Disinventing multilingualism: from monological multilingualism to multilingua francas

Abstract

Assumptions about the existence of languages and, ipso facto, multilingualism, are so deeply embedded in predominant paradigms of language studies that they are rarely questioned. Multilingualism, furthermore, viewed from this perspective, is an indomitably good thing; the task of linguists, sociolinguists, applied linguists and educational linguists is to enhance our understanding of multilingualism, to overcome the monolingual blinkers of Anglo-or Eurocentric thought, to encourage both the understanding of and the practices of multilingualism. The relevance of such models to diverse contexts, however, is often taken for granted. As Haugen once observed [t]he concept of language as a rigid, monolithic structure is false, even if it has proved to be a useful fiction in the development of linguistics. It is the kind of simplification that is necessary at a certain stage of a science, but which can now be replaced by more sophisticated models.

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