ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some of the broader, societal aspects of language diversity and reports some first research findings by a leading British research unit in the field. The opportunities bilingual adults have to use their other-than-English language depend on their patterns of social interaction, which are influenced in large measure by the local labour market. Both bidialectal and bilingual speakers adapt their language use according to context and according to whom they are with. In the ways in which they draw on their linguistic repertoire they convey different aspects of their social identity. The three cities in which LMP carried out the majority of its work exemplify the situation of linguistic minorities throughout the country. The mother tongue debate in England so far has focused on provision of minority language teaching in the later stage of secondary school, or the development of skills in the spoken languages in the early primary school.
