I am currently at the University of the Western completing a PhD in Linguistics. My dissertation attempts to understand the dynamics of emergent multilingual practices in situations of mobility and flux, where traditional and/or contemporary approaches to multilingual studies employ structural-functional models derivative of situations of stasis and community. To approach this problem I will be focusing on popular spaces where there are transcultural flows of goods, services, languages and peoples. Here encounters between mobile populations and multilingual language users permit investigation into trajectories of development of locally-styled multilingual practices of youth in late modern Cape Town. Much of the literature of relevance to the question of how language practices circulate transnationally and across different spaces is written within the frameworks of the world Englishes (Kachru, 1986), global Englishes (Crystal, 1997), and Linguistic Imperialism (Phillipson, 1992) paradigms. The study will therefore situate its work within this body of literature. It is also the case that when youth appropriate new forms of multilingual communication, many elements of their repertoires are taken from English. In order to research this issue the study will employ methods of multi-site sociolinguistic ethnography research (cf. Appadurai, 1996; Burawoy et al, 2000; Marcus, 1995; 1998, Watson, 1999; Hannerz, 2003; Heller, 2007a; 2006), triangulated with qualitative methods of data collection. The thesis will contribute to an emerging body of theory around multilingualism in late modern societies.

Download my proposal: Popular Spaces of Multilingual Practices in Late-Modern Cape Town by Quentin E. Williams,