ABSTRACT
All of the preceding discussion has emphasized the social aspects of multilingualism and has interwoven the story of languages with the sociology and psychology of their speakers. Here I want to turn to a closer examination of the relationship between multilingualism and multiculturalism; this, in a sense, picks up a thread first exposed in the chapter on bilingualism, where an integrative motivation for second-language acquisition was seen to grow from the desire to know more about and perhaps to eventually take on the characteristics of another culture. Beyond an individual level at which multilingualism and multiculturalism might overlap, it is also clear that social recognition-perhaps at a policy level-of one involves the other, too. Here we must consider issues of pluralism and assimilation. Related to this is the linkage between language and groupness (ethnicity or nationalism) which is centrally the relationship between language maintenance and cultural continuity.
