Language and Superdiversity

This chapter focuses on the linguistic ethnographic research conducted with students and teachers associated with a Panjabi complementary school in Birmingham, UK. The study reported is the United Kingdom section of an international linguistic ethnographic research project, &s;Investigating Discourses of Inheritance and Identity in Four Multilingual European Settings&s;. A speaker&s;s linguistic repertoire may be the basis on which he/she is described as, for example, a &s;social climber&s;, &s;politically aware&s;, or &s;conservative&s;. It also considers how metapragmatic stereotypes are deployed in the identification and imagining of multilingual speakers in a city in the United Kingdom. A focus on the reflexive activity of metapragmatic stereotypes has much to offer in understanding the organisation and reproduction of social life. The changing set of conditions and social configurations that constitutes the diversification of diversity in contemporary life is not limited to changes in the ethnic or linguistic make-up of Western populations.