Ongoing Research Project: Exile and Linguistics in Comparative Literature: Exile and Linguistics in Comparative Literature

Exile represents a profoundly complex human and cultural experience that goes beyond mere geographic displacement. It deeply affects the author’s subjectivity and their relationship to language. Literature, as a vehicle of memory and culture, offers a privileged terrain for observing these effects, particularly when exile involves confrontation with a foreign language or a multilingual context.This project falls within the field of comparative literature and Francophone studies, aiming to analyze the impact of exile on authors’ language and linguistic subjectivity. It combines the analysis of literary texts with concepts drawn from applied linguistics and translation studies, in order to illuminate the interactions between language, culture, and identity.The scientific significance of this research is twofold: to understand how exile transforms authors’ linguistic and stylistic practices across different periods and geographical contexts, and to examine the role of translation and cultural transfer in identity construction. Existing studies have shown that uprooting profoundly influences linguistic and stylistic subjectivity, and that translation serves as a central tool for mediating identity, enabling navigation between memory of origin and integration into a new linguistic space. These works highlight the necessity of a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to study exile in all its dimensions.Thus, exile is not merely a social or political displacement: it is a linguistic and stylistic experience that transforms both thought and writing. This project builds on these studies by proposing a comparative analysis of different corpora of Francophone and translated authors, examining the interactions between memory, exile, and identity, particularly when the language of the host country becomes a medium for personal and cultural reconstruction.