2 Sociolinguistic and Cultural Considerations when Working with Multilingual Children Madalena Cruz-Ferreira Languages mentioned: Arabic, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hokkien, Japanese, Mirpuri, Norwegian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Singapore Standard English, Singlish (Singapore Colloquial English), Spanish, Swedish, Tok Pisin, Turkish, Urdu Multilingual Typicality versus Speech-language Disorder Overarching considerations when working with multilingual children concern the special status that continues to be accorded to multilingualism. Virtually all current knowledge about linguistic and cultural practices draws on monolingual and mono-cultural behaviour, whose mono character is glossed over and so tacitly emerges as default. In contrast, research on multilingualism invariably includes explicit reference to multi settings, thereby signalling an exceptionality worthy of a dedicated label. Multilingual children are culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD), as if monolingual children were, by definition, culturally and linguistically homogeneous; or users of heritage varieties, as if monolinguals lacked linguistic heritage. Labels such as these belie the fact that multilingualism is itself a norm, historically and statistically. They conveniently explain (away) idiosyncra- sies necessarily found in a population for whom proper norms, and so properly normed assessment instruments, have yet to be formulated: extant assessment tools are normed from and for monolingual uses of language. Correlating multilingualism, which is the feature shared by such children, with mismatches to norms, and interpreting correlation as causality often results in diagnosing the child with multilingualism itself, for which the remedy is monolingualism (Stow & Dodd, 2003). There is no correlation between multilingualism and disorder (Genesee et al., 2004), but there is evidence that therapy delivered in a home language will impact the child’s other languages (Kohnert, 2007; Stow, 2006). Tragically, the misguided association of multilingualism with disorder finds support from perhaps the least expected sources: Bavin’s (2009) recent collection dedicates one chapter to child multilingualism in a section entitled ‘Varieties of Development’, 13