Language and Superdiversity

A first synthesis of work done in sociolinguistic superdiversity, this volume offers a substantial introduction to the field and the issues and state-of-the-art research papers organized around three themes: Sketching the paradigm, Sociolinguistic complexity, Policing complexity. The focus is to show how complexity rather than plurality can serve as a lens through which an equally vast range of topics, sites and issues can be tied together.

Superdiversity captures the acceleration and intensification of processes of social ‘mixing’ and ‘fragmentation’ since the early 1990s, as an outcome of two different but related processes: new post-Cold War migration flows, and the advent and spread of the Internet and mobile technologies. The confluence of these forces have created entirely new sociolinguistic environments, leading to research in the past decade that has brought a mixture of new empirical terrain–extreme diversity in language and literacy resources, complex repertoires and practices of participants in interaction–and conceptual challenges.

Language and Superdiversity is a landmark volume bringing together the work of the scholars and researchers who spearhead the development of the sociolinguistics of superdiversity.

Karel Arnaut is Associate Professor, Interculturalism, Migration and Minorities Research Centre (IMMRC) | Faculty of Social Sciences, K.U.Leuven, Belgium.

Jan Blommaert is Professor of Language, Culture and Globalization and Director of the Babylon Center at Tilburg University (The Netherlands). He coordinates the INCOLAS consortium and is one of the group leaders of the Max Planck Sociolinguistic Diversity Working Group.

Ben Rampton is Professor of Applied and Sociolinguistics at King’s College, London (UK). He is the Founding convenor of the UK Linguistic Ethnography Forum, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and an Honorary Doctor at Copenhagen University.

Massimiliano Spotti is Lecturer in Sociolinguistics at Tilburg University and Deputy Director of the Babylon Center (The Netherlands).