Beyond the mother tongue: language as cultural capital in Xiaolu Guo's A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

The paper investigates multilingual aesthetics in Xiaolu Guo's A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (2007). It argues that the novel refuses and undermines the family romance of the mother tongue by grounding its experimental form and language in Western poststructuralist theory. Yet, the text fictionalises the encounter with the other language as a love story, a fatal romance of conquest and profound metamorphosis thus revealing the complex status of English as cultural capital. As it exhibits multilingual strategies, the book also displays an elite cosmopolitism based on European literary canonical works that reinforces rather than discards monolingual ides of language and literature.

Automated summary

The paper explores multilingual aesthetics in Xiaolu Guo's novel "A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers" by rejecting and undermining the romance of the mother tongue, and fictionalizing encounters with other languages as a fatal conquest and profound metamorphosis. Despite exhibiting multilingual strategies, the book also emphasizes an elite cosmopolitanism based on European literary canonical works, reinforcing rather than discarding monolingual ideas of language and literature.