The e-multilingual Internet: fact or fiction?
A special thematic series of the International Journal on Multicultural Societies, developed within the framework of Initiative B@bel, will focus on the debate surrounding the Internet and multilingualism. The Internet has been criticised on one count for promoting and installing the English language as lingua franca, and praised on another for the opportunities it has created across the world in access to communication and affordable publication in languages besides English. Should the Internet be regarded primarily as a conduit of linguistic dominance, bearing in mind the powerful influence of the United States in the field of information technology in the 1970s and 1980s? Is this unfairly detrimental of the web’s capabilities, and of how it is used? Can accusations of linguistic elitism be justified?
These journal issues will stimulate the ongoing theoretical debate as well as provide an evaluation of current policies promoting multilingualism on the Internet and report on new research and discussions, such as:
Language on the web in relation to North-South issues; a report by a team from the University of Sokoine, Tanzania, that will discuss the Internet’s linguistic elitism and its connection with access to education and resources, keeping in mind that only a tiny percentage of internet use takes place in Africa and the Middle East.
"Trans-national contact": the use of major lingua francas on the Internet, including measures to promote the use of French, Arabic, Russian, Spanish and Chinese.
Use of the Internet to support less widely spoken languages and to create virtual communities amongst small linguistic groups.
Use of the Internet in a multilingual nation: a report from Indonesia focusing on how the internet is used in a state where the national common language is Bahasa Indonesian.
Link to the current issue of the IJMS Developed in cooperation with Initiative B@bel related to this subject: Multilingualism on the Internet
