Chapter published in:
Dynamics of Linguistic Diversity
Edited by Hagen Peukert and Ingrid Gogolin
[Hamburg Studies on Linguistic Diversity 6] 2017
► pp. 235–258

Dublin

Linguistic habitus and hierarchies in the (new) multilingual city

| University of Hamburg
This article offers an overview of the multilingual city of Dublin. We draw on research undertaken for the LUCIDE (Languages in Urban Communities: Integration and Diversity for Europe) network to describe the rapid linguistic diversification that occurred as recently as the 1990s. Yet English, the global lingua franca and Ireland’s second official language (with Irish), remains the dominant language of city life. Dublin is constitutionally bilingual, normatively monolingual, yet actually multilingual. Its historically evolved language policy and linguistic habitus matter to how we describe and discuss this (new) multilingual city. We apply a scalar lens to multilingualism in Dublin to show the vertical layering of language in two districts of economic activity, one regenerated from ‘above’, the other from ‘below’. We show how the city’s linguistic habitus, combined with the conditions of language and cultural diversification from the 1990s, serve to index languages in the urban environment. Some suggestions for further research are also made.
Keywords: urban multilingualism, immigration, language policy, indexicality, economic, activity
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • The LUCIDE research network: Aims and methods
  • Researching multilingual Dublin: Context and background
    • Population diversity in Dublin
    • The language policy context
  • Multilingual Dublin: Economic regeneration, language distribution, ordered indexicalities
    • Multilingualism in the Dublin Docklands: Affordances and challenges of the monolingual habitus
    • The north inner city: Commercialism and contradictions in a highly multilingual area
  • Stakeholder input
  • Conclusion & suggestions for further research
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 May 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/hsld.6.12mcm
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