This is my first post though I have been reading others from time to time. Yes, American monolingual chauvinism is still surprising, but not unexpected even among scholars. As a student of Chinese and Arabic while a Berkeley undergrad, most of my peers were also studying several languages, but we were exceptions area scholars interested in particular phenomena for which there were limited secondary works beyond general introductions. Aside from that comment, I would like to know if anyone on this list has interests in Lev N. Gumilev's work and possible uses of Bakhtin and other linguistic analysts in interpreting the ethnogenic processes as expressed in literature, which was an important component of Gumilev's syncretic methodology for historical-geographic reconstructions.
Every iteration is dialogical.
I've been studying Russian for two years now. One of those years I lived in Russia. I'm married to a Russian woman. This is my fourth European language, and far and away the hardest. I speak Finnish fluently, and Finnish, often considered the most difficult language in the world, can't hold a candle to Russian.