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12 - “Multilingualism Is Now a Must”: Discourses on Languages and International Cooperation at the Council of Europe
- By Zorana Sokolovska
Edited by Aneta Pavlenko, University of York
Book:

Multilingualism and History

Published online:

20 April 2023

Print publication:

27 April 2023, pp 223-238
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Summary

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the discourses of multilingualism in the Council of Europe. More specifically, it is a study of language categories used by nation-state representatives in a debate held in the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly in 2001. I am particularly interested in how language categories are used to form language power blocs, i.e., alliances of nation-states that pursue their linguistic and cultural agendas on the international political scene. The analysis is based on a critical approach that considers the layers of historicity in which a specific discourse is embedded and to which it refers. The findings suggest that debates on the place of languages in the European curricula function as a proxy for negotiating the status and legitimacy of a nation-state on the international level. Language debates, in other words, serve as a terrain for mediating and managing Europe as a political and a geographical entity.