The Handbook of Bilingualism and Multilingualism

As people across the world become increasingly mobile, questions concerning bilingualism and multilingualism have taken on growing importance from both scholarly and practical points of view. The international circumstances that have developed over the last two decades—in which linguistic and ethnic communities that had previously been politically submerged have asserted themselves—have provided scholars with new opportunities to study the phenomena of individual and societal bilingualism and multilingualism. This timely reference volume explores these questions, discussing the meaning and influence of the phenomena and conceptualization of ‘hyperglobalization’ in the field, and assessing the latest developments in worldwide linguistics, with particular emphasis on geographical centers of global conflict and commerce. The first edition of The Handbook of Bilingualism and Multilingualism , which provided state–of–the–art overviews of the central issues of bilingualism, represented a new integration of interdisciplinary research by a team of internationally–renowned scholars. The second edition now benefits from seven new chapters on topics ranging from global media to heritage language learning, and the addition of ten new authors to the contributor team. All of the chapters have been revised and in some cases rewritten to provide more extensive overviews of bilingual and multilingual communities, polyglot aphasia, creolization, indigenization, linguistic ecology, endangered languages, multilingualism, and forensic linguistics.  The result is a single–volume handbook that will be an invaluable resource for scholars and students in linguistics, education, anthropology, and global studies.

Tej K. Bhatia is Professor of Linguistics and Director of South Asian Languages at Syracuse University. He is a recipient of the Chancellor’s Citation Award for excellence in research. Publications include Colloquial Urdu: The Complete Course for Beginners (2000), Colloquial Hindi: The Complete Course for Beginners, 2nd Edition (2007), Advertising and Marketing in Rural India, 2nd Edition  (2007), and The New Handbook of Second Language Acquisition (co–edited with William C. Ritchie, 2009). William C. Ritchie is Associate Professor of Linguistics at Syracuse University. His publications include an edited volume entitled Second Language Acquisition Research: Issues and Implications (1978). He has co–edited four handbooks with Tej K. Bhatia, including Handbook of Child Language Acquisition (1999).

“ The most profound and authoritative reference source in the field. Nowhere else can one find to the same degree such a comprehensive and thought provoking presentation of all the major concepts and approaches pertaining to the field. . . The volume is an absolute must–read for any student and researcher in the field of bi–/multilingualism and the adjacent spheres of language contact, language and globalization, second language acquisition, cross–cultural communication, world Englishes, and others.”  ( World Englishes , 10 February 2014)