290102 VO Language, Space and Society - Language Geography of Eastern Europe (2008W)

It is the goal of this course to highlight the relation between language and space from the geographical perspective by the example of eastern Europe. After an introduction into the essence of language (relation between language an reality, conceptual division of reality by language, temporal and historical variability of language, language and social stratification, standard language - colloquial language - dialect, functionality of language) by examples from eastern Europe especially the spatial aspects of language are elaborated: Greek and Latin as shaping factors of communicational and cultural regions, spatial spread and relationship of languages, interference of adjacent languages, language and national/regional identity, language and religion (sacred languages), small standard languages, language rights (esp. of minorities), multilingualism and its impact on cultural and economic relations, trading and educational languages and their processes of expansion and regression, language transfer by migration (e.g. by pastoral communities, guest workers), superimposition of languages (e.g. Russian over national languages in Ukraine, Moldavia, Belorussia), official, imperial and military languages, the meaning of a language's cultural prestige, language and script, geographical names in the cultural landscape and on maps.