This volume offers a critical perspective on current views on linguistic fixity and fluidity in sociolinguistics and highlights empirical accounts alternative to prevailing trends in the field. Featuring accounts from a broad range of regional contexts, the collection takes stock of such terms as "polylingualism", "metrolingualism" and "translanguaging" to question perceptions around multilingual and monolingual language use. The book critiques the status of fluid language use as a more "natural" language practice and in turn, its greater potential for corresponding social transformation, demonstrating the value of linguistic fixity and the continuous debate between fixity and fluidity in multilingual speakers' lives. In providing these accounts, the book seeks not to advocate for linguistic fixity or fluidity, but to argue that sociolinguists pay close attention to the way both types of linguistic practice open up or close down avenues for social transformation. This collection is a key reading for graduate students and scholars in sociolinguistics, multilingualism, and linguistic anthropology.

This book contributes to current theory building within applied linguistics and sociolinguistics by looking at the role of language in the lives, realities, and understandings of real children and youth in an urban setting. Collectively the studies amount to a comprehensive account of how urban children and youth construct, reactivate, negotiate, contest, and navigate between different linguistic and sociocultural norms and resources.

This book contributes to current theory building within applied linguistics and sociolinguistics by looking at the role of language in the lives, realities, and understandings of real children and youth in an urban setting. Collectively the studies amount to a comprehensive account of how urban children and youth construct, reactivate, negotiate, contest, and navigate between different linguistic and sociocultural norms and resources.