Interactive and ideological dimensions of receptive multilingualism in Luxembourg workplaces

Abstract

This article investigates the use and perception of receptive multilingualism (RM) as an everyday multilingual practice in linguistically diverse workplaces in Luxembourg. RM refers to speakers each using a different language to speak to each other, while understanding the language used by the other speaker. Previous research has identified this practice as most likely to occur among typologically related languages, in specific contexts and in circumstances of explicit language negotiation. Our data, comprising spontaneous workplace interactions and interviews with cross-border workers at a range of workplaces in Luxembourg, broadens this picture to show RM being used between speakers of quite different language varieties, in a wide range of workplace contexts and for a variety of relational and transactional purposes. Using a dual analytical approach combining interactional sociolinguistics and language ideology analysis, we investigate both interactional characteristics and ideological constructions of RM, and consider the relative influence of linguistic and extralinguistic factors on this everyday multilingual practice at work.