The Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa

Abstract

There is an urgency in theorising how
diversity is negotiated, communicated,
and disputed as a matter of everyday
ordinariness that is compounded by the
clear linkages between diversity, transformation,
voice, agency, poverty and
health. The way in which difference is
categorised, semiotised and reconfigured
in multiple languages across quotidian
encounters and in public and media forums
is a central dynamic in how poverty
and disadvantage are distributed and reproduced
across social and racial categorisations.
In the South African context,
finding ways of productively harnessing
diversity in the building of a better society
must be a priority.