UNIT 7B. Thinking Thinking Language Language Thinking and Language Thinking and Language.
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European language policy:Why is it so difficult?
Jacomine NortierUtrecht Institute of LinguisticsDpt. of Dutch language & culture
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Outline
The official situation: complex but understandable
The actual situation: almost impossible to handle
My aim is NOT to solve this, but only to sketch.
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Literature :
- Official languages (based on Abram de Swaan: Words of the World (2001, Polity)
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Indigenous vs imported minority languages Guus Extra & Durk Gorter (eds): The other languages of Europe (2001, Multilingual Matters)
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http://europa.eu/languages/nl/home
2007: The European Union has 27 member states
and 23 official languages:
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1. Български (Bălgarski) - BG - Bulgarian
2. Čeština - CS - Czech 3. Dansk - DA - Danish 4. Deutsch - DE - German 5. Eesti - ET - Estonian 6. Elinika - EL - Greek 7. English - EN 8. Español - ES - Spanish 9. Français - FR - French 10. Gaeilge - GA - Irish 11. Italiano - IT - Italian 12. Latviesu valoda - LV -
Latvian
13. Lietuviu kalba - LT - Lithuanian
14. Magyar - HU - Hungarian 15. Malti - MT - Maltese 16. Nederlands - NL - Dutch 17. Polski - PL - Polish 18. Português - PT -
Portuguese 19. Română - RO - Romanian 20. Slovenčina - SK - Slovak 21. Slovenščina - SL -
Slovene 22. Suomi - FI – Finnish23. Svenska - SV - Swedish
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De Swaan’s book:
First: general Later : focus on Europe
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Although the languages of the world differ extremely from each other, the speakers are tied together by bilinguals in a tightly organized system: the language constellation.
The position of individual languages in the world system can be expressed by their Q-values (a measure of communicative value).
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The language constellation:
English (connecting the supercentral languages)
Supercentral languages (long-distance and international communication) [such as Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese]
Central languages (national) [such as Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Dutch, Iranian]
Peripheral languages (oral) (98% of the world’s 5/6000 languages
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Q-value of a language:
“... the proportion of those who speak it among all speakers in the constellation and the proportion of multilingual speakers whose repertoire includes the language among all multilingual speakers in the constellation.” (i.e. as an L2)
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Value versus attitude René Appel (Appel, 2002): AdS holds an
extreme instrumental view on language tool.
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The political economy of language constellations
Language: hypercollective goods Economic goods: the more they are
used, the less there is left of them Language: the more you use it, the
more valuable it becomes, both collectively and individually
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Conditions - in order to be a collective good:
1- nobody can be excluded (true for languages)
2- Maintenance: collaboration of many but not all is required (true for languages)
3- The efforts of a single person are not sufficient (true for languages)
4- Utility does not diminish as new users are added (true for languages).
Consistently, AdS consideres language as a“hypercollective” good.
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Why is there stable multilingualism in Euope (according to AdS)? It costs a lot of trouble and effort to
learn a new language But also (my addition): attitudes,
affective values attached to different languages; different levels of importance.
Outside-value (status) versus inside-value (solidarity)
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Europe: “The more languages, the more English”
Initial, shortly after World War 2: French
Why not Italian? Or German? Or Dutch?
With the UK and Ireland: English
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Europe versus other parts of the world: the average speaker in Europe is relatively rich and well-educated.
Languages in Europe: robust. Support from own government and European Parliament; taught in school, used in court, politics, governments: prestige, standardization, function in education
As far as the official languages are concerned! And within, not necessarily between countries
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1987: 17% of the European citizens reported to be able to converse in English;
1997: the number has doubled. Increase mainly caused by young
people.
Nr 2 in popularity was German, except for the Dutch where Fench was second best.
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Some countries: officially multilingual (e.g., Belgium). But common practice in Europe: societal monolingualism
Europe: State = nation = national language
States are the protectors of the official languages.
Law, regulations, administration, education, business, prestige and mass media are all associated with that single language.
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Q-values in Europe:
English: number one French and German: second Again: only measurable factors.
