ABSTRACT
In this part are four chapters which each, in di erent ways, develop methodologies which extend the boundaries of multilingualism research. Until fairly recently, it would have been reasonable to say that most multilingualism research was carried out within a set of sites, and using a set of methods, which were largely in keeping with the concerns and methods of sociolinguistics more generally. On the one hand, we had macro-level studies, drawing broad-brush pictures of multilingual communities, linguistic minorities in particular. On the other hand, micro-level investigations in multilingualism were typically concerned with spoken language-family conversations, perhaps, or classroom interactions or service encountersand although by defi nition more than one language was usually involved, relatively few studies involved more than one mode, the spoken one. Over several decades, research in bilingualism and multilingualism developed and fi ne-tuned its methods. Yet despite a great diversity of approaches, orientations and research sites, the focus broadly remained on spoken language, face-to-face interaction, and, frequently, institutional settings.
