Community and Communication The Role of Language in Nation State Building and European Integration

by Wright, Sue

• ISBN13: 9781853594847
• ISBN10: 1853594849
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-03-31
• Publisher: Multilingual Matters

Summary

This book considers the issue of language in the European Union. Without a community of communication, the EU must remain a trading association run in an autocratic way by bilingual patrician technocrats; with a community of communication, the European Union could develop democratic structures and legitimacy and give meaning to its policies of free movement. How to achieve that community of communication is the biggest challenge facing Europe today.

Author Biography

Sue Wright is a member of the Department of Languages and European Studies at Aston University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vii
Introduction The themes of the book	1	(9)
Definitions. Theories of nationalism and the role of language. The nationalists and linguistic nationalism. The modernists, industrialisation and democracy. The post-modernists and the invention of tradition	10	(21)
The role of language in nation state formation. The three European models: assimilation, blood and belonging and fragmentation	31	(30)
Language as a key organising principle of nationalism. Contending schools in the debate. The linguistic realities of multilingual states	61	(18)
The weakening of the concept of sovereignty. Globalisation and internationalisation in the legal, political, economic and cultural domains. The growing role of English as the medium of these phenomena	79	(29)
The growth of the European Community. Theories of integration. The role of language	108	(18)
Theories of democracy: participatory and liberal representative democracy. The essential role of language in democracy. The democratic deficit in the EU and the need to develop new practices for a multilingual polity	126	(36)
Managing plurilingualism in the institutions of the EU	162	(17)
New and smaller polities. Europe of the Regions. Support for the lesser-used languages of Europe	179	(15)
Language in the domains of defence, education and research networks	194	(36)
Conclusions	230	(25)
Bibliography	255	(20)
Index	275