Introduction

Abstract

In the introductory chapter of the book, the rationale of the collection is explained, highlighting the research gap and setting the (inter)disciplinary scope. The volume aims to make a contribution to the relatively underexplored area of the interplay between multilingualism and politics. The 14 chapters of this edited collection study multilingualism both as a concept and as a contemporary phenomenon. Multilingualism affects both the social construction of cosmopolitan civic identities and the actual conduct of democratic politics, with new concepts of citizenship and new forms of deliberation. With this in mind, the volume is divided into two parts: (1) Multilingualism in Politics and (2) The Politics of Multilingualism. The scope is necessarily interdisciplinary, and the collection brings together analyses from the perspectives of sociolinguistics, (political) discourse analysis, language policy, sociology, migration studies, and political science. These multifaceted approaches attest to the need to continue to explore the ways in which multilingualism and politics/policy/polity interrelate in different contexts and countries.