Between Macrosociolinguistics and Microsociolinguistics Through the Lens of Bookstores

Abstract

Drawing on my quarter-of-a-century-long experience with interdisciplinary research on language politics and the social and political history of languages in Central and Eastern Europe, I sketch examples of macro and micro approaches of how social scientists (including historians) may fruitfully probe into matters linguistics. At the same time, these examples can be also of use to (socio)linguists, who wish to integrate their findings with rele­vant socio-political, economic and cultural developments of the present moment or from the past. I range from the rarely noticed divide in language politics between Eurasia and the ‘Rest’ of the world to the politics of the global translation market, ethnolingu­istic nationalism, Holocaust denial, and to the politics of script. As the article’s title announces, I adopted bookstores in the role of a unifying lens of observation. The physicality of bookstores constitutes a tangible ‘crystallization’ of technology and power relations in a given society or polity, as expressed through the me­dium of (or symbolized by) a language or languages.