In recent years, sociolinguistic research on minority languages in Europe, particularly in the Galician context, has chiefly contributed both theoretically and empirically to the growing attention given to ‘new speakers’, as well as to the emergence of a European research network in 2013 entitled ‘New Speakers in a multilingual Europe: Opportunities and challenges’ (www.nspk.org.uk). As documented in special issues and edited volumes, the research activities in the network not only aimed at adding the term ‘new speaker’ to the growing pool of analytical terminology in critically oriented sociolinguistics. Employing ‘new speaker’ as a lens rather than as a clear-cut notion is what we—as editors—had in mind when giving shape to this volume, drawing on discussions during the final phases of the above-mentioned research network. This seemed especially useful because such a broad take on ‘new speakerness’ opens up avenues for comparative research under a common label. In sum, it is certainly worth the effort to continue delving deeper into the notion of ‘new speakers’, and particularly to do that from the perspective of language policy. The articles collected in this thematic issue aim at contributing into that direction.

中文翻译：

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语言政策和“新发言人”：主题问题简介

近年来，对欧洲少数民族语言的社会语言学研究，特别是在加利西亚语境中，主要在理论和经验上对“新说话者”的日益关注以及2013年欧洲研究网络的出现做出了主要贡献，该研究网络题为“多语言欧洲的新演讲者：机遇和挑战”（www.nspk.org.uk）。正如特刊和编辑卷所记录的那样，网络中的研究活动不仅旨在将“新发言人”一词添加到批判性社会语言学中不断增长的分析术语库中。使用“新演讲者”作为一个镜头而不是一个明确的概念是我们作为编辑在塑造这本书时所考虑的，借鉴了上述研究网络最后阶段的讨论。这似乎特别有用，因为对“新演讲者”的如此广泛的理解为在共同标签下进行比较研究开辟了道路。总而言之，继续深入研究“新演讲者”的概念当然是值得的，尤其是从语言政策的角度来做这件事。本专题中收集的文章旨在为这个方向做出贡献。