ABSTRACT
Plurilingualism is the “new linguistic world order/dispensation” (Aronin and Singleton, 2008), being at the core of the research and intervention agenda in several social science fields, including education. In fact, political, social and economic changes occurring in the world, characterized for example by worldwide mobility and globalization, have made multilingualism – the multilingual nature of a given society – a ubiquitous reality, and plurilingualism – an individual’s ability to use several languages (Council of Europe (CE), 2001) – a crucial prerequisite for addressing global society’s present-day challenges. Hence, both for those who live in particularly diverse societies and/or whose personal experiences have led them to naturally engage in and acknowledge linguistic and culturally diverse phenomena, or for those who, as a consequence of living in less diverse settings and being less exposed to such phenomena, have only recently started to notice multilingualism as an undeniable feature of today’s society, the enhancement of plurilingualism is key to fulfilling the individual’s everyday needs over his or her lifetime in this complex, dynamic and multifaceted world.
