Multilingual Communication (Hamburg Studies in Multilingualism)

From the perspective of multilingual communication, a language serves not only as a means and a medium of communication, it is also a highly complex system which enters into a relationship with other languages and imprints its own dynamics upon those human beings involved in interaction by structuring their “action spaces”. Participants in multilingual interactions can be said to activate links between language and actions, mental activities, perception, thought patterns, knowledge systems etc. – in short, all mental and cognitive processes involved in communication – which are active both universally and in each individual language.