Introduction

Over the last two decades, sociolinguistic research on multilingualism has been transformed. Two broad processes of change have been at work: first, there have been broad epistemological shifts in the field of sociolinguistics to ethnographic and critical approaches. These broad shifts have reflected the wider turn, across the social sciences, towards poststructuralist and postmodern perspectives on social life. Second, there has been increasing focus on the study of the social, cultural and linguistic changes ushered in by globalisation, including the intensification of transnational population flows, the advent of new communication technologies, and changes taking place in the political and economic landscape of different regions of the world. These changes have had major implications for the ways in which we conceptualise the relationship between language and society and the multilingual realities of the late modern era. They have also obliged us to adjust our research lenses and recast our research methodologies. A new sociolinguistics of multilingualism is now being forged: one that takes account of the new communicative order and the particular cultural conditions of our times, while retaining a central concern with the social and institutional processes involved in the construction of social difference and social inequality. The main aim of this volume is to provide a state-of-the-art overview of this distinct new research landscape and to illustrate the ways in which research methodologies are being reshaped in different strands of critical and ethnographic research in multilingual settings.