Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Tables
- Transcription Conventions
- Map of Central Europe
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Discourses on Language in Social Life: Theoretical and Methodological Orientations
- 3 Sociolinguistic Histories and the Footprint of German in Eastern Central Europe
- 4 Language Policy Discourses: Interventions and Intersections
- 5 Language (Auto)biographies: Narrating Multilingual Selves
- 6 Language Ideologies: Negotiating Linguistic Identities
- 7 Conclusions
- Appendix A European Institutions and Documents Concerning Language Policy
- Appendix B Preamble to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
- Appendix C Introduction to the 2005 Commission Communication ‘A New Framework Strategy for Multilingualism’
- Appendix D Introduction to the 2008 Commission Communication ‘Multilingualism: an asset for Europe and a shared commitment’
- Appendix E German and Austrian agents and institutions in foreign cultural policy
- Appendix F Extract from ‘Auswärtige Kulturpolitik – Konzeption 2000’
- Appendix G Central focus – ‘Leitbild’ – of the Goethe-Institut
- Appendix H Austria's Auslandskulturkonzept NEU
- Appendix I Plattform Kultur Mitteleuropa – Platform Culture Central Europe
- Appendix J Extract from Austria kulturint – Tätigkeitsbericht 2002
- Appendix K Czech 2001 White Paper on Education
- Appendix L Czech 2004 Education Act
- Appendix M Extract from Czech Follow-up of Action Plan on Language Learning and Linguistic Diversity
- Appendix N Hungarian 1997 Directive Concerning the Education for National and Ethnic Minorities
- Appendix O Extract from 2007 Hungarian National Core Curriculum
- Appendix P Extract from Hungarian Follow-up of Action Plan for Language Learning and Linguistic Diversity
- References
- Index
7 - Conclusions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Tables
- Transcription Conventions
- Map of Central Europe
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Discourses on Language in Social Life: Theoretical and Methodological Orientations
- 3 Sociolinguistic Histories and the Footprint of German in Eastern Central Europe
- 4 Language Policy Discourses: Interventions and Intersections
- 5 Language (Auto)biographies: Narrating Multilingual Selves
- 6 Language Ideologies: Negotiating Linguistic Identities
- 7 Conclusions
- Appendix A European Institutions and Documents Concerning Language Policy
- Appendix B Preamble to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
- Appendix C Introduction to the 2005 Commission Communication ‘A New Framework Strategy for Multilingualism’
- Appendix D Introduction to the 2008 Commission Communication ‘Multilingualism: an asset for Europe and a shared commitment’
- Appendix E German and Austrian agents and institutions in foreign cultural policy
- Appendix F Extract from ‘Auswärtige Kulturpolitik – Konzeption 2000’
- Appendix G Central focus – ‘Leitbild’ – of the Goethe-Institut
- Appendix H Austria's Auslandskulturkonzept NEU
- Appendix I Plattform Kultur Mitteleuropa – Platform Culture Central Europe
- Appendix J Extract from Austria kulturint – Tätigkeitsbericht 2002
- Appendix K Czech 2001 White Paper on Education
- Appendix L Czech 2004 Education Act
- Appendix M Extract from Czech Follow-up of Action Plan on Language Learning and Linguistic Diversity
- Appendix N Hungarian 1997 Directive Concerning the Education for National and Ethnic Minorities
- Appendix O Extract from 2007 Hungarian National Core Curriculum
- Appendix P Extract from Hungarian Follow-up of Action Plan for Language Learning and Linguistic Diversity
- References
- Index
Summary
‘States draw boundaries in sand, but people make their boundaries with talk.’ (Lefkowitz 2004: 272)
To understand ‘what language achieves in people's lives’ (Blommaert 2003: 608), we need to understand the historical conditions that create the limits of what it is possible for language to achieve. This means, first, determining the sets of beliefs and values associated with particular languages and language varieties in the discourses prevailing in given societies at given times: what we have been referring to through the now established conception of language ideologies; second, identifying how these ideologies influence discourses on language policy, which not only generate specific policies but also contribute to what Townson (1992) calls the ‘communicative environment’ (that is, the scope of what can be talked about and how it can be said); and third, exploring ways in which these ideologies penetrate and permeate wider discourses on language in the social life of communities and individuals by listening to the life stories of people for whom experiences with language represent a means of signifying their ‘life worlds’ and of establishing options for identifying with others. Finally, it is the interconnectedness of these dimensions that allows us to see the reciprocal relationship between language and social change.
Our aim in this book has been to investigate this relationship in the context of central Europe by identifying the different dimensions of language ideological work, past and present, that have fed into contemporary discourses on language.
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- Information
- Language and Social Change in Central EuropeDiscourses on Policy, Identity and the German Language, pp. 202 - 207Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2010