Regional: a Lost Dimension?

Abstract

Globalization is commonly discussed in terms of how it enforces language and culture monopoly in transnational social structures and practices. It is also linked to deterritorialization of contacts among individuals, groups and institutions. With the exhaustion of the nation-state, the core-periphery metaphor is used to designate new distributions of power. This view obscures, however, the complex, polyphonic and heterogeneous nature of many peripheral contexts. It is argued that the regional element needs revisiting its capacities to serve as an interface between the global and the local (often national). The paper construes regionalism as a valid dimension of language studies in a foreign language macro culture of the Central and Eastern European countries. Some discussion follows the ongoing marketization of universities and technologization of language and translation teaching for the pressing needs of global and local markets. A counter-balanced engagement is proposed. Alongside some flashes of the region’s academic cooperation in the past, an argument is made for the development of Critical Discourse Studies, with a checklist of topics being suggested and profiled on social and linguistic issues sensitive for this region.