Affordances for Multilingual Development in Minority Contexts: A Sociolinguistic Perspective on Multilingualism in South Tyrol

Drawing on the notion of affordances, this contribution focuses on the multiple potentialities for individual and societal multilingualism afforded by the special minority context of South Tyrol. The blueprint for a New Linguistic Dispensation is mapped onto the local realities and discussed in the light of current discourses on multilingualism and educational attainment targets in South Tyrol. Shifting the focus away from monolingual standards and norm expectations, linguistic competence is redefined as multilingual transversal competence. This paradigm shift envisages Dominant Language Constellations taking the place of monolingual repertoires and multi-competence supplanting native-speaker competence. Politico-ideological and ontological factors are scrutinised from the perspective of the Continua of Multicompetence (Hofer, 2023). The CMC framework models the complex and dynamic interdependencies between conditional factors in multilingual life realities. Taking account of the dynamical confluence of multiple impact factors it provides a useful frame of reference for the study of multilingualism at the individual learner and wider societal level.