Overview

The articles in this collection explore the relationship between minorities, minority languages, and state language policies. Five articles focus on southern Balkan languages (Macedonian, Albanian, Romany, Greek, Turkish) and the sixth on Kurdish as a transition between the Balkans and the Near East. Although grounded in different disciplines (History, Linguistics, Anthropology, Communications Studies), the authors bring a common ethnographic rather than a formal, structural perspective to their materials. Specialists and non-specialists alike interested in the Balkans, sociolinguistics, or issues of culture contact will find these articles timely and compelling.

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9780820416526

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A very useful collection of essays on a much-neglected aspect of nationalism - that of linguistics - per se. The studies will prove useful for both scholars and classroom use, and the issues discussed have implications for all who are interested in languages and nationalism. Thus the work's value is not limited to Balkanists. (John Fine, University of Michigan) It is rare to read a scholarly book that so clearly reflects, as does this one, the relationship between headlines and history and the differences between the two. Whoever seeks to understand the long-term trends and deep ethnoreligious structures that underlie the fleeting headlines cannot do without historical, sociocultural and sociolinguistic research. Books such as this one uncover for us the long-term considerations that underlie, complicate, and also render ultimately soluble the myriad problems of this sorely troubled and strategically vital part of the world. We should be grateful for the editors who assembled it and for the (six) writers who provide its detailed studies. Their collective work will be around to inform us long after today's and tomorrow's headlines are gone and forgotten - which is what scholarship is all about. (Joshua Fishman, Yeshiva University) The volume indeed contributes to our knowledge of languages in contact and social contexts in which language plays an important role. (Horace G. Lunt, Anthropological Linguistics) 'Language Contact - Language Conflict' is a contribution mainly to sociolinguistic studies. The contributors and editors are to be commended for their comprehensiveness. For Balkanists and Slavists, linguists and anthropologists, scholars and classroom use this book is a worthy contribution to further discussions and comparative studies of language problems within a social and cultural context. (Zoya Valkova, Canadian Slavonic Papers)

Author Information

The Editors: Eran Fraenkel is a Balkan cultural historian who has worked with Macedonians, Albanians, and Gypsies. He is General Editor of the Balkan Studies Series for Peter Lang Publishing and Associate Editor of the World Music Press. Christina Kramer is Professor of Slavic Linguistics at the University of Toronto. She has conducted research in Macedonia and with the Macedonian immigrant community in Toronto.

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