General research project of linguistic movements and language policies aiming at multilingual societies

我们举行了关于多语言社会、多语言、语言帝国主义、振兴少数民族语言运动和语言政策的会议：2002年1月在东京举行了关于欧洲多种语言的会议；2002年11月在冲绳那霸举行了关于日本语言运动的会议；2003年11月在东京举行了关于亚洲和非洲国家，特别是纳米比亚、塞内加尔、乌干达、坦桑尼亚、菲律宾、台湾、中国、韩国和印度的会议。2003年12月，我们在名古屋举行了一次研究会议，主题是语言政策和语言运动，以及社会语言学的理论问题。我们于2004年3月编写了这一三年项目的报告。主要的论点是：少数群体的语言运动在欧洲非常活跃，这引起了每个国家的语言政策；在亚洲和非洲，有些国家在语言政策领域超过了欧洲国家；在支持多语言社会的论点中，重要的是书面语言的水平，目标多语言社会不是双语，而是三种语言或更多。

We made conferences concerning multilingual societies, multilingualism, linguistic imperialism, revitalizing movements of minority languages and language policies: in January 2002 in Tokyo, about European multilingualism, in November 2002 in Naha, Okinawa, about linguistic movements in Japan, and in November 2003 in Tokyo, about Asian and African countries, especially Namibia, Senegal, Uganda, Tanzania, the Philippines, Taiwan, China, Korea and India. We made a research conference in December 2003 in Nagoya, about language policies and language movements and also about theoretical problems in sociolinguistics. We compiled a report of this three year project in March 2004. Main arguments are: language movements of minorities are very active in Europe which evoke a language policy of each country; In Asia and in Africa, there are countries which surpass the European countries in the domains of linguistic policies; what is important in the arguments for multilingual societies is in the level of written languages and the target multilingual society is not bilingual but trilingual or more.