ABSTRACT
In recent years, medium-of-instruction policies have become particularly important in the new states emerging from the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of communist control of Eastern Europe. A number of language-policy analysts have noted that both dominant and nondominant ethnolinguistic groups in these new states have been affected by two competing forces (see Blommaert, 1996; Phillipson, 2000). One force is globalization, a general term referring to economic, political, cultural, and social changes that result in increasing integration. In Europe, integration is particularly advanced, with the adoption of a common currency and financial system, an integrated media network, and increasingly powerful institutions of the European Union. A second, contradictory force has also arisen, however, partly in a response to the movement toward integration. This second force is the rise of ethnolinguistic nationalism, manifest in movements by ethnolinguistic groups seeking official status and protection for their language varieties as well as in the dissolution of multi-ethnic and multilingual states. Particularly important examples of dissolution are the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia (which broke up relatively peacefully) and Yugoslavia (which suffered enormous violence). Other examples in-
clude movements for autonomy or independence among ethnolinguistic minorities in Spain, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Turkey, and elsewhere.
