Esperanto Revolutionaries and Geeks

Guilherme Fians is Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Brasília, Brazil and Co-Director of the Centre for Research and Documentation on World Language Problems, Netherlands/USA.

• Chapter 1: Introduction: In the beginning was the word.- Chapter 2: And the word was made flesh, or how to narrate histories.- Chapter 3: Follow the (non-)native: Circulating, mapping and territorialising the Esperanto community.- Chapter 4: When Esperanto speakers meet, or what makes this community international?.- Chapter 5: Crocodiles, apples and owls: Language variation and standardisation in a no man’s language.- Chapter 6: On moving and standing still: The movement from the standpoint of an Esperanto association.- Chapter 7: Communicating is freedom: human languages, programming languages and new technologies.- Chapter 8: Esperanto in the making, making through Esperanto: prefiguration and the building of alternative presents.- Chapter 9: Conclusion, or how not to put an end to the conversation.

“My curiosity turned to pleasure as I read on, since Fians’ writing is both ethnographically rich … and theoretically sound … . Thorough and easy to read, with material from real speakers and situations, Fians’ book would make an excellent text for courses dealing with sociolinguistics and multilingualism – and, of course, for those focused on constructed languages. It could also serve as a model for those conducting research in constructed-language settings and, more generally, for those working with international and dispersed communities.” (Christine Schreyer, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, July 31, 2022)