Focuses on the endangering effects of language-ideological processes. This book looks at the challenges imposed by globalization and super-diversity on the nation state and its language situations and ideologies, and demonstrates how many of its problems rise from the tension between late-modern diversity and the (pre-)modernist responses to it.

Focuses on the endangering effects of language-ideological processes. This book looks at the challenges imposed by globalization and super-diversity on the nation state and its language situations and ideologies, and demonstrates how many of its problems rise from the tension between late-modern diversity and the (pre-)modernist responses to it.

This edited book makes a significant contribution to the relatively under-explored field of multilingualism and politics, approaching the topic from two key perspectives: multilingualism in politics, and the politics of multilingualism. Through the lens of case studies from around the world, the authors in this volume combine theoretical and empirical insights to examine the inter-relation between multilingualism and politics in different spheres and contexts, including minority language policy, national identity, the translation of political debates and discourse, and the use of multiple, often competing languages in educational settings. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of politics, sociology, sociolinguistics, language policy, and translation and interpreting studies.

This book interrogates and problematises African multilingualism as it is currently understood in language education and research. It challenges the enduring colonial matrices of power hidden within mainstream conceptions of multilingualism that have been propagated in the Global North and then exported to the Global South under the aegis of colonial modernity and pretensions of universal epistemic relevance. The book contributes new points of method, theory and interpretation that will advance scholarly conversations on decolonial epistemology by introducing the notion of coloniality of language – a summary term that describes the ways in which notions of language and multilingualism in post-colonial societies remain colonial. The authors begin the process of mapping out what a socially realistic notion of multilingualism would look like if we took into account the voices of marginalised and ignored African communities of practice – both on the African continent and in the diasporas.

John C. Maher explains why societies everywhere have become more multilingual, despite the disappearance of hundreds of the world languages. He considers our notion of language as national or cultural identities, and discusses why nations cluster and survive around particular languages even as some territories pursue autonomy or nationhood.

Hegemony and Language Policies in Southern Africa argues that language policy - whether formal or informal, micro or macro - has always been the centrepiece of identity imaginings, struggles for political emancipation, and quests for cultural affirmation and economic advancement in the colonial and postcolonial histories of African nations. This book addresses questions on the social and political history of language policies, focusing on their significance for ethnic, immigrant and social groups, as well as for various political projects in southern Africa, as they have unfolded from the late.

This book examines the linguistic and discursive elements of social and economic policies and national political leader statements to read new meanings into debates on border protection, national sovereignty, immigration, economic indigenisation, land reform and black economic empowerment. It adds a fresh angle to the debate on nationalisms and transnationalism by pushing forward a more applied agenda to establish a clear and empirically-based illustration of the contradictions in current policy frameworks around the world and the debates they invite. The author’s novel vernacular discourse approach contributes new points of method and interpretation that will advance scholarly conversations on nationalisms, transnationalism and other forms of identity imaginings in a transient world.