The Center’s vision is to contribute to how society can deal with the opportunities and challenges of multilingualism through increased knowledge, promoting agency for individuals in society, and a better quality of life, no matter what linguistic and social background we have.
MultiLing’s themes
The Center is organized around three mutually dependent and interrelated themes:
- Multilingual competence across the lifespan. How multilingual children, youth and adults acquire the languages they know, with a particular focus on how multilingual competence changes throughout the lifespan.
- Multilingual language choice and practices across the lifespan. How multilingual children, youth and adults use the languages they know, with a particular focus on how multilingual language use changes throughout the lifespan.
- Multilingualism, ideologies and language policies. How social and political power relations influence multilingual acquisition and use, both at an individual and at a group level.
MultiLing’s Colloquia
The Center’s two Colloquia are established to ensure a common perception of concepts and direction of research and to provide conceptual and methodological arenas across disciplines through which researchers can integrate and synthesize their work, as well as emphasize the social relevance of MultiLing’s research.
- Colloquium A: Scrutinizing critical concepts and theoretical approaches in studying multilingualism
- Colloquium B: Engaging innovative methodologies in studying multilingualism across the lifespan
An interdisciplinary Center
MultiLing brings together disciplines that have hitherto often been fragmented within linguistics, namely psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic approaches to language and multilingualism.
The Center also unites different fields of research such as linguistics, sociology, psychology, education, anthropology and brain research.
The training of researchers and international recruitment have a high priority for the Center. MultiLing has an extensive network and collaboration with researchers in multilingualism, at both national and international research institutions.