Languages and the First World War: Representation and Memory

Review 1 - Aviv Amit, Tel Aviv University, Israel
1. Broad Outline of the Project
This proposal focuses on varied aspects of languages during the First World War. These are investigated in the wider context of language change and contact based factors which caused variations in languages especially in Europe (UK, France, Belgium, Germany, Malta, Italy, Austria, Kosovo, Wales), but also in other places around the world (Canada, USA, Australia, Senegal, India). The authors propose to divide the project into two parts. Part I about 'Meetings between languages' and part II about 'Communication, Recording and Remembering'. Each part would open with an introduction and include papers presented at the 'Languages and the First World War' conference that was held at the University of Antwerp and the British Library on 18 and 20 June 2014. Each one of these books would be arranged into sections, including, among others: 'interpreting and translation', 'politics as a catalyst for language change', 'linguistic contact', 'language change', 'language and power', 'the language of remembrance'.

2. Critical Analysis of its Strengths and Weaknesses
Although there are many books on the topic of languages during WWI, this project is strategically located at the intersection of sociolinguistic, language contacts and historical studies, providing obvious links with other fields of research such as sociology, anthropology, literature and cultural studies, and therefore represents a great interest. In addition, the book's documentation is most impressive and varied to the point of including newspapers, private journals, songs, post-war literature, propaganda, memorials, phrasebooks, etc.
Given the great interest in the remembrance of the First World War, there is clearly a potential market for this project, notably at universities' departments where modules include sociolinguistics, twentieth-century history, discourse analysis and cultural representations of languages during the war. There is also possible interest in literature and modern history departments, but the focus on sociolinguistics means that this is likely to serve as a support text for reference purposes, rather than a key item on a reading list. However, given the fact that this period represents an important phase in the history of many languages, it is likely that an incisive, original consideration of language change and contacts between languages during this time would enjoy a long shelf-life and wide circulation.
The description of each essay is of course very brief and lacks a bibliography, so I do not know what sources each author might intend eventually to bring to bear on the discussion. In addition, there is no abstract for the introduction to present the comparative framework of each book.
The quality of the papers is very various. Some are excellent and demonstrate a solid awareness of the relevant issues and how they might be investigated (parts 1.2, 1.3, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 3.4, 4.1, 5.1, 5.4, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 8.1, 9.1, 9.2), while others maybe deal with important topics, but often not in a very illuminating fashion and are in need of tighter editing. In addition, some abstracts in the proposal are too short (parts 3.1, 3.3, 5.2, 8.2), and some even lack an abstract (part 5.5 and the introduction of Book I).
Whilst I very much like the concept for this project, I fear that the authors need to rethink considerably their proposal before it could be recommended for publication. The key problem that needs to be addressed is the structure of the project. The point of collecting all the papers presented at the conference into two books without any selection or adaptation is certainly not the best option to serve the needs of the potential reader. Hence, only the best papers should be considered for publishing to maintain a high standard publication and should be incorporated in one book instead of two.

3. Overall, my assessment is that the proposed pr