The Multilingual Citizen: Towards a Politics of Language for Agency and Change (Encounters, 11) (Volume 11) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 178309964X ISBN 13: 9781783099641

Publisher: Multilingual Matters, 2018

Synopsis

In this ground-breaking collection of essays, the editors and authors develop the idea of Linguistic Citizenship. This notion highlights the importance of practices whereby vulnerable speakers themselves exercise control over their languages, and draws attention to the ways in which alternative voices can be inserted into processes and structures that otherwise alienate those they were designed to support. The chapters discuss issues of decoloniality and multilingualism in the global South, and together retheorize how to accommodate diversity in complexly multilingual/ multicultural societies. Offering a framework anchored in transformative notions of democratic and reflexive citizenship, it prompts readers to critically rethink how existing contemporary frameworks such as Linguistic Human Rights rest on disempowering forms of multilingualism that channel discourses of diversity into specific predetermined cultural and linguistic identities.

About this title

About the Author

Lisa Lim is Associate Professor and Head of the School of English, The University of Hong Kong. Christopher Stroud is Director of the Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research and Senior Professor of Linguistics, University of the Western Cape, South Africa and Professor of Transnational Multilingualism, Centre for Research on Bilingualism, Stockholm University, Sweden. Lionel Wee is Provost Chair Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore.

Review

Here is a book that helps us think hard about language rights and linguistic citizenship for minoritized populations. Interweaving theoretical argumentation and commentary with empirical accounts primarily from Southeast Asia and Africa, this is a compellingly multi-voiced exploration of tensions, complementarities and affordances of rights and citizenship frameworks as engines for long-overdue educational and social change. (Nancy H. Hornberger, University of Pennsylvania, USA)

This important book challenges received notions about language, agency, and multilingualism through the lens of 'linguistic citizenship', a process of engagement that opens doors for respectful and deconstructive negotiations around language forms and practices. This book is required reading for anyone interested in learning how the systematic creation of 'otherness' can be creatively engaged with – and hopefully overcome – through a better understanding of linguistic practices of resistance and hope 'on the ground' in diverse contexts, globally. (Thomas Ricento, University of Calgary, Canada)

Edition details

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 178309964X
• ISBN 13: 9781783099641
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Lim Assist. Prof. Lisa, Stroud Christopher, Wee Dr. Lionel