Language, Nation and State Identity Politics in a Multilingual Age [Hardcover]

This edited collection examines the role that language has played in forming modern European nations. With language an omnipresent issue within the European Union, the importance languages have played within the histories and present situations of member nations is a crucial topic. Drawing on an international cast of contributors, the book explores the issues of monolingualism vs. plurilingualism within individual nations, the revival of languages in nations such as former soviet republics, and concludes with a look at language in the electronic age.Introduction; T.Judt & D.Lacorne PART 1: THE LIMITS OF NATIONAL MONOLINGUALISM French Jacobinism and the Challenge of Linguistic, Ethnic, and Regional Variety; A.Fenet Occitan: The History of Decline; P.Martel Language Wars in the USA: The Case of California; D.Lopez PART 2: THE FRAGILITY OF PLURILINGUAL NATIONS Nationalism versus Bilingualism: The Belgian Case; A.von Busekist Struggling Against Territory: Language Policy in Canada; K.McRoberts Multiculturalism and Plurilingualism: The Swiss Experience; U.Windisch PART 3: NATION-MAKING AND LINGUISTIC REVIVALS The Invention of Hebrew as a Daily Language; A.Dieckhoff Acculturation and Linguistic Reconstruction in Ukraine, Lithuania, and Belorusse; D.Beauvois Unity and Plurality in the Serbo-Croatian Linguistic Domain; P.Garde Conclusion: The Internet: A New Babel? Languages and Language Communities in the Age of Electronic Discourses; G.Nunberg

By contrasting linguistic diversity and language policies across societies, this fine collection provides a unique lens into the status of minorities at a time when multiculturalism is on many scholarly and political agendas. The essays will be of great value to anyone interested in the variable articulation between collective identities, nations, ethnicities, states, and rights.

- Michele Lamont, Harvard University, co-author of Comparative

Cultural Sociology: Repertoires of Evalual#