Lori Saint-Martin (1959–2022)

Pour qui je me prends is an autobiography in which the author explores her multiple identities tied to her multilingualism. She suggests and shows how people have different personalities depending on the languages they speak.

Lori Saint-Martin was born into an English-speaking family in Canada, and she grew up speaking English. She started learning French at primary school, and as she grew older she decided that French was her mother tongue. Throughout her life, some people would occasionally comment on her accent, but in all other respects she had a perfect command of French. She changed her name to reflect that French was her de facto mother tongue. Her proficiency in French was so high, that all her life she worked as an author and translator in that language.

The book explores her sentiment about the languages she speaks. Initially, this is about English and French. In the later part of the book, she also writes about her sentiment and identity as a speaker of Spanish and German.

Pour qui je me prends touches on many feelings and experiences that many multilingual language users have. Each language seems to come with a different internalized culture. Languages are differently spoken, and people's characters appear different as speakers of various languages. Lori Saint-Martin describes many aspects of this development over the course of her life, how she rejected her original mother tongue and embraced another.… (more)