Christopher Stroud – författare

Language, Literacy and Diversity brings together researchers who are leading the innovative and important re-theorization of language and literacy in relation to social mobility, multilingualism and globalization. The volume examines local and global flows of people, language and literacy in relation to social practice; the role (and nature) of boundary maintenance or disruption in global, transnational and translocal contexts; and the lived experiences of individuals on the front lines of global, transnational and translocal processes.

The contributors pay attention to the dynamics of multilingualism in located settings and the social and personal management of multilingualism in socially stratified and ethnically plural social settings. Together, they offer ground-breaking research on language practices and documentary practices as regards to access, selection, social mobility and gate-keeping processes in a range of settings across several continents: Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe.

Language, Literacy and Diversity brings together researchers who are leading the innovative and important re-theorization of language and literacy in relation to social mobility, multilingualism and globalization. The volume examines local and global flows of people, language and literacy in relation to social practice; the role (and nature) of boundary maintenance or disruption in global, transnational and translocal contexts; and the lived experiences of individuals on the front lines of global, transnational and translocal processes.

The contributors pay attention to the dynamics of multilingualism in located settings and the social and personal management of multilingualism in socially stratified and ethnically plural social settings. Together, they offer ground-breaking research on language practices and documentary practices as regards to access, selection, social mobility and gate-keeping processes in a range of settings across several continents: Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe.

This book brings to life initiatives among scholars of the south and north to understand better the intelligences and pluralities of multilingualisms in southern communities and spaces of decoloniality.

Chapters follow a longue durée perspective of human co-existence with communal presents, pasts, and futures; attachments to place; and insights into how multilingualisms emerge, circulate, and alter over time. Each chapter, informed by the authors’ experiences living and working among southern communities, illustrates nuances in ideas of south and southern, tracing (dis-/inter-) connected discourses in vastly different geopolitical contexts. Authors reflect on the roots, routes and ecologies of linguistic and epistemic heterogeneity while remembering the sociolinguistic knowledge and practices of those who have gone before. The book re-examines the appropriacy of how theories, policies, and methodologies ‘for multilingual contexts’ are transported across different settings and underscores the ethics of research practice and reversal of centre and periphery perspectives through careful listening and conversation.

Highlighting the potential of a southern sociolinguistics to articulate a new humanity and more ethical world in registers of care, hope, and love, this volume contributes to new directions in critical and decolonial studies of multilingualism, and to re-imagining sociolinguistics, cultural studies, and applied linguistics more broadly.

This book brings to life initiatives among scholars of the south and north to understand better the intelligences and pluralities of multilingualisms in southern communities and spaces of decoloniality.

Chapters follow a longue durée perspective of human co-existence with communal presents, pasts, and futures; attachments to place; and insights into how multilingualisms emerge, circulate, and alter over time. Each chapter, informed by the authors’ experiences living and working among southern communities, illustrates nuances in ideas of south and southern, tracing (dis-/inter-) connected discourses in vastly different geopolitical contexts. Authors reflect on the roots, routes and ecologies of linguistic and epistemic heterogeneity while remembering the sociolinguistic knowledge and practices of those who have gone before. The book re-examines the appropriacy of how theories, policies, and methodologies ‘for multilingual contexts’ are transported across different settings and underscores the ethics of research practice and reversal of centre and periphery perspectives through careful listening and conversation.

Highlighting the potential of a southern sociolinguistics to articulate a new humanity and more ethical world in registers of care, hope, and love, this volume contributes to new directions in critical and decolonial studies of multilingualism, and to re-imagining sociolinguistics, cultural studies, and applied linguistics more broadly.

In this ground-breaking collection of essays, the editors and authors develop the idea of Linguistic Citizenship. This notion highlights the importance of practices whereby vulnerable speakers themselves exercise control over their languages, and draws attention to the ways in which alternative voices can be inserted into processes and structures that otherwise alienate those they were designed to support. The chapters discuss issues of decoloniality and multilingualism in the global South, and together retheorize how to accommodate diversity in complexly multilingual/ multicultural societies. Offering a framework anchored in transformative notions of democratic and reflexive citizenship, it prompts readers to critically rethink how existing contemporary frameworks such as Linguistic Human Rights rest on disempowering forms of multilingualism that channel discourses of diversity into specific predetermined cultural and linguistic identities.

In this ground-breaking collection of essays, the editors and authors develop the idea of Linguistic Citizenship. This notion highlights the importance of practices whereby vulnerable speakers themselves exercise control over their languages, and draws attention to the ways in which alternative voices can be inserted into processes and structures that otherwise alienate those they were designed to support. The chapters discuss issues of decoloniality and multilingualism in the global South, and together retheorize how to accommodate diversity in complexly multilingual/ multicultural societies. Offering a framework anchored in transformative notions of democratic and reflexive citizenship, it prompts readers to critically rethink how existing contemporary frameworks such as Linguistic Human Rights rest on disempowering forms of multilingualism that channel discourses of diversity into specific predetermined cultural and linguistic identities.

Style, Identity and Literacy: English in Singapore is a qualitative study of the literacy practices of a group of Singaporean adolescents, relating their patterns of interaction – both inside and outside the classroom – to the different levels of social organization in Singaporean society (home, peer group and school). Combining field data gathered through a series of detailed interviews with available classroom observations, the study focuses on six adolescents from different ethnic and social backgrounds as they negotiate the learning of English against the backdrop of multilingual Singapore. This book provides social explanations for the difficulties and challenges these adolescents face by drawing on current developments in sociolinguistics, literacy studies, English language teaching and language policy.

Style, Identity and Literacy: English in Singapore is a qualitative study of the literacy practices of a group of Singaporean adolescents, relating their patterns of interaction – both inside and outside the classroom – to the different levels of social organization in Singaporean society (home, peer group and school). Combining field data gathered through a series of detailed interviews with available classroom observations, the study focuses on six adolescents from different ethnic and social backgrounds as they negotiate the learning of English against the backdrop of multilingual Singapore. This book provides social explanations for the difficulties and challenges these adolescents face by drawing on current developments in sociolinguistics, literacy studies, English language teaching and language policy.