After the accession of ten new member-states in 2004, the number of official EU languages increased from eleven to twenty. In 2005, the Council of the European Union decided to expand the existing legal framework for Irish and for other languages, such as Basque, Catalan and Galician, which are official in all or part of the territory of a given member-state. On 1 January 2007 Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU, increasing the number of official EU languages still further. This book addresses the challenge of respecting linguistic diversity within the EU and is intended as an introduction to the issue for those not already familiar with EU law. It also provides an analysis of the potential of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union to enhance respect for linguistic diversity. Each chapter has been written by a recognised expert in the field. The appendices bring together the basic legal norms relating to linguistic diversity within EU institutions.

What role does linguistic diversity play in European democratic and legal processes? Is it an obstacle to deliberative democracy and a hindrance to legal certainty, or a cultural and economic asset and a prerequisite for the free movement of citizens? This book examines the tensions and contradictions of European language laws and policy from a multi-disciplinary perspective. With contributions from leading researchers in EU law and legal theory, political science, sociology, sociolinguistic and cognitive linguistics, it combines mutually exclusive and competing perspectives of linguistic diversity. The work will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers in the areas of European law, legal theory and linguistics.

This book offers an inclusive perspective on the constellation of languages in Europe by taking into account official state languages, regional minority languages and immigrant minority languages. Although "celebrating linguistic diversity" is one of the key propositions in the European discourse on multilingualism and language policies, this device holds for these three types of languages in a decreasing order. All three types of languages, however, are constituent parts of a multilingual European identity and should be taken into account in any type of language policy. Both facts and policies on multilingualism and plurilingual education are addressed in case studies at the national and European level. The selection of case studies is based on a careful weighing of geographical spread of countries and languages across Europe on the one hand, and availability of established expert knowledge on the other. After an Introduction to the theme of the book (Guus Extra and Durk Gorter), Part I deals with official state languages with a focus on the spread of English as lingua franca across Europe (Juliane House), on French and France (Dennis Ager), on Polish in Poland and abroad (Justyna Lesniewśka), and on language constellations in the Baltic States (Gabrielle Hogan-Brun). Part II deals with regional minority languages with a focus on Catalan in Spain (Francesc Xavier Vila i Moreno), Frisian in the Netherlands (Durk Gorter et al.), Hungarian as a minority language in Central Europe (Susan Gal), and Saami in the Nordic countries (Mikael Svonni). Part III deals with immigrant minority languages in the United Kingdom (Viv Edwards), Sweden (Lilian Nygren-Junkin), Italy (Monica Barni and Carla Bagna) and Europe at large (Guus Extra and Kutlay Yağmur).

Explores the roots of Europe's struggle with multilingualism. This book argues that, over the centuries, the pursuit of linguistic homogeneity has become a central aspect of the mindset of Europeans. It offers an overview of the emergence of a standard language ideology and its relationship with ethnicity, territorial unity and social mobility

This volume focuses on the interface between language policy, language planning and practices in the current panorama of linguistic 'superdiversity' of the European Union. The topics of discussion draw on different theoretical perspectives and span

The present volume deals with the influence of the English lexis on other European languages in various fields of discourse, social attitudes towards this phenomenon and its reflections in recent lexicographical work. It contains some of the papers read at the conference Anglicisms in Europe 2006, which took place at the University of Regensburg, Germany. It links linguistic aspects with psychological, social, political and cultural issues, tracing relationships and differences between the respective research interests and findings. Its aim is to put the influx of anglicisms into languages other than English into a wide perspective encompassing the European heterogeneity of cultures, traditions and developments. The volume is divided into four parts, which reflect the particular foci of interest in the recent research on anglicisms in the languages of Europe: I. 'Cognitive and Semantic Approaches to Anglicisms', comprising articles that deal with the cognitive, communicative and semantic motivation for contact-induced innovation; II. 'Attitudes Towards the Influx of Anglicisms', with contributions about various national attitudes towards anglicisms and their reflection in the respective languages; III. 'The Use of Anglicisms in Specialized Discourse', with articles focussing on particular practices and domains such as business, sports, the sciences, and on language varieties used in communication within particular subcultures; and IV. 'Anglicisms in Dictionaries', comprising articles that deal with the existing dictionaries of anglicisms in European languages and provide a future-oriented perspective by making suggestions and recommendations regarding future lexicographic works.

This book explores how different European education systems manage multilingualism. Each chapter focuses on one of ten diverse settings (Andorra, Asturias, the Basque Country, Catalonia, England, Finland, France, Latvia, the Netherlands and Romania) and considers how its education system is influenced by historical, sociolinguistic and legislative and political processes and how languages are handled within the system, stressing the challenges and opportunities in each area of study. The chapters provide the reader with insights around three key aspects: the management of the guarantee of the rights of regional language minorities; the incorporation of the language background inherited by immigrants living in Europe (whether they are European citizens or not) and the need to promote the learning of international languages. Individually, the chapters offer deep insights into a specific education system and, together, the studies allow for a comparison and holistic understanding of multilingualism in European education.

This text covers the language situation in Hungary, Finland, and Sweden explaining linguistic diversity, historical and political contexts, including language-in-education planning; and the roles of the media, of religion, and of minority and migrant languages. The authors have been participants in the language planning context in these polities.

This is the first volume entirely dedicated to contested languages. While generally listed in international language atlases, contested languages usually fall through the cracks of research: excluded from the literature on minority languages and treated as mere ensembles of geographically defined varieties by traditional dialectology. This volume investigates the nature of contested languages, the role language ideologies play in the perception of these languages, the contribution of academic discourse to the formation and perpetuation of language contestedness, and the damage contestedness causes to linguistic communities and ultimately to linguistic diversity. Various situations and degrees of language contestedness are presented and analysed, along with theoretical considerations, exploring potential roads to recognition and issues in language planning that arise from language contestedness. Addressing the “language vs dialect” question head on, the volume opens up new perspectives that are relevant to all students and researchers interested in the maintenance of linguistic diversity.

This volume gives an up-to-date account of various situations of language contact and multilingualism in Europe especially from a historical point of view. Its ten contributions present newly collected data from different parts of the continent seen through diverse theoretical perspectives. They show a richness of topics and data that not only reveal numerous historical and sociological facts but also afford considerable insight into possible effects multilingualism and language contact might have on language change. The collection begins its journey through Europe in the British Isles. Then it turns to northern Europe and looks at how multilingualism worked in three towns that are all marked by border and contact situations. The journey continues with linguistic-historical and political-historical visits to Sweden and to Lithuania before the reader is taken to central Europe, where we will deal with the influence of Latin on written German.As far as southern Europe is concerned, the study continues on the Iberian peninsula, where the relationship between Portuguese and Spanish is focused, to be followed by Sardinia and Malta, two islands whose unique geohistorical positions give rise to some consideration of multilingualism in the Mediterranean.