i-iv -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Introduction: Along the routes to power -- Section 1. Theoretical perspectives: Linguistic empowerment and language choices -- Sociolinguistics: More power(s) to you! (On the explicit study of power in sociolinguistic research) -- The power of language, the language of power -- Language endangerment, the construction of indigenous languages and world English -- The power to choose and its sociolinguistic implications -- How codeswitching as an available option empowers bilinguals -- Section 2. Language policy and language planning: Empowering speakers of minority languages in communities and institutions -- Language policy failures -- Empowerment through the community language - A challenge -- Pidgins and Creoles between endangerment and empowerment: A dynamic view of empowerment in the growth and the decline of contact languages, especially in the Pacific -- Lost in transculturation: The case of bilingual education in New York City -- Language policies in Spain: Accommodation or alteration? -- The potential of parliaments for the empowerment of linguistic minorities: Experiences from Scotland and Norway -- The dominance of languages and language communities in the European Union (EU) and the consequences -- Section 3. The language empowerment discourse: Case studies of language policy and language planning in Africa -- Socio-political factors in the evolution of language policy in post-Apartheid South Africa -- Marginalisation and empowerment through educational medium: The case of the linguistically disadvantaged groups of Botswana and Tanzania -- Language policy, cultural rights and the law in Botswana -- We speak Otjiherero but we write in English - Disempowerment through language use in participatory extension work -- Empowerment through English - A realistic view of the educational promotion of English in postcolonial contexts: The case of Nigeria -- Life in a Tower of Babel without a language policy -- JK Nyerere of Tanzania and the empowerment of Swahili -- Living on borrowed tongues? A view from within -- Index