This is an ambitious volume keyed to some of the most acute concerns of our time in regard to the linguistic condition of the world of late modernity. This collective effort is structured in such a manner as to offer the widest possible coverage of languages, broad geographical areas, and politico-economic blocks. It consists of 21 chapters, including the Introduction and Conclusion. Figures and tables provide useful supplements to the analytical parts of several chapters. It is unfortunate that the bulk and density of this work does not allow for a chapter-by-chapter review here.

One major, positive characteristic that immediately strikes the careful reader is that the volume editors and contributors have no illusions that they can claim to make hard and fast predictions of the future of our global linguistic condition, and this kind of theoretical sensitivity is in line with the actual, fluid, and unpredictable world circumstances of high or late modernity (Giddens 1991). In addition to an Introduction written by the editors and a Conclusion by Humphrey Tonkin on “The search for a global linguistic strategy,” the volume is divided into three parts: 1, “Global communication challenges”; 2, “Major areas”; and 3, “Languages of wider communication.”

The first and most theoretical part includes chapters by Jacques Maurais on a general view of the global linguistic order, by Mark Fettes on the geostrategies of interlingualism, by Douglas A. Kibbee on language policy and linguistic theory, by Jean Laponce on geostrategies for minority languages, and by William F. Mackey on forecasting the fate of languages.

In the second part, the focus shifts to major areas such as eastern and central Europe, with contributions on linguistic geostrategy by Ferenc Fodor and Sandrine Peluau, issues of languages and supranationality in the European Union by Claude Truchot, language policy of Mercosur in South America and the question of English hegemony by Rainer Enrique Hamel, North American integration (NAFTA) and questions of linguistic diversity by Michael A. Morris, problems of sociolinguistic change in post-Soviet Central Asian societies by Birgit N. Schlyter, technology, language and script in Japan and East Asian countries by Stefan Kaiser, consequences of globalization on Sub-Saharan Africa by Roland J. – L. Breton, and discussion of Australasia and the South Pacific by Richard B. Baldauf Jr. and Paulin G. Djité.

The third part continues in the same general spirit but moves analysis to the discussion of languages of wider communication, which, in our inherited commonsense understanding and political awareness, are associated most readily with what have come to be known as the sources and causes of linguistic globalization. Thus, Ulrich Ammon examines the international status of German, Foued Laroussi the challenges and difficulties that Arabic faces in regard to new technologies, Vida Io. Mikhalchenko and Yulia Trushkova the unstable condition of Russian in the modern world, and Robert Chaudenson the geolinguistic and geostrategic situation surrounding French; Grant D. McConnell calls for a scientific geostrategy for English; and Maria da Graça Krieger discusses Brazilian Portuguese in the context of Latin American integration.

Even though contributors have carefully and laudably avoided committing themselves to uncritical forecasts and grand predictive schemes, they nevertheless embed their analyses in a more or less unified conceptual frame. Major notions that inform the whole enterprise are geostrategy, geopolitics, geolinguistics, expansion, interconnectedness, and so on (see in particular the Conclusion by Humphrey Tonkin and chap. 2 by Jacques Maurais, as well as the Introduction by Maurais & Morris for a critical assessment). These foundational concepts are analytically supplemented in the various chapters (particularly the theoretical ones of part 1, but reiterated and used in later chapters too) with notions intimately related to globalization processes, such as esperantism, interlingualism, language brokering, technologism, and critical juxtapositions of linguistic Darwinism and ecological linguistics. Such a conceptual unification does not come as a surprise, since most contributors to the volume share sociolinguistic and political interests by training and academic orientation. Thus, concepts such as geopolitics and geostrategy are tailored to suit references to worldwide linguistic phenomena, including economic, social, and cultural factors. Emphasis on terms such as strategy or politics, as constituents of compound words, indicates that the various components of the world system are embedded in networks of human agencies of various degrees of power and therefore can be affected and changed for the better.

In terms of more specific topics addressed in the volume under the broader conceptual framework presented above, the authors discuss issues related to minority languages and various models that have been proposed for their study in a dialectic with major, world, national, and regional languages, broad functional specialization of languages, new nation formations and linguistic planning, writing systems and technology, or the matrix of language shift and maintenance. But the contributors are united in a commitment to macro-sociolinguistics. This option is quite understandable in the context of a unified project and in the spirit of the academic division of labor. And, of course, one cannot expect a book to address just about everything. But the interested reader would expect rather more emphasis to fall on the micro-dimensions. What academic specialization dictates does not necessarily coincide with the complex condition of our world. More detailed discussions of linguistic interactions and functional aspects of languages at a level beneath the national, the regional, and the global would be useful and not irrelevant to global processes.

Furthermore, one would expect from the authors of these interesting, well-articulated, and informed chapters a higher degree of reflexivity. Errington 2003 argues that issues related to language rights, language diversity, language shift, and so on are theoretically formulated with an eye on what the audiences and the goals of the particular families of research are. And even though critical thinking is not absent from this volume, one would want to see more of that. Martel 2004, in a paper with a focus on globalization, strongly favors what she calls “solidarity views” of global order as against competition models derived from a Darwinian frame of mind and their taken-for-grantedness, particularly the dividing lines set up by nationalism. Authors of this volume are not completely indifferent to options such as those suggested by Martel, but the technical character of the book prevents these issues from being foregrounded as much as they should be, in this reviewer's opinion.

This technical character of the book and its realistic treatment of globalizing language processes (not necessarily negative aspects of such a collective endeavor) have prevented to some extent a serious discussion of Western language ideologies per se (Dorian 1998), and the decisive role they have played and continue to play in influencing and shaping global language structures.

Languages in a globalising world is a serious work of a macro-sociolinguistic nature that will be instrumental in research by scholars and students interested in language policy and planning, international relations, questions of nationalism and transnationalism, political theory, and the sociology of the world order.