A common denominator is that questions about bilingualism and multilingualism are put in a political, social and cultural context. This line of research draws on the interest of sociolinguistics in language variation and change, but applies it to issues that involve more than one language. In sociolinguistically oriented research on bi-/multilingualism, the approaches can be ethnographic, historical, sociological, variational-linguistic, or discourse or conversational analytics.
Issues of power, language ideology, and language policy usually have central positions, irrespective of whether the focus is set on educational conditions of linguistic minorities, the multilingual practices of working life, or the arrangements that shape linguistic or semiotic landscapes. A common assumption is that language both reflects and shapes society.
