Lectures

Summer term 2022

"One Nation, One Country, One Language?" Multilingualism and language policy in (post)colonial contexts
[“Eine Nation, ein Land, eine Sprache?” Mehrsprachigkeit und Sprachenpolitik in (post)kolonialen Kontexten]

Kulturwissenschaften: Vertiefung // Linguistik: Vertiefung
Cultural and Social Studies: Consolidation // Media – Image, Text and Language
Interkulturelle Germanistik: Modul 6 - Kontinuität, Gemeinsamkeiten und Transfer

3/6/9 ECTS
Language: German

The binarism of language and nation is the basis of ideologies that gave rise to colonial language discourses in the name of "nation-building". These emerged in the modern era, but still determine a large part of political practices as well as linguistic attitudes in the Global South today (Abdelhay; Makoni; Severo 2020). Colonial language discourses did not follow a unified model, but culminated in strategies of domination based on suppressing minorities' right to their own language (Rajagopalan 2020).

In this sense, language planning in postcolonial contexts proves to be key to rearticulating asymmetrical power relations. In this seminar, we will reflect on the ways in which language minorities at the Global South (Sousa Santos 2009) advocate for the recognition of their languages. In this regard, we are interested in the question of what processes and contestations need to take place for multilingualism to rise to the status of language policy.