MULTILINGUALISMS IN THE GLOBAL SOUTHS: Shaping Language Scholarship in the Global Norths

Thinking about language from the South requires not only the addition of contexts of southern language use but also an extensive decolonization of the frameworks through which languages are viewed. What languages are and how they are used together must be embedded in local social and cultural frameworks of reference. The idea that multilingualism could refer to the same thing in diverse contexts of communication is revealed from this perspective as not merely incongruous but also constrictive in what it enables sociolinguists to understand. This chapter argues that instead, we need models that question the very foundations that underpin such linguistic simplifications, models that take on board Southern insights about language chains and communicative repertoires.