Abel, Andrea / Mathias Stuflesser & Leonhard Voltmer (eds.) (2007). Aspects of Multilingualism in European Border Regions: Insights and Views from Alsace, Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, the Lublin Voivodeship and South Tyrol. Bozen-Bolzano: Eurac research.

Excerpt from the preface:

This publication is the fruit of the INTERREG IIIC project "Language Bridges", an initiative within the EU Regional Framework Operation "Change on Borders" . One of the goals of "Language Bridges" was to examine the role of languages in border regions and more specifically to describe the role played by motivation and attitudes in language learning. A further aim was to promote awareness that linguistic variation is an asset in economic and cultural terms.
The findings of the present study are not only addressed to the scientific community, but also to the general public: they reveal the multifaceted influence on language learning exerted by the (political, legal, social etc.) context.
The present publication focuses on the linguistic situation obtaining in the following border regions: Alsace, Delta-Rhodopi, Lublin and South Tyrol and includes four specific chapters written by the relevant partners. Starting from a common conception the partners chose to emphasise various aspects, such as "Language use and language awareness" "Languages in education and training", "Language and cross-border co-operation".
The authors give different weight to various aspects and adopt different approaches: the contribution on Alsace was mainly written by dialectologists, that on Delta-Rhodopi by anthropologists, the one on Lublin by sociologists and finally the study on South Tyrol by a lawyer, a literary critic and a pedagogue amongst others.
The findings on multilingualism seem to be highly context-dependent. While a long list of factors influence multilingualism in theory, in real life some issues are more relevant than others under the specific circumstances of each border region. The individual contributions focus on these specificities yet, for purposes of comparison, there are some common concepts underlying all chapters, such as the concept of language status.
The multilingualism of Europe's border regions can be seen as a small scale model for Europe as a whole. Our regions can learn from each other and take their chances in the wider European context. In this spirit, we hope that the present book will give new insights into the multifaceted world of languages in border regions and raise new questions for fruitful research.

last update 24.9.2007