Superdiversity and its explanatory limits

Abstract

Abstract Superdiversity is a key term that has taken hold in macro sociolinguistic commentary over the last decade. It has been used to explore the increasing linguistic diversity, particularly in major urban centres in the West, brought about by changing patterns of migration and transmigration. Within sociolinguistics, this has led to an increasing focus on the complex multilingualism that can now be found in diverse urban contexts. The focus on multilingualism that superdiversity brings is a welcome, albeit belated, recognition of the normalcy of mutilingualism, thus challenging the inherent monolingualism still underpinning much language policy, pedagogy, and practice. However, the rise of superdiversity as a theoretical framework has also led to an increasingly deconstructivist view of languages by its proponents – questioning and/or rejecting distinctions between so called named languages, particularly national languages, while also critiquing standard language registers. In this commentary, I outline the benefits that superdiversity has brought to sociolinguistics over the last decade but also highlight, and critique, its explanatory limits. The latter include, among others, its ahistoricity, its almost exclusive focus on migrants in urban contexts, its dimissal of non-urban, often Indigenous, language contexts, and its rejection of language rights and standard language varieties.