Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 6:1 (2007) ► pp.129–143

Language as a political category

The viewpoint of political science

| University of Innsbruck

The article is based on an understanding that everything in society — including language — is political, at least potentially. For that reason, language must be seen (and analyzed) as a political phenomenon. Language is one of the decisive ‘nation building’ factors among others — sometimes cross-cutting other potentially defining factors. In its identity-building capacity, language is inclusive and exclusive at the very same time. Language has to be seen as one of the most important social (and: therefore political) cleavages. As more and more societies are confronted with ‘multiculturalism’ expressed in a multi-linguistic reality, politics have to come to terms with diversity in different ways.

Keywords: cleavage, diversity, linguistic conflicts, minority rights, nation building
Published online: 13 June 2007
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.6.1.09pel
References
Almond, Gabriel and Powel, G. Bignham, Jr
1966 Comparative Politics. A Developmental Approach. Boston, MA: Lilttle, Brown and Co.Google Scholar
Bugarski, Ranko
2004 Language policies in the successor states of former Yugoslavia. Journal of Language and Politics 3 (2), 189–208. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dallmayr, Fred
1984 Language and Politics. Notre Dame, In: University of Notre Dame.Google Scholar
Deutsch, Karl W
1963 The Nerves of Government: Models of Political Communication and Control. New York, NY: Free Press.Google Scholar
Edelman, Murray
1985 The Symbolic Uses of Politics. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois.Google Scholar
Etzioni, Amitai
2001 Political Unification Revisited. On Building Supranational Communities. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Finlayson, Alan
2001 Imagined Communities. In: Kate Nash and Alan Scott (eds) 2001 The Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology. Oxford: Blackwell, 281–290.Google Scholar
Gellner, Ernest
1983 Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Haller, Max
1996 Identität und Nationalstolz der österreicher. Gesellschaftliche Ursachen und Funktionen. Herausbildung und Transformation seit 1945. Internationaler Vergleich. Vienna: Böhlau. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Inglehart, Ronald
1977 The Silent Revolution. Changing Values and Political Styles among Western Publics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University.Google Scholar
1997 Modernization and Postmodernization. Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University.Google Scholar
Katzenstein, Mary Fainsold and Mueller, Carol McClurg
(eds) 1987 The Women‘s Movement of the United States and Western Europe. Consciousness, Political Opportunity, and Public Policy. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University.Google Scholar
Kramer, Helmut and Dzihic, Vedran
2005 Die Kosovo Bilanz. Scheitert die internationale Gemeinschaft? Vienna: LIT.Google Scholar
Laitin, David D
1997 The cultural identities of a European state. Politics and Society 25 (3) (September), 277–302. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lane, Jan-Erik and Ersson, Svante O
1994 Politics and Society in Western Europe. 3rd ed. Sage: London.Google Scholar
Lijphart, Arend
1977 Democracy in Plural Societies. A Comparative Exploration. New Haven, CN: Yale University.Google Scholar
Lipset, Seymour Martin
1983 Political Man. The Social Bases of Politics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University.Google Scholar
Mateo Diaz, Mercedes
2005 Representing Women? Female Legislators in West European Parliaments. Colchester: ECPR.Google Scholar
Neisser, Heinrich and Verschraegen, Bea
2001 Die Europäische Union. Anspruch und Wirklichkeit. Vienna: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oudenaren, John van
2005 Uniting Europe. An Introduction to the European Union. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Pelinka, Anton
2003 Democracy Indian Style. Subhas Chandra Bose and the Creation of India’s Political Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.Google Scholar
Reiterer, Albert F
1986 Doktor und Bauer. Ethnischer Konflikt und sozialer Wandel: Die Sozialstruktur der slowenischen Minderheit in Kärnten. Klagenfurt: Drava.Google Scholar
2003 Gesellschaft in österreich. Vienna: WUV.Google Scholar
Rokkan, Stein
2000 Staat, Nation und Demokratie in Europa. Die Theorien Stein Rokkans aus seinen gesammelten Werken rekonstruiert und eingeleitet von Peter Flora. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Sartori, Giovanni
2005: Parties and Party Systems. A Framework for Analysis. Colchester: ECPR.Google Scholar
Valandro, Franz
2002 A Nation of Nations. Nationalities’ Policies in Spain. Frankfurt am Maiun: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Weiss, Hilde
2004 Nation und Toleranz? Empirische Studien zu nationalen Identitäten in öster-reich. Vienna: Braumüller.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth
et al. 1998 Zur diskursiven Konstruktion nationaler Identität. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth and van Dijk, Teun A
(eds) 2000 Racism at the Top. Parliamentary Discourses on Ethnic Issues in Six European States. Klagenfurt/Celovec: Drava.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth
2004 Preface. The power of language in political discourse. Journal of Language and Politics 3 (3), 381–383. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wodak, Ruth and Panagl, Oswald
(eds) 2004 Text und Kontext. Theoriemodelle und methodische Vwerfahren im transdiszilinären Vergleich. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.Google Scholar
Woyke, Wichard
2003 Das politische System Belgiens. In: Wolfgang Ismayr (ed.) 2003 Die politischen Systeme Westeuropas. 3rd ed. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 389–414.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 17 other publications

