All languages and cultures are unconsciously hybrid yet claim exclusive ownership

Evidence

Pnina Werbner (1997), drawing on a point made by Bakhtin, suggests that “organic hybridity” is a feature of all languages and by extension all human cultures. She argued that the assimilation of difference, or new cultural influences, occur in an unconscious fashion, leaving intact a presumption of exclusive ownership in the culture of the assimilator. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3026

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Bakhtin’s concept of ‘organic hybridity’ — unconscious cultural assimilation that preserves a fiction of exclusive ownership.
• XREF: Connects to Bakhtin’s dialogism/heteroglossia and to the general linguistic turn in cultural theory. — connects to: All cultures arise from mixture, so hybridity theory restates an essentialist error. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 915; A language stays rich only through risking contact with other cultures — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 578