Languages in a Globalising World

• Main Authors: Maurais, Jacques, Morris, Michael A
• Format: eBook Book
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Cambridge University Press 10.04.2003
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Africa (Sub Sahara); Arabic; Asia; Australasia; Brazil; Europe; European Union; Foreign Countries; French; Geolinguistics; Geopolitics; German; Global Approach; Global Issues; Globalization; Interlinguistics; Japan; Language; Language and languages; Language Change; Language Contact; Language Diversity; Language Maintenance; Language Minorities; Latin America; Linguistics; Political aspects; Politics of Education; Portuguese; Public Policy; Russian; Sociolinguistics; South America; South Pacific; Technology; South America; Brazil; Asia; European Union; Japan; Africa

Throughout human history, the fate of languages has been closely linked to political power relationships. Political shifts in the international system continue to affect linguistic patterns, which today are still in a state of flux following the end of the Cold War. This book considers the effects o...

Table of Contents:

• Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Figures -- Tables -- Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Introduction -- Part I: Global communication challenges -- Part II: Major Areas -- Part III: Languages of wider communication -- Conclusions -- References -- Part I Global communications challenges -- 2 Towards a new linguistic world order -- The collapse of the USSR -- The end of Apartheid in South Africa -- Report on the 'universality' of English -- Geographic vs. virtual space -- A redefinition of geographic space: Internationalisation and new economic blocs -- The linguistic future of the planet: A lowering of diversity? Or, on the contrary, a fragmentation of the big languages? -- Language problems at the dawn of the twenty-first century -- Acknowledgements -- References -- 3 The geostrategies of interlingualism -- Plurilingualism and world English -- Language brokers and technologism -- Esperantism and language ecology -- Further reading -- 4 Language policy and linguistic theory -- References -- 5 Babel and the market: Geostrategy for minority languages -- From Babel to Adam Smith -- The market as a moderator of territorialisation -- References -- 6 Forecasting the fate of languages -- Demographic projection -- What counts as a user? -- What counts as a language? -- What counts as a country? -- Key-factor fixation -- Military domination -- Economic power -- Psychosocial factors -- The extrapolation of trends -- Multilingual broadcasting -- The language of computer software -- Wired communities and satellite societies -- The appropriation of models -- Acknowledgements -- References -- Part II Major areas -- 7 Language geostrategy in eastern and central Europe: Assessment and perspectives -- Historical overview of the situation of foreign languages in central and eastern Europe
• The importance of foreign languages during the first half of the twentieth century -- Teaching of foreign languages during the communist period -- Legislation and teaching of foreign languages after 1990 -- Country-by-country situations -- Conclusions -- References -- 8 Languages and supranationality in Europe: The linguistic influence of the European Union -- European Union and supranationality -- Economic integration -- Political integration and Community values -- Linguistic relations between the EU, member states and citizens -- Official rules governing the languages to be used -- Use of languages in the institutions -- Limits of institutional multilingualism -- Empirical usage of languages -- Official linguistic regime and relations with citizens -- The dynamic of lingua francas -- The linguistic influence of EU policies -- Community law and language laws -- A supranational power of language regulation -- Conclusions and prospects -- The EU as an institution regulating language use -- The EU as a pole of language changes -- Uncertain prospects -- References -- 9 Regional blocs as a barrier against English hegemony? The language policy of Mercosur in South America -- Latin America and linguistic globalisation -- Mercosur: Regional linguistic dynamics -- History of linguistic and educational policies in the Mercosur countries12 -- The dynamics of integration and changes in state policy: Conflicts and contradictions -- Educational and linguistic policies since 1991 -- The dynamics of integration in civil society -- Geolinguistic perspectives in Mercosur -- References -- 10 Effects of North American integration on linguistic diversity -- Complex, cross-cutting effects -- Positive effects -- Negative effects -- Conclusions -- References -- 11 Sociolinguistic changes in transformed Central Asian societies
• The international standing of German according to various indicators -- Numerical strength -- Economic strength -- Political strength -- Cultural strength -- Study strength -- Concluding remarks -- References -- 16 Arabic and the new technologies -- Arabic and computer technologies: Are there specific difficulties? -- The spread of Arabic -- Satellite broadcasting -- Arabic on the internet -- Technical difficulties -- Which propositions? -- Experiences with standardisation -- Towards a conclusion -- References -- 17 Russian in the modern world -- Russian within the Russian Federation -- Russian in the countries of the CIS -- Ukraine -- Belarus -- Russian in the Baltic states -- Interim conclusions -- Russian in other foreign countries -- The demographic power of Russian -- The economic power of Russian -- Russian in worldwide education -- Russian in the information technologies -- Conclusions -- References -- 18 Geolinguistics, geopolitics, geostrategy: The case of French -- References -- 19 Towards a scientific geostrategy for English -- Geostrategy via a future language observatory -- Sources of international data -- Global approaches to the gathering of language figures -- A model for future analysis -- References -- 20 On Brazilian Portuguese in Latin American integration -- References -- Conclusion -- 21 The search for a global linguistic strategy -- References -- Index
• Contact-induced linguistic variation and language policy -- Language as a pawn in the political game -- In the wake of Central Asian state language laws -- Issues in corpus planning -- The role of foreign interests in Central Asian language issues -- Concluding remarks: Linguistic identity crisis leading to new paradigms? -- References -- 12 Language and script in Japan and other East Asian countries: Between insularity and technology -- Historical background -- Influx of foreign words and government policy -- How the East Asian languages deal with foreign words -- Policy regarding foreign words -- Script-related issues -- Chinese characters only, mixed with syllabary/phonemic script and phonemic script alone -- Official character sets and codes1 -- Problems with codes -- Unicode -- Chinese and Korean input -- Japanese input systems -- Spread of electronic media -- China and Korea -- Japan -- Japan's policies for spreading Japanese language learning -- English and the 'internationalisation' of Japanese -- Conclusions -- References -- 13 Sub-Saharan Africa -- 'Sub-Saharan' or 'south Saharan' Africa? -- The exceptional linguistic African diversity -- From the supremacy of the three colonial languages to the politicolinguistic tripartition -- The decolonisation strategies -- Deficient language planning -- Continuity of linguistic policies, from colonial times to the present -- Why this linguistic non-development of Black Africa? -- What are the prospects? -- References -- 14 Australasia and the South Pacific -- World Englishes -- Plurilingualism -- 'Esperantism' -- Language brokers -- Roles of other world languages -- Technologism -- Conclusions -- References -- Part III Languages of wider communication -- 15 The international standing of the German language -- What do we mean by the 'international standing of a language'?