ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at language and superdiversity through an ethnographic lens. Drawing on data from a neighbourhood study in the London Borough of Hackney, the chapter looks at how people communicate across language differences in a place where almost everybody comes from elsewhere and where, according to one informant, ‘everybody speaks bad English’. It situates earlier sociological concepts concerned with interactions in public space such as ‘civility’ and ‘cosmopolitanism’ within a super-diverse context, showing how especially when it comes to transactions between traders and costumers, people activate interactional and linguistic skills to communicate across linguistic and other differences. The chapter also looks at the interplay of national, ethnic, socio-economic and language differences in regard to more personal social relations such as friendships. By drawing on the concept of social milieus, the chapter shows how not only knowledge of English, but also cultural capital and class-related sociolects shape how and with whom both long-term residents and newcomers form closer social relations.
