Abstract
Estonian language policy and planning (LPP) research has begun to expand beyond its decades-long focus on the integration and the Russian minority and on the state’s central role in policymaking. These traditional and critically important areas of focus, however, threaten to obscure other important and fascinating trends in Estonian LPP. Critical areas such as the Anglicization of higher education, the practices of transnational families and corporations, the changed security discourse, dynamic regional language communities, and the emergence of important political agents in LPP, in addition to the state, are also in need of attention. This edited volume aims to help expand our understanding of the dynamism of language policy and planning by exploring the ways in which Estonian-based research in the field reveals shifting borders and new centers of LPP influence and power.
The east-west border is always wandering
sometimes eastward, sometimes west
and we do not know where it is just now:
on the Elbe, in the Urals, or maybe in ourselves,
so that one ear, one eye, one nostril, one hand, one foot
one lung and one testicle or one ovary
is on the one, another on the other side. Only the
heart, only the heart is always on the one side:
if we are looking northward, in the west:
if we are looking southward, in the east;
and the mouth doesn’t know on behalf of which
it has to speak, or both.
Jaan Kaplinski, The Wandering Border, 1987
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Notes
- 1.
The opening quote’s author, the Estonian poet, philosopher, translator and essayist Jaan Kaplinski, is known for his critical posture towards language planning (see Salumets 2014, 35).
- 2.
On one hand, this past embraced Baltic German self-governing institutions exercising hegemonic control over native population over centuries (Kasekamp 2010), on the other hand, different reforms following the spread of Enlightenment ideals, and Estophiles, including Enlighteners of non-Estonian descent, above all Baltic Germans, who initiated the romantic cult of Estonian which in turn boosted Estonian ethnolinguistic communion (Jansen 2007 as quoted in Koreinik 2011).
- 3.
The spatial reconsiderations can be the result of (forced) migration of scholars themselves. For example, Valter Tauli, the author of Introduction to the theory of language planning (1968), fled to Sweden in 1944, and this brought Scandinavian languages and respective language planning to his attention (see Haugen 1969).
- 4.
Migration during times of war and crisis also shapes language policy, which can be found, among many examples, in historical research on the role of language in Displaced Persons’ camps and the role of voluntary societies sustaining Estonian in receiving countries after WWII.
- 5.
In Estonian areas incorporated into the Russian Empire (1721–1917), Russian twice had particular prominence as an administrative language— first during the period of Russification starting in the 1880s, and then again during the Soviet occupation of Estonia (1940–941, 1944–1991).
- 6.
“Olgem eestlased, aga saagem ka eurooplasteks!” (Suits 1905, p. 17). “Noor Eesti” stands for the outset of Estonian-language urban culture, the triumph of modernism and neo-Romanticism over realism, and was the framework movement of the language innovation (planning) of Estonian.
- 7.
- 8.
Russian was the main language of communication at many workplaces during the occupation period while German remained the main language of instruction at the University of Tartu throughout the nineteenth century (Marten, this volume; Siilvask and Haamer 1982).
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Brown, K.D., Koreinik, K., Siiner, M. (2017). Introductory Chapter: Questioning Borders. In: Siiner, M., Koreinik, K., Brown, K. (eds) Language Policy Beyond the State. Language Policy, vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52993-6_1
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