Fixity and Fluidity in Sociolinguistic Theory and Practice

This chapter takes critical stock of such terms as ‘polylingualism’, ‘metrolingualism’ and ‘translanguaging’ to question perceptions around linguistic fixity and fluidity. It discusses the provenance and pertinence of these terms against the backdrop of earlier language contact research, pointing out the difficulties caused by their on-going semantic inflation. It addresses the epistemic and political affordances of claims that the facts of linguistic fluidity must take absolute precedence over the fiction of fixed, bounded languages. And it critiques the status of fluid language as a more natural language practice, and in turn, its greater potential for social transformation. We argue that linguistic fixity and fluidity must be approached as mutually presupposing, that this invites dilemmas in everyday life and academia, and that sociolinguists should pay close attention to the way both types of linguistic practice open up or close down avenues for social transformation.