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.

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.

Desde los tiempos prehistoricos, los hombres han dejado inscritos sus deseos, sus suenos y sus creencias sobre los mas diversos soportes, como por ejemplo las manos en negativo descubiertas en ciertas grutas, incluso recientemente, en las costas provenzales. La escritura, en el sentido moderno de la expresion, aparecio alrededor del ano 4. 500 antes de nuestra era, en Mesopotamia, hacia la misma epoca en que surgieron las ciudades y las necesidades administrativas, dos de las principales condiciones necesarias para su emergencia. Despues, desde los signos cuneiformes a los jeroglificos, de los caracteres chinos a los glifos mayas, cada epoca y cada cultura ha buscado sus propias respuestas a las necesidades de la comunicacion escrita, siguiendo sus propios enfoques mas o menos originales e ingeniosos. Algunos sistemas de escritura transcriben unicamente los significados, otros como el alfabeto solo los sonidos, mientras que unos terceros combinan ambos principios. E incluso hay nuevas escrituras que continuan viendo la luz dia a dia, como por ejemplo las que sirven para transcribir las lenguas africanas. Este libro, elaborado con rigor y claridad, ilustrado por numerosos graficos y ejemplos, nos conduce al nucleo de una de las mas prodigiosas aventuras humanas: la escritura.