Language policy and language planning in Cyprus

The aim of this monograph is to provide a detailed account of language policy and language planning in Cyprus. Using both historical and synchronic data and adopting a mixed-methods approach (archival research, ethnographic tools and insights from sociolinguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis), this study attempts to trace the origins and the trajectories of language polices in Cyprus and to relate these to issues of ethnicity, community and national identity formation, language maintenance and language shift, as well as the varying constructions of the role of language in education. It will be shown that, while linguistic variation and multilingualism were historically a core feature of the linguistic communities of Cyprus, the end of the anticolonial struggle and the separation of the island's two major linguistic communities post-1974 has helped to establish effectively monolingual language policies, with a strong prioritization of national standard languages as opposed to sociolinguistically stigmatized varieties and minority languages. The monograph will also discuss language moribundity and prospects for potential reversal of language shift.