Lingue, codici, rappresentanza. Margini delle Digital Humanities

Digital Humanities became a global phenomenon and as a result are exposed today to the processes of knowledge concentration and to the risks of uniformisation to the cultural models of the Anglosphere. However, a number studies document the social and political costs of the linguistic exclusion and the uneconomical effects of imposing on European citizens the adoption of English as lingua franca in all areas, including the academic-scientific sector. Set against the theoretical backdrop of postcolonial studies and non-hegemonic epistemologies, this paper will discuss the problem of monolingualism in DH through the analysis of the sources of articles published by the seven most important DH journals across five years (2009-2014), amounting to about 16.000 sources. Although the collected data are heterogeneous, results show the overwhelming Anglophone dominion on DH and the essential monolingualism of Anglophone colleagues. The article concludes with a series of proposal for mitigating the negative impact of monolingualism both at institutional level (representation of non-Anglophone communities) and at research level (visibility of scientific products).