Abstract
Language is an important but often neglected aspect of the political process, this chapter gives a brief overview of the main phases of the past thousand years of European history in terms of language choice and shift, showing how communities of communication developed in tandem with political power centres. This history reveals that all political associations develop the communication solutions which promote and serve their political ambition and that new ways of organising society are accompanied by new language practices. In this context it is unlikely that the European Union will prove an exception.
Europeanisation is not happening within a vacuum. Political power is also leaking away from state governments to relocate at global and regional level. The growing use of English as a global lingua franca and the renaissance of languages eclipsed in the period of nation building are further factors that affect the community of communication which is developing in Europe. Since the European project is developing in tandem with these other societal changes, the communication solutions it provokes will not be simple cause and effect relationships. Nonetheless, we can be sure that, if European integration progresses, new language practices will evolve to facilitate the circulation of information and ideas, the construction of democratic governance and individual access to centres of power. If they do not, then European integration will find itself halted at the level of a common market and a technocratic bureaucracy.
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