Survival and Development of Language Communities: Prospects and Challenges

Xavier, Vila

ISBN 10: 1847698344 / ISBN 13: 9781847698346

Published by Channel View Books, 2012

About this Item

218 pages. 8.00x5.75x0.50 inches. In Stock.

Seller Inventory # x-1847698344

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Survival and Development of Language Communities: Prospects and Challenges
• Publisher: Channel View Books
• Publication Date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1847698344
• ISBN 13: 9781847698346
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Brand New
• Weight: 0.32 kilograms

About this title

Synopsis

Too small to be big, but also too big to be really small, medium-sized language communities (MSLCs) face their own challenges in a rapidly globalising world where multilingualism and mobility seem to be eroding the old securities that the monolingual nation states provided. The questions to be answered are numerous: What are the main areas in which the position of these languages is actually threatened? How do these societies manage their diversity (both old and new)? Has state machinery really become as irrelevant in terms of language policy as their portrayals often suggest? This book explores the responses to these and other challenges by seven relatively successful MSLCs, so that their lessons can be applied more generally to other languages striving for long term survival.

About the Author

F. Xavier Vila is an associate professor in the Department of Catalan Philology and Director of the University Centre for Sociolinguistics and Communication at the Universitat de Barcelona. He has published widely in the areas of sociolinguistics, demolinguistics and language policy, including Survival and Development of Language Communities: Prospects and Challenges (Multilingual Matters, 2013).