This volume continues and extends an interest in the dynamics of minority languages in Europe which has already appeared in related works in which some of this volume's participants have been contributors or editors. The major theoretical framework that unifies and offers coherence to the contributions is that of a macro-sociological, macro-sociolinguistic perspective with links to political theory, and detailed discussions of policy in the context of European power structures. Against this emphasis, micro-interactional processes and linguistic ideologies emerging from within the local communities are not afforded the same degree of attention, even though they are not entirely absent from some at least of the volume's chapters.

The book is divided into four parts, beginning with the editors' Introduction and Camille C. O'Reilly's chapter, moving on to Part II on “Legal and policy frameworks,” Part III on “Case studies,” and Part IV with the concluding chapter. In their introductory chapter, “Minority languages in Europe: An introduction to the current debate,” the editors set the agenda for the chapters to follow and provide an illuminating theoretical discussion of the issues emerging out of the increasingly unequal relations between majority and minority language speakers: The former have no need to worry about the status of their language, whereas the latter are in a much less advantageous position. While I agree with the editors that perceptions of speakers as to the status of their languages play a crucial role in affecting the future prospects of minority speech forms, such perceptions are not always or exhaustively described as they actually emerge in interaction in the communities studied by the various contributors. However, the tensions between functionality and social mobility, on the one hand, and cultural identity and symbolic dimensions of language choice, on the other, are properly foregrounded. The book is distinguished throughout by its sensitivity in avoiding simplistic, unidimensional, and one-sided interpretations.

In the second chapter of the introductory part, “When a language is ‘just symbolic’: Reconsidering the significance of language to the politics of identity,” Camille C. O'Reilly discusses culture, ethnicity, and the politics of identity in a critical vein, with a focus on the experience of Celtic languages. Even though the author admits that essentialized notions about the relationships between the aforementioned “entities” are hard to avoid, she delves deeply into the workings of conflict and its management by calling for a broad theoretical understanding of language and ethnicity, paired with sensitive understandings of how such relationships play out in the complex processes of actual situations. For instance, underestimating the significance of the symbolic aspects of the relations among language, culture, and ethnicity may lead to underestimating the role of language in actual situations.

Kristin Henrard (“Devising an adequate system of minority protection in the area of language rights”) offers an arresting examination of European and international conventions, declarations, and charters and a theoretical discussion of language rights in connection with human rights. The basic merit of this chapter is its distinction between rules that guarantee formal equality (prohibition of discrimination) and rules governing substantive equality (differential treatment for people in different circumstances). Even though these two pillars of equality, as the author calls them, are indeed closely connected, the substantive concern is in need of more elaborate and concerted efforts for its implementation, as recognized in the chapter. Henrard's analysis is in line with the whole tradition of attention to human rights associated with liberal thinkers such as John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and Bruce Ackerman (see Taylor 1994).

M. Nic Craith (“Facilitating or generating linguistic diversity: The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages”) examines the Charter issued by the Council of Europe, focusing on various examples including Ulster-Scots. Various perspectives on languages complicate the picture, as, for instance, when Alsatian becomes simply a variety of German and Alsatian speakers a German-speaking minority in France, or when controversies arise related to the issue of whether Ulster-Scots is a language or a dialect. Identity issues are also foregrounded, and the situation with regard to linguistic diversity suggests that European initiatives facilitating it acquire a new potential.

In the chapter by John Packer on “The practitioner's perspective: Minority languages and linguistic minorities in the work of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities,” the interesting novelty is that the author views linguistic minorities through the acts and interventions of a functionary. The High Commissioner of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe makes interventions on behalf of minority languages and linguistic minorities through public pronouncements, formal recommendations, general recommendations, public research reporting, and projects. Such interventions address important issues such as integrating diversity, citizenship, status, implementation of law, political participation, and education. The analysis shows great sensitivity to the problem of the actual implementation of the Commissioner's suggestions, taking account of the complexities of the situations involved.

Stefan Wolff and Karl Cordell (“Ethnic Germans as a language minority in central and eastern Europe: Legislative and policy frameworks in Poland, Hungary and Romania”) trace the history of the German-speaking ethnocultural groups in these countries in both earlier and post-communist eras. Well informed on the historical details, the authors avoid simplifying matters, recognizing that in the post-communist era conditions surrounding German speakers in these countries have improved but are far from completely resolved. The sociohistorical and sociolinguistic perspective built through the analysis is complemented by tracing out differences between the various states functioning as host societies vis-à-vis the fate of their German speakers.

Analogous, but not identical, is the situation in the Baltic states as discussed by Gabrielle Hogan-Brun in “Baltic national minorities in a transitional setting.” As in eastern and central Europe, the newly formed Baltic nations also emerged out of recent Soviet hegemony. This turnover, deeply affecting the new state formations and their matrix societies, is closely related to conflicts over language and citizenship. Given the emergence of Baltic languages as titular languages of the newly founded states, combined with the large numbers of Russian speakers in their respective territories (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia), issues of ethnic consolidation, attitudes toward integration, national language learning, citizenship and legislation are all part of the complex picture that challenges these societies and their state apparatuses. Here too, differences between the states involved do exist, but no approach is going to have positive effects, as the author rightly recognizes, unless it seriously considers the complexities of the issues and is designed and determined to go beyond purely legal frameworks.

