ABSTRACT
Language is one of the most immediate and sensitive indexes of diversity. Small differences in accent and speaking patterns betray someone’s regional, social class, ethnic and/or gender backgrounds; hearing a different language spoken instantly provokes impressions of ‘foreignness’; and seeing public signs in a language you don’t read is a reliable indication that you’re not in your familiar habitat. Language is also the most immediate and sensitive index of social change. Hearing or seeing languages not hitherto heard or seen in an area is a sure and immediate sign that the area has changed – ‘Hey, I never heard Russian spoken here!’ And language, fi nally, is also the key tool to organize and navigate diversity: we perpetually adjust our language repertoires to those we have to communicate with, often coming up with entirely new forms of language usage. A failure to do so would lead to something most people consciously try to avoid – misunderstanding – or can be an effect of restrictive institutional arrangements in the area of language use – as when language legislation prescribes the use of a single language and/or script. In the latter case, language also becomes a sensitive index of confl icts, contests and power in a fi eld of diversity.
