To understand ‘what language achieves in people's lives’ (Blommaert 2003: 608), we need to understand the historical conditions that create the limits of what it is possible for language to achieve. This means, first, determining the sets of beliefs and values associated with particular languages and language varieties in the discourses prevailing in given societies at given times: what we have been referring to through the now established conception of language ideologies; second, identifying how these ideologies influence discourses on language policy, which not only generate specific policies but also contribute to what Townson (1992) calls the ‘communicative environment’ (that is, the scope of what can be talked about and how it can be said); and third, exploring ways in which these ideologies penetrate and permeate wider discourses on language in the social life of communities and individuals by listening to the life stories of people for whom experiences with language represent a means of signifying their ‘life worlds’ and of establishing options for identifying with others. Finally, it is the interconnectedness of these dimensions that allows us to see the reciprocal relationship between language and social change.

Our aim in this book has been to investigate this relationship in the context of central Europe by identifying the different dimensions of language ideological work, past and present, that have fed into contemporary discourses on language.