STEPHEN WURM ET IOANNIS IKONOMOU : DEUX PLURILINGUES HORS NORMES ET LEURS BIOGRAPHIES LANGAGIERES
STEPHEN WURM AND IOANNIS IKONOMOU: TWO MULTILINGUALS OUTSIDE NORMS AND THEIR LANGUAGE BIOGRAPHIES

Summary/Abstract: The article proposes a discursive and sociolinguistic analysis of the language biographies of two plurilingual adults considered exceptional in terms of the number of languages spoken and used in their professional activities and everyday life: the Greek translator Ioannis Ikonomou (born in 1964) and the Australian linguist of Hungarian origin Stephen Wurm (died in 2001). The analysis will focus on two texts presenting their multilingual biographies by journalists, and on the representations and linguistic imaginaries illustrated by the Wikipedia articles devoted to them. The two plurilingual peoples are seen by the two journalists who have taken an interest in their unusual language biographies as ‘children of Babel’, the outstanding ‘results’ of multilingualism and of human curiosity and intelligence about the many languages spoken in the world.

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