Language and Identity Politics : A Cross-Atlantic Perspective [1 ed.] 9781782389439, 9781782389422

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Language and Identity Politics

Language and Identity Politics : A Cross-Atlantic Perspective, edited by Christina Späti, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2015.

Copyright © 2015. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Language and Identity Politics : A Cross-Atlantic Perspective, edited by Christina Späti, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2015.

LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY POLITICS A Cross-Atlantic Perspective

Edited by

Copyright © 2015. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

CHRISTINA SPÄTI

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Language and Identity Politics : A Cross-Atlantic Perspective, edited by Christina Späti, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2015.

First published in 2016 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com

© 2016 Christina Späti All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Language and identity politics : a cross-Atlantic perspective / edited by Christina Späti. pages cm ISBN 978-1-78238-942-2 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-78238-943-9 (ebook) 1. Language and languages—Political aspects. 2. Language and culture—Political aspects. 3. Identity politics. 4. Intercultural communication. 5. Sociolinguistics. I. Späti, Christina, editor. P119.3.L278 2015 306.44’9—dc23 2015013045

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-78238-942-2 hardback ISBN 978-1-78238-943-9 ebook

Language and Identity Politics : A Cross-Atlantic Perspective, edited by Christina Späti, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2015.

CONTENTS

List of Figures

vii

Acknowledgements

viii

Language and the Rise of Identity Politics: An Introduction Christina Späti

1

PART I. LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY POLITICS: THEORY AND CONCEPTS Chapter 1 Language and Collective Identity: Theorizing Complexity Peter Ives

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Chapter 2 The Politics of Linguistic Identity in Europe: Between the Expression of Power and the Power of Expressivity Peter A. Kraus

17

38

PART II. LANGUAGE AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITY IN MULTILINGUAL STATES Chapter 3 Language and Identity Politics in Belgium Claude Javeau

61

Chapter 4 Plurilingualism and Identity Politics: The Case of Switzerland Christina Späti

73

Chapter 5 Languages and Collective Identities in Switzerland: The Case of Bilingual Cantons (Bern, Fribourg, Valais) Manuel Meune

93

Language and Identity Politics : A Cross-Atlantic Perspective, edited by Christina Späti, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2015.

Contents

Chapter 6 Language Rights and Language Endangerment in Canada: The Case of Indigenous Languages Donna Patrick

119

PART III. LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY POLITICS IN IMMIGRATION SOCIETIES Chapter 7 Immigrants and the Reframing of Language and National Identity Politics in the United States Ronald Schmidt Sr.

139

Chapter 8 Challenges of Diversity: Language and Immigration in Switzerland Damir Skenderovic

158

Chapter 9 Language and the Transformation of Identity Politics in Minority Francophone Communities in Canada: Between Collective Linguistic Identity and Individualistic Integration Policies Nicole Gallant

177

198

Index

213

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The Problematic Nexus of Language and Identity: Some Concluding Remarks Robert Gould

– vi –

Language and Identity Politics : A Cross-Atlantic Perspective, edited by Christina Späti, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2015.

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FIGURES

Figure 5.1. Differentiated Identity Pyramids: Canton of Bern

101

Figure 5.2. Common Identity Pyramid for French and German Speakers: Cantons of Fribourg and Valais

102

Figure 5.3. Representations of the Language Border (%)

103

Figure 5.4. Perception of the Territoriality Principle (%)

106

Figure 5.5. Perception of ‘Germanization’ (%)

107

Figure 5.6. Individual Bilingual Skills (%)

109

Figure 5.7. Bilingual Education in the Canton (%)

110

Figure 5.8. Perception of Swiss German (%)

111

Figure 5.9. Reputation of Multilingual Switzerland (%)

112

Figure 5.10. Index of Swiss Pride (%)

113

Figure 5.11. Index of Ethnolinguistic Pride (%)

114

Figure 5.12. Index of Cantonal Pride (%)

115

Figure 9.1. Average Importance of Identity Markers According to Survey Respondents, by Type of Marker

187

Figure 9.2. Identity Markers Ranked by Importance According to Survey Respondents, by Region (Based on Average Importance)

187

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Language and Identity Politics : A Cross-Atlantic Perspective, edited by Christina Späti, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2015.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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T

he issue of language and identity politics has reemerged in the 1990s and has since been at the core of various debates and controversies, not only in Western countries, but also at a global level. For instance, local language skills are increasingly seen as indicators for the successful integration of migrants, while increasing linguistic diversity resulting from migration is presented as a threat to national cohesion. As a result, linguistic competences have become important preconditions in citizenship attribution, and language courses are seen as compulsory for receiving residential permits. Moreover, the debate on ‘global English’ has become increasingly salient, touching on questions not only of language acquisition, but also of collective identity, thereby demonstrating one trend in current criticism of globalization. Such questions continue to emerge increasingly in politics and society, and they have been at the core of my research for almost ten years now. Together with Damir Skenderovic, from the University of Fribourg, I directed – from 2006 to 2010 – the extensive research project ‘Language and Identity Politics’, which was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation within National Research Programme 56, ‘Language Diversity and Language Competence in Switzerland’. The project’s aim was to examine parliamentary debates on language issues in Switzerland since the 1960s, thus focusing on the emerging discussions concerning migrants’ languages and dealing with the question of the role that should be accorded to English in comparison with the four national languages. Curious about gaining a comparative perspective on such questions, I took the opportunity in 2008 to spend a year as a visiting scholar at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. This research stay enabled me to expand my focus on Swiss language politics through a comparison with the debates that were going on in Canada and Québec. I am very grateful to the institute’s former director, Antonia Maioni, and other col– viii –

Language and Identity Politics : A Cross-Atlantic Perspective, edited by Christina Späti, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2015.

