This book contributes to the debates around the presence and activity of women in politics, as well as the part which language plays in shaping and developing political activity. Footitt argues that, in a world of shifting roots and multiple identities, the stories we tell, the ways in which we understand the relationships between us, and the communities we imagine ourselves belonging to, are of ever-increasing political importance. At the centre of the study are the women from 12 European Union countries who participate in the transnational political site of the European Parliament. Using interviews with female Members of the European Parliament from the late 90s and early 00s, and a close textual study of speeches in the European Parliament, Hilary Footitt argues that women have created a language of politics that transcends nationalities and political parties and contributes to engendering democracy, defining citizenship and imagining the community of Europe. Politics, she argues, is multilingual, and an understanding of the varieties of vocabularies and grammars that are potentially available to us may help us to create a more inclusive and dynamic political process.

Multilingualism is an ever-present feature in political contexts around the world, including multilingual states and international organizations. Increasingly, consequential political decisions are negotiated between politicians who do not share a common native language. Nils Ringe uses the European Union to investigate how politicians’ reliance on shared foreign languages and translation services affects politics and policy-making. Ringe's research illustrates how multilingualism is an inherent and consequential feature of EU politics—that it depoliticizes policy-making by reducing its political nature and potential for conflict. An atmosphere with both foreign language use and a reliance on translation leads to communication that is simple, utilitarian, neutralized, and involves commonly shared phrases and expressions. Policymakers tend to disregard politically charged language and they are constrained in their ability to use vague or ambiguous language to gloss over disagreements by the need for consistency across languages.

Do political boundaries impact on concepts of language? How significant is language for citizenship in contemporary Europe? Can disputed languages acquire full status? Should non-European languages receive recognition from the EU? These are among the many questions explored in this new study of official, regional and disputed languages in an ever-changing European context. Broad policy issues and the performance of the range of instruments of policy at local, national and European levels are illustrated with reference to case studies across Europe.

Investigates the underrepresentation of women in politics, by examining how language use constructs and maintains gender inequalities in political institutions.

Rewriting Joyce's Europe sheds light on how the text and physical design of James Joyce's two most challenging works, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, reflect changes that transformed Europe between World War I and II. Looking beyond the commonly studied Irish historical context of these works, Tekla Mecsnóber calls for more attention to their place among broader cultural and political processes of the interwar era. Published in 1922 and 1939, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake display Joyce's keen interest in naming, language choice, and visual aspects of writing. Mecsnóber shows the connections between these literary explorations and the real-world remapping of national borders that was often accompanied by the imposition of new place names, languages, and alphabets. In addition to drawing on extensive research in newspaper archives as well as genetic criticism, Mecsnóber provides the first comprehensive analysis of meanings suggested by the typographic design of early editions of Joyce's texts. Mecsnóber argues that Joyce's fascination with the visual nature of writing not only shows up as a motif in his books but also can be seen in the writer's active role within European and North American print culture as he influenced the design of his published works. This illuminating study highlights the enduring--and often surprising--political stakes in choices regarding the use and visual representation of languages. A volume in the Florida James Joyce Series, edited by Sebastian D. G. Knowles

Although women constitute half of the world's population, their participation in the political sphere remains problematic. While existing research on women politicians from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada sheds light on the challenges and opportunities they face, we still have a very limited understanding of women's political participation in emerging democracies. Women in Politics and Media: Perspectives From Nations in Transition is the first collection to de-Westernize the scholarship on women, politics and media by: 1) highlighting the latest research on countries and regions that have not been 'the usual suspects'; 2) featuring a diverse group of scholars, many of non-Western origin; 3) giving voice through personal interviews to politically active women, thus providing the reader with a rare insight into women's agency in the political structures of emerging democracies. Each chapter examines the complex women, politics and media dynamic in a particular nation-state, taking into consideration the specific political, historic and social context. With 23 case studies and interviews from Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Russia and the former Soviet republics, this volume will be of interest to students, media scholars and policy makers from developed and emerging democracies.

First Published in 1986. The modern women's movement has exerted a profound influence upon contemporary political thought, research, and action in Western Europe. Despite important differences within - and cross-national in - the ideological and political orientations of modern feminism, the overall impact of this movement has been pronounced, albeit largely unrecognised and unexplored within the Western European and especially European politics fields. The publication of this volume represents an important step towards bringing research on women and organised feminism, on the one hand, and European politics, on the other, to the attention of area specialists.