Superdiversity, fluidity and flexibility: translanguaging practices and grassroots multilingualism in an international trade hub in China

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing upon a sociolinguistic ethnography of a global market town in Yiwu, China, this study seeks to add theoretical depth and empirical breadth to the notions of translanguaging and grassroots multilingualism in ‘globalisation from below’. The data shows that superdiversity, fluidity and flexibility are key features of language practices in the business community, where private traders discarded the boundaries between different languages and deployed various linguistic features as translanguaging practices for the purposes of networking, meaning-making and bringing in more business. By valuing the functionality of languages and embracing a ‘non-standard’ language ideology, the traders resisted the linguistic ‘rule’ and ‘norm’ imposed by the mainstream society and in the meanwhile, articulating the value of grassroots multilingualism in the localised context. More importantly, the translangugaing practices were multisemiotic, multisensory and multimodal in nature, which helped traders overcome the negative effective of language superdiversity and contributed to their confident conclusion of ‘no communication problem’ in the market. Implications for language policy making and community-based training are discussed at the end of the article.