Acknowledgements

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leagues for having provided a very stimulating intellectual climate for my research. Living in the bilingual city of Montréal, it soon became clear that it would be an ideal place and context in which to bring together scholars of language and identity politics. From the beginning, the idea was met with great enthusiasm and support from the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. Thanks to the generous sponsorship of the Programme d’études sur le Québec de l’Université McGill, the Centre d’Excellence sur l’Union européenne Université de Montréal/Université McGill and the Swiss National Science Foundation, McGill hosted renowned researchers from the fields of history, political science, sociolinguistics and anthropology on 11–12 June 2009. Warm thanks go to the staff of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada for doing a fantastic job in helping me organize this initiative. I am also grateful to Isabelle Petit and Stéphane Gervais for their support. The stimulating and fruitful discussions at McGill led to the idea of a book project, an enterprise that was met with great interest by Marion Berghahn from Berghahn Books. Many thanks go to Marion, and also to Adam Capitanio and Chris Chappell, who diligently accompanied the publication process. The publication of the book has received generous funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation, as well as from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Fribourg. David Luginbühl and Dirk Fischer helped me with the figures, and Felix Wirth with the index. As always, Duncan Brown has done excellent work in editing the final version of the book manuscript. Last but not least, I would like to thank the authors from both sides of the Atlantic for their highly valuable contributions. Fribourg, July 2015

Christina Späti

– ix –

Language and Identity Politics : A Cross-Atlantic Perspective, edited by Christina Späti, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2015.

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LANGUAGE AND THE RISE OF IDENTITY POLITICS An Introduction Christina Späti

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I

n recent decades, the term ‘identity’ has forged an astonishing career for itself in public as well as academic discussions. Journalists and political actors have adopted the notion in their writing and in speeches and have thus contributed to its widespread use (Farred 2000). As various recent studies and publications contend, identity has become a dominant discourse in the public sphere and in politics, as well as in science (Niethammer 2000). The genesis of the concept is closely tied to the emergence of modernity (Jenkins 2004: 10–14), but it was only in the 1950s that the term itself was introduced and made popular within the social sciences (Gleason 1983). In the aftermath of 1968, social movements dealing with feminism, civil rights, gay culture or Black Power promoted the importance of self-identification and often transposed perceptions of individual identities to groups without considering the question of whether personal and collective identities actually function in a similar manner (Brubaker and Cooper 2000).

Identity and Identity Politics Social theorists such as Anthony Giddens (1991) or Manuel Castells (1997) interpret the growing importance of the concept of identity as a result of increasing globalization. According to their arguments, people now find themselves in an area of tension between the two conflicting trends: on the one hand, globalization, and on the other, the search for orientation by –1–

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means of identity constructions. In the context of the technological revolution, the transformation of capitalism and the trend towards a greater flexibility within the working world, people tend to invoke the alleged importance of collective identity, be it on the basis of religion, gender, language or culture, or by stressing the importance of affiliation with a nation or an ethnic group. In spite of the widespread use of the notion of identity, its conceptualization remains difficult and the term itself rather fuzzy, which makes it tricky to deal with notions of identity and identification. Several difficulties can be noted. First of all, as Siniša Malešević (2006: 13) points out, the concept of identity has not only gained almost universal acceptance, but this fact has also resulted in the renunciation of any questioning of its very existence. Nowadays, there seems to be a large consensus to support the idea that every person has an identity, and that groups can be defined through their collective identity. Accordingly, there are practically no discussions on the question of whether or not identities exist in the first place. Furthermore, there are no accurate determinations of the notion of identity. On the contrary, definitions of identity vary strongly. While it might be useful to differentiate between individual and collective identity, the two phenomena are also frequently mixed together. For instance, we often find deductions from individual identity to collective identity (Straub 2002). This process is facilitated by the fact that people tend to find it difficult to separate personal identity from collective identity, and that symbolic representations of identity are in continuous need of negotiation inside the larger framework of society and its conceptions of a collective identity (Dusche 2010: 84–87). However, according to Jan Assmann (2007: 132), one important difference between the two dimensions of identity lies in the fact that individual identity premises the corporal existence of the person. Collective identity, on the other hand, does not imply an actual, existing social body, but rather something that is socially constructed and used as a metaphor or an imagined variable. Another problem lies in the fact that identity is at the same time a practical and an analytical category, as pointed out by Brubaker and Cooper (2000). As a practical category, identity is used to pursue political interests. Political entrepreneurs use identity as an instrument to induce people to collective action by referring to an alleged collective identity. This appears to be all the easier to achieve when we consider how the notion of identity is variable and can be filled with diverging content. Given the widespread dissemination of the term, it is also the case that it does not seem necessary in political debates to clarify exactly what is understood by it, or to disclose normative or ideological interests behind its usage. This turns identity into –2–

Language and Identity Politics : A Cross-Atlantic Perspective, edited by Christina Späti, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2015.

