Pluricentric Theory beyond Dominance and Non-dominance: A Critical View
The present volume contains ten contributions. Six of them were presented in Stockholm at the workshop “The Theory and Description of Pluricentric Languages- Beyond Concepts of Dominance and Non-Dominance, which was hosted at the conference “The Languages, Nations, Cultures: Pluricentric Languages in Context(s) Conference was held at Stockholm University in May 2019. Four other contributions have been accepted because some of the papers presented at the workshop could not be delivered because of difficulties beyond the control of the authors.
Although many of these papers still utilize the concepts of dominance and non-dominance, they are used to advance the theory of pluricentricity in general or are used as tools to explain other linguistic or social phenomena. Each contribution, in its own way, is a testimony to the usefulness of pluricentricity as a theoretical framework. And, they show that the alternative concept of “pluriareality” that is favoured by some linguists working on German has no theoretical basis and cannot describe pluricentric languages correctly.