Language Diversity, Identity, and Globalization

Language Diversity, Identity, and Globalization focuses on the ways in which people use multiple languages to communicate and build identities in highly diverse communities. Research carried out by this strand’s members (De Fina, Hamilton, Subtirelu) includes (a) manifestations of language diversity in immigrant communities in contact zones (for example schools or urban areas where multilingual and multicultural communities come into contact), such as how people incorporate different languages and linguistic resources in their communicative practices, the language ideologies emerging in relation to those practices, and the linguistic landscapes that characterize multilingual areas; (b) transnational practices in multilingual contexts that recent immigrants and people of immigrant origin engage in and the types of communities they create; (c) roles for new technologies and ethnic media in the maintenance of transnational links and the creation of transnational spaces; (d) identity construction processes emerging out of synergies between multilingual/multicultural contacts and transnationalism.