Wanderlust

Abstract

AbstractUsing the loanword ‘wanderlust’ as point of departure, the final chapter summarizes the many ways in which the mobility of speakers, words and languages are at the heart of how societies adjust their linguistic repertoires. As expounded in the previous chapters, trade, religion, nation-building, colonialism, migration, and technology impact the spatial and temporal dynamics of how people communicate, what languages they use, how they use them, and how they change them. Against this background, this chapter examines traditional patterns of language categorization and societal stratification and argues that a processual view of language and society in the spirit of Norbert Elias is the most promising approach for coming to grips with language and mobility in such a highly complex mix of variables and the momentous changes we are experiencing at present.