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Introduction

an ‘elastic category that can be made to accommodate whatever requirements the overall argument demands of it’ (Bendle 2002: 12). Similar difficulties arise when identity is used as an analytical category. Like nation, race or ethnicity, identity is often referred to in scientific work in the same way as it is in practice, which means that it is explicitly or implicitly used in a reifying way (Brubaker and Cooper 2000). In an essentialist manner, language, religion or territory can be used as primordial attachments (Geertz 1973) that supposedly act as ‘authentic’ markers of a fixed and unchangeable collective identity (Smith 1986; Young 1990). This essentialist view has been widely criticized, and a constructionist approach to the concept of collective identity has been established in wide swaths of the social and cultural sciences (Calhoun 1994; Wimmer 2002). This approach not only underlines the abilities of collective identities to be formed and changed, which renders them multiple, unstable and contingent; it also points to the strategic usage of collective identity in political debates (Castells 1997). In recent years, the constructivist approach has also been met with criticism. One critique points to the fact that the importance of power structures in legitimizing or delegitimizing particular identities have not been adequately dealt with by constructivists (Bourdieu 1991). A further point of criticism regarding a ‘soft’ definition of identity is evoked by Brubaker and Cooper (2000), who lament that the characterization of identity as unstable and fragmented ultimately functions more as an expression of certain attitudes than as a description useful for analysis. Finally, as has also been pointed out in recent research, it is obvious that large segments of the population understand identity in an essentialist way, meaning that this approach should not be wilfully neglected (O’Reilly 2001). As such, concepts of collective identity – be they presented as ethnically or nationally relevant – might suddenly deploy manifest impacts, even if they are analytically deconstructed by the social sciences (ReeseSchäfer 1999). Overall there appears to be a significant gap or even contradiction between, on the one hand, the importance attributed to collective identities in political or social debates, and on the other, the theoretical debates that deconstruct identities and describe them as multiple, fluid and fragmented (Bendle 2002). This contradiction and the obvious complexity and inconsistency of the concept of identity has led some researchers to propose abandoning the term altogether (Niethammer 2000). Others, such as Brubaker and Cooper (2000), for example, suggest that instead of identity we should refer to the concepts of ‘identification’ or ‘categorization’. As processual, active terms, they make it possible to avoid the problem of reification and make clear that we are talking about situationally and con–3–

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Christina Späti

textually framed processes (Ivanič 1998: 11; Jenkins 2004: 15–21). Moreover, the term ‘identification’ asks for specifying agents and therefore puts forward their role in constructions of identity. Finally, this approach takes into account the complexity of collective identity: ‘By considering authoritative, institutionalized modes of identification together with alternative modes involved in the practices of everyday life and the projects of social movements, one can emphasize the hard work and long struggles over identification as well as the uncertain outcomes of such struggles’ (Brubaker and Cooper 2000: 16).

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Language and Collective Identity In traditional European political theory, language is generally attributed two different functions (Joseph 2004: 15–17).1 First, language serves as a tool of communication. People who speak the same language can interact, and it is generally agreed that it is impossible for human beings to live in complete isolation. At the same time, a language can be learned in order to enable communication with another person. Second, language also has a symbolic meaning insofar as it is understood as a fundamental and constitutive element of identity, be it personal or collective identity. To some degree, the two functions of language are contradictory, in the sense that language is closely linked to identity, and yet a language can be learned and used in various situations of communication without achieving deeper meaning in terms of identification. However, the symbolic link between language and, for example, ethnic identity is one that is frequently evoked in public as well as academic discourse. Language is thereby represented as a core marker of the alleged collective identity of the ethnic group concerned, and is frequently even seen as being essentially synonymous with it. According to O’Reilly (2003: 20), ‘the connection between language, ethnicity and culture can seem so “natural” that it passes without comment unless challenged’. In their function as categories that serve the construction of communities or demarcation from other communities, language or culture may be used as a means of identifying one’s own group and distinguishing it from another group. In this process of inclusion and exclusion, language is referred to as a point of reference for the politicization of cultural difference (Blommaert and Verschueren 1998). Given the extraordinary importance of language in constructions of ethnicity, language politics represent a crucial political and social context in which collective identities are negotiated. In many public debates in linguistically divided societies, language serves as an explanation for diverging political views or varying economic developments. –4–

Language and Identity Politics : A Cross-Atlantic Perspective, edited by Christina Späti, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2015.

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Introduction

Thereby, language is closely linked to culture and appears not only as a key marker of collective identity, but also as something that has a great impact on other identity markers (Späti 2012). However, such assumptions overlook the fact that groups may exist that display communal cultural characteristics but speak different languages. On the other hand, there are countries that are composed of different ethnic groups, but whose inhabitants speak the same language. As a result of the wide range of highly varied concepts of collective identity and a lack of consensus on how to define them – even in academic research – the assumptions that are made about the relationships between identity and language and between ethnicity and language diverge to a large degree. On the one hand, language is understood as an outstanding feature of ethnic identity. Much like religion, culture, mentality or customs, language is seen within this context as a supposedly objective factor that defines a particular ethnic group as such, and provides its members with a feeling of togetherness. But as Benedict Anderson (1991: 145) writes, since language can be learned, it also allows people to ‘be “invited into” the imagined community’ and thereby develop a subjective feeling of belonging to a particular group. However, other authors (e.g., Hamers and Blanc 2002) reject the idea of a ‘one-to-one correlation’ between language and identity. If ethnicity itself is understood as situational and constructed, then it follows that the correlation between language and ethnicity is also the result of a construction (Fishman 1996). Moreover, these authors make the criticism that such a view of a direct relationship between language and identity is driven by a monolingual and monocultural bias, which negates the complex linguistic repertoires of multilingual individuals. In particular, poststructuralist approaches criticize the notion of focusing on a single defining element such as language in the construction of identity and point instead to the hybridity of postmodern identities (Pavlenko and Blackledge 2004). Reference to the nation has played a major role in the construction of collective identities. As has been shown by various nation-building processes in Europe since the nineteenth century, language has been deemed a key marker of national identity (Gellner 1983; Hobsbawm 1990). First, national elites strained to postulate the importance of having a single language as the national language of the new nation-state and regarded its existence as crucial for the functioning of the state. Second, language served as a cultural hallmark of the national community and as a symbolic demarcation from other nation-states. Under these circumstances, many languages were standardized and local vernaculars were abolished. In other words, as Silverstein (2000) puts it, national languages and national identities arose dialectically. –5–

