ABSTRACT
This chapter summarises the key findings about discursive and linguistic articulation and differentiation in a social movement, Emmaus, from the viewpoint of two local communities. Emmaus is a transnational formation based on an imagined community made up of ideas, texts and words from elsewhere. It is simultaneously embedded in nation-state regimes of language and discourse, as well as linguistic ideologies and bundles of discourses in local groups, with resulting transnational trends. Imagination and discourse have a split role because they can be both emancipatory and disciplinary for participants. Within an emergent “sociolinguistics of transnationalism”, the monograph’s conclusions will be contrasted with analyses of other transnational formations in late modernity. Through a running metaphor of “utopia”, the closing chapter engages in researcher reflexivity and projects the movement into the future, with updates from post-fieldwork developments.
