National Multilingualism in the Horn of Africa and South Asia

This book compares how multilingualism is governed, managed, and imagined in nation-states in the Horn of Africa and South Asia. Rather, the multilingual nation-state of the Global South should be re-centred as paradigmatic of the relationship between language, multilingualism, and the nation-state in general, including in the Global North.

This book compares how multilingualism is governed, managed, and imagined in nation-states in the Horn of Africa and South Asia. With state-of-the-art contributions by leading scholars, this is the first volume to bring together political, historical, and literary perspectives on national multilingualism in the two regions, documenting both the views of state actors and those of writers, intellectuals, and activists. In undertaking this South-South comparison, the book shows that national multilingualism in the Global South is not a derivative postcolonial adaptation of European models. Rather, the multilingual nation-state of the Global South should be re-centred as paradigmatic of the relationship between language, multilingualism, and the nation-state in general, including in the Global North. This book is essential reading for all researchers interested in anti-Eurocentric approaches to multilingualism in policy-making, intellectual history, literature, and print culture.