Along the routes to power: explorations of empowerment through language

Intro -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Along the routes to power -- Section 1. Theoretical perspectives: Linguistic empowerment and language choices -- Sociolinguistics: More power(s) to you! (On the explicit study of power in sociolinguistic research) -- The power of language, the language of power -- Language endangerment, the construction of indigenous languages and world English -- The power to choose and its sociolinguistic implications -- How codeswitching as an available option empowers bilinguals -- Section 2. Language policy and language planning: Empowering speakrs of minority languages in communities and institutions -- Language policy failures -- Empowerment through the community language - A challenge -- Pidgins and Creoles between endangerment and empowerment: A dynamic view of empowerment in the growth and the decline of contact languages, especially in the Pacific -- Lost in transculturation: The case of bilingual education in New York City -- Language policies in Spain: Accomodation or alteration? -- The potential of parliaments for the empowerment of linguistic minorities: Experiences from Scotland and Norway -- The dominance of languages and language communities in the European Union (EU) and the consequences -- Section 3. The language empowerment discourse: Case studies of language policy and language planning in Africa -- Socio-political factors in the evolution of language policy in post-Apartheid South Africa -- Marginalisation and empowerment through educational medium: The case of the linguistically disadvantaged groups of Botswana and Tanzania -- Language policy, cultural rights and the law in Botswana -- We speak Otjiherero but we write in English - Disempowerment through language use in participatory extension work.

Main description: This volume grew out of the 30th International LAUD Symposium, held in 2004 at the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany. It constitutes a collection of papers by prominent linguists who explore the interdisciplinary area of language and power. The papers focus on the theoretical and sociolinguistic problems related to the role of power in language policy and language planning situations in multilingual settings, code switches, and associated topics. The fate of African minority languages and their speakers is of particular concern.