When humans learn languages, are they also learning how to create shared meaning? In The Usage-based Study of Language Learning and Multilingualism, a cadre of international experts say yes and offer cutting-edge research in usage-based linguistics to explore how language acquisition, in particular multilingual language acquisition, works.

Each chapter presents an original study that supports the view that language learning is initiated through local and meaningful communication with others. Over an accumulated history of such usage, people gradually create more abstract,...

Sociocultural linguistics has long conceived of languages as well-bounded, separate codes. But the increasing diversity of languages encountered by most people in their daily lives challenges this conception. Globalization has accelerated population flows, so that cities are now sites of encounter for groups that are highly diverse in terms of origins, cultural practices, and languages. New media technologies invent communicative genres, foster hybrid semiotic practices, and spread diversity as they intensify contact and exchange between peoples who often are spatially removed and...