Multilingualism, identity, and 1940s Britain: A sociolinguistic study of 'enemy alien' internment in the Second World War

The proposed project will combine archive analysis with methods from sociolinguistics and critical discourse studies(CDS) for the purpose of understanding the relationship between language and identity in British internment programmes in the Second World War (WW2).

Internment systems in WW2 Britain to detain 'enemy aliens' - foreign nationals labelled as potential threats to security - offer rich insights into British war experience and cultural policy (Kershaw, 2015, Pistol, 2017). Analysing language in wartime archival material opens unique avenues for understanding these policies, and their impact on cultural identity and public attitudes toward multilingualism and multiculturalism in Britain.

Multilingualism and multiculturalism are largely understood as post-war phenomena in studies of British politics, language and society. An aim of my project is to contribute to the growing number of studies seeking to understand how these were conceived of at earlier points in Britain's history.

My long-term goal is to encourage increased critical engagement with language used to justify and communicate modern cultural policies such as refugee detainment. Presenting my conclusions in ways that are accessible for both a specialist and non-specialist audience is a priority of this project.

Current scholarship on internment is dominated by history and cultural studies. Work focussed on linguistics is limited. However, the inherent multidisciplinarity of internment systems means many non-linguistic analyses include elements of language analysis (Hazley, 2021, Atkins, 2005, Webster, 2013).

This project aims to address the lack of dedicated linguistic scholarship on internment by promoting the value of linguistic research on traditionally cultural-historical topics and highlighting the benefits of interdisciplinarity in researching complex cultural and political systems. Central Research Questions:

1. How was language used strategically by political actors to justify internment programmes?

2. What role did rhetoric and representation for and of internees play in cultural and linguistic identity formation and the spread and efficacy of Home Front propaganda? 3. How was the multilingualism of internees perceived and treated by the British government?

These questions address the key language datatypes I will collect: political and systemic discourse, and the language of cultural representation. The questions will set the scope for the data collection and function as 'data relevance checkpoints' preceding close analysis of the material.

This project will draw on CDS sub-branches the socio cognitive approach (SCA) and the discourse-historical approach (DHA) (Reisigl, 2017, Van Dijk, 2015), and on critical sociolinguistic approaches to multilingualism and identity (Pennycook 2021, Blommaert 2009, Khan 2022)

The project will be divided into three phases: data collection, analysis, and writing. I plan to schedule Phase 1 by archive rather than by data type because of the physical distances between archives. Through regular reflection and assessment, I intend to refine this method to create a balanced and nuanced analysis, bespoke to nature of the data.

To avoid repeating the past we must learn from it. Understanding the intersection of language, culture, and politics through WW2 internment can unlock knowledge needed to engage critically with comparable modern issues, and hopefully achieve more ethical and inclusive solutions.