About After Babel

Rotterdam CS Babel Wall 2015 Unknown painter

This blog is maintained by students of the course After Babel – Language Policies in Europe (Maastricht University, European Studies, year 3, 2014-2015). The course is coordinated by Dr Charles van Leeuwen.

In this course we explore the history of the European language policies and learn about general conceptions of language planning, language use, language cultivation and language learning in Europe. We also deal with language practices and language attitudes, language rights, language beliefs and language ideologies.

The course is named After Babel. Language Policies in Europe. In former years we called the course The European Language Debate as many of the language policy issues are currently under debate. But we aim to do more than just follow the debate. The plural in the subtitle Language Policies in Europe indicates that we will look at a variety of language policies, at different political levels and in different parts of Europe, and thus go beyond what is supposed to be the official European policy and its surrounding debate.

Archive of student blogs:

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