CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.
The European Community has pledged respect for the cultural and linguistic diversity of its Member States and has recognized minority languages as an inherent constituent in this regard. This development reflects a broader trend within the Community towards grappling with less obvious aspects of supranational governance. Minority language groups turn optimistically to `Europe' in response. But, despite rhetorical promises, just what can the EC actually be expected to do in the realm of minority language protection, a politically sensitive and traditionally domestic concern? Arguments put forward to date focus primarily on philosophical, moral, economic, and political discourse. While these considerations are a vital aspect of the debate on minority languages and on linguistic diversity more generally, the question of legal basis remains largely unanswered. For the first time, this book traces comprehensively the existence of an appropriate legal basis for action undertaken by the EC in this domain, striving in particular to locate a pragmatic yet effective balance between legitimate possibility and acceptable limitations.
Globalization and European integration are sometimes seen as the enemies of nationalism, sweeping away particularisms and imposing a single economic, cultural and political order. The book argues on the contrary that, by challenging the 'nation-state' as the sole basis for identity and sovereignty, they open the way for a variety of claims by stateless nations. It is certainly true that recent years have seen a strong recurrence of nationalist claims, in Europe and in other parts of the world. At the same time, however, globalization and European integration provide new ways of managing nationality claims. At one level, they lower the stakes in independence and might permit peaceful transitions to independence. Yet they may also make independence in the traditional sense less important and provide ways in which multiple and conflicting nationality claims could be accommodated in new political structures. The chapters in this collection consider these issues from a theoretical perspective and through case studies of stateless nationalisms in western, eastern and central Europe, the former Soviet Union and Quebec. They record a wide variety of experiences and show that, while there are no easy answers to conflicting national claims, there is reason to believe that they can be managed through democratic political processes.
A collection of pivotal papers from 1986-1993 on bilingualism and bilingual education, grouped in sections on policy and legislation, implementation of bilingual policy in schools, bilingualism in instruction, and using the bilingualism of the school community. Articles conclude with suggested student activities and discussion questions, encouraging students to take on an advocacy-oriented role. The reader can be used alone or with the publisher's Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. No index. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
This text covers the language situation in Hungary, Finland, and Sweden explaining linguistic diversity, historical and political contexts, including language-in-education planning; and the roles of the media, of religion, and of minority and migrant languages. The authors have been participants in the language planning context in these polities.
This encyclopedia is divided into three sections: individual bilingualism; bilingualism in society and bilingual education. It includes many pictures, graphs, maps and diagrams. The book concludes with a comprehensive bibliography on bilingualism.
This book aims to expand the theoretical framework of and counter the Eurocentric narratives in language policy research, by comparing policies of EU and India and demonstrating the importance of taking a comparative perspective while studying language policies. This book challenges the notion of macro-level power in language policy research and offers evidence that, in democratic frameworks, macro-level power is not absolute. It is not uniform across policy domains, but rather susceptible to pressure, especially in the domains of healthcare and social welfare. This book makes three important contributions to the theory of language policy by: Arguing for the need to reconceptualise macro-level power Proposing ‘Categories of Differentiation’ as a new analytical tool for policy research Demonstrating that socio-political changes are reflected at the textual level This book is of interest to researchers working on language policies and those investigating language related legislation across different policy domains, to practitioners and policymakers in language policy, as well as to graduate students conducting comparative policy research. “This is a much valued and timely book making a strong case for the subject of language policy across Europe and India. The large comparative case studies of four distinctive states across Europe and India in a simple descriptive mode makes the reading of this book enjoyable. The domains of administration, legislation, healthcare and social welfare are undoubtedly novel ways to deal within the concept of language policy in a wider sense. The author uses discourse analysis to bring out the relationship between intention, explanation and interpretation of a phenomenon like language policy and its implementation. The social diversity as expressed in linguistic mapping is well captured in the novel idea of “categories of differentiation” both as a normative methodological tool and its historical-empirical manifestation.” — Asha Sarangi, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Language policies are increasingly acknowledged as being a necessary component of many decisions taken in the areas of the labor market, education, minority languages, mobility, and social inclusion of migrants. They can affect the democratic control of political organizations, and they can either entrench or reduce inequalities. These are the central topics of this book. Economists, philosophers, political scientists, and sociolinguists discuss – from an interdisciplinary perspective – the distributive socio-economic effects of language policies, their impact on justice and inequality at the national or international level, as well as the connection between language choices and an inclusive access to public services. The range of social and economic issues raised by linguistic diversity in contemporary societies is large, and this requires new approaches to tackle them. This book provides new input to design better, more efficient, and fair language policies in order to manage linguistic diversity in different areas. Topics covered include: theoretical models of linguistic justice and linguistic disadvantage; the assessment of the socio-economic consequences of language policies; the evaluation of the costs, benefits, and degree of inclusion of language planning measures; the politics of migrants’ linguistic integration; as well as multilingualism and economic activities. These topics are discussed in different contexts, including the areas inhabited by linguistic minorities, cities receiving migrants, and supranational organizations.
This edited volume offers an overarching yet detailed view of fast-changing language policy and practice in Europe and beyond. It provides a thorough investigation of different linguacultural scenarios, exploring how language policy has repercussions on research and initiatives in the field of language education. With contributions from a range of European settings as well as Turkey and the USA, the book discusses topical issues related to language learning and explores how these can shape our identities. Chapters present cutting-edge research on translanguaging, EMI, multilingualism and minority languages in Europe. The volume forecasts what future educational policies might look like, and questions how evaluating and rethinking educational practices can produce positive effects on language practices as well as language policies. The book has a wide-reaching international focus and will be an important resource for researchers, academics, language experts and postgraduate students in the fields of applied linguistics, language education and sociolinguistics.
This revised second edition is a comprehensive overview of why we speak the languages that we do. It covers language learning imposed by political and economic agendas as well as language choices entered into willingly for reasons of social mobility, economic advantage and group identity.
This book examines the language policies relating to linguistic rights in European Union law and in the constitutions and legal statutes of some European Union member states. In recent years, the European Union has seen an increase in claims for language recognition by minority groups representing a considerable population (such as Catalan in Spain and Welsh in the UK). Additionally, there is a developing situation surrounding the official use of English within the European Union in the aftermath of the Brexit vote. In light of these two contexts, this book focuses on the degree of legal protection afforded to linguistic groups in the European Union. It will be of interest to students and scholars of language policy, EU law, minority languages and sociolinguistics.
This book stems from the joint effort of 25 research teams across Europe, representing a dozen disciplines from the social sciences and humanities, resulting in a radically novel perspective to the challenges of multilingualism in Europe. The various concepts and tools brought to bear on multilingualism are analytically combined in an integrative framework starting from a core insight: in its approach to multilingualism, Europe is pursuing two equally worthy, but non-converging goals, namely, the mobility of citizens across national boundaries (and hence across languages and cultures) and the preservation of Europe’s diversity, which presupposes that each locale nurtures its linguistic and cultural uniqueness, and has the means to include newcomers in its specific linguistic and cultural environment. In this book, scholars from applied linguistics, economics, the education sciences, finance, geography, history, law, political science, philosophy, psychology, sociology and translation studies apply their specific approaches to this common challenge. Without compromising the state-of-the-art analysis proposed in each chapter, particular attention is devoted to ensuring the cross-disciplinary accessibility of concepts and methods, making this book the most deeply interdisciplinary volume on language policy and planning published to date.
