This article looks at France's Loi Toubon, which mandates the use of French in private companies, to illustrate how macro-level language planning reaches a dead end if it fails to consider local contexts and involve micro-level agents. The motivations, limitations and contradictions of France's language policy in relation to companies are…

This paper examines the influence of the Internet on the French language from a predominantly sociolinguistic perspective, noting the main areas of debate between francophone businesses, governments, and "Institutions de la Francophonie," while considering theories of language in contact and language policy. It analyzes a number of…

The effects of differing and often opposing language policies on the sociolinguistic position of the Alsatian language are discussed. An attempt is made to show how the function and scope of Alsatian have been reduced, and how borrowings from French have created a dialect with unique characteristics. It has survived despite its lack of official…

The paper presents the language policies being implemented in French primary schools under the present educational reform and considers how they tackle the question of sociocultural and linguistic pluralism. It questions the choice of teaching one foreign language from a very early age at kindergarten rather than opting for a model of language…

This series of discussions is based on an experiment, created by a multidisciplinary French Civilization Group in Seattle, the purpose of which was to compare the ways in which different cultures deal with certain civic issues. Four discussions were held over a period of two months. Two were concerned with day care education, one with…

Describes the three methods of teaching French in elementary schools in France: the traditional, the Freinet, and the "Plan de renovation pour l'enseignement du francais." A description of a model for the l980s is given. Techniques influenced by sociolinguistics seem most suited to replace traditional methodology. (AMH)

This collection of papers includes the following: "Language Issues and Language Planning in Europe" (Anthony J. Liddicoat and Karis Muller); "Language and National Identity" (Peter M. Hill); "Language Planning, Linguistic Diversity and Democracy in Europe" (Anthony J. Liddicoat); "Language Competition in European…

This book focuses on the minority languages of Europe, those other than the national languages of European Union member states, by looking at the demographic, sociolinguistic, and educational aspects of both regional and immigrant languages. Empirical evidence for the status of these other languages of multicultural Europe is brought together in a…

Chapters in this volume include the following: "Co-Constructing School Safetime: Safetalk Practices in Peruvian and South African Classrooms" (Nancy H. Hornberger, J. Keith Chick); "Codeswitching and Collusion: Classroom Interaction in Botswana Primary Schools" (Jo Arthur); "Language and Educational Inequality in Primary…

The 33 papers, all in French, from the 1996 conference on research in linguistics address a wide range of topics in linguistics, including: linguists as an endangered species; categorizing verb specifiers in Yoruba; socio-terminology as a framework for understanding the language of orthodontia; French-to-Arabic borrowings in the 19th and 20th…