Diversity and Super-Diversity

The value of this volume is that it goes beyond a simple discussion on superdiversity, including case studies that problematize and complicate the ways in which language, communication and identity have been interpreted in the past. By embedding these concepts within different and new contexts, it engages readers in the mobility, complexity and interconnectedness that the case studies so well describe. -- Ofelia Garcia, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

Sociocultural linguistics has long conceived of languages as well-bounded,separate codes. But the increasing diversity of languages encountered by most people in their daily lives challenges this conception. This volume takes stock of the increasing diversity of linguistic phenomena and more.Sociocultural linguistics has long conceived of languages as well-bounded, separate codes. But the increasing diversity of languages encountered by most people in their daily lives challenges this conception. Because globalization has accelerated population flows, cities are now sites of encounter for groups that are highly diverse in terms of origins, cultural practices, and languages. Further, new media technologies invent communicative genres, foster hybrid semiotic practices, and spread diversity as they intensify contact and exchange between peoples who often are spatially removed and culturally different from each other. Diversity-even super-diversity-is now the norm. In response, recent scholarship complicates traditional associations between languages and social identities, emphasizing the connectedness of communicative events and practices at different scales and the embedding of languages within new physical landscapes and mediated practices. This volume takes stock of the increasing diversity of linguistic phenomena and faces the theoretical-methodological challenges that accounting for such phenomena pose to socio-cultural linguistics. This book stages the debate on super-diversity that will be sure to interest societal linguists and serves as an invaluable reference for academic libraries specializing in the linguistics field.