Abstract
Since the Esperanto speech community cannot rely on intergenerational transmission to guarantee its long-term continuity, the Esperanto movement has emerged as an attempted solution to stabilise the community by promoting the language and encouraging continuous engagement with it. In this sense, one of the most interesting wings of the current neutral Esperanto movement in Europe is the political party Europe-Democracy-Esperanto (EDE), which puts forward candidates for the European Parliamentary elections and uses their election campaigns as a platform to promote the language. Through a socio-anthropological approach, based on longterm fieldwork carried out among Esperanto speakers and supporters in France, this work explores some aspects of EDE’s actions, focusing on a controversy: how can a political party be neutral? From this initial interrogation, the diverse definitions of neutrality held by Esperantists will be explored as a means to approach the question of how a concept of neutral politics can be strategically mobilised as a tool in the discussion among this party’s members. Also examind is how the outcomes of this party’s actions are seen by its members in terms of success and failure, and how the issue of neutrality and political engagement reappears in this discussion.
Translated title of the contribution | The neutrality of a political party: Language policies and activism for Esperanto in the European Parliamentary elections |
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Original language | German |
Pages (from-to) | 11-33 |
Number of pages | 23 |
Journal | Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Interlinguistik |
Volume | 2018 |
Publication status | Published - 2018 |