Community and Communication: The Role of Language in Nation State Building and European Integration

Front Cover
Multilingual Matters, 2000 M01 1 - 280 pages
Three processes which have greatly affected European political development since 1945 are: a slow but steady progress towards abolition of political and economic frontiers; a tendency for the old nation-states to fracture, with the communities of which they were composed demanding some devolution of power, autonomy or even full independence; and migration on mass scale. Much has been written about these processes without the linguistic instability always considered. This book investigates how the linguistic dimension might affect European integration.

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Contents

Chapter
6
The nationalists and linguistic nationalism The modernists
10
Chapter 2
29
Chapter 3
61
Chapter 4
79
integration The role of language
108
representative democracy The essential role of language
126
Chapter 7
162
Chapter 8
169
the lesserused languages of Europe
179
Chapter 9
194
Chapter 10
203
Conclusions
230
Bibliography
255
Index
275
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About the author (2000)

Sue Wright is a lecturer in the School of Language and European Studies at Aston University. She is Editor of the journal Current Issues in Language and Society and her research interests are multilingualism and language policy in Europe.

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