Resumen de Affordances and the diversity of multilingualism
Larissa Aronin, David Singleton
With the advent of globalization and the consequent and concomitant establishment of a new linguistic dispensation, the diversity of multilingualism has increased exponentially. Unsurprisingly, such diversity has attracted the closest attention of researchers, as well as those involved in managing the practical ramifications of multilingualism, particularly, perhaps, in regard to issues relating to the ethnic diversity of multilingual populations, both indigenous and immigrant. In this contribution, we call attention to further numerous distinctions manifested in the diversity of multilingualism. We also discuss the recent emergence of new language nominations. Language nominations are terms which have been traditionally attached to languages used in society, such as mother tongue, heritage language and foreign language — as opposed to the proper names of particular languages (e.g. English, Turkish, Urdu, etc.). In addition to strong subjective connotations, language nominations advert to the value and role currently assigned to a given language by a given society/community.
We go on to argue that the concept of affordances has considerable explanatory power in relation to the unprecedented flourishing of multilingual diversity of all kinds and can provide a framework within which the description and explication of the intriguing array of attributes of multilingual communities and individuals becomes feasible. In addition, we suggest that societal linguistic affordances are more conducive to the selection of particular languages for use and study in society than to the selection of others: in other words, that social affordances pave the way for the realization of specific individual linguistic affordances.
It is our view that the affordances perspective will facilitate a more efficacious organization of a research perspective on multilingual diversity — allowing investigators to fish out, as it were, identifiable societal underpinnings for individual patterns of linguistic behavior from what may appear to be an unruly pool of complexity.
