open a path to explore language acquisition and intercultural education through literature.

Keywords: Bilingualism; Diglossia; Languages in contact; code-switching; code-mixing; Dionysios Solomos;