Berrocal, Martina & Aleksandra Salamurović
2019. Chapter 1. Introduction. In Political Discourse in Central, Eastern and Balkan Europe [Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 84], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Chen, Lijuan, Danyang Zhang, Yingfei He & Guoliang Zhang
2020. Transcultural political communication from the perspective of proximization theory: A comparative analysis on the corpuses of the Sino–US trade war. Discourse & Communication 14:4 ► pp. 341 ff. DOI logo
Hartig, Falk
2018. Political slogans as instruments of international government communication – the case of China. The Journal of International Communication 24:1 ► pp. 115 ff. DOI logo
Ivašković, Igor
2024. Examining political influence on language. Journal of Language and Politics DOI logo
Ivašković, Igor
2024. The role of identification criteria in language. Language Problems and Language Planning DOI logo
Jebessa, Kassaye Gutema
2022. Fuel for Perpetuating Struggle: Analysis of an Oromo Resistance Song. Critical Arts 36:1-2 ► pp. 20 ff. DOI logo
Jebessa, Kassaye Gutema & Alemgena Belete Abdeta
2022. Upholding justice through music: protesting betrayal in Oromo song, Wal Agarraa. Heliyon 8:7 ► pp. e09956 ff. DOI logo
Kim, Gooyong
2019. Neoliberal feminism in contemporary South Korean popular music. Journal of Language and Politics 18:4 ► pp. 560 ff. DOI logo
Li, He
2020. Changing status, entrenched inequality: How English language becomes a Chinese form of cultural capital. Educational Philosophy and Theory 52:12 ► pp. 1302 ff. DOI logo
Makoni, Busi
2017. Status of “women’s language” in a multilingual jurisdiction: power and ethics in legal monolingualism. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2017:243 DOI logo
Makoni, Sinfree & Busi Makoni
2015. “Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth”. In The Handbook of Bilingual and Multilingual Education, ► pp. 554 ff. DOI logo
Mathe, Limukani & Gilbert Motsaathebe
2023. The Political Economy of Indigenous Local Media for Minority Languages in Zimbabwe: A Case of Lyeja FM Community Radio. Journal of Asian and African Studies ► pp. 002190962311602 ff. DOI logo
Mpofu, Phillip & Abiodun Salawu
2019. Interrogating the Autonomy of Previously Marginalised Languages in Zimbabwe's Indigenous-Language Press. Language Matters 50:1 ► pp. 25 ff. DOI logo
Randour, François, Julien Perrez & Min Reuchamps
2020. Twenty years of research on political discourse: A systematic review and directions for future research. Discourse & Society 31:4 ► pp. 428 ff. DOI logo
Tazanfal Tehseem, Sarwat Jabeen & Samia Naz
2020. A Political Discourse Analysis of the Speeches of President Obama and Prime Minister Gillani. Journal of Business and Social Review in Emerging Economies 6:1 ► pp. 209 ff. DOI logo
YALÇINKAYA, Ozan Deniz
2022. CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS IN TRUMP'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS. Asya Studies 6:19 ► pp. 85 ff. DOI logo
Zouhir, Abderrahman
2015. Language Policy and Identity Conflict in Sudan. Digest of Middle East Studies 24:2 ► pp. 283 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 may 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.