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Language as a Source of Conflict in Mono- and Multilingual Situations
This study explores 'language conflict research', a field predominantly focused on conflicts arising within multilingual societies due to language contact. Often associated with social inequality, the crux of these conflicts pertains to the status and societal functions of different languages. This perspective resonates with earlier works in the field of contact linguistics, which link the source of conflict to social disparities exacerbated by language issues. This paper also critically reviews several key interpretations of language conflict advanced in the 'Dictionary of Sociolinguistic Terms' and scholarly contributions by Nelde, Michal'čenko, Bitkeeva, and others. The research exposes a common denominator in these perspectives: the notion of conflict as a clash between language communities sparked by language-related problems, thus situating language conflict as integral to the broader sociolinguistics context.