Trends in Linguistics is a series of books that publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighboring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. The series considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. Bonfiglio examines the ideological legacy of the metaphors "mother tongue" and "native speaker" by historicizing their linguistic development. The early nation states constructed the ideology of ethnolinguistic nationalism, a composite of language, identity, geography, and ethnicity that configured the national language as originating in the mother-infant relationship, as well as in local organic nature. These insular protectionist strategies generated the philologies of (early) modernity and their genetic and arboreal "families" of languages, and continue today to evoke folkloric notions that configure language ethnically. Scholarly recognition of the biological metaphors that racialize language will help to illuminate persisting gestures of ethnolinguistic discrimination.

This monograph examines the ideological legacy of the the apparently innocent kinship metaphors of “mother tongue” and “native speaker” by historicizing their linguistic development. It shows how the early nation states constructed the ideology of ethnolinguistic nationalism, a composite of national language, identity, geography, and race. This ideology invented myths of congenital communities that configured the national language in a symbiotic matrix between body and physical environment and as the ethnic and corporeal ownership of national identity and local organic nature. These ethno-nationalist gestures informed the philology of the early modern era and generated arboreal and genealogical models of language, culminating most divisively in the race conscious discourse of the Indo-European hypothesis of the 19th century. The philosophical theories of organicism also contributed to these ideologies. The fundamentally nationalist conflation of race and language was and is the catalyst for subsequent permutations of ethnolinguistic discrimination, which continue today. Scholarship should scrutinize the tendency to overextend biological metaphors in the study of language, as these can encourage, however surreptitiously, genetic and racial impressions of language.

In a time when the increasing cultural diversity and population mobility of the continent calls for good communication skills, this fascinating book features a wealth of data and critical opinion on the topic of mother tongue education.In the first part of the book, the two editors address central cultural, political and educational concerns relating to the mother tongue, using some of the findings of their European Commission funded research on the changing European classroom. The second part presents case study articles by practitioners from nine countries which have significant regional or immigrant mother tongue populations. These include Welsh in Wales, Catalan and Galician in Spain, Turkish and Greek in Germany, Arabic and Corsican in France, and Belorussian in Poland, as well as critical accounts of the main first language situation in England, Denmark, France, Germany, Poland, post-Soviet Russia, and Spain. The concluding part of the book looks at language awareness as a possible approach to linguistic diversity. It examines the preparation of teachers at all levels, as experinced by the editors through their involvement in an in international language study group based in Calgary, Cambridge, Mainz and Bialystock.Teaching the Mother Tongue in a Multilingual Europe is packed with original information which will be of use to all teachers and educationalists concerned with language.

Pioneering in the comparison of standard language teaching in Europe, the International Mother tongue Education Network (IMEN) in the last twenty-five years stimulated experts from more than fifteen European countries to participate in a range of research projects in this field of qualitative educational analyses. The volume "Research on mother tongue education in a comparative international perspective - Theoretical and methodological issues" documents theoretical principals and methodological developments that during the last decades shaped IMEN research and may enlarge the fundaments of comparative qualitative research in language education in a seminal way. The topics of this volume include: - IMEN's aims, points of departure, history and methodology; - research on the professional practical knowledge of MTE-teachers; - innovation, key incident analysis and international triangulation; - positioning in theory and practice. Also included: the IMEN bibliography 1984-2004 which supplies a complete picture of IMEN research activities from the beginning.

Untying the Mother Tongue explores what it might mean today to speak of someone's attachment to a particular, primary language. Traditional conceptions of mother tongue are often seen as an expression of the ideology of a European nation-state. Yet, current celebrations of multilingualism reflect the recent demands of global capitalism, raising other challenges. The contributions from international scholars on literature, philosophy, and culture, analyze and problematize the concept of 'mother tongue', rethinking affective and cognitive attachments to language while deconstructing its metaphysical, capitalist, and colonialist presuppositions.

This book examines how early research on literary activities outside national literatures such as émigré literature or diasporic literature conceived of the loss of ‘mother-tongue” as a tragedy, and how it perpetuated the ideology of national language by relying on the dichotomy of native language/foreign language. It transcends these limitations by examining modern Japanese literature and literary criticism through modern philology, the vernacularization movement, and Korean-Japanese literature. Through the insights of recent philosophical/linguistic theories, it reveals the political problems of the notion of “mother-tongue” in literary and linguistic theories and proposes strategies to realize genuinely “exophonic” and “translational” literature beyond the confines of nation. Examining the notion of “mother-tongue” in literature and literary criticism, the author deconstructs the concept and language itself as an apparatus of nation-state in order to imagine alternative literature, genuinely creolized and heterogeneous. Offering a comparative, transnational perspective on the significance of the mother tongue in contemporary literatures, this is a key read for students of modern Japanese literature, language and culture, as well as those interested in theories of translation and bilingualism.

Language, Nations, and Multilingualism explores the legacy of Herder’s ideas about the relationship between language and nationalism in the post-colonial world. Focusing on how anti-colonial and post-colonial nations reconcile their myriad multilingualisms with the Herderian model of one language-one nation, it shows how Herder’s model is both attractive and problematic for such nations. Why then does the Herderian model have such valency? How has the Herderian ideal of one nation-one language continued to survive beneath the uncomfortable resolution struck by new multilingual nations as they create fictions of a singular national mother tongue? To what extent is Herder still relevant in our contemporary world? How have different nations negotiated the Herderian ideal in different ways? What does the way in which multilingual post-colonial nations deal with this crisis tell us about a possible alternative framework for understanding the relationship between language and nation? By approaching this investigation from diverse archives across Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean, Language, Nations, and Multilingualism proposes answers to the aforementioned questions from a global perspective that takes into account the specificities of a range of colonial experiences and political regimes. And by extending the discussion backwards in time to offer a more historical reading of the making of modern nations, it allows us to see how multilingualism has always disrupted constructions of monoglot nations.

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.

Between 1870 and 1960, national boundaries became more evident on the demographic map of Western Europe. In most of the fifteen countries examined here, differences in marital fertility, illegitimacy, and marriage from one province (counties, cantons, arrondissements) to another diminished considerably. From Provinces into Nations describes this shift to greater national demographic homogeneity and places it in the context of a parallel decline in linguistic diversity, as well as in the context of increases in national market integration, the expansion of state activities, and nation-building. The book interprets the shift as evidence of the influence of communities on demographic behavior, and as an indication of the growing predominance of national over local communities. The author uses demographic data, too often the property of specialists, to examine themes of interest to historians, sociologists, economists, and political scientists interested in the integration of modern societies. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.