In one of the most interesting chapters, Vanessa Pupavac analyzes “Politics and language rights: A case study of language politics in Croatia.” We have here a combination of sociolinguistics, social dialectology, and political thinking at its best. The Croatian language in its adventurous relations with Serbian is embedded in a matrix of post-Yugoslavian states which do not yet feel securely established, as the author observes, and, as a consequence, are experiencing a “Thucydidean moment,” a moment when words are not perceived as representing ideas but as a sovereign, duplicitous force. The more conflicts and insecurities there are in a society, the more language issues are politicized. With regard to language rights for Serbs in Croatia, linguists and planners prove once more to be part of the political game, and only a sense of secure statehood can depoliticize the language question, as happened between Britain and the United States. One could, of course, argue that even with an improved agenda for ethnic and national linguistic minorities, language issues will continue to be political, but along other dividing lines, not necessarily along national boundaries. It is unfortunate that in this as well as in other articles of this volume, not all important analytical distinctions and their implications are explicitly drawn out. Are minority language communities facing the power or the authority of a hegemonic national or global formation? To what extent do power and authority intermingle, or are they kept separate? These two notions are not synonymous, and for a better understanding of authority we need to embed it in various power structures (see Tsitsipis 2004:569–94).

Carmen Millan-Varela (“‘Minor’ needs or the ambiguous power of translation”) makes the penetrating observation that planning and translation studies have developed past each other. She uses the Galician context to explore the subtleties of translation policy in a historical trajectory covering the period before and after 1980. The author recognizes the potential of translation to enhance the consolidation of an ethnocultural and linguistic identity, but also the fact that it exposes a culture and its weaknesses and contradictions. Crucial questions are dealt with, such as the contact with the Other that translation makes possible only by denying cultural and linguistic fragmentation.

The chapter “On policies and prospects for British Sign Language,” by Graham H. Turner, is one of the most stimulating, both because sign language communities do not figure prominently in collections on minority languages and communities of speakers and because the author combines sociolinguistic considerations with sophisticated social-theoretic models. Turner examines the inadequacies and silences of official structures with regard to the British Sign Language community by exposing the weaknesses of education policy, employment policy, broadcast media, health policy, and social policy as parts of the policy web. He calls for a radical shift from inherited ideologies that focus on disability to an emphasis on sign language users as constituting minority language communities. Building on important work by M. Heller, Turner shows that a distancing is taking place from the earlier priorities on the politics of identity and suggests that younger-generation signers are much more pragmatic and instrumentalist than ideological. One can take issue with the manner in which the distinction between pragmatic and ideological is presented here, since pragmatic aspects of hypermodernity are equally ideological, as suggested in work on language shift.

The chapter on “The changing status of Romani in Europe,” by Dieter W. Halwachs, also discusses a nonterritorial language minority group. The Roma form a heterogeneous nation which has been marginalized and stigmatized, and which has never had the chance to develop a linguistic standard. Self-organization and some degree of acknowledgment of Romani organizations by national and international structures and institutions have brought some improvement in the status of the language and its speakers. However, for the enhancement of cultural and linguistic diversity, the people should be granted equal rights. The chapter's major sociolinguistic distinction is between the internal and the external status of Romani. As the author observes, with regard to its internal status Romani has developed from a poorly perceived language to the most significant parameter of the Roma cultural identity. Codification, lexical expansion, and emblematic functions all contribute to important changes widening the pragmatic basis of the language functionally, and, as a consequence, affect the external, public status that is granted to Romani by the institutions of the majority population.

The concluding chapter by Stephen May, “Language, nationalism and democracy in Europe,” addresses issues of the nation-state, supranationalism, and multilingualism in the European Union, and discusses in some detail the case of Catalonia, with an eye on the prospects for enhanced ethnolinguistic democracy. The most striking feature of this excellent essay is its mature adoption of dialectical and diachronic thinking, focusing on human agency and political intervention, and declining to declare the nation-state dead. If we want to challenge cultural and linguistic homogeneity as a product of nation-derived linguistic ideologies, we cannot but focus on the workings of history and the diachronic character of sociopolitical eventfulness. If we are blind to the dialectic between the nation-state and supranational realities, we find ourselves automatically deprived of all these analytical and interventionist tools which can denaturalize and historicize minority languages.

This volume is a valuable contribution to minority language studies in their European context and will interest those working in macro-sociolinguistics, language planning and policy, translation studies, political theory and sociology, and also language activists. However, if a focus on micro-sociolinguistic and micro-contextual issues does not also become part of such a framework, the whole enterprise may remain incomplete.