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The example of Germany in the nineteenth century shows how language served as a significant tool in the process of community building, since it was understood as a constitutive element, as the medium in which social processes received their meaning and where cultural reciprocity was established (Dittrich and Radtke 1990: 22). Accordingly, in the course of their developmental processes, most nation-states tried to present themselves as monolingual – although de facto they were not. In already existing nation-states, too, the question of language took and continues to take a central place. As the rise of ethnic nationalism shows, language and other categories such as religion or ethnic group are immune to any questioning, and politically mobilized for the purposes of the particular group (Connor 1994). In the mainstream discourse of Western public spheres, language is often used as a central category of community in order to exclude other groups, and as a reference point in the politicization of cultural difference (Wodak et al. 1999). Language policy is the means by which nation-states govern language issues so important to their constitution. According to Spolsky (2004), language policy in speech communities consists of three components that interact and mutually influence each other: language practices, language management and language ideology. Language practice describes the largely unreflective everyday speech of individuals and linguistic groups. Under language management we understand specific measures and interventions in the sense of policies, which aim at controlling, influencing or changing the language practices of a language group. As a rule, these policies are adopted by individuals or institutions that have a certain decision-making power at their disposal. Finally, language ideology describes beliefs and notions of what proper language practices should be. In other words, language ideology can be understood as ‘the cultural system of ideas about social and linguistic relationships, together with their loading of moral and political interests’ (Irvine 1989: 255). As such, it has to be taken into account when it comes to the examination of the perceptions and positions of political actors in language policy issues.

Language and Identity Politics Politics of identity can be defined as ‘a struggle over the qualities attributed, socially and institutionally, to individuals and groupings of individuals’ (Wiley 1994: 131). As such, identity politics are not only politics of recognition (Taylor 1992; Honneth 1995; Fraser 1995), but also of misrecognition (Thompson and Yar 2011), and they are closely associated with questions of inclusion and exclusion. Identity has to be seen as consequen–6–

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Introduction

tial in terms of allocation, and this allocation concerns resources that are more than just material and economic: ‘how you are identified may influence what, and how much, you get’ (Jenkins 2004: 174). Moreover, as Bourdieu (1991) has pointed out, the links between identity politics and collective identity are reciprocal. Even though collective identities essentialize somewhat arbitrary divisions among people, once they have been established, they exist as cognitive and mental representations. Identity politics are thus struggles over the monopoly of power to enforce legitimate views of the world, but as such, they also ‘make and unmake groups’ (Bourdieu 1991: 221). The variety of ways in which language is seen as an important identity marker in attempts to evoke and strengthen feelings of belonging, and as a vehicle to convey specific cultural characteristics of a community, are reflected in the various contributions to this book. For a number of different reasons, the book puts a particular focus on the cases of Switzerland and Canada. First, there is a general lack of research studies in English relating to language questions in Switzerland, and the various contributions in this volume therefore close an important research gap. Second, the comparison between Switzerland and Canada provides interesting insights, since the institutional framework of the language politics in the two countries are quite similar, and yet their linguistic policies and their outcomes are quite different (Späti 2015). Third, in both cases, the language politics focus on official languages. It is thus important to also ask about the role and status of autochthonous and immigrant languages as compared to the official languages. Peter Ives’s chapter sets out from the common assumption that there is a clear distinction between the functioning of language as a means of communication and language as a constituent part of identity. However, as he points out, this distinction is blurry as a result of the paradox in the relationship between language and identity. Whereas language constitutes a fundamental part of an individual or collective identity, it is also a learnable structure of communication. In other words, contrary to other features of identity, such as religion or culture, language is a much more permeable aspect of identity, which becomes clear when we consider how individuals can easily be bilingual or multilingual, whereas religious affiliation, for example, generally allows for just a single denomination. After outlining various positions that different authors have taken on this paradox, Ives turns towards Antonio Gramsci’s writings on language. Unlike many others, Gramsci refuses to distinguish between the two characteristics of language, but argues instead that they have to be viewed together. This is because during actual linguistic action, both self-identification and the identification of others can occur simultaneously, for instance, when it –7–

