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A recent turn in sociolinguistic research is to see language not as a bound and discrete system, but as a form of social practice. Languages are sociohistorical in nature, bound up with conflicting and contested political ideologies that are shaped and remade by the everyday practices of speakers. This book furthers this turn by taking up a most appropriate subject: bilingualism. It is appropriate because bilingualism is inherently a boundary phenomenon and resists the propensity of researchers to study language as a series of isolated systems. This collection critically examines bilingualism from three perspectives - "practice, ideology, and political economy" - and shows the degree to which languages are jointly affected by language structures, agency, language ideology, and discourse practices.
Monica Heller's introductory chapter presents the theme of the book and a concise historical overview of different ways bilingualism has been studied. This is followed by four parts. Part 1 traces developments in ideologies of state and nation from the 19th century to the present. Part 2 examines how bilingualism is regulated by late modern institutions such as education, tourism, health, and the Internet. Part 3 explores how bilingual practices in everyday life interact with identity and power relations. Part 4 shows how empirical studies of bilingual discourse practices challenge the idea that language is a bounded system. The final chapter considers new directions and implications for the study of bilingualism.
In part 1, chapters by Christopher Stroud and Alexandra Jaffe examine changes in the practices and ideologies of bilingualism in the cases of Mozambique and Corsica, respectively. Stroud demonstrates that as Mozambique moved from colonial to postcolonial status, notions of bilingualism were tied up with competing ideologies, practices, and powers of the state. During the colonial period Portuguese "was deemed essential for civilized states and seen as a bona fide 'language', whereas African languages were dialectos, corrupt and inadequate forms of speech" (p. 32). However, after independence and a civil war, state institutions were targeted, including Portuguese. In the current climate, African languages have become the voice of political power and civil society, spoken alongside vernacular Portuguese. Jaffe's chapter looks at a similar case of contested practices on the French-ruled island of Corsica. Prior to the 1980s,...