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ABSTRACT
YouTube polyglots are an online community whose origin can be traced to the late 2000s, when language learning forums and YouTube videos of language learning enthusiasts began appearing online. This article draws on critical discourse analysis to examine the discourses of language learning that are manifest in polyglot videos and websites. It also situates this online community and their conception of language learning in the historical context of the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism, a period marked by intense technological acceleration, rapid social change and the commodification of lifestyles in the global marketplace of the internet. As representative figures of this period, polyglots turn to discourses that are suffused with tropes of speed and other related values such as efficiency, entrepreneurialism and individuality. They see language as an individual skill, rather than as a social practice, and language learning as a personal endeavor guided by productivity.
Acknowledgements
I thank the editors of this special issue and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful suggestions to improve the manuscript. I am also grateful to Will Simpson for his comments on an earlier version of this paper. Special thanks to Charlie Hankin, who helped me find an English voice without incurring in idiomatic dissonances. Finally, I would like to dedicate this article to the memory of polyglot Moses McCormick, who passed away on March 2021, while this paper was under review.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 ‘Hacking language learning: Benny Lewis at TEDxWarsaw’ https://youtu.be/0x2_kWRB8-A (accessed 10 February 2021).
2 See https://www.youtube.com/user/laoshu505000 (accessed 10 February 2021).
3 See https://flrmethod.com/about/ (accessed 10 February 2021).
4 See https://www.youtube.com/user/poliglotta80 (accessed 10 February 2021).
5 See http://www.linguahackers.com/ (accessed 10 February 2021).
6 See https://youtu.be/XpY5XBv3CvI (accessed 10 February 2021).
7 Source: https://polyglotconference.com/. The first edition of the Polyglot Conference took place in 2013 in Budapest, Hungary. The other events are the Polyglot Gathering (https://www.polyglotgathering.com/) and LangFest (https://montreal.langfest.org/en/). The quote is from https://www.polyglotgathering.com/faq/ (all accessed 10 February 2021).
8 Source: http://polyglotconference.com/about/our-history/ (accessed 17 August 2019).
9 Source: https://www.quora.com/Who-is-meant-by-the-polyglot-community/answer/Judith-Meyer (accessed 10 February 2021).
10 See https://www.youtube.com/user/lingosteve (accessed 10 February 2021).
11 See https://www.youtube.com/user/IWTYAL (accessed 10 February 2021).
12 See https://www.youtube.com/user/Dacud (accessed 10 February 2021).
13 See https://www.youtube.com/user/Sprachprofi (accessed 10 February 2021).
14 See https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSLMd1qIB32mKvscZDc6sFQ (accessed 10 February 2021).
15 For instance, see Steve Kauffman’s video ‘Hacking Benny Lewis' Language Hacking Books’, https://youtu.be/uIMNbwcremk (accessed 10 February 2021).
16 See ‘Lýdia Machová – Ten things polyglots do differently [EN] – PG 2017’ https://youtu.be/ROh_-RG3OVg (accessed 16 August 2019).
17 Source: https://www.lingq.com/en/ (accessed 12 February 2021).
18 Source: https://imabouttolevelup.biz/ (accessed 11 February 2021).
19 Source: https://youtu.be/r0Rw17g3bww (accessed 11 February 2021).
20 Source: https://www.iwillteachyoualanguage.com/about-me (accessed 11 February 2021).
21 See https://youtu.be/Lgec7VxZYc0 (accessed 16 February 2021).
22 See https://youtu.be/8EqcL-HVYWE (accessed 16 February 2021).
23 See https://youtu.be/xNzg0GuHrVg (accessed 16 February 2021).
24 See https://youtu.be/BbdWdSC1Lvo (accessed 16 February 2021).
25 ‘Want to learn another language? Fluent in 3 Months (Fi3M) is all about finding the quickest possible route to speaking a new language.’ Source: https://www.fluentin3months.com/start-here/ (accessed 11 February 2021).
