Exophony is the practice of writing in a language that is not one's mother tongue. While the phenomenon has been known for ages, the term is relatively new: it was introduced within the field of literary and cultural studies by Susan Arndt, Dirk Naguschewski and Robert Stockhammer in 2007. Some exophonic authors may be bilingual or multilingual from their childhood years, even polyglots, while others may write in an acquired language. In some cases the second language is acquired early in life, for example through immigration, and it is not always clear whether the writer should strictly be classed a non-native speaker. In other cases, the language is acquired through exile or migration: "Exophonic writing, the phenomenon of writing literature in a second language, is increasing across Europe due to labour migration". It is one form of transnational literature, although the latter also encompasses writing that crosses national stylistic or cultural boundaries without being written in another language. "Extraterritoriality and exophony are indeed important notions, not only for comparative literature but in general for the question of the status of the literary text the 21st century". It also overlaps with translingualism, and translingualist writer is one of many terms that has been coined to describe the phenomenon. Related concepts in English include transculturalism/transculturation, axial writing, postnationalism and postcolonialism, and in German, Exophonie, Anders-Sprachigkeit, :de:Interkulturelle Literatur|Interkulturelle Literatur, Gastarbeiterliteratur, Ausländerliteratur and Migrantenliteratur. Motivations for becoming an exophonic writer may be manifold: to make a political statement and her acquired tongue, to adopt/avoid stylistic elements of particular languages, to evade the risk of being lost in translation, or to gain a wider readership – translated literature in the UK and US accounts for only a small percentage of sales, so "it makes commercial sense". When asked why he didn’t write in his native language, Joseph Conrad replied, "I value too much our beautiful Polish literature to introduce into it my worthless twaddle. But for Englishmen my capacities are just sufficient." Some exophonic authors are also translators, including of their own works. Conversely, translation of exophonic works can present problems due to the "defamiliarisation of the new language through stylistic innovation".