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is claimed that somebody who does not speak the national language does not belong to the nation. Peter A. Kraus tackles the complex question of the accommodation of linguistic diversity within the European Union. By observing a repoliticization of language issues all over Europe, he argues that it is the expressive dimension of language that gives it its particular political importance. By acquiring a language, we are at the same time attached to a specific, culturally shaped collective identity. Linguistic recognition is therefore an important policy in order to accommodate diversity – as it presents itself within the European Union, to take one example. However, as Kraus points out, the language politics of the EU refer primarily to the cultural identities that are embodied by the nation-states concerned. Transnational or hybrid patterns of identification play a much smaller role. One can thus say that the EU’s identity politics are primarily used in order to underpin the linguistic interests of the nation-states. On the other hand, the English language plays an important role within the EU, and its regular use in practice contradicts to some degree the professed multilingualism within the union. Another challenge emanates from immigration, which has further increased multilingualism within Europe. Kraus points to multilingual cities such as Barcelona or Helsinki, which offer laboratory-like conditions for examining complex linguistic situations and the responses to them suggested by contemporary language politics. The following chapters deal with language politics within multilingual states containing national or autochthonous linguistic minorities. These examples show that the successful management of linguistic diversity depends on a number of variables ranging from the size of the linguistic groups to the distribution of power and resources and the instrumentalization of collective memories dealing with past injustices and oppression. As Claude Javeau demonstrates for the case of Belgium, the French language held a strong position in the newly founded nation-state, and it was only in the course of the twentieth century that the Flemish language slowly gained an equal standing. It was not only better economic resources and a higher political position that contributed to the dominance of Francophones, but also language ideology that denigrated Flemish as an uncivilized language unfit for educational purposes. The struggle for language equality was accompanied by a rise in Flemish nationalism, which to some degree eventually managed to supersede other identifications based on class. Within the Francophone language group, however, linguistic nationalism does not play an analogous role, and consequently, the ethnic turn that was observable in Flanders did not take place in Wallonia. For the moment, these circumstances prevent the undoing of the Belgian nation-state, whose future nonetheless remains very uncertain. –8–

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Introduction

The Swiss language situation is quite different from the Belgian one, as is shown in the chapter by Christina Späti. The protection of linguistic particularism was already codified in Switzerland’s first constitution of 1848. As a consequence, it was possible to avoid the overt domination of one language group over others, as was the case in Belgium or Canada in the nineteenth century. Moreover, Switzerland did not see the formation of a linguistic nationalism, and political and intellectual elites strove to present Switzerland as an antithesis to the European model of one nation, one language. This does not mean, however, that concepts of identity tied to language questions play no role in Swiss political debates. Instead, a dilemma emerged between concepts of a plurilingual collective identity versus the idea that collective identity is closely linked to one language and one language only. In other words, the question is, how to uphold the idea of a plurilingual society when collective identity is usually assumed to be based on one single language? As Manuel Meune’s chapter shows, this dilemma is efficiently solved by the federalist structure of Switzerland and the important role that cantonal affiliation plays for large segments of its population. While no internal nationalist movement challenges the concept of Switzerland as a multilingual nation-state, considerable energy is sometimes invested in evoking monolingual collective identity at the level of the canton, or within a particular language group. As Meune demonstrates on the basis of his empirical research, the ‘identity pyramids’ obtained by questioning people about the order of importance of their proposed affiliations are highly complex. Ethnolinguistic affiliation, cantonal belonging and minority position all influence the construction of identity, which turns out to be multifaceted and variable. Focusing on the endangered autochthonous languages in Canada, Donna Patrick’s chapter examines the effects that state language politics towards indigenous languages have on the processes of identification within linguistic minority groups. The recognition of language rights plays an important role within identity politics and reinforces the acknowledgement of the importance of language education and the promotion of fluency and literacy in autochthonous languages. As Patrick demonstrates, Canadian language politics towards indigenous peoples has long been shaped by assimilationist policies. It was only in the 1960s and 1970s that a rights discourse permitted the formation of distinct linguistic and cultural identifications, which were accompanied by claims to fund bilingual schools and support language programmes. The case of the Inuit represents a particularly interesting example as a consequence of current processes in the Canadian Arctic. Various language initiatives seeking to unite Inuit within and across national borders offer new ways to imag–9–

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Christina Späti

ine identification processes at local, regional, national and international levels. Linguistic diversity can be the result of the existence of national or indigenous minorities, or – as can increasingly be observed in many Western societies – of immigration. As Ronald Schmidt Sr. demonstrates in his chapter, the recent significant increase in immigration in the United States has modified the discursive role of language diversity in identity politics. This is because partisans of assimilationist language policies use the issue of immigration to frame language diversity in the United States as an immigrant phenomenon and consequently demand linguistic adaption within the framework of an English-only strategy. As a consequence of the increasing political success of assimilationism, bilingual education has been abolished in several states. As recent surveys have demonstrated, a language shift towards English is already frequent in the first generation of immigrants, and even more so in the subsequent generation. As Schmidt argues, however, it might be fruitful for Latino activists to counter these tendencies and redeploy the narrative of a multilingual United States. Assimilationist policies regarding language also play an important role in Switzerland’s migration politics, as is shown by Damir Skenderovic. Unlike the United States, Switzerland understands itself as an officially multilingual country. However, this linguistic diversity does not extend to migration languages. Instead, their presence is frequently seen as a threat to the traditional quadrilingualism. While in migration policy debates language competence is often understood as a key to integration, language also frequently serves as a marker of identity and a tool of delimitation towards other nontraditional linguistic groups. As Skenderovic demonstrates, the alleged fragility of the linguistic peace between the four traditional language groups served as an argument to reject a multilingualism that would also include migration languages. Eventually, identity politics based on language thus came to serve as a justification for a selective migration policy, on the pretext that immigration represents a threat to national identity. Nicole Gallant’s chapter also deals with the question of migration languages within an officially bilingual state. In Canada, official bilingualism demands the distribution of Francophone immigration to different parts of the country in order to maintain the linguistic equilibrium between Anglophones and Francophones in a country where the latter account for only 4.25 per cent of the total population outside of Québec. As Gallant shows, the strategies designed to foster Francophone immigration not only collide with the individually oriented official Canadian language and migration politics, but also fail to take communitarian concepts important to Francophone groups sufficiently into account. In practice, Francophone com– 10 –