Irrespective of affective factors & attitudes. Example: Netherlands.
AdS: Dutch prefer French because of communicative value (!)
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European linguistic dilemma:
Maintenance of the languages
Effective and sucessful communication
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In the European language constellation four levels of communication can be distinguished:1. Domestic communication (central and peripheral
languages). Threatened: by (1) the supracentral Ls for communication across borders and (2) minority languages within the borders.
2. The level of transnational communication, where English competes with French and German.
3. The level of the European Parliament and the European Commission, all official languages of the members of the Union have the same status. Decisions should be translated into all official Ls.
4. The level of the Commission’s internal bureaucracy where there are more or less informally adopted a few working languages.
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Four levels of communication (repeated)1. Domestic communication: powerful relation
nation-state language: maintenance2. Transnational communication: 1: English; 2:
French and German3. European Parliament: all languages will keep
their position4. European Commission internal
communication: English and French (Spanish: world wide more important than
F/G but within Europe spoken in only one country)
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Minority languages in Europe (based on Extra & Gorter) In short, there are three groups of
languages:
Official languages (‘robust’) Non-official indigenous (‘regional’)
languages with lower status Imported languages with low status
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Regional languages restricted to one state: Breton 300,000 France
Corsican 160,000 France
North-Frisian 8,000 Germany
Saterfrisian 2,000 Germany
Sorbian 60,000 Germany
Friulian 550,000 Italy
Ladin 35,000 Italy
Sardinian1,000,000 Italy
Frisian 450,000 The Netherlands
Mirandes 15,000 Portugal
Galician 2,300,000 Spain
Aragonese 30,000 Spain
Asturian 450,000 Spain
Scottish 67,000 UKGaelic
Scots 1,500,000 UK
Ulster Scots 100,000 UK
Welsh 500,000 UK
Cornish 200 UK
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Regional languages spoken in more than one state: Basque:
565,000 Spain
70,000 France Catalan:
6,376,000 Spain
102,000 France
20,000 Italy Occitan:
4,000 Spain
3,500,000 France
50,000 Italy
Sami:
18,000 Sweden 3,000 Finland
Low-Saxon:
1,800,000 Netherlands
8-10,000,000 Germany Limburgian:
1,000,000 Netherlands and
Belgium
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Exceptional positions:
Luxemburgish: national language but it doesn’t have the status of an official working language in the EU.
Romani and Yiddish are non-territorial minority languages.
Regional indigenous languages always function as an L1 for children. Usually they are not learned as L2 (de Swaan would call them peripheral Ls).
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Most official Ls are minority Ls outside their own nation-state
Examples: Croatian in Italy; German in Belgium and Denmark; Swedish in Finland; Finnish in Sweden.
Official languages, but without the protection as in ‘their’ nation states
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Immigrant languages (from outside Europe): immigrant workers and their
descendants; refugees; ex-colonials. 1993: 368 million people in Europe;
4.8% (18 mln) were not citizens of the countries they lived in
Exact numbers: difficult Sometimes no data Illegals Nationality and country of birth? Residents of former colonies
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BCPMF: Birth Country Criterion of Person and/or Mother/FatherProblems: what would we want to call the grandchildren
of e.g. Chinese immigrants: Chinese or Dutch? What to do with people with different
ethnicities from one country (such as Kurds) or the opposite:
same ethnic groups from different countries (Chinese from China and Vietnam)?
And ethnocultural groups without territorial status? (Roma)
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Immigrant languages in the Netherlands:Groups BCPMF criterion Nationality
criterion
Dutch 12,872,000 14,768,000
Turks 272,000 154,000
Moroccans 225,00 150,000
Surinamese 282,000 15,000
Antilleans 94,000 -
Greeks 11,000 5,000
Italians 32,000 17,000
Former Yugoslavs 56,000 34,000
Portuguese 13,000 9,000
Spaniards 29,000 17,000
Capeverdians 17,000 2,000
Tunisians 6,000 2,000 Based on CBS 1997
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Conclusion:
How can we talk about European language policy when we don’t even know how to carry out initial fact finding?