Thematising multilingualism in the media

摘要

The book is a special issue in the publisher's 'Current Topics Series', the aim of which is to attract new audiences for interesting contemporary material, beyond the readership of specialist journals. The thematisation of multilingualism is certainly an excellent choice here. The book starts with a premise that is undeniable: discussion of the institutional elements that determine the language choices of the media is routinely neglected in favour of the perhaps more straightforward discussion of the language used in the media. The key term in the title and, indeed, in the project overall is 'thematisation'. It allows the contributors to draw a fine but insistent conceptual line through many varied institutional, national and technological contexts. The book is structured around five chapters emanating from an AILA Research Network, and they are all written by core members of that successful enterprise. They range from the specifics of multilingual states, through the enabling/constraining of digital technologies, to questions of access and authority over language matters.