Alex Robertson’s research while affiliated with University of Manchester and other places

Drawing on the example of Multilingual Manchester, we show how a university research unit can support work toward a more inclusive society by raising awareness of language diversity and thereby helping to facilitate access to services, raise confidence among disadvantaged groups, sensitise young people to the challenges of diversity, and remove barriers. The setting (Manchester, UK) is one in which globalisation and increased mobility have created a diverse civic community; where austerity measures in the wake of the financial crisis a decade ago continue to put pressure on public services affecting the most vulnerable population sectors; and where higher education is embracing a neo-liberal agenda with growing emphasis on the economisation of research, commodification of teaching, and a need to demonstrate a ‘return on investment’ to clients and sponsors. Unexpectedly, perhaps, this environment creates favourable conditions for a model of participatory research that involves co-production with students and local stakeholders and seeks to shape public discourses around language diversity as a way of promoting values and strategies of inclusion.

Recording the home languages of schoolchildren has long been acknowledged as a useful way of mapping community multilingualism. However, the need to process large quantities of data on many different languages has meant that in order to assess the vitality of community languages, researchers have had to rely on schoolchildren's self-reported language preference and proficiency. Moreover, large scale data collection among minors poses ethical and data protection issues. We describe a pilot study carried out in Manchester, England, in which a method was tested to record home language proficiency based on rapid, anonymous speech acts. These were correlated with respondents’ self-reported exposure to their home languages. The results indicate that different factors can play a role in language maintenance in different communities, and that home language maintenance does not have an adverse effect on proficiency in the majority language.

Manchester (England), one of the first industrial cities, is now home to over 150 languages. Ethnic minority and migrant communities take active steps to maintain heritage languages in commerce and through education. The paper introduces a model for a holistic approach to profiling urban multilingualism that relies on triangulating a variety of quantitative data sets, observations, and ethnographic interviews. We examine how responses to language diversity reflect an emerging new civic identity, but at the same time rely on private and voluntary sector initiative: While the city officially brands itself as multicultural to attract foreign investment, language provisions are local, responsive, and de-centralised and often outsourced, and aim primarily at ensuring equal access to public services rather than to safeguard or promote cultural heritage or even to cultivate language skills as a workforce resource that is vital to economic growth. In such a complex and dynamic setting, there is a need for a mechanism to continuously monitor changes in language profiles and language needs.