Conclusions

Abstract

The epistemological and ontological shifts made by this book impact upon both the study of language and the study of the city in a number of disciplinexs. This impact comprises the following:

• How, and the extent to which, the city and language shape and are shaped by one another.

• How, the city, along with the various social processes which operate through it and in it, affects the status and use of language at the societal level and the relationship of that to patterns of language use in specific, local, city sites.

• The implications of this for the study of language in social context on one hand, and on the other hand, its implications for the study of the city.

• And the implications of this for the practice of language planning and policy in urban contexts — research to make urban practices in language diversity observable so as to inform social policy, not merely ‘administered’ language (Coulmas, 2005) — oral, spontaneous, language ‘of the street’ but also ‘unadministered’ language — language resulting from ‘purposeful intervention in the course of language development’ (Coulmas, 2005: 3) through education, corpus planning etc.