Do languages cause borders or do borders cause languages? This volume in the Current Issues in Language and Society series attempts to situate the debate on language policies in Southeastern Europe within the larger debate in social sciences and humanities on the issues of borders and the formation of national identities.

Since 1989, Europe’s eastern rim has been in constant flux. This collection focuses on how political and economic transformations have triggered redefinitions of cultural identity. Using discursive modes of identity construction (deconstruction, reconstruction, reformulation, and invention) the book focuses on the creation of opposition to old and new 'outsiders' and 'insiders' in Europe. The linguistic study of discourse elements in connection with an exploration of the significance of metaphors in anchoring individual and collective identity is innovative and allows for a unique analysis of public discourse in Europe.

Language Contact. An International Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of current topics in research on language contact. Broadly conceived, it stands out for its international approach to language contact, complementing the theoretical state-of-the-art with examples from traditionally eclipsed areas and languages. Next to a thorough introductory overview of the ground-breaking methodological and theoretical approaches that shaped the discipline, ample attention goes to the new and innovative insights on language contact in the 21st century. Combining concise introductory contributions with in-depth treatment of the most relevant case studies in the field, the handbook speaks to both junior and established scholars.

In Show Time, Lee Ann Fujii asks why some perpetrators of political violence, from lynch mobs to genocidal killers, display their acts of violence so publicly and extravagantly. Closely examining three horrific and extreme episodes—the murder of a prominent Tutsi family amidst the genocide in Rwanda, the execution of Muslim men in a Serb-controlled village in Bosnia during the Balkan Wars, and the lynching of a twenty-two-year old Black farmhand on Maryland's Eastern Shore in 1933—Fujii shows how "violent displays" are staged to not merely to kill those perceived to be enemies or threats, but also to affect and influence observers, neighbors, and the larger society. Watching and participating in these violent displays profoundly transforms those involved, reinforcing political identities, social hierarchies, and power structures. Such public spectacles of violence also force members of the community to choose sides—openly show support for the goals of the violence, or risk becoming victims, themselves. Tracing the ways in which public displays of violence unfold, Show Time reveals how the perpetrators exploit the fluidity of social ties for their own ends.

What makes suicide bombers capable of sacrificing themselves for a belief? Why do members of one race believe they are superior to another? How do subliminal messages affect the outcome of political polling? Using the tools of neuroscience and social science, researchers have learned a great deal about the brain's role in human behavior and interactions. This volume is the proceedings of the first Barcelona Social Brain Conference, which was organized by the New York Academy of Sciences, the Fundació Catalana per a la Recerca i la Innovació, the Càtedra UAB "el cervell social," and the European Science Foundation. Through a neuroscientific lens, the invited chapters examine the human qualities of empathy, sacred values, and cooperation, and focus on the ways in which what they learn can be used to understand human conflicts. NOTE: Annals volumes are available for sale as individual books or as a journal. For information on institutional journal subscriptions, please visit www.blackwellpublishing.com/nyas. ACADEMY MEMBERS: Please contact the New York Academy of Sciences directly to place your order (www.nyas.org). Members of the New York Academy of Science receive full-text access to the Annals online and discounts on print volumes. Please visit http://www.nyas.org/MemberCenter/Join.aspx for more information about becoming a member.

This edited volume examines how metaphors and related phenomena (metonymies, symbols, cultural models, stereotypes) lead to the discursive construal of a common element that brings the nation together. The central idea is that metaphor use must be questioned to lay bare the processes and the discursive power behind them. The chapters examine a range of contemporary and historical, monomodal and multimodal discourses, including politicians’ discourse, presidential speeches, newspapers, TV series, Catholic homilies, colonialist discourse, and various online sources. The approaches taken include political science, international relations, cultural studies, and linguistics. All contributions feature discursive constructivist views of metaphor, with clear sociocultural grounding, and the notion of metaphor as a framing device in constructing various aspects of nations and national identity. The volume will appeal to scholars in discourse analysis, metaphor studies, media studies, nationalism studies, and political science.

Politeness as practised across 22 European societies, firmly set within critical debates developed since the 1980s, is here presented in ways related to concrete situations in which language-users interact with one another to achieve their goals. Areas covered include types of politeness, forms of address, negotiation and small-talk in various contexts.

Now that nearly twenty years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet bloc there is a need to understand what has taken place since that historic date and where we are at the moment. Bringing together authors with different historical, cultural, regional and theoretical backgrounds, this volume engages in debates that address new questions arising from recent developments, such as whether there is a need to reject or uphold the notion of post-socialism as both a necessary and valid concept ignoring changes and differences across both time and space. The authors' firsthand ethnographies from their own countries belie such a simplistic notion, revealing, as they do, the cultural, social, and historical diversity of countries of Central and Southeastern Europe.

What is the relationship between writing systems and nationalism? How can different alphabets coexist in the same country? What is the destiny of the Cyrillic alphabet in Europe? Giustina Selvelli’s original work provides detailed answers to these far-reaching and potentially divisive questions and many more by examining several intriguing debates on topics of alphabets and national identity in a number of countries from the Balkan area over the course of the last 100 years. Following an encompassing perspective on alphabetic diversity, Selvelli, an expert on Southeast European Studies, reconstructs the ideological context of national discourses connected to the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, also taking a look at the Arabic and Glagolitic scripts, and interweaving issues on the symbolism of the alphabet with the complex recent history of the region, marked by the parallel influences of the East and the West. She also sheds light on the impact of a range of alphabet policies on ethnolinguistic minorities, proposing a new definition of “alphabetic rights” with special regard to the multiethnic legacy of the former Ottoman and Habsburg empires. This comprehensive book makes us discover the privileged role that writing systems played in the region’s delicate post-imperial and post-socialist transitions, leaving us captivated by peculiar stories such as that of the utopian “Yugoslav alphabet”.

Sounds of the Borderland is the first book-length study of how popular music became a medium for political communication and contested identification during and after Croatia's war of independence from Yugoslavia. It extends existing cultural studies literature on music, politics and the state, which has largely been grounded in Western European and North American political systems. It also responds to an emerging fascination with the culture and politics of contemporary south-east Europe, expanding scholarship on the post-Yugoslav conflicts by going on to encompass significant social and political changes into the present day. The outbreak of war in 1991 saw almost every professional musician in Croatia take part in a wave of patriotic music-making and the powerful state television system strive to bring popular music under its control. As the political imperative shifted from securing national survival to consolidating a homogenous nation-state, the music industry responded with several strategies for creating a national popular music, producing messages about the nation and, in the ongoing debates over the origins of the folk music that inspired many songs, a way to define the nation by expressing what Croatia was not. The war on ethnic ambiguity which cut through individuals' social and creative lives played out across the airwaves, sales racks and gossip columns of a small country that imagined itself a historical and cultural borderland. These explicit and implicit narratives of nationhood connect many political phases: the months of fiercest fighting, the stabilised front, the uneasy post-war years when the symbolic frontline region of eastern Slavonia had still not returned to Croatian sovereignty, the euphoria and instability after the end of the Tudjman regime in 2000, and Croatia's fraught journey towards the European Union. Baker's book provides valuable insight into the role of music in a wartime and post-conflict society and will be essential reading for researchers and students interested in south-east Europe or the transformation of entertainment during and after conflict.