The City and its Languages: Taking Linguistic Diversity Seriously

It is hardly possible to overestimate the importance of language in urban studies and the social sciences more broadly, after decades of research influenced by so-called French theory and the associated cultural and linguistic turns. However, most attention with regard to language has been devoted to the power of naming, labelling, framing and othering in social relations, and more specifically in urban planning processes. Less attention has gone to languages as such; the impact of the co-presence of multiple languages in cities, (individual and collective) multilingualism, the dynamics between language groups and the representation of urban multilingualism largely remain a blind spot in urban studies.