We will look at attitudes and value judgments which speakers and communities have about English dialects and discuss their social relevance of language in general. We will see that language is not only a means to share information but an essential part of social life which helps us organize ourselves and define our identity. There are different levels of usage (regional, social, ethnic, individual) and that variation has regional, social and individual dimensions. We start with a short discussion of general attitudes about language varieties, look at social prejudice based on language usage, find out why some varieties are stigmatized whereas others have high prestige and get a first glance of perceptions about standard and non-standardized varieties. Looking at examples from English around the world, we take a look at perceptual dialectology to demonstrate how views toward dialects affect our ives – not forgetting their negative side effects.

We take a look at fundamental principles that operate when social and/or regional varieties of English are in contact with each other or with other languages. We take a historical look at English and explore various contact settings which have shaped its development, from contact with Old Norse, Latin and Norman French to the present day. We discuss patterns of bilingualism and multilingualism, that is when speakers use two or more languages in their everyday lives. As the product of migration and colonization, different kinds of English have emerged in different locations around the world. We learn how new dialects emerge as a product of new-dialect formation and how contact-derived varieties such as pidgins and creoles develop under conditions of language contact, with emphasis on different theories of origins. Finally, we discuss the so-called Global Englishes which have emerged as a product of second-language learning around the world.

This chapter examines the ideologies of language use in the context of an EMI university in multilingual Hong Kong from the perspectives of a group of international students. Based on the findings of the study, the chapter shows that international students’ ideologies of language use in the EMI university classroom are much more complex and nuanced than what is written in the institution’s official language policy documents. The majority of international students are found to hold ideologies of English as the default language for university education and English monolingualism as the norm in the EMI classroom. However, there is also evidence of varying degrees of acceptability of multilingual language practices in the classroom. The chapter draws attention to the complex ways in which international students’ language ideologies intersect with their concerns about social exclusion, linguistic disadvantage and educational inequality in the EMI classroom. It also demonstrates how their language ideologies contribute to sustaining and reproducing linguistic hegemony and social injustice in EMI higher education.

The study of Roman history has always been multilingual, and some of the most important work on the Roman Republic is in German. Today, however, fewer and fewer anglophone students and scholars read German. The result is that major work published in German can go unread and uncited. This new essay by Amy Russell surveys the problem and potential solutions, as well as exploring some of the difficulties of translation from German to English and a glossary of untranslatable terms. It is important that we balance the benefits of multilingual publishing with the need to make Roman history accessible to all. Translation and collaboration are among the methods recommended. Translation from German brings specific problems, as some concepts can be expressed more easily in one language or the other; Russell takes a case study of the term Öffentlichkeit and its similarities to and differences from English phrases such as ‘public space’. Those differences have significantly affected how scholars writing in German and English have conceptualized the public and the political in the Roman Republic. A glossary elucidates a range of other hard-to-translate concepts.

In this chapter, language policies are examined with reference to how they are debated in public discourse. The chapter argues that, like in politics, the space afforded to language policy in conventional media is often narrow, and depends upon how language-related issues invoke broader narratives of identity and ideology, though more significant debating often occurs in new media. The case study examines debates about language policy in Singapore, drawing on examples from traditional media (in the form of letters to the editor) to comments under a Facebook post by a local media outlet.

The book concludes with a brief discussion of a number of the themes covered in the book, in particular, multilingualism. The chapter points out that linguistic contact is likely to be more central to the processes of language change than has been assumed by many specialists.

This chapter introduces readers to the processes underlying language ontact and how these relate to both personal and group multilingualism. Concepts such as superstratal, adstratal and substratal directions of contact are considered, as are the levels of influence put forward by Thomason and the integration process put forward by Winford. Interpretations of borrowing and interference are aired. A case study of Estonian Halbdeutsch is used to exemplify and test many of these ideas.

Artes Dictandi; use of French and of verse in letters; the verse epistle as a lyric genre; autobiographical ballade sequences; appropriation and imitation; doubt as between art and actuality

This chapter discusses the role of Christian churchmen in the credit business and, more broadly, in creating ties of indebtedness in the early Islamic empire. With the help of a multilingual corpus of papyri from the Umayyad and the Abbasid periods, it wishes to contribute to a broader conversation about historical expressions of indebtedness in the premodern Middle East, sustained by anthropological literature on the “debt–credit nexus.” It points to the versatility and multilingualism of early Islamicate documents about debt and to their relation to a wide range of activities, going beyond impoverishment due to high taxation.

We have witnessed a growing number of investigations into the acquisition process in a multilingual context, which has become recognized as an independent field, quantitatively and qualitatively different from second language acquisition. Scholars have started to differentiate between learners/speakers on the basis of the complexity of their linguistic background, with the numer of known languages being an additional variable. A growing body of studies into the acquisition of third language phonology demonstrates an inherent complexity of the field reflected, among others, in multidirectional dynamic cross-linguistic influence. As shown, multilingual learners have at their disposal a broadened phonetic repertoire, a raised level of metalinguistic awareness and enhanced perceptual sensitivity, which may facilitate the learning of subsequent phonological systems. Thus, this chapter aims to compare bilingual and trilingual phonetics and phonology by providing an overview of recent research into both subdomains, identifying their common features and, importantly, their points of departure for L3 phonology, with a view to providing new insights into the acquisition of speech.

This chapter discusses the Ontogeny Phylogeny Model (OPM), which focuses on the formation and development of second language phonological systems. It proposes an interrelationship between L2 native-like productions, L1 transfer, and universal factors. The model argues that chronologically, and as style becomes increasingly formal, L2 native-like processes increase, L1 transfer processes decrease, and universal processes increase and then decrease. It further claims that the roles of universals and L1 transfer are mediated by markedness and similarity, both of which slow L2 acquisition. Specifically, in similar phenomena L1 transfer processes persist, while in marked phenomena universal processes persist. The OPM also argues that these same principles obtain for learners acquiring more than one L2, monolingual and bilingual acquisition, and L1 attrition. In addition to the chronological stages and variation of the individual learner, the model claims that these relationships hold true for language variation and change, including pidgins and creoles.

Evidence that listeners attend to and track subphonemic phonetic details is indicated by listeners’ ability to reliably connect subphonemic variation and, often, socio-indexical associations in ways that align with the patterns realized in production. Bilinguals are presented with the task not only of associating within-language variation (e.g., social group X is connected to a particular range of phonetic realizations within language Y) but also of attending to how ethnolects and bilingually accented speech index social categories across languages. Having access to multiple languages also gives bilingual speakers a larger repertoire with which to index language- and community-specific social meaning. This chapter outlines the linguistic structures bilinguals may connect across their languages and then presents a specific exemplar model, noting the opportunities within the model’s structure for bilingual dynamics. The heterogeneity of bilingual individuals and speech communities is necessarily addressed, as this dynamic adds to the complexity and intrigue of studying bilingual populations.

Peru is a multiethnic society whose postcolonial language regime was marked by the dominance of Spanish as the exclusive language of state bureaucracy up until recently. There are now forty-eight different Indigenous languages recognized by the state. The process of language regime transformation in Peru started with state traditions of monolingualism by defect, followed by incremental change in state recognition of Indigenous languages and the subsequent development of Indigenous language rights as manifested in constitutional and legislative norms. The adoption of a multilingual language regime based on linguistic rights for minorities was not the product of the Indigenous movement´s actions, nor those of ethnic parties. Institutional reforms that were not designed, and were not expected, to advance linguistic rights, allowed some actors the framework to accelerate incremental change.