Language And Identity In Europe

"This book brings together research perspectives on the theme of European linguistic and cultural identity. Its chapters are the responses of rising European researchers to the challenges of language and identity in the context of a multilingual Europe, particularly in urban settings. The authors explore the extent to which diversity, and in particular linguistic diversity, affects identity formation across the European Union, from Ireland to Bulgaria, and beyond its borders. These chapters illustrate both the importance of the theme and the potential for further development in theory, policy and praxis. Readers will find this volume to be an informative and useful springboard for a deeper understanding of language and identity in complex social contexts within an evolving geopolitical and cultural landscape"--

This book examines the role of language in the present and past creation of social, cultural, and national identities in Europe. It considers the way in which language may sometimes reinforce national identity (as in England) while tending to subvert the nation-state (as in the United Kingdom). After an introduction describing the interactive roles of language, ethnicity, culture, and institutions in the character and formation of nationalism and identity, the book considers their different manifestations throughout Europe. Chapters are devoted to Britain and Ireland; France; Spain and Portugal; Scandinavia; the Netherlands and Belgium; Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Luxembourg; Italy; Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic; Bulgaria, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Albania, Slovenia, Romania, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo; Greece and Turkey; the Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, the Baltic States, and the Russian Federation. The book concludes with a consideration of the current relative status of the languages of Europe and how these and the identities they reflect are changing and evolving.

In an increasingly multicultural world, the relationship between language and identity remains a complicated and often fraught subject for most societies. The growing political salience of questions relating to language is evident not only in the expanded implementation of new policies and legislation, but also in heated public debates about national unity, collective identities, and the rights of linguistic minorities. By taking a comprehensive approach that considers both the inclusive and exclusive dimensions of linguistic identity across Europe and North America, the studies assembled here provide a sophisticated look at one of the global era’s defining political dynamics.

This book discusses the historical record of the idea that language is associated with national identity, demonstrating that different applications of this idea have consistently produced certain types of results. Nationalist movements aimed at 'unification', based upon languages which vary greatly at the spoken level, e.g. German, Italian, Pan-Turkish and Arabic, have been associated with aggression, fascism and genocide, while those based upon relatively homogeneous spoken languages, e.g. Czech, Norwegian and Ukrainian, have resulted in national liberation and international stability. It is also shown that religion can be more important to national identity than language, but only for religious groups which were understood in premodern times to be national rather than universal or doctrinal, e.g. Jews, Armenians, Maronites, Serbs, Dutch and English; this is demonstrated with discussions of the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the civil war in Lebanon and the breakup of Yugoslavia, the United Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

This book re-examines the relationship between language and national identity. Unlike many previous studies, it employs a comparative approach: France and Sweden have been chosen as case studies both for their similarities (e.g. both are member states of the European Union) as well as their important differences (e.g. France subscribes in principle to a civic model of national identity, whereas the basis of Swedish identity is undeniably ethnic). It is precisely differences such as these which allow for a more comprehensive understanding of the ethnolinguistic implications of some of the major challenges currently facing France, Sweden and other European countries: regionalism, immigration, European integration and globalization. The present volume benefits from the use of a multidisciplinary approach, and differs from others on the market because of the variety of methods of inquiry used. A series of societal analyses is complemented by an empirical component, bringing a more grounded understanding to the issue of language and national identity.

As Europe continues to expand and integrate through the European Union, it faces the challenge of ever increasing multilingual and multicultural contact, within and across its borders. This volume presents recent research on European language policy, language contact and multiculturalism that explores how Europe is meeting this challenge. Inspired by intersections and conflicts in language and cultural identity in Europe, the volume transcends disciplinary boundaries by enhancing sociolinguistic research with chapters on cultural identity and language in contemporary European cinema. The book considers the relationships between language and cultural identity in Europe at a time of increasing multicultural complexity, with contributions on Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Ukraine, and the linguistic and imaginative spaces between and beyond. The volume highlights the ongoing significance of language and identity for an expanding Europe, and the ways in which situations of linguistic hybridity, interlocution and language contact continue to define Europe and its others.

