ABSTRACT
Multilingualism is a real shape-shifter, at least in the media. This chapter deals with the contradiction: the fact that the new present-day positive evaluation of multilingualism in the media is hardly ever extended to the multilingual members of migrant and minority groups. It explores the media representations of three such groups: luso-descendants in Luxembourg, South Asians in the UK and Latinos in the US. Blackledge studies the role of political and media discourses in ideological debates about minority languages in Britain. He presents a critical examination of policy-making on language, immigration and citizenship by the British Labour Government at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The chapter provides a number of attempts to essentialize the link between language and territory, and to construct both the UK and the US as English-only spaces. However, from a historical point of view, such claims are obviously untrue.
