Cultural and linguistic diversity and plurality are seen as markers of our time, linked to discourses about citizenship and cosmopolitanism in the context of economic globalization in the late twentieth century. It is often monolingualism, however, that informs understanding and policies regulating the relationship between languages, nations, and communities.
Grounded by the idea of language as lived experience, Negotiating Linguistic Plurality assumes linguistic plurality to be a continuing human condition and offers a novel transnational and comparative perspective on it. The essays featured cover concepts and praxis in which linguistic plurality surfaces in the public sphere through institutional and individual practices. The collection adopts a critical view of language policies and foregrounds distances and dissonances between policy and language practices by presenting lived experiences of multilingualism. Translation, seen as constitutive to the relations inherent to linguistic plurality, is at the core of the volume. Contributors explore a range of social and institutional aspects of the relationship between translation and linguistic plurality, foregrounding less documented experiences and minoritized practices.
Presenting knowledge that spans regions, languages, and territories, Negotiating Linguistic Plurality is a thoughtful consideration of what constitutes language plurality: what its limits are, as well as its possibilities.

María Constanza Guzmán is associate professor of translation and Hispanic studies at Glendon College, York University.

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Sehnaz Tahir Gürçaglar is adjunct professor of translation studies and course director at Glendon College, York University.

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“This strong collection offers perspectives on multilingualism and linguistic plurality that are purposefully disparate – moving across different orders of expression (policy, conversations in daily life, Indigenous wisdom) – to present an innovative approach to investigating plurilingualism.” Sherry Simon, Concordia University

“The collection brings together a varied group of international social scientists who contribute to a growing literature on current approaches and debates in the study of linguistic plurality, regarding both the ways in which it unfolds and is transacted in general, and specifically how it is negotiated via translation. … thought-provoking and a good read … an important source of knowledge for linguistic experts, social scientists, policy-makers, and researchers.” South Asian Diaspora