Twelve Lectures on Multilingualism (MM Textbooks, 15)

by David Singleton (Editor), Dr. Larissa Aronin (Editor)

This major new textbook offers an accessible introduction to many of the most interesting areas in the study of multilingualism. It consists of twelve lectures, written by leading researchers, each dedicated to a particular topic of importance. Each lecture offers a state-of-the-art, authoritative review of a subdiscipline of the field. The volume sheds light on the ways in which the use and acquisition of languages are changing, providing new insights into the nature of contemporary multilingualism. It will be of interest both to undergraduate and postgraduate students working in linguistics-related disciplines and students in associated social sciences.

400 pages, Paperback

Published November 20, 2018

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

David Singleton is Professor, University of Pannonia, Hungary and Fellow Emeritus, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. He has published widely on second language acquisition, multilingualism and lexicology and is the series editor for the SLA series published by Multilingual Matters.

Reviews

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have almost five pages of notes of great quotes to incorporate into my lecture notes. Among them are the following gems:

"All such attitudes [about multilinguals] reveal more about social dominance, convention - and, indeed, perceived necessity (or lack of it) - than they do about aptitude" (141).

"Learners frequently relied on their non-native languages, even when it seemed illogical for them to do so, for instance when they were familiar with languages typologically closer to the target language" (171).

"When people do not want to understand each other, typological closeness seems to be of little or no importance" (332).