In one of his works, Barthes wrote; "If I was a writer and I was dead, I would like that my life be reduced through the care of a friendly and confident biographer, to some details [...] whose distinction and mobility could be translated out of any destiny."And Calvet has made it.

This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

Non-linguistic conflicts - economic, religious, territorial - are often projected on to language differences, and may be played out in the language policies of governments and other holders of power. Jean-Louis Calvet deals broadly, in a non-technical and introductory style, with this interaction of language issues and political process. He examines the fundamental problems arising from language contact, multilingualism, and the conflicts caused by inequalities symbolized in various patterns of language use. The author draws extensively on his own research and uses numerous case studies to illustrate the power-political dimensions of language policies from many parts of the world, such as Africa, China, South America, the former Soviet Union, and Europe. He cites the former Soviet Union as a prime example of an attempt to impose, for ideological reasons, a supra-national vehicular language, in order to supersede the languages of regional nationalism. Professor Calvet offers no simple solutions to the `war of languages' but urges all those involved in language intervention - from the professional `language planners' to school teachers - to combine the need to promote majority languages with respect for the diversity of local languages and language varieties.