ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the meaning and roots of multilingualism, varying contexts and norms, educational responses, and future concerns. There are clear links between the dynamic nature of plurilingualism and the dynamic model of multilingualism (DMM). The DMM aims to explain shared properties of language in the brain, represent languages as one complex system in which the languages an individual knows are interdependent and non-linear and predict multilingual development across languages. A quick review of the subject heading ‘multilingualism’ in library catalogues reveals that earlier books on multilingualism devoted a good deal of space to multilingualism as a noun, specifically country and regional profiles of multilingualism. M. Heller has discussed the link between multilingualism and economics in terms of language as ‘commodity’. Language-in-education and multilingual provisions in schooling are also of interest to parents of children whose mother tongue is the same as the language of schooling.
