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Language is, of course, always political. While this insight is hardly new, collegiate German studies curricula often seem largely indifferent to one of the most obviously political dimensions of language: language politics. Since the early 2000s, German-speaking countries have made language (or rather proficiency in various national standard varieties of German as measured by standardized tests) one of the key legal requirements for permanent or even temporary residence; at the same time, these policies have markedly shaped the public discourse about languages and their speakers, projecting negotiations of belonging, exclusion, and legitimacy in Germanophone societies onto language. Through a brief example from Austria, I make the case for anchoring language politics in German studies curricula, thereby empowering students to resist the linguistic indifference of language policy regimes, develop insights into the political and ideological nature of language, and examine questions of language and power.Although amendments since 2000 would (re-)introduce Slovenian, Burgenland Croatian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, Romanes, and Austrian Sign Language, Austria's constitution of 1920 solely recognized German as the country's official national language. German is likewise the official language of education in Austria, and German proficiency is a requirement for non-EU citizens to obtain residency. New minority (i.e., immigrant) languages enjoy no official recognition or legal status and therefore do not come with any rights for their speakers (de Cillia 81-90).Meanwhile, until at least the 1990s, Austrian government officials refused even to recognize Austria as a "migration society," a stance reflected in the dearth of federally funded German language-learning opportunities for immigrants. During the early 2000s, in an era dominated by a right-wing coalition between the Österreichische Volkspartei and the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, language policy took a further and explicitly exclusionary turn due to a perceived threat from incoming migrants (Rheindorf and Wodak, "Sociolinguistic Perspectives"). The complex and evolving situation in Austria epitomizes a model of citizenship David Gramling has described

Sociocognitive (Atkinson, 2011) and complex dynamic systems approaches (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008) highlight the inextricable connectedness of social and cognitive phenomena in second language (L2) learning. Previous research found numerous ties between L2 learning and both learners' sociocultural background as well as their affective attitudes such as their Tolerance of Ambiguity (TOA; Ely, 1995; Herman, Stevens, Bird, Mendenhall, & Oddou, 2010). However, there is little insight as to how these social and cognitive factors are interrelated. This article explores the interconnections between socioculturalplace of upbringing, international experience, languages-and cognitive-attitudinal-TOA, Attitudinal and Behavioral Openness (ABOS; Caligiuri, Jacobs, & Farr, 2000)-learner backgrounds among 49 elementary-level students of L2 German at a U.S. university. Correlation analyses show a complex network of learners' sociocognitive backgrounds and suggest that international students tend to have lower TOA and higher ABOS than domestic students. Implications for L2 German teaching are discussed. In their 2016 manifesto, the Douglas Fir Group made the case for a transdisciplinary approach to studying second language acquisition (SLA) by expanding the field's traditional focus on linguistics and psychology. The authors see language learning as follows: Language learning is a complex, ongoing, multifaceted phenomenon that involves the dynamic and variable interplay among a range of individual neurobiological mechanisms and cognitive capacities and L2 learners' diverse experiences in their multilingual worlds occurring over their life spans and along three interrelated levels of social activity: the micro level of social action and interaction, the meso level of sociocultural institutions and communities, and the macro level of ideological structures. (Douglas Fir Group, 2016, p. 36)

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