This book addresses the themes of language, identity and linguistic politics in Europe, drawing on approaches and methodologies from a range of disciplines from socio- and contact linguistics to cultural history, psychology and policy studies. It makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the linguistic landscape of today's Europe.

This volume is a collection of studies that analyze cultural encounters in Europe from multidisciplinary perspectives. The book faithfully reflects the research conducted at various departments within the Faculty of Arts and Letters at the University of Szeged, Hungary. The idea for the collection was conceived during a dissemination meeting for a four-year research project involving some of the authors known as Languages in a Network of European Excellence (LINEE), cofounded by the European Commission (FP6, contract 28388), whose generous support also made the publication of this volume possible—for which I would like to extend my gratitude here. Our contemporary world has been persuasively described in a wealth of literature as an era of postmodernity, characterized by a series of particular features, including the development of digital culture and mediation, an intricate interplay between globalization and localization, the compression of time and space, the rapid and constant movement of information and of people as well as the crossing of boundaries, both in symbolic and concrete terms (Lyotard, Harvey, and Appadurai [Modernity], among others). It has been depicted as a transitory period marked by a series of turns—linguistic, cultural and pictorial/visual (e.g. by Rorty, Jameson and Mitchell)—that have captured new mental frameworks for the comprehension of reality(-ies) and resultant principles and processes of knowledge production, also opening up avenues towards pluralism, the politics of identity and difference, and the centrality of issues concerning discourse, power and ideology (Calhoun, Gupta and Ferguson, Fairclough, etc.). Having investigated various aspects of globalization, Appadurai (“Disjuncture”) concluded that one way to understand this phenomenon is through the notion of cultural flows, a concept that captures the speed and dynamism with which particular cultural forms and practices may travel and gain recognition outside of the local cultures within which they appear. He proposed that these global cultural flows can best be explored through five imagined dimensions, often in disjunction with each other: ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes and ideoscapes. Of these, the studies in this volume focus primarily on ethnoscapes and ideoscapes: the cultural flow that both the movement of people, be they students, tourists, immigrants or artists, and that of ideas, from subcultures to teaching paradigms, bring about and the representation of the various encounters these entail in language use, cultural production and identity constructions. This collection of studies tackles some of these issues as they appear in Europe, particularly within the boundaries of Hungary, where they have received particular attention after Hungary joined the European Union in 2004. Hungary’s accession introduced not only EU rules, norms and expectations to the country but also encouraged the flow of people, cultural exchange and cooperation within the EU in numerous ways, such as research projects and academic exchange programs (e.g. Tempus and Erasmus) and cultural projects, such as the European Capital of Culture award program. In the implementation of the various programs and broad cooperation upon which a united Europe may emerge, it is imperative to ensure communication; thus, language teaching and learning and the attainment of a particular level of proficiency have received particular attention within the EU. All this, in a broader context, can be regarded as part of the problematization tied to the word “European,” including the construction and meaning of a European identity, particularly in relation to other, such as national, regional and local, identities, while not being blind to other powerful factors, such as ethnicity, religion and gender, that also shape self-identities in compelling ways. The authors in this volume represent a multiplicity of academic fields, from linguistics and literary criticism to cultural anthropology and cultural studies. They share the characteristic of reaching across traditional methods and disciplines, thus typically applying an interdisciplinary approach in their investigations, all of which focus on the construction, mediation, outcome or impact of cultural encounters in a variety of contexts. Except for one, all of these studies explore particular aspects of contemporary issues and practices. As reflected in the subtitle of the volume, the papers have been organized around three major themes: language use, cultural interaction and identity construction. The first set of studies investigates the significance of language in the postmodern age. Globalization is often associated with tendencies towards standardization and homogenization (e.g. Featherstone), in the course of which “English is becoming the global language, and culture is becoming more and more dominated by American and Western European models” (Smith 14). In this context, issues such as the way in which English is used in the global community, the forms of power English may represent in particular local communities, or the washback effect this global role may have on emerging techniques used in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom, require further investigation.