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Introduction

munity organizations in various provinces function as important agents in integration strategies that aim at including new immigrants into the Francophone community. In order to do so, however, the Francophone minority outside Québec had to considerably adjust the imagining of their collective identity. In the concluding chapter, Robert Gould points to the importance of power structures within language politics. Whereas in all the case studies examined in this book, efforts were made or are still being made to recognize linguistic diversity – efforts that demand considerable exertion from the power holders – other multilingual states have failed to avoid status conflicts among their language groups. As the example of Latvia shows, the framing of language groups plays an important role in reinforcing language politics. Negative attributes assigned to Russian residents are intended to underline demands to foster Latvian as the only official language. Some activists do not even shy away from linking Latvian language competence to citizenship in order to achieve this goal. This is another example of identity politics closely linked to language questions. As the different chapters of this book show, the notion of collective identity plays various roles in language politics and in the way that language is perceived. Language as such remains a rather weak identity marker. Individuals, societies and institutions may be multilingual, languages can be learned or forgotten due to migration and language shifts occur over generations, resulting in language loss. Yet language appears to play an important role in identity politics, for majorities as well as for minorities, and for inclusive as well as for exclusive purposes. Identity politics thus expresses itself in politics of recognition and misrecognition, in which language is used as an expression of sameness and of difference, of belonging and of dissociation. Language and identity politics continue to take their place at the top of political agendas in contemporary Western societies. Christina Späti is an associate professor of contemporary history at the University of Fribourg. In 2008/9, she was a visiting scholar at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. Between 2006 and 2010 she codirected the SNSF-funded research project ‘Language and Identity Politics’. Her research focuses on language politics in multilingual states, institutional and societal bilingualism, anti-Zionism and antisemitism, and 1968 in Western Europe, with a particular emphasis on Switzerland. Her recent books include Sprache als Politikum: Ein Vergleich der Schweiz und Kanadas seit den 1960er Jahren (Augsburg: Wißner, 2015) and Die 68er Jahre in der Schweiz: Aufbruch in Politik und Kultur (Baden: hier+jetzt, 2012, with Damir Skenderovic). – 11 –

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Christina Späti

Notes 1. For a critique of this dichotomy, see Peter Ives’s chapter in this book.

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References Anderson, B. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Assmann, J. 2007. Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen. Munich: Beck. Bendle, M.F. 2002. ‘The Crisis of “Identity” in High Modernity’, British Journal of Sociology 53(1): 1–18. Blommaert, J. and J. Verschueren. 1998. ‘The Role of Language in European Nationalist Ideologies’, in B.B. Schieffelin, K.A. Woolard and P.V. Kroskrity (eds), Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 189–210. Bourdieu, P. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power: The Economy of Linguistic Exchanges. Cambridge: Polity Press (in association with Basil Blackwell). Brubaker, R. and F. Cooper. 2000. ‘Beyond “Identity”’, Theory and Society 29: 1–47. Calhoun, C. 1994. ‘Social Theory and the Politics of Identity’, in C. Calhoun (ed.), Social Theory and the Politics of Identity. Malden, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 9–36. Castells, M. 1997. The Power of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell. Connor, W. 1994. Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Dittrich, E.J. and. F.-O. Radtke. 1990. ‘Einleitung: Der Beitrag der Wissenschaft zur Konstruktion ethnischer Minderheiten’, in E.J. Dittrich and F.-O. Radtke (eds), Ethnizität: Wissenschaft und Minderheiten. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, pp. 11–40. Dusche, M. 2010. Identity Politics in India and Europe. Los Angeles: Sage. Farred, G. 2000. ‘Endgame Identity? Mapping the New Left Roots of Identity Politics’, New Literary History 31(4): 627–48. Fishman, J.A. 1996. ‘Language and Ethnicity: The View from Within’, in F. Coulmas (ed.), The Handbook of Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 327–43. Fraser, N. 1995. ‘From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a “Postsocialist” Age’, New Left Review 212: 68–93. Geertz, C. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books. Gellner, E. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Giddens, A. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gleason, P. 1983. ‘Identifying Identity: A Semantic History’, The Journal of American History 69(4): 910–31. Hamers, J.F. and M. Blanc 2000. Bilinguality and Bilingualism, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hobsbawm, E. 1990. Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Honneth, A. 1995. The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Struggles. Cambridge: Polity Press. Irvine, J. 1989. ‘When Talk Isn’t Cheap: Language and Political Economy’, American Ethnologist 16: 248–67. Ivanič, R. 1998. Writing and Identity: The Discoursal Construction of Identity in Academic Writing. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Jenkins, R. 2004. Social Identity, 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge.

