The ideas here were applied to several language communities in a project I edited.

What is it about?

When communities choose which language(s) to use for what purposes, they make their choices based on such factors as prestige, religion, nationality. This article shows that the same factors that lead to the choice of languages to use also apply to communities choosing which script to use. Both the spoken language and the script that people use to write it function as projections of our identity.

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Why is it important?

I edited a project that applied the ideas from this article to several languages: 2008. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Issue 192, on the theme “Sociolinguistics of script choice”. This collection shows how the ideas from this original article can be profitably applied to a variety of contexts.