Experienced Multiculturalism - Experienced Cosmopolitanism?
Keywords:
multiculturalism, multilingual, cosmopolitanismAbstract
There are many types of multiculturalism, and many definitions of it. Everyday multiculruralism involves a differentiated, ethnographic approach (Wise & Velayutham 2009), which studies the negotiation and experience of cultural complexities in everyday situations or "contact zones" (Pratt 1992, 7) as expressions of "unpanicked multiculturalism" (Noble 2009, 51). lt is most obvious in the change of lifestyle in Western countries and in the evidence of multiple cultural heritages, which contribute to cultural and linguistic diversity and may be expressed through embodiment, hybridisation and the coexistence of difference (see Wise & Velayutham 2009). Everyday multiculturalism examines the dynamics and meaning of diversity within societies and attempts to reconstruct difference on the basis of situated experience. Moreover, it explores the ability to use, define and create difference and its forms of representation as well as its transformations and deconstructions (see Semi et al. 2009).
