Multilingualism

Abstract Multilingualism has a long tradition but has gained visibility in the past years. Its scope is very broad and related to several disciplines and research approaches including linguistics, sociolinguistics, neurolinguistics, anthropology, or education, among others. Some studies focus on the individual ability to use several languages, and others look at the languages used in society. Nowadays, the focus is on multilingual speakers because of their specific characteristic which make them different from the sum of several monolingual speakers. The study of multilingualism is increasingly looking at the way multilingual speakers communicate and use their resources to learn additional languages. Multilingual speakers use resources from their whole repertoire when they translanguage. This entry looks at the definition and scope of multilingualism and offers an overview of the recent trends in the study of multilingualism.