KATE?INA ?ERNÁ Doctoral Candidate, Department of General Linguistics, Faculty of Philosophy and Arts, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
THOMAS COOPER is currently teaching as Associate Professor at the Károly Eszterházy University, Hungary
JENNIFER DAILEY-O'CAIN Associate Professor of German Applied Linguistics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
KRISTINE HORNER Lecturer in German and Sociolinguistics, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Leeds, UK
SYLVIA JAWORSKA Language Studies Coordinator in German at Queen Mary College, University of London, UK
MICHAL KRZY?ANOWSKI Senior Research Fellow, Department of Linguistics, Lancaster University, UK and Assistant Professor, School of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland
GRIT LIEBSCHER Associate Professor of German at the University of Waterloo in Canada
PÉTER MAITZ Assistant Professor at the German Department of the University of Debrecen, Hungary
JI?Í NEKVAPIL Associate Professor of Linguistics, Department of General Linguistics, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
KLÁRA SÁNDOR Professor of Linguistics, University of Szeged, Hungary, and a member of the Hungarian National Assembly
BRITTA SCHNEIDER Research Assistant, Department of Linguistics, University of Frankfurt, Germany
TAMAH SHERMAN Post-doctoral Researcher in the Department of General Linguistics, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
JANE WILKINSON Lecturer in German, University of Leeds, UK

List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: Central Europe as a Multilingual Space; J.Carl & P.Stevenson PART I: LANGUAGE AND EUROPEAN IDENTITIES: CENTRE AND PERIPHERY Discourses about Enlarged and Multilingual Europe: Perspectives from German and Polish National Public Spheres; M.Krzy?anowski PART II: BORDER CROSSINGS The German Language in Poland: The Eternal Foe and the Wars on Words; S.Jaworska 'Die Härteste Sprachgrenze Europas?' Negotiating the Linguistic Divide in Theatres on the German-Polish Border; J.Wilkinson Czech-German Relationships and Identity in a Cross-Border Region; K.?erna Czech, German and English: Finding Their Place in Multinational Companies in the Czech Republic; J.Nekvapil & T.Sherman PART III: MIGRATIONS PAST AND PRESENT Changes in the Linguistic Marketplace: The Case of German in Hungary; P.Maitz & K.Sándor Central European Time: Memories of Language - Lost and Found - In the Life Stories of German-Speakers; J.Carl & P.Stevenson Dialect Use and Discursive Identities of Migrants from the West in Eastern Germany; J.Dailey-O'Cain & G.Liebscher ¿Hablemos El Mismo Idioma? Salsa, Multilingualism and National Monolingual Ideology; B.Schneider Towards a Multinational Concept of Culture: Romanian German Literature in Romanian and Hungarian Literature; T.Cooper PART IV: LANGUAGE AND EUROPEAN IDENTITIES: PERIPHERY AND CENTRE Revisiting History: The 2007 European Capital of Culture and the Integration of Fractal Europe; K.Horner Index

Central Europe has always been a highly multilingual region but how has this been affected by the social and political transformations of the last 20 years? The German language in particular has long played a key role in processes of identification here: but what role is the relationship between German and other languages playing today in the reshaping of societies and communities in this rapidly changing region? How is this relationship articulated in discourses on language and language ideologies? How is it manifested in individual repertoires and social practices? How is it determined by social and cultural policies? How is it exploited in the construction of European identities?
These are just some of the questions addressed in this book, in which individual studies explore language practices in the multilingual contact zones of central Europe and the impact of both past and present migrations. Analysing a wide range of sources from media texts to language biographies and from business meetings to salsa classes, the authors demonstrate the local effects of global processes and some of the many ways in which language figures in contemporary social change.