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Introduction

Joseph, J.E. 2004. Language and Identity: National, Ethnic, Religious. Basingstoke, UK, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Malešević, S. 2006. Identity as Ideology: Understanding Ethnicity and Nationalism. Basingstoke, UK, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Niethammer, L. 2000. Kollektive Identität: Heimliche Quellen einer unheimlichen Konjunktur. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt. O’Reilly, C. 2001. ‘Introduction: Minority Languages, Ethnicity and the State in the European Union’, in C. O’Reilly (ed.), Language, Ethnicity and the State, vol. 1, Minority Languages in the European Union. Basingstoke, UK, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–19. ———. 2003. ‘When a Language Is “Just Symbolic”: Reconsidering the Significance of Language to the Politics of Identity’, in G. Hogan-Brun and S. Wolff (eds), Minority Languages in Europe: Frameworks, Status, Prospects. Basingstoke, UK, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 16–33. Pavlenko, A. and A. Blackledge. 2004. ‘Introduction: New Theoretical Approaches to the Study of Negotiation of Identities in Multilingual Contexts’, in A. Pavlenko and A. Blackledge (eds), Negotiation of Identities in Multilingual Contexts. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, pp. 1–33. Reese-Schäfer, W. 1999. ‘Einleitung: Identität und Interesse’, in W. Reese-Schäfer (ed.), Identität und Interesse: Der Diskurs der Identitätsforschung. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, pp. 7–43. Silverstein, M. 2000. ‘Whorfianism and the Linguistic Imagination of Nationality’, in P.V. Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities and Identities. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, pp. 85–138. Smith, A. 1986. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Späti, C. 2012. ‘Sprache, Ethnizität, Identität: Die schweizerische Sprachenpolitik zwischen Ethnisierung und nationaler Kohäsion’, in B. Engler (ed.), Wir und die Anderen: Stereotypen in der Schweiz / Nous et les autres: Stéréotypes en Suisse. Fribourg: Academic Press, pp. 139–55. ———. 2015. Sprache als Politikum: Ein Vergleich der Schweiz und Kanadas seit den 1960er Jahren. Augsburg: Wißner-Verlag. Spolsky, B. 2004. Language Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Straub, J. 2002. ‘Personal and Collective Identity: A Conceptual Analysis’, in H. Friese (ed.), Identities: Time, Difference and Boundaries. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 56–76. Taylor, C. 1992. Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition”. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Thompson, S. and M. Yar (eds). 2011. The Politics of Misrecognition. Farnham, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Wiley, N. 1994. ‘The Politics of Identity in American History’, in C. Calhoun (ed.), Social Theory and the Politics of Identity. Malden, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 130–49. Wimmer, A. 2002. Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict: Shadows of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wodak, R., et al. 1999. The Discursive Construction of National Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Young, I.M. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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P A RT I

LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY POLITICS

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Theory and Concepts

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Chapter 1

LANGUAGE AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITY Theorizing Complexity Peter Ives

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I

t is impossible to separate language from questions of political identity.1 How individuals use language is often at the centre of identity politics, as was evident in the turmoil over Arizona’s immigration law (Gorman and Riccardi 2010).2 The controversial Arizona Senate Bill 1070 requires, among other provisions, that law enforcement officers determine the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being an illegal immigrant.3 However, they must accomplish this without resorting to ‘racial profiling’, which results in the ironic situation in which an individual’s usage of English somehow functions as an illusive sign for whether or not they should be suspected of being an illegal immigrant (Riccardi 2010). This particular law is part of a general shift that has been seen over the last decade concerning immigration and language politics in Arizona, including the policy of firing teachers that speak English with ‘heavy’ accents ( Jordon 2010), and that of making English the official state language in 2006. The job losses and financial insecurities of the recent economic recession have only exacerbated this situation, making immigration an issue that generates considerable fear and hostility. I begin this chapter by using a particular example with which to note the politically conflictual nature of language and identity, because I do not want such issues to be lost in this chapter’s more theoretical examination. Similarly, as is evident in most of the chapters in this volume, the role of governments and specific policies are crucial to language politics. These themes come into my argument nearer the end of this chapter, but my primary focus is on what language is, and how we understand and think about – 17 –

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it. This chapter argues that the complexity of political issues involving language use and identity will remain convoluted if we are not conscious of how we conceptualize language and the implications of our assumptions about what language is. I specifically argue that the common practice of distinguishing and abstracting the function of language as an instrument of communication from language as a defining feature of identity and community leads to interminable quagmires. Once this distinction is made, it is too easy for debates to congeal into simplistic oppositions that pit one of these dimensions against the other, or treat them as separable quantities that can be added together in differing amounts as if they were ingredients in a recipe. These debates then fail to address the clearly political issues of power that are really paramount. My goal is to propose an approach that can more thoroughly grapple with the coinciding of communication and expression of identity within language, which I argue is an inherently political question regarding the power relationships among those involved in language use.

