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This paper provides a framework for understanding the social complexity of the linkages between language, identity, and territoriality (or attachments to place). Drawing on qualitative research among Inuit in the Canadian Arctic and in Ottawa, it discusses Inuit identities in relation to the role played by local, regional, national, and global processes in constructing Inuitness and the transformation of Indigenous identities nationally and globally. The paper argues that although Inuktitut is being supported by institutional and political structures in Nunavik and Nunavut, English and French have become increasingly important in daily Northern life. At the same time, Inuit migration to Southern cities has offered new challenges and established new priorities in the fostering of the plurilingualism necessary for urban Inuit life.

In an increasingly multicultural world, the relationship between language and identity remains a complicated and often fraught subject for most societies. The growing political salience of questions relating to language is evident not only in the expanded implementation of new policies and legislation, but also in heated public debates about national unity, collective identities, and the rights of linguistic minorities. By taking a comprehensive approach that considers both the inclusive and exclusive dimensions of linguistic identity across Europe and North America, the studies assembled here provide a sophisticated look at one of the global era's defining political dynamics

This book addresses a crucial, yet often overlooked dimension of minority language standardisation, namely, how social actors engage with, support, alter, resist and even reject standardisation processes. We look at standardisation processes as a political domain where social actors use standards as semiotic resources for articulating discourses on society. The chapters in this volume are therefore concerned first and foremost with social actors, their ideologies and practices, rather than with language per se. By considering the perspectives and actions of people who participate in or are affected by minority language politics, this volume aims to provide a comparative and nuanced analysis of the complexity and tensions inherent in minority language standardisation processes. Echoing Fasold (1984), this involves a shift in focus from a sociolinguistics of language to a sociolinguistics of people. How do social actors experience and negotiate these predicaments? Why are standards for minoritised languages sometimes sought after and praised and at other times vehemently contested and rejected? What are the consequences of standardisation projects for different people? It is these questions that this volume considers through case studies of minority language standardisation from around the world. The authors, who come from very different backgrounds with respect to involvement in standardisation processes, draw on ethnographic, historical and discourse data in order to examine standardisation projects in diverse settings. In bringing these case studies and analyses together, we aim to provide both empirical and conceptual insights into minority language standardisation. This volume highlights the role of social actors in the creation and negotiation of standards, and the diversity of marginalised or peripheral speech communities in which standardisation efforts occur. Focusing on ground-level processes and participants allows us to illuminate ways in which projects to standardise minoritised languages echo, reinvent, and at times subvert the characteristics of language standardisation established since the 18th century. Beginning with a reflection on language standardisation from a historical perspective (section 2), we then define our focus on minority/ minoritised language communities and discuss the nature of standardisation projects in these settings in particular (section 3). We conclude with an overview of the volume (section 4).