Research group Social aspects of multilingualism (SAM)

We conduct research in areas such as language ideologies, language policy, minority languages, identity construction, and mother tongue education, as well as linguistic variation and language and dialect contact, to highlight the complexity of multilingualism from a social perspective. We also investigate multilingual interaction and how second language speakers develop their multimodal interactional competence.

Our studies are often based on various ethnographic approaches, including conversation and discourse analysis, but we also use quantitative, corpus-based and sociophonetic methods, as well as approaches involving language technology. We use theories and concepts from Bourdieu’s conceptual world, among others, to highlight power relations and social hierarchies that influence language use and linguistic norms. Through this work, we strive to contribute to a deeper understanding of how linguistic diversity both reflects and influences social development.