This book is a relatively comprehensive and comprehensible description on multilingual practice from several different approaches. It gives us an overall glance of multilingual practice all over the world. It is particularly noticeable that the book features descriptions of specific and localized multilingual practice in China, North America, Africa, Europe (p.12) written by contributors expertise in the particular field, while the book as a whole runs in a highly organized idea flow that each case analysis give us ideas on how multilingual practice work in some particular field. In general, I would say the book emphasize the multilingual practice in a relatively large scale. In the first part, it argues that multilingual practice in a large scale make it different not only in quality but also "quantity", or property, which matches my conclusion in Project 2. In a multilingual practice involving a large population, factors like political or cultural influence have to be taken into consideration, which make the case much more complex.(19) Part II talks about migration. The mass number of migration rise the issue of "dislocation" and "relocation", foregrounding some distinct pattern of multilingualism including identity recognition and spatialization.(14) The third part of the book study the multilingualism versus the elapse of time and change in space. Overall, this book is a good starter's guide for us to have an empirical understanding of multilingualism. Unlike the 1st and 3rd sources in this project dealing with regional issues, this book gives a comprehensive description on the studies conducted on multilingualism, and in most time case studies in this book is more representative, giving us a liable and versatile tool to understand multilingualism.
Chapter 9 (p.170) of the second section gives us some ideas on how multilingualism affects people's lives in a foreign country. It compares the interview with two groups of Polish post-communist migrants who arrived England in 1989 and 2004 respectively.(p.170) By comparing the style of talking of people in those two groups, we can see how the multilingual environment can shape people’s language over time.(p.174) It is concluded that the post-1989 group speak very differently in the style compared with post-2004 group. \ We can clearly see that the group which is longer influenced by multilingual practice (post 1989 group) speak in a much story-telling style. The study itself doesn't tell if it is because people are under the influence of British English-styled way of talking, but we can make a fairly good hypothesis to say so. The difference in speaking style is concrete enough to show that living in a multilingual culture does influence the way people speak in some way or other.
Also, the book gives a good example on internal immigrants in China, who experience accent bias in Beijing. As described in the book, Putonghua and monoglot ideologies in China has a positive influence on the politics and economics that it greatly enhanced the mobility of the society. (49) But it also created a problem that migrant workers, typically coming from an area of lower social and economy status, are experiencing bias due to the dialect they speak. In another word, they are "silenced by their accent". (49) Under such context, a migrant workers speak his own dialect with people from his hometown, but try to learn "Putonghua" in order to avoid being a victim of dialect bias. This provides an alternative explanation why Ivy need to learn Cantonese in Shenzhen, Guangdong(Canton). She initially learns "Putonghua" or Mandarine as most Chinese people living in a city do. But Cantonese has their own dialect that most people use. Differed from the Putonghua-bias in Beijing caused by the monoglot ideologies implemented by the central government there, Cantonese values their own language for their regional pride due to the fact that it is the second economically prosperous region. Similar to Beijing, they have bias to other dialects too. So it is not hard to understand why a Putonghua user as Ivy need to learn Cantonese in order to emerge into the society in Shenzhen.
Chapter 9 (p.170) of the second section gives us some ideas on how multilingualism affects people's lives in a foreign country. It compares the interview with two groups of Polish post-communist migrants who arrived England in 1989 and 2004 respectively.(p.170) By comparing the style of talking of people in those two groups, we can see how the multilingual environment can shape people’s language over time.(p.174) It is concluded that the post-1989 group speak very differently in the style compared with post-2004 group. \ We can clearly see that the group which is longer influenced by multilingual practice (post 1989 group) speak in a much story-telling style. The study itself doesn't tell if it is because people are under the influence of British English-styled way of talking, but we can make a fairly good hypothesis to say so. The difference in speaking style is concrete enough to show that living in a multilingual culture does influence the way people speak in some way or other.
Also, the book gives a good example on internal immigrants in China, who experience accent bias in Beijing. As described in the book, Putonghua and monoglot ideologies in China has a positive influence on the politics and economics that it greatly enhanced the mobility of the society. (49) But it also created a problem that migrant workers, typically coming from an area of lower social and economy status, are experiencing bias due to the dialect they speak. In another word, they are "silenced by their accent". (49) Under such context, a migrant workers speak his own dialect with people from his hometown, but try to learn "Putonghua" in order to avoid being a victim of dialect bias. This provides an alternative explanation why Ivy need to learn Cantonese in Shenzhen, Guangdong(Canton). She initially learns "Putonghua" or Mandarine as most Chinese people living in a city do. But Cantonese has their own dialect that most people use. Differed from the Putonghua-bias in Beijing caused by the monoglot ideologies implemented by the central government there, Cantonese values their own language for their regional pride due to the fact that it is the second economically prosperous region. Similar to Beijing, they have bias to other dialects too. So it is not hard to understand why a Putonghua user as Ivy need to learn Cantonese in order to emerge into the society in Shenzhen.