ABSTRACT

The fields named in the title of the volume serve to permit a thematic grouping of the papers into five parts of roughly equal size, starting with Language and Rights, and moving via Equity and Power to Education. Each part includes a range of chapters on these cross-cutting themes. The volume provides a provocative challenge to our ways of thinking about language, about how language rights are formulated and implemented, how speakers of all languages can be treated more equitably, and how multilingualism can be promoted in the wider society and more specifically in education. The rich mix of chapters serves to underline that the issues are comparable worldwide, that many apparently disparate topics can cross-fertilise each other, and that our understanding of the issues can benefit from coverage that is global, reflective, and committed.