Language In A Changing Europe

This volume contains papers presented at the Annual Meeting of the British Association for Applied Linguistics held at the University of Salford, in September 1993. They illustrate the breadth and diversity of research in the field.

Recent sociopolitical events have profoundly changed the status and functions of German and influenced its usage. In this study (published by Cambridge in 1984) Michael Clyne revises and expands his original analysis of the German language in Language and Society in the German-speaking Countries in the light of such changes as the end of the Cold War, German unification, the redrawing of the map of Europe, increasing European integration, and the changing self-images of Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg. His discussion includes the differences in the form, function and status of the various national varieties of German; the relation between standard and non-standard varieties; gender, generational and political variation; Anglo-American influence on German; and the convergence of east and west. The result is a wide-ranging exploration of language and society in the German-speaking countries, all of which have problems or dilemmas concerning nationhood or ethnicity which are language-related and/or language-marked.

Recent sociopolitical events have profoundly changed the status and functions of German and influenced its usage. In this textbook Michael Clyne revises and expands his original analysis of the German language in Language and Society in the German-Speaking Countries (CUP, 1984) in the light of such changes as the end of the Cold War, German unification, increasing European integration, and the changing self-images of Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg. His wide-ranging exploration shows that the German-speaking countries all have problems or dilemmas concerning nationhood or ethnicity that are language-related and/or language-marked.

"Professor Heine and Professor Kuteva look for the causes of linguistic change in cultural and economic exchanges across national and regional boundaries and in the processes that occur when speakers learn or are in close contact with another language. Testing their data and conclusions against findings from elsewhere in the world, the authors reconstruct and reveal when, how, and why common grammatical structures have evolved and continue to evolve in processes of change that will, they argue, transform the linguistic landscape of Europe." "The book is written in clear, non-technical language. It will appeal to scholars and students of language change and variation in Europe and elsewhere. It will also interest everyone concerned to understand the nature of language and language change."--BOOK JACKET.

Do political boundaries impact on concepts of language? How significant is language for citizenship in contemporary Europe? Can disputed languages acquire full status? Should non-European languages receive recognition from the EU? These are among the many questions explored in this new study of official, regional and disputed languages in an ever-changing European context. Broad policy issues and the performance of the range of instruments of policy at local, national and European levels are illustrated with reference to case studies across Europe.

Human history has been characterised by the movement of peoples from one part of the world to another. The current tendency towards globalisation has accentuated this movement. While the proliferation of economic ties and the speed of travel and communication have made the world a much smaller place, any particular location within the world is now faced with an increasing degree of contact between cultures and languages. Migrating people bring with them languages in various stages of planning, with differing status and with differing relationships to their personal and group identity. The present study explores the ways in which three immigrant communities have adjusted and adapted to a new setting in Australia , and the ways in which the host community has contributed to this process. It focuses specifically on the ways in which patterns of language use contribute to the maintenance of a pre-migration identity and/or the negotiation of a new one. The languages chosen for this research are Macedonian, Filipino/Tagalog and Somali.

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.