Concept(s) of Interlinguistics

Interlinguistics was created in order to help establish standards for auxiliary languages. However, over the course of its hundred-year history it has come to be understood in ever broader ways, generally as an interdisciplinary branch of science including various aspects of communication, including language planning and standardization, multilingualism, language policy, translation, sociolinguistics as well as the history and literature of planned languages. This expanded concept makes it possible for different scholars, researchers, associations and organizations to treat interlinguistics from extremely diverse points of view and for specialists in different sub-fields to work together. On the one hand, there is a clear lack of agreement concerning the subject matter of interlinguistics as can be seen, for example, in Wikipedia entries. On the other hand a broad understanding opens up new horizons for interlinguistics and makes deeper specialization in individual areas possible. It is therefore possible to see the future of interlinguistics in a positive light: there are still many interesting fields to discover whether through a reanalysis of historical documents or following the latest wave in internet-supported language construction and the activity of polyglots or observing the birth of new scientific specializations and sub-branches such as Slavic interlinguistics.