Helen Kelly-Holmes & Tommaso M. Milani observe in their introduction that few contemporary contexts are monolingual; even where there is a dominant national language, decisions—or implicit ‘nondecisions’—are made about the use of varieties. The ways of representing multilingualism in the media may reinforce ideological categorisations of languages, portraying some as ‘natural’ and others as ‘exotic’.
In the first chapter Kristine Horner explores discourses of multilingualism as a right, a resource, and a problem in Luxembourgish print media. Horner found that Luxembourg's celebration as a multilingual nation is limited to a ‘specific form of individual multilingualism’ (p. 23), that is, Luxembourgish, German, and French. Individual multilingualism texts foregrounded ‘language as resource’, whereas societal-level multilingualism texts foregrounded the idea of ‘language as a problem’. Deviations from the country's standard trilingualism are represented as threatening the linguistic order of the nation.
Kelly-Holmes investigates thematisation of Irish in chapter 2. The data is taken from an online thread discussing the first ever Irish-language leader's debate. Three specific kinds of discourse appear. A ‘truth’ discourse considers discrepancies between Irish's official status and its actual spoken status. Next, an ‘us and them’ discourse divides ‘Irish speakers’ and ‘non-Irish speakers’, and the third, ‘sexy Irish’, positions Irish speakers as ‘young, beautiful and mediatisable’ (p. 44). This last discourse, Kelly-Holmes argues, is evidence of an ideological shift towards bilingualism as added value.
In chapter 3, Astrid Ensslin presents an analysis of Wikipedia's multilingual policies and practices. Wikipedia includes articles in any language ‘… for which there are Wikipedians willing to do the work’ (p. 77). Ensslin draws attention to Wikipedia's implicit language ideologies, including that Wikipedia's logo foregrounds four dominant alphabets, with Latin (representing English) in the top-central position, ‘creating hierarchy in a seemingly non-hierarchical (spherical) space’ (p. 81). Despite explicit multilingual policies, Wikipedia's implicit metapragmatics, Ensslin believes, show the inevitability of ‘anglo-conformity’ in contemporary digital culture.
In chapter 4, Alexandra Jaffe explores attributions of ‘authority’ and ‘authenticity’ to dialect speech in a documentary Do you speak American?, which explicitly promotes positive attitudes towards multilingualism, suggesting that these positive attitudes are not the norm (p. 96). When the representative work being done by media producers in the documentary is backgrounded, Jaffe claims, speakers are attributed authenticity. Authority, by contrast, is attributed to speakers when they retain some control over their own representation.
Finally, in chapter 5, Milani, Bethan Davies, & Will Turner examine thematisation of multilingualism in Britain. The BBC website's Voices project aimed to celebrate regional and ethnic diversity and unity through a ‘national conversation’. Analysing a public thread on the value of Welsh, the authors uncover conflicting discourses. While the BBC aims to present the UK as a unified multilingual nation, public contributions show that multilingualism remains ‘a politically-fraught issue’ that creates strong differences of opinion (p. 121).
This edited collection offers a range of approaches to the study of multilingualism in the media. It will be valuable to scholars across disciplines looking for an overview of research in this area.
