First announcement of forthcoming book from Multilingual Matters

[Kathryn King]

IDEOLOGY AND IMAGE
Britain and Language
Dennis Ager (Professor Emeritus, University of Birmingham)

Key Features
q Describes and characterises British Language Policy and Planning
against an understanding of British society to compare it with other
countries
q Investigates a dozen examples of recent action on language or language
behaviour in the UK to see how these fit into a definition of Language
Policy and Planning

Description
This book describes and evaluates recent  Language Planning and Policy
in the British Isles. Issues including minority language rights,
language resources for the state and the citizen, and problems such as
the standard English battle and policy for Welsh and Gaelic are analysed
against the background of detailed study of contemporary British society
and politics.

"A very substantial new angle on Language Policy and Planning, something
which is much needed in what I consider a poorly theorised field. I very
much enjoyed reading it. I loved the wide scope and really appreciated
the connection to history, politics and non-language focused social
action"
                           Professor Joseph Lo Bianco, The National
Languages and Literacy Insitute of Australia .

"I read this book with enormous pleasure and interest. It should prove
an invaluable resource for any scholar concerned with language politics
in Britain  - or indeed anyone working professionally with English or
other languages in use in Britain. It brings together in a very
accessible  and readable way a huge array of facts and figures on
language issues and provides a very coherent picture of the status of
languages in contemporary Britain"
                              Tom Bloor, Aston University, Birmingham.
     Contents
Introduction
Language Communities; Language Attitudes; Planning and Policy: from 880
- 1950s; Non-political Language Planning; Language Rights; Language as a
Resources for Citizens; Language as a Resources for the State; Language
as a Political Problem; British language Policy and Planning in
Perspective

Author information
Dennis Ager is is Emeritus Professor of Modern Languages  at Aston
University, UK. His interests lie in   language behaviour at the
interface between language and society. He is the author of
Sociolinguistics and Contemporary French (Cambridge University Press,
1990) and of Language, Community and the State (Intellect, 1997). His
most recent  books on language policy are  Identity, Insecurity and
Image. France and Language (Multilingual Matters, No 112) (Multilingual
Matters, 1999) and Motivation in Language Planning and Language Policy
(Multilingual Matters, No 119) (Multilingual Matters, 2001).

Multilingual Matters 124
May 2003        Format: 210 x 148mm                 X+208pp
Hbk ISBN 1-85359-660-4          £42.95/ US$69.95/ CAN$99.95
Pbk ISBN 1-85359-659-0          £16.95/ US$27.95/ CAN$39.95


--
Kathryn King
Multilingual Matters Ltd
Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall
Victoria Road, Clevedon, North Somerset BS21 7HH, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1275-876519; Fax: +44 (0) 1275-871673
Email: kathryn at multilingual-matters.com
www.multilingual-matters.com