26 For a grassroots discussion on the term, see https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/6hxenc/polygloats_and_language_hackers/ (accessed 11 February 2021).
27 ‘The fast, fun and effective way to learn.’ Source: https://www.lingq.com/en/ (accessed 12 February 2021).
28 For an early example, see the ‘Lecture on the Best Methods of Teaching the Living Languages’ delivered by the American Hispanist George Ticknor in 1832 (Ticknor Citation1937).
29 Source: https://www.fluentin3months.com/self-study/ (accessed 13 February 2021).
30 Source: https://www.youtube.com/user/poliglotta80/about (accessed 13 February 2021).
31 Source: https://youtu.be/sQAnBIUARXk (accessed 13 February 2021).
32 Namely, Spanish, French, German and Italian; see https://languagehacking.com/books/ (accessed 13 February 2021).
33 See https://imabouttolevelup.biz/language-courses/ (accessed 13 February 2021).
34 See https://www.lucalampariello.com/services/ (accessed 13 February 2021).
35 See https://www.languagementoring.com/lydia-machova/ (accessed 13 February 2021).
36 See https://youtu.be/MgDGsfISkIQ (accessed 13 February 2021).
37 See https://youtu.be/0ZQIsof-Zcc (accessed 13 February 2021).
38 Source: https://youtu.be/Yoc9wxSg5KM (accessed 13 February 2021).
39 See https://www.quora.com/How-is-Benny-Lewis-regarded-within-the-polyglot-community. Also: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/7iaxlx/is_benny_lewis_trustworthy/ (both accessed 14 February 2021).
40 Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/74t8mr/do_polyglots_even_exist/
(accessed 15 February 2021).
41 Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/6hxenc/polygloats_and_language_hackers/ (accessed 15 February 2021).
42 See https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/investing-in-future-of-video-youtube (accessed 15 February 2021).
43 See https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/youtube/ (accessed 15 February 2021).
44 See https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72857?hl=en&ref_topic=9153826 (accessed 15 February 2021).
45 See Richard Simcott’s ‘Hyperpolyglot – Polyglot and Multilingual Ambassador speaks in 16 languages’, https://youtu.be/SAtWuQmdexs; Luca Lampariello’s ‘Polyglot Speaking 8 Languages’ https://youtu.be/L3w8yHrqFiQ; and Olly Richards’ ‘Multilingual video – Olly Richards’ https://youtu.be/6zIZ1oAvvik (all accessed 16 February 2021).
46 For a discussion on dynamics of multilingual accommodation, see Sachdev, Giles, and Pauwels (Citation2012).
47 Source: ‘Globalism has ruined adventure and is making the world boring’ https://youtu.be/v7vWFayCIH8. For the website, see https://www.mezzoguild.com/ (both accessed 5 May 2021).
48 Source: https://youtu.be/LXcmi50kFW4 (accessed 17 February 2021).
49 Olly Richards: ‘Today we have such amazing opportunities and possibilities by ourselves because of the internet. (…) Today you just go on Google –I mean– for any language, you can find grammar charts for Klingon. (…) It is not of a question of oh there are no resources.’ Source: https://youtu.be/sQAnBIUARXk (accessed 19 February 2021).
50 Steve Kauffman: ‘Culture is out there and anyone can participate in any culture (…) All the cultures of the world belong to all of us. (…) It’s all out there to enjoy and participate in, and it is that kind of feeling about discovering the cultures of the world that induced me to learn languages.’ Source: https://youtu.be/KBMqBs8resI (accessed 17 February 2021).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Alberto Bruzos
Alberto Bruzos holds a position as University Lecturer and director of the Spanish Language Program at Princeton University. He has published on linguistic relativism, semantic motivation, the pragmatics of irony, the commercialization and institutionalization of language education, language policy and the use of service learning and the linguistic landscape in L2 teaching. Currently, his research interest lies in language ideologies, Marxist linguistic thought and the relationship between language and political economy.