Monica Heller (ed): Bilingualism: A Social Approach (Palgrave Advances in Linguistics)

Béatrice Fracchiolla (1) , Béatrice Fracchiolla

1 SYLED - SYLED - Systèmes Linguistiques, Énonciation et Discursivité - EA 2290

Bilingualism: A Social Approach is a difficult book to present shortly. It opens with a summary of bilingualism around the world adopting a sociolinguistic approach, including contributions by twenty different international authors who describe and analyse such situations with the idea that language is connected to society and culture and is a form of social practice. Thus, questions of citizenship, language, competition among institutions, groups and individuals and their relationship to the state are explored according to different historical and geographical contexts such as colonialism, neo-colonialism, migration, but also other social organisations, such as those of a religious nature. In her introduction on ''bilingualism as ideology and practice'', Heller gives the theoretical framework needed to understand the perspectives of the contributors, which are based on historical and sociolinguistic approaches or, as she says, set ''within specific discursive regimes'' (p. 1), to use Foucauldian language. The purpose of the book is to understand the meanings of bilingualism today, through a variety of contributions reflecting today's social changes and ''how new understandings of it, as ideology and practice, also contribute to linguistic and social theory'' (p. 1). Divided into four parts, the book starts with a first part on ''Bilingualism, Nation, State and Capitalism'', articulating bilingualism with ideologies of state and nation from the nineteenth century to nowadays. Stroud explores the idea of bilingualism through colonialism and postcolonialism as a social construct, especially in Mozambique. Jaffe treats bilingual practices and linguistic ideologies and attitudes concerning bilingualism in the minority language context on the French island of Corsica. Pujolar examines bilingualism in the postnational era: how it is rooted in the nation-state as defined in the eighteenth century and during the French Revolution, and how the new economy involves language in new ways. Muehlman and Duchêne show how nation-states no longer have the

Domaines: Linguistique; Linguistique

Béatrice Fracchiolla, Béatrice Fracchiolla. Monica Heller (ed): Bilingualism: A Social Approach (Palgrave Advances in Linguistics). Language Policy, 2008, 8, pp.197 - 199. ⟨10.1007/s10993-008-9109-4⟩. ⟨halshs-03478835⟩