The Multilingual City

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.

Lid King was Director of CILT and then between 2003 and 2011 was National Director for Languages taking forward the implementation of the National Languages Strategy for England. He was co-author – with Lord Ron Dearing – of The Languages Review, and has represented the UK on languages at both the European Union and the Council of Europe. He established the Languages Company in 2008, originally in order to support the national policy on languages and also to promote languages pedagogy and policy issues.

Lorna Carson is Assistant Professor in Applied Linguistics and Director of the Trinity Centre for Asian Studies at Trinity College Dublin. Her teaching and research focuses on multilingualism with a particular emphasis on understanding the language classroom. She is President of the Irish Association for Applied Linguistics (IRAAL).