The Multilingual City

Vitality, Conflict and Change

Edited by Dr. Lid King, Lorna Carson

Publication date:

26 January 2016

Publisher

Multilingual Matters

Dimensions:

234x156mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781783094776

This book is an exploration of the vitality of multilingualism and of its critical importance in and for contemporary cities. It examines how the city has emerged as a key driver of the multilingual future, a concentration of different, changing cultures which somehow manage to create a new identity. The book uses the recent LUCIDE multilingual city reports as a basis for discussion and analysis, and deals with both societal and individual multilingualism in a way that draws on the full range of their historical, contemporary, visual/audible, psychological, educational and policy-oriented aspects. The book will be of interest to students and researchers of multilingualism, migration studies, European Studies, anthropology, sociology and urbanism.

Contributors

Preface

1. Lorna Carson and Lid King: Introduction: ‘Multilingualism is Lived Here’

2. Itesh Sachdev and Sarah Cartwright: The Vitality of Urban Multilingualism

3. Lorna Carson: The Sights and Sounds of the Multilingual City

4. Maria Stoicheva: Urban Multilingualism: Bond or Barrier?

5. Peter Skrandies: Language Policies and the Politics of Urban Multilingualism

6. David Little: Languages at School: A Challenge for Multilingual Cities

7. Lid King: Multilingual Cities and the Future — Vitality or Decline?

List of References

Index

This important new volume reports research on Europe’s irretrievably multilingual cities and states where the challenges and rewards of multilingualism are sharply defined. Municipal authorities and national governments need to pay much more attention to the city as a site of language planning, of possible new conceptions of citizenship, and sites where much of the future of human relations will be negotiated.