- Recap: what introduced linguistic diversity into Hong Kong?

• Lim and Ansaldo (2016)

“Multilingualism is a very common and natural state of human societies, and is the result of practices that have always characterised the history of human populations: migration, war, intermarriage and trade.” (p. 57)

- Linguistic diversity <—> demographic info, statistics:

No specific correlation can be taken for granted (same language and culture but different socio-economical conditions could mean totally different stories) 

- Another kind of philosophy of identity and language attitude: Sociolinguistic consumption and Multilingualism (Stroud and Wee, 2012)

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The concepts of linguistic citizenship and sociolinguistic consumption

• linguistic citizenship: what does it mean and is it strong enough?

  • "Linguistic citizenship refers to the linguistic implications of reflexivity in a cosmopolitan world [...] This approach to language politics recognizes that "multilinguality" is "constitutive of being human" (Agnihorti, 2007: 80); that communities today increasingly need to be recognized as comprising complex translocal, multilayered, polycentric, and stratified semiotic spaces; and that a late-modern politics of language thus needs to address tentions between identity and identification, recognize a plurality of public voices and positions and new public spheres outside of state proper, as well as deal with the blurring of borders between public and private. A fundamental point of departure for linguistic citizenship is that linguistic diversity and difference are one prime means (rather than an insurmountable problem) for the material realization of democracy, to the extent that speakers negotiate their access to resources and agency across manifold sites, building both local and transnational solidarities through interpersonal negotiation in multiscaled and multilingual spaces."​

  • "However, [...] the importance of diversity in and across languages for a reflexive citizenship remains largely unrecognized in much contemporary discourse on language and policy, thereby excluding many forms of linguistic (and metalinguistic) practice essential for agency and social justice. The collocation linguistic citizenship has thus been deliberately coined in order to highlight the power of the trope of citizenship historically to draw attention to inequalities suffered by those whose voices have been systematically excluded and structurally marginalized, [...]" (p. 203)​

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• sociolinguistic consumption

  • "This refers to the portfolio of linguistic forms, both at the sublanguage level and at the "supralanguage" level as chains of multilingual, cross-linguistic resources, and to the multiple ways in which speakers invest in this portfolio."​ (p.204)

  • “In the pursuit of linguistic justice in a transnational consumerist world, one guiding principle behind a new Singaporean language policy could be to attempt to increase choices in consumption open to different classes. Its core design features should therefore be built around consumption, choice/autonomy and reflexivity. The idea of linguistic citizenship captures these alternative formulations or questions on language, and their attendant implications for a late-modern approach to a politics of language.” (p. 203)

  • “We suggest an approach in terms of radical deliberative procedures around questions of language, and make the point that deliberation in a plural and complex world requires a focus on how meanings are contextualized and recontextualized or resemiotized across multiple modes of semiotic practice.” (p. 204)

  • “This implies a departure from a conventional emphasis on the importance of mother tongues and ethnic languages for political participation and deliberation.” (p. 204)

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