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The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism Marilyn Martin-Jones, Adrian

Blackledge, and Angela Creese (Eds.). New York: Routledge, 2012. Pp. xxi +
562.

Article in TESOL Quarterly · September 2013

DOI: 10.1002/tesq.108

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REFERENCES

Coste, D., & Simon, D. L. (2009). The plurilingual social actor: Language, citizen-
ship and education. International Journal of Multilingualism, 6, 168–185. doi:10.
1080/14790710902846723
Cummins, J. (1979). Linguistic interdependence and the educational development
of bilingual children. Review of Educational Research, 49, 222–251. doi: 10.3102/
00346543049002222
Igoudin, L. (2012). Towards a culture inclusive language pedagogy in multilingual
social contexts. In G. Alao, M. Derivry, E. Suzuki, & S. Yun-Roger (Eds.), Didac-
tique plurilingue et pluriculturelle: l’acteur en contexte mondialis
e [Plurilingual, pluri-
cultural teaching: The actor in social context] (pp. 7–22). Paris, France: Edition des
archives contemporaines.
Kramsch, C. (2009). The multilingual subject: What foreign language learners say about
their experiences and why it matters. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

COLETTE DESPAGNE
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada

The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism

Marilyn Martin-Jones, Adrian Blackledge, and Angela Creese (Eds.).
New York: Routledge, 2012. Pp. xxi + 562.

doi: 10.1002/tesq.108

& This handbook has sections covering discourses about multilingual-

ism across political and historical contexts, multilingualism in relation
to education and other institutional sites, social and cultural change,
and “Situated Practices, Lived Realities.” There are 32 chapters,
between 4 and 8 in each section, and a lengthy introduction by the
editors, a “sociolinguistics of multilingualism for our times.” The chap-
ters each sum up a complex research field; many conclude with sug-
gestions for further research. While many contributions operate with
distinct languages sharing sociolinguistic territory, others iconoclasti-
cally reject this conceptual framework, embrace fluidity and hybridity,
and generate a plethora of concepts to capture what is perceived as
new diversity.
There is a risk of overgeneralizing in handbook articles. Most arti-
cles in this one treat speech as though it is synonymous with language.
Some contributors tend to be reinventing the wheel or renaming it.
There is also a tendency to overstate the local (often Western) as
though it applies globally, as in the incautious “the heterogeneity of

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languages found in most classrooms in the twenty-first century”
(p. 237). The impression is created that while social injustice regretta-
bly occurs, sociolinguists of “our times” should celebrate living in the
best of all possible linguistic worlds, and produce academic theoriza-
tion attuned to it.
The editors claim that recent descriptive and conceptual work in
critical and ethnographic sociolinguistics signals a paradigm shift in
our understanding of multilingualism. They track developments of
recent decades, presenting how migration and superdiversity are inter-
preted sociolinguistically. They also summarize each article.
The editors are themselves somewhat uncritical when reporting on
challenges identified by influential scholars. Has there really been “a
shift from a discourse of rights to a discourse of profit” (Heller, p. 8)?
Only in certain contexts, or for some analytical purposes, but not
generally. Several contributors refer to linguistic human rights, but
most fail to present them validly (e.g., p. 446). Likewise there is imper-
missible either/or thinking when Pennycook (p. 8) wishes to replace
seeing languages as discrete, countable entities with “local activities,
resources and practices.” Blommaert’s wish (p. 8) to move away from
language to a focus on “how you speak it” has been common knowl-
edge in class-based societies for centuries. (On weaknesses in Blomma-
ert’s approach, see Phillipson [2012]. On Makoni, another fashionable
postmodernist, see Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas [2012].)
The predominant focus on speech results in occlusion of the writ-
ten language, which is unhelpful when considering norms in educa-
tion. It is revealing that the index has no entries for dictionaries,
vocabulary, translation, or writing. Neoliberalism, colossally influential in
the past two decades, is also absent, as are linguistic hegemony and impe-
rialism. Duch^ ene and Heller write on the “new economy” but their
findings (“the linguistic market is not homogeneous in terms of
language,” p. 376) ignore the reality of what exporting has required
for centuries. They advocate use of Bourdieu’s concepts (habitus, lin-
guistic capital) but fail to use them themselves.
There are excellent state-of-the-art summaries by eminent contribu-
tors: McCarty and Nicholas on indigenous education, May on language
rights, Pavlenko on multilingualism and emotions, Sarkar and Low on
popular culture, Woll and Adam on sign languages. Other articles are
uneven, for instance the vast field of global English and bilingual edu-
cation (Gardner) is solid on young learners and content and language
integrated learning (CLIL), but weak otherwise: some points suffer
from A recycling B citing C (for instance Kirkpatrick misrepresenting
Denison, cited by Hoffman, quoted by Gardner) and are therefore
inaccurate. In general the expansion of English is seen uncritically
as “natural” (p. 257), global itself is seen as inherently positive, and

658 TESOL QUARTERLY

 apologists for English like Graddol—whose work is to promote British
interests—and Vaish are cited, whereas scholars with conflicting views
are ignored.
Canagarajah and Liyanage present diversity in the Indian subconti-
nent as “amicable” (p. 52), as if caste (misspelt) and conflict never
existed in premodern times. They make many questionable generaliza-
tions before conceding that one should be wary of doing so. By con-
trast, Ramanathan’s empirical study provides rich documentation of
how simplistic and ultimately false it is to correlate Gujarati with paro-
chialism and English with cosmopolitanism: Gandhian educational
philosophy can permeate either.
More rigorous quality control by the editors and publisher would
have helped. Some concepts are misused (e.g., diglossia, p. 233; legis-
lative, p. 298; sign language, p. 300). There are errors of lexis (crite-
rion, p. 232), concord (pp. 61, 240, 252), and spelling in the names of
a country (“Phillippines,” p. 354) and celebrated scholars (“Cummin,”
p. 252; “Maurenen,” p. 247). Omoniyi considers Slovakia as formerly
part of the Soviet Union, and classifies a text in Swedish as Finnish
(p. 362). A book applauding multilingualism fails to use the correct
diacritics in Danish (pp. 6, 24, 51), French (p. 173), German (p. 250),
and Swedish (p. 238).
The book covers a wide range of topics, privileging description and
self-referential theorization. It has many strengths but too many weak-
nesses. It needs to be read with an alert critical eye.

REFERENCES
Phillipson, R. (2012). How to strengthen the sociolinguistics of globalization: A
review article based on challenges in The sociolinguistics of globalization by Jan
Blommaert. Critical Discourse Studies, 9, 407–414. doi:10.1080/17405904.2012.
713209
Phillipson, R., & Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2012). Getting language rights right: A
response to Makoni. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 7, 29–35. doi:10.1080/
17447143.2012.660945

ROBERT PHILLIPSON
(Professor Emeritus) Copenhagen Business School
Copenhagen, Denmark

TOVE SKUTNABB-KANGAS
 Akademi
Roskilde University and Abo
Roskilde, Denmark, and Turku, Finland

REVIEWS 659

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