This book discusses salient moments of multilingual encounters and brings together contributions focused on the interplay between language use by individuals and societies, and language-related inequalities or opportunities for speakers. The chapters demonstrate how biographical and speaker-centred approaches can contribute to an understanding of linguistic diversity, how researchers can empirically account for lived experiences of languages, and how such accounts are embedded in a larger discussion on social (in)equality. Together the chapters make a powerful case for the importance of speaker-centred methodologies in multilingual and multilingualism research. The book is a rich source of theoretical and methodological reflections and will thus be a valuable resource for both experienced researchers and students beginning to explore biographical research methods.

This edited volume extends current voluntourism theorizing by critically examining the intersections among various forms of work-leisure travel and language learning/teaching. The book’s contributors investigate volunteer tourism and its cognates such as working holidaymaking, international internships, and gap year labor, as discursive fields in which powerful ideas about language(s), their speakers, and pedagogical practices are propagated worldwide. The various authors’ chapters shed light on the hegemony of global English, the social consequences of linguistic commodification and neoliberal rationalities, the ways in which speaker identity positions can alter the exchange value of languages, and how language competencies are tied to power in the labor market, among related topics. This volume will be of interest to readers in Applied Linguistics, Critical Sociolinguistics, Educational and Linguistic Anthropology, Tourism and Leisure Studies, Migration and Mobility Studies, and Language Teaching and Learning.

How are two or more languages learned and contained in the same mind or the same community? This handbook presents an up-to-date view of the concept of multi-competence, exploring the research questions it has generated and the methods that have been used to investigate it. The book brings together psychologists, sociolinguists, Second Language Acquisition (SLA) researchers, and language teachers from across the world to look at how multi-competence relates to their own areas of study. This comprehensive, state-of-the-art exploration of multi-competence research and ideas offers a powerful critique of the values and methods of classical SLA research, and an exciting preview of the future implications of multi-competence for research and thinking about language. It is an essential reference for all those concerned with language learning, language use and language teaching.

The Brexit debate has been accompanied by a rise in hostile attitudes to multilingualism. However, cities can provide an important counter-weight to political polarisation by forging civic identities that embrace diversity. In this timely book, Yaron Matras describes the emergence of a city language narrative that embraces and celebrates multilingualism and helps forge a civic identity. He critiques linguaphobic discourses at a national level that regard multilingualism as deficient citizenship. Drawing on his research in Manchester, he examines the 'multilingual utopia', looking at multilingual spaces across sectors in the city that support access, heritage, skills and celebration. The book explores the tensions between decolonial approaches that inspire activism for social justice and equality, and the neoliberal enterprise that appropriates diversity for reputational and profitability purposes, prompting critical reflection on calls for civic university engagement. It is essential reading for anyone concerned about ways to protect cultural pluralism in our society.

This book fosters an awareness of multilingualism as lived or as subjectively experienced from the perspective of those involved in language education and teacher education. Responding to multilingual and visual turns, it widens the repertoire of methodologies dominating the field of language teacher education, from linguistic or verbal to visual. The chapters, written by practising language teachers and teacher educators, explore aspects of multilingualism accessed through visual means in a wide range of contexts. Using social justice as a transformative framework, they highlight the biases, inequalities and linguistic hierarchies within schools and teacher education, and promote respect for linguistic plurality and cultural diversity in these settings. They illustrate how visual methods can be used to reconstruct histories of individual multilingualism, identify present language ideologies and support teachers’ professional development by means of envisioning the future self in action. This book will be of interest to those involved in language education and language teacher education, including researchers, practising language teachers, student or trainee teachers and teacher educators. This book is Open Access under a CC BY NC ND license.

This volume is an up-to-date, concise introduction to bilingualism and multilingualism in schools, in the workplace, and in international institutions in a globalized world. The authors use a problem-solving approach and ask broad questions about bilingualism and multilingualism in society, including the question of language acquisition versus maintenance of bilingualism. Key features: provides a state-of-the-art description of different areas in the context of multilingualism and multilingual communication presents a critical appraisal of the relevance of the field, offers solutions of everyday language-related problems international handbook with contributions from renown experts in the field

The Routledge Handbook of Technological Advances in Researching Language Learning is the first volume to bring together the extant scholarship on the nature and role of digital technology in conducting second language research. The Handbook showcases technological advances, including issues and considerations, affecting research conduction in second language education. The contributions focus on the role of digital technology in researching second language education, second language acquisition, and applied linguistics. Contributions by both seasoned and junior scholars feature empirical studies and methodological and/or theoretical discussions of technological tools used (or tools that can be used) for conducting research into various aspects of second language learning and acquisition. This book will primarily appeal to academic specialists, practitioners, and professionals in the field of applied linguistics and second language education. The book will also be informative for scholars and professionals in disciplines such as educational technology and TESOL.

This book is an exploration of the role of language at Warruwi Community, a remote Indigenous settlement in northern Australia. It explores how language use and people’s ideas about language are embedded in contemporary Indigenous life there. Using an ethnographic approach, the book examines what language at Warruwi means in the context of the history of the community, ongoing social and political changes and the continuing importance of ancestral traditions. Children growing up at Warruwi still learn to speak many small Indigenous languages. This is remarkable not just in the Australian context, where many Indigenous languages are no longer spoken, but around the world as this kind of multilingualism in small languages persists only in a few remaining pockets. The way that people use many languages in their daily life at Warruwi reveals how high levels of linguistic diversity can be maintained in a small community. This detailed study of the creation of linguistic diversity is relevant to sociolinguistics, linguistic typology, historical linguistics and evolutionary linguistics. More generally, this book is for linguists, anthropologists and anyone with an interest in contemporary Australian Indigenous lives.

John C. Maher explains why societies everywhere have become more multilingual, despite the disappearance of hundreds of the world languages. He considers our notion of language as national or cultural identities, and discusses why nations cluster and survive around particular languages even as some territories pursue autonomy or nationhood.