What’s New in LPLP?

Edited by Probal Dasgupta (University of Hyderabad) and Humphrey Tonkin (University of Hartford) – Book Review Editors: Frank Nuessel & Renato Corsetti; Interlinguistics Editor: Mark Fettes – Language Problems and Language Planning (LPLP) is published by John Benjamins in cooperation with the Center for Research and Documentation on World Language Problems. This international multi-lingual journal publishes articles primarily on political, sociological, and economic aspects of language and language use. It is especially concerned with relationships between and among language communities, particularly in international contexts, and in the adaptation, manipulation, and standardization of language for international use. Articles deal with language policy, language management, and language use in international organizations, multinational enterprises, etc., and theoretical studies on global communication, language interaction, and language conflict.

The most recent issue of Language Problems & Language Planning, 26:1 (2002), contains the following articles:

Addressing counterterrorism: US literacy in languages and international affairs
Kurt E. Müller (pp. 1–21)

The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 in New York and Washington, DC, have caused a significant review of US capacity to conduct intelligence analysis to predict such attacks. This article looks at the link between government needs for language capacity and the availability of languages in formal education and shows that despite previous links between education and defense and the availability of federal funding to subsidize languages in schools, the predominant pattern of language enrollment appears to be in response to domestic concerns rather than to international affairs.

Communication linguistique: Étude comparative faite sur le terrain

[Linguistic communication: A comparative field study]
Claude Piron (pp. 23–50)

This article, written in French, examines four international language systems, the UN family of organizations, the multinationals, the European Union and the Esperanto organizations, with respect to a number of criteria including the duration of language learning expected of participants, costs of language learning to the organizations concerned, the State and the participants, communication delay involved in translation, and loss of information. The author concludes that unilingual systems, where only one language – be it Esperanto or English – is used, present the greatest advantages and the least disadvantages taken over the full set of criteria, but if certain factors, such as the equality among countries or the amount of time required to reach a reasonable level of competence, are taken into account, Esperanto comes out on top.

Direct vs. indirect attitude measurement and the planning of Catalan in Mallorca
Felipe Pieras-Guasp (pp. 51–68)

Studies of the sociolinguistic situation of Catalan have generally concentrated on Catalonia and have disregarded other territories where Catalan is also native, namely the Valencian Community and the Balearic Islands. In this article, the specifics of the island of Mallorca and in particular the sociolinguistic situation of its capital city, Palma, are reviewed. In doing so, this paper explores the differences between the answers to direct questionnaires and the responses to a matched-guise experiment by way of the traditional distinction between the parameters of status-instrumentality and solidarity-integrativeness. It also proposes that a combination of methods is needed to obtain a clearer picture of the problems still to overcome.

The section dedicated to Interlinguistics includes the article

Etimologia in una lingua pianificata

[Etymology in a planned language]
Carlo Minnaja (pp. 69–75)

This article, written in Italian, discusses Ebbe Vilborg’s Etimologia Vortaro de Esperanto [Etymological Dictionary of Esperanto], whose fifth and final volume (S-Z) was published last year. While pointing out that the coverage of this dictionary is limited in that it covers only roots approved by the Academy of Esperanto, the author praises the depth of analysis given to each item in the Etimologia Vortaro. He concludes that in a comparison with etymological dictionaries of an ethnic language such as Italian, the Etimologia Vortaro comes out quite favourably.

LPLP 26:1 also reviews a number of books of interest to interlinguists. The books reviewed are:

Dennis Ager: Motivation in Language Planning and Policy (reviewer: Joe Mac Donnacha)

William Eggington and Helen Wren (ed.): Language Policy: Dominant English, Pluralist Challenges (reviewer: John Algeo)

Thom Huebner and Kathryn A. Davis (ed.): Sociopolitical Perspectives on Language Policy and Planning in the USA (reviewer: Terry A. Osborn)

Stephen May: Language and Minority Rights: Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Politics of Language (reviewer: François Grin)

Daniel Villa (ed.): Studies in Language Contact: Spanish in the U. S. (reviewer: Frank Nuessel)

Hans P. Krings: Repairing Texts: Empirical Investigations of Machine Translation Post-Editing Processes (reviewer: Robert N. St. Clair)

Louis-Jean Calvet: La guerre des langues et les politiques linguistiques (reviewer: Walter Żelazny)

Richard D. Lambert and Elana Shohamy (eds.): Language Policy and Pedagogy: Essays in honor of A. Ronald Walton (reviewer Christina L. Isabelli)

Glyn Williams and Delyth Morris: Language Planning and Language Use: Welsh in a Global Age (reviewer: Piotr Stalmaszczyk)

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