Bilingualism

This module provides an in-depth introduction to the subject of bilingualism and multilingualism, viewed from the perspectives of individual language practice and its implications in social life. We will look at a variety of contexts and sites, among those education, the legal system, the economy, and the state. This module is designed to provide a better understanding of current issues, methods and theoretical developments in the study of bilingualism and multilingualism in society. By drawing on examples from empirical research in this field, this module aims to introduce you to different research approaches and to enable you to take a critical perspective on how social structures as well as language policies and -ideologies shape language practice. In doing so, this module puts a perspective on multilingual repertoires within social-, political-, and economic contexts. In teaching we will draw on your own experiences of bilingualism and multilingual societies (even ‘monolingual’ societies are very often multilingual in reality) as well putting multilingualism into wider political-economic and language-ideological contexts.