Prof. Yaron Matras 

This project explores attitudes to multilingualism in a global city, based on the example of Manchester, UK. I draw on collaboration between researchers and practitioners in a variety of settings, including the city council, the health care sector, schools, community-run weekend schools that teach heritage language, local museums, and others. Using observations and interviews, I examine how practitioners experience encounters with languages in the urban environment, and how those encounters prompt them to draft and implement solutions to the challenges of providing services to a multilingual population. I describe how informal networks of practitioners, activists, and researchers help consolidate practical strategies to address language needs, and how these help forward policies that support equal access to services, cultivation of heritage and skills, and celebration of multilingualism as a collective experience, giving rise to what I call a “city-language narrative” that is used as a kind of municipal identity badge. I demonstrate how these developments contrast with language policy and statements at national level, which emphasise uniformity and tend to view language difference as a barrier to social inclusion. By contrast, the ideologies and policies that emerge in the city around practical encounters with multilingualism have the potential to offer a counter-weight to current populist movements and to strengthen commitments to multiculturalism.