Multilingual Communication

In a world of increasing migration and technological progress, multilingual communication has become the rule rather than the exception. This book reflects the growing interest in understanding communication between members of different linguistic groups and contains a collection of original papers by members of the German Science Foundation’s research center on multilingualism at Hamburg University and by international experts, offering an overview of the most important research fields in multilingual communication. The book is divided into four sections dealing with interpreting and translation, code-switching in various institutional contexts, two important strands of multilingual communication: rapport and politeness, and contrastive studies of Japanese and German grammar and discourse. The editors’ preface presents the relevant theoretical and methodological background to the issues discussed in this book and points to useful directions for future research.

Alexander Onysko, University of Innsbruck, on Linguist List 16.1675, 2005:
Multilingual Communication is a thought provoking and stimulating volume that not only indicates the vastness of the field, but also offers an in-depth view on diverse aspects of multilingual communication. In its complexity it reaches out to a wide target audience from the fields of multilingualism, language contact, translation studies, pragmatics, and discourse analysis.