This is the proceedings of the international conference of the same name organized by the KEG in collaboration with the Directorate of International Educational Relations of the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs in 2001, as part of the European Year of Languages. The volume is bilingual and consists of 22 texts by specialists on topics related to the relationship between language and social and historical contexts in the particularly sensitive area of the Balkans. The texts included in the five thematic sections that structure the volume attempt to describe:

- the effort to establish national languages (written by: E. Skopetea, G. Drettas, E. Boutyra)
- the issue of language naming (written by: B. Ersanli for Turkish, R. Bugarski, B. Jaksic, and S. Monnesland for languages in Yugoslavia after its dissolution)
- the history of linguistic ideas in the 19th century (written by: E. Martinell Gifre, N. Giakovaki, D. Stamopoulos, S. Paker)
- general issues of Balkan linguistics and language policies (written by: N. Reiter, C. Truchot, B. Beci, N. Aretov, A. Hranova, A. Ioannidou)
- reflection on minority languages in modern Greek state (written by: V. Aarbake, S. Beis, S. Chatzisavvidis, T. Kostopoulos, K. Tsitselikis).

The book is dedicated to the memory of A.-F. Christidis and E. Skopetea, who, together with I. Kakridis, constituted the scientific committee of the conference.