Language policies and linguistic super-diversity in contemporary urban societies: the case of the City of Southampton, UK

Abstract

Our aim here is to investigate the multilingual ‘super-diverse’ environment of Southampton City's work places, in public and private sector sites, and to observe how speakers interact and use their linguistic competences; whether this facilitates communication and social/professional integration, or whether this produces obstacles and discrimination. We assess how far explicit or implicit language policies operate in the workplace, be they local to the establishment, or influences from governmental (local or state) directives, and what factors drive such policies. We discuss how far these policies co-exist in what Spolsky [2012. Family language policy – the critical domain. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 33(1), 3–13] describes as ‘chaotic and non-hierarchical’ domains, operating from grassroots communities, or being principally ‘top-down’ directives from those in authority.