Complexities of intercultural writing process of budding multilingual writers

Abstract

This paper explores challenges faced by twenty-six budding multilingual creative writers. Grounded in a contrastive rhetoric writing perspective, the paper determines the extent to which language is a barrier to creative writers who write in English as a second language. Data was collected from the participants’ reflections through an online questionnaire and face-to-face interviews, in which the participants were asked to indicate whether they could express their ideas clearly when writing in English. The study finds that English did not inhibit the writers from expressing thoughts, but 57.1% of the participants feel they would have expressed themselves more freely if they had not been confined to using English only in their writing. It is, therefore, recommended that complementary phenomena ought to occur in multilingual societies in which value will be placed not only on one’s ability to operate between languages, but also, and most importantly, on nourishing creativity in a way that would allow one to construct and share knowledge, skills and experiences as well as critically reflect on one’s worldview through the eyes of various linguistic repertoires and cultures.