Multilingualism and Wellbeing by Smakman, Dick; Anderson, Jemima Asabea; Ansah, Gladys Nyarko;

Short description:

Multilingualism and Wellbeing is an innovative text that combines sociolinguistic, psychological and philosophical approaches to explore multilingualism as a source of wellbeing. It challenges the “monolingual bias” and the common assumption that multilingualism is solely driven by utilitarian, formal, or identity-based motivations.

Long description:

Multilingualism and Wellbeing is an innovative text that combines sociolinguistic, psychological, and philosophical approaches to explore multilingualism as a source of wellbeing. It challenges the ‘monolingual bias’ and the common assumption that multilingualism is solely driven by utilitarian, formal, or identity-based motivations.

Across nineteen carefully edited chapters, contributors illustrate the enduring vitality of multilingualism across the globe through personal and empirical accounts, investigating diverse motivations behind its persistence. Authors present compelling evidence for multilingualism’s positive impact on a person’s sense of mental, social, and cultural wellbeing. With a distinctive global reach, this volume showcases multilingual experiences from regions including West Africa, the Netherlands, Georgia, Japan, and Indonesia, while also examining governmental policies that promote multilingualism – despite the practical challenges involved – offering a nuanced and balanced perspective.

This ground-breaking work is essential reading for advanced students and researchers in multilingualism, language acquisition, language learning, and applied linguistics, as well as for those in related fields of sociology, psychology, and philosophy.

'The volume Multilingualism and Wellbeing, edited by Dick Smakman, Jemima Anderson, and Gladys Ansah, offers a refreshing new outlook on multilingualism by focusing on its psychological and emotional impact, and by positively associating it with the well-being of multilingual speakers. It provides a new perspective in the study of multilingualism, moving beyond the well-trodden paths of research into language choice, identity construction, power, and functionality. This is definitely a book I would like students in my Sociolinguistics class to read.'

Nadia Shalaby, Professor of Linguistics, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt

'This book is a ground-breaking contribution to multilingualism research, moving beyond questions of social identity and towards the felt experience of language. Multilingualism, the authors argue, is essential for the well-being of speakers and is thus closely linked to affect. The message is as simple as it is important: multilingualism makes us happy and brings us pleasure.'

Ana Deumert, Professor of Linguistics, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Table of Contents:

Part I: 1. Wellbeing and Multilingualism  2. Multilingualism and Happiness  3. The Wellbeing of Being Multilingual in Bulgaria  Part II: 4. Multilingualism in Ghana’s Healthcare: A Neglected Barrier  5. Multilingualism: Happiness and Wellbeing in South-Western Nigeria and Greater Accra, Ghana 6. Multilingualism and  Wellbeing: Reflections from Ghana 7. Multilingualism as a Tool for Destressing: Evidence from Northern Ghana  Part III: 8. The Impact of State Language Knowledge on Georgian Ethnic Minority Student’s Wellbeing  9. Conceptualization of Wellbeing: Kuleana ‘Responsibility’, Revitalization, and Reclamation of the Hawaiian language  10. Multilingualism and Social Wellbeing: The Sierra Leone ‘Wan Pot’: The Official, the Lingua Franca and the Indigenous  11. The Language Chameleon: Between Happiness and Worries about Being Bilingual in Catalonia  Part IV: 12. Linguistic wellbeing in Multi-ethnic The Hague  13. Rethinking Migrants’ Wellbeing in Germany through a Multilingual Lens  14. Multilingualism and Economic Wellbeing of Female Migrants in Accra  15. Verfremdung  Part V: 16. Sweet Sounds of Melancholy: Brabantish as a Language of Culture  17. Multilingualism and Wellbeing in Japan: The Case of Yomitan Village in Okinawa  18. The Relation between Degree of Multilingualism and Experiences of Wellbeing in Catalonia   19. Multilingualism and Wellbeing in Timor-Leste