Abstract
Multilingualism is a fundamental characteristic of modern society. As highlighted by the editors of the volume, Kurt Braunmüller and Christoph Gabriel, in contemporary reality multilingualism is far more prevalent than monolingualism on a global scale represented by a variety of phenomena like diglossia, plurilingualism or receptive bilingualism. Multilingualism has been studied by linguists, psychologists, educational professionals, and social scientists, all of whom have endeavored to generate the state-of-the-art scientific understanding that may disclose potential and challenges that multilingualism poses for the individual in the context of her family, school, other institutions, and society in general. Multilingual Individuals and Multilingual Societies is the thirteenth book volume published in the series Hamburg Studies on Multilingualism. The present book volume provides a multidimensional perspective on contemporary research in multilingualism with a special focus on individual and societal aspects of this phenomenon. The volume consists of 25 contributions organized into three thematic blocks: (1) the acquisition of multilingualism, (2) historical aspects of multilingualism and variance, and (3) multilingual communication. Each block addresses a variety of issues as they relate to language acquisition, language change and language use in multilingual settings.
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