Pt. 1. Researching trajectories, multilingual repertoires and identities -- pt. 2. Researching discourses, policies and practices on different scales -- pt. 3. Researching multilingual communication and multisemioticity online -- pt. 4. Multilingualism in research practice : voices, identities and researcher reflexivity -- pt. 5. Ethnographic monitoring and critical collaborative analysis for social change.

This book contributes to understanding research approaches for studying multilingualism in the context of contemporary superdiversity, in environments that are being dramatically transformed by transnational migration and movement of peoples. It explores language in urban contexts: the city as a site for experimentation and creativity in language practices. This involves considering theoretical frameworks in which to examine these practices, but above all, it focuses on how we do, or could do, research into these language practices and their users. What methodologies are we using to understand urban linguistic contexts? What do we want to learn? The chapters explore complex and challenging situations, capturing the evolution of new forms of language practice and changing attitudes to language in the city.

Researching Multilingualism expertly engages with a new sociolinguistics of multilingualism, taking account of this new communicative order and the particular cultural and social conditions of our times. Seventeen chapters are divided into four sections covering: researching discourses, policies and practices; contemporary mobilities; Researching multilingual communication on-line; Multilingualism in research practice. This state-of-the-art overview of research methodologies in multilingual settings will be of interest for all students and researchers working in the area of multilingualism within Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Education and Communication Studies.

This book offers a unique understanding of how researchers’ linguistic resources, and the languages they use, are politically and structurally constrained, with implications for the reliability of the research. The book will help readers to make theoretically and methodologically informed choices about the political dimensions of their research.

This volume draws together current research on dyslexia and literacy in multilingual settings across disciplines and methodologies. The contributors, all internationally recognised in the field, address developmental and acquired literacy difficulties and dyslexia in a range of language contexts including EAL/EFL. The book uses theories and analytical frameworks of a critical nature to reveal prejudicial social practices, and suggests future research directions towards a critical re-consideration of current understandings of dyslexia in multilingual settings, with a view to foregrounding the potential for interdisciplinarity. The book also suggests ways forward for evidence-informed practice, and it will be a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners and students alike.

Over the last twenty years, sociolinguistic research on multilingualism has been transformed. Two processes have been at work: first, an epistemological shift to a critical ethnographic approach, which has contributed to a larger turn toward post-structuralist perspectives on social life. Second, the effects of globalization—transnational population flows, new communication technologies, transformations in the political and economic landscape—have sparked increasing concern about the implications of these changes for our understanding of the relationship between language and society. A new sociolinguistics of multilingualism is being forged: one that takes account of the new communicative order, while retaining a central concern with the processes in the construction of social difference. The contributors to this volume have been at the forefront of these epistemological shifts. They write here about the conceptual and methodological challenges posed by these shifts, and the profound changes that we are witnessing in the late modern era.