Michael A. Morris Books

The fate of languages has been closely linked to political power relationships throughout human history. Political shifts in the international system today continue to affect linguistic patterns, still in a state of flux following the end of the Cold War. This book considers the effects of present-day trends in global politics on the relative status of languages, and the directions in which the linguistic hierarchy might develop in the future. It appeals to researchers and students of sociolinguistics and language planning as well as of international relations.

A political science approach integrates multidisciplinary case studies about culture and language from multiple perspectives. Culture and language are viewed broadly with topics ranging widely across the conflict/cooperation continuum of human activities. Case studies involve four perspectives on culture and language – linguistic perspectives, cultural perspectives, identity perspectives, and visual perspectives. Each chapter is self-standing with conclusions about the case study at hand. The final chapter integrates all the case studies with separate conclusions about each of the four perspectives.