The ordinariness of translinguistics in Indigenous Australia

Recent debates within the sociolinguistics of multilingualism have highlighted the challenges posed by new complexities in the semiotic space of ‘superdiversity’, where the linguistic repertoire cannot be neatly partitioned according to socially or politically constructed language boundaries. Some have noted, however, that discourses framing these complexities as ‘new’ tend to focus on the City and the West, and risk erasing diversities that have long been acknowledged as commonplace in other – for example, Indigenous – settings. This chapter explores language practices in an Indigenous community in remote northern Australia. Through highlighting ‘the ordinariness of diversity’ in local translinguistic practice in this region, the chapter demonstrates that the supposed ‘new complexities’ of globalisation have significant reflexes in the ‘peripheries’ of its reach.