Superdiversity, Multilingualism, and Awareness

Abstract

Paradoxically, individual and societal multilingualism are officially accepted and celebrated at a European level, the aim being that every European citizen becomes at least trilingual. Closer analyses of the discourse on multilingualism shows, however, that what are celebrated are the languages of European nation-states and officially acknowledged linguistic minorities (such as Frisian in the Netherlands, Welsh or Gaelic in the United Kingdom, Sorbian in Germany) but by no means all languages of the people who actually live in European countries. Embedded in this paradox, the present chapter will first provide an overview on the historical development of the term and concept of “super-diversity”. In the second part, we present current research on linguistic super-diversity and awareness from sociological/ anthropological, sociolinguistic, education and psycholinguistic perspectives. Methodological aspects and challenges will then be identified, followed by an outline of future directions in the field.