Jan Blommaert

Jan Blommaert (1961-2021) was Professor of Language, Culture and Globalization and Director of the Babylon Center at Tilburg University, The Netherlands, and Professor of African Linguistics and Sociolinguistics at Ghent University, Belgium. He held honorary appointments at University of the Western Cape (South Africa) and Beijing Language and Culture University (China) and was group leader of the Max Planck Sociolinguistic Diversity Working Group. He has published widely on language ideologies and language inequality in the context of globalization. Publications include Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity (Multilingual matters 2013), The Sociolinguistics of Globalization (Cambridge University Press, 2010), Ethnographic Fieldwork: A Beginner’s Guide (Multilingual Matters 2010), Grassroots Literacy (Routledge, 2008), Discourse: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Language Ideological Debates (Mouton de Gruyter, 1999). His latest book was Durkheim and the Internet (Bloomsbury 2018).

Language, culture and globalization. Superdiversity in the online-offline nexus and its theoretical implications. Sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, literacy, linguistic anthropology, social theory, new media, culture theory, critical theory.