From multilingualism to translingualism: towards the idea of a new Europe

This work deals with some particular concepts that, inside the European Union, are the main cause of animated debates among politicians and scholars of European languages and cultures. Cultural diversity, lingua franca, multilingualism and multiculturalism, plurilingualism and pluriculturalism, interculturalism, translingualism and transculturalism are the subjects of our survey that, in four chapters, tries to explain from a historical, terminological, cultural and linguistic point of view all these matters. Obviously, this kind of survey is neither a simple question nor a thing that we can take for granted. Reading the official documents of the European Union about the above mentioned subjects, it is clear that there are still many efforts to make for finding a possible solution that can satisfies everybody, but continuing in this way, the European Union will be able to solve these problems and to become an example for other countries. After a first chapter in which we can observe the main historical stages of the EU, in the second we will analyze the most important linguistic policies and strategies adopted about the rule of English and the other languages in the EU, and the programmes of learning and teaching foreign languages. The third and the fourth chapters deal with the shift from the concept of a multicultural European society to a transcultural one, passing through the analysis of the concept of pluricultural and intercultural societies.