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Language as an Instrument versus Language as Constituent of Identity John E. Joseph traces a long history of what he calls the paradox of the relationship between language and identity. He summarizes it like this: ‘My language is a fundamental part of who I am, culturally and mentally … and yet other people can learn my language or I theirs’ ( Joseph 2004: 48). He looks at these two poles – of language as something intricately connected to identity and language as a learnable structure of communication – and examines the shuttling back and forth that has gone on between them throughout the history of linguistics, especially in the period from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. Adding to the complexity of this paradox, Joseph notes that while there is often some confluence of linguistic boundaries with ethnic identities, cultural practices and political distinctions, such divisions are almost impossible to pin down with any clarity from a scientific standpoint, and each is commonly crossed. There is much intermingling between ethnic identity, cultural practice and language usage. Many political scientists, political theorists and scholars who deal with language policy raise similar points, often using analogous distinctions between language as an instrument of communication (a learnable system for conveying messages) and language as a fundamental constitutive aspect of who we are, that is to say, our political, social and cultural identities that are related to how we perceive the world. However, these distinctions are rarely posed as a paradox, or as being explicitly in tension. Rather, the – 18 –

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Language and Collective Identity

distinction is most often posited as a straightforward, self-evident truism; language has a communicative ‘dimension’ and an expressive or symbolic ‘dimension’ beyond the explicit messages that it denotes. The importance of such an expressive or symbolic connection to our identity is also often tied to the notion that our first language – our ‘mother tongue’ or ‘native language’ (both of which are loaded and interesting metaphors)4 – is inextricable from the cultural and social perspective through which we see and interpret the world. As such, language is deeply rooted in our upbringing and education, but also gives a sense of our relationship to our families, our histories and who we are in the world. From this perspective, as I will explore in more detail below, it becomes more difficult to separate language from how we make meaning about the world and how we reason by using language. However, the notion that language is a vehicle of communication, an instrument for conveying information, ideas and emotions, emphasizes that it is something that can be learned, and many individuals are able to use a particular language very effectively even though they have no such deep connection to the culture and histories of the previous speakers of that language. In this sense, specific languages can be used to convey ideas, thoughts and emotions formed prior to their expression in any given language.5 This chapter will first argue that these two different approaches to language implicitly contain different and contrasting views of political community and the role of language within them. It will do so by relating each view of language to different traditions within European political thought, namely, the individualist liberalism of John Locke, on the one hand, and what is sometimes vaguely or loosely labelled ‘Continental philosophy’ but is more precisely categorized as German Romanticism, on the other. I will then turn to contemporary examples of analyses of language politics, specifically the work of Peter Kraus on the European Union and Sue Wright on globalization, to show how the opposing nature of these two European theoretical perspectives are replicated in debates over language. I will conclude by offering a reading of Antonio Gramsci that highlights an approach to the politics of language that is able to view language as equally and simultaneously an instrument of communication and a medium of communal identity, in a manner that reemphasizes the political struggles that take place within language usage.

Opposing Traditions in the History of Political Thought John Locke (1632–1704), a key founding figure of liberalism, explicitly defines language as a collection of words that is attached to the ideas of indi– 19 –

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viduals, and thus sees language primarily as a vehicle with which to move ideas from one human to others (Locke 1995: 321, 327). He provides a model or ideal of how language should work, in which ideas formed prior to language are transported effectively in language from one individual to others. This general perspective, albeit in more sophisticated versions, informs much of the analytic philosophy of language, where the proposition is the unit of analysis (Taylor 1995: 79–99). As Hannah Dawson notes, Locke begins his analysis of language by insisting that it is ‘the great instrument and common tie of society’, given by God because humans were designed to be ‘a sociable creature’ (Locke 1995: 321; see also Dawson 2007: 186). Dawson’s thesis is that Locke’s theory of language ‘shakes the prevailing orthodoxy out of its complacency’, because words ‘must signify the ideas of someone, and therefore are limited to the ideas of particular speakers’ (Dawson 2007: 188). So on the one hand, not surprisingly for one of the fathers of liberal individualism, Locke’s theory of language rests on the individual, and on the individual’s use of language to transfer his or her ideas, feelings and thoughts to other humans. On the other hand, however, language is necessarily communal because it is conventional (rather than natural or God-given), and in order for the individual to use it successfully, those with whom that person wishes to communicate must recognize the words in such a way that they stand for the same ideas. Dawson stresses the communal themes in Locke’s theory of language, especially in his arguments that ‘common use’ dictates the meaning of words, that it is through words that ideas become public. Dawson argues that for Locke, we should subordinate our self-interest to the good of society from a moral perspective (Dawson 2007: 295–98). However, even in Dawson’s reading, Locke’s emphasis gives overwhelming priority to language as a vehicle with which to convey thought or meaning that is preconstituted and ‘primarily private’ (Dawson 2007: 2).6 Thus, language is secondary to the emotions, meanings, thoughts or ideas that language is to convey with as little distortion as possible. Locke’s argument is that this conveying function is exceedingly difficult and that language often fails. In attempting to minimize such failure, Locke frames the expressive dimension of language and the attachment of speakers to their language community, that is, their communal identity (cultural or political), as a minimal precondition for communication among individuals to occur. We can interpret Locke in terms of him seeing language as having two dimensions, but where the communicative one is clearly dominant, and the communal one is a precondition that has nothing to do with identity or the process of reasoning, except in a negative sense when language fails in its primary function as a vehicle for conveying ideas, thoughts and emotions among individuals. – 20 –

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Language and Collective Identity

In contrast to Locke’s theory of language are those of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) and German Romanticism more generally. This tradition views language as the defining feature of a ‘people’ or a Volk, deeply connected to culture and inextricable from reason itself. Of course, this view does not deny that language is a vehicle of individual communication, or that individuals can learn different languages. However, both Fichte and Herder argued that thought does not precede language and emphasized the role of language in defining human rationality, identities and political communities. In Addresses to the German Nation, