National language and transnationalization

Abstract

AbstractToday’s increasing mobility affects binary divisions of citizenship and what it implies for the nation reviving the long-standing debate about whether nations are the product or accompaniment of modernization or, alternatively, can be traced back as long as documented history extends. One aspect of this debate is the constitution and function of the national language, which can be described less controversially as a modern phenomenon; for there cannot be a national language without a nation. How are its geographic, cultural, political, and linguistic boundaries and its inner constitution affected by demographic dynamics and mobility in the age of transnationalism? How do nations and national languages divide the world between insiders and outsiders, members and non-members, inclusion and exclusion? These are the principal question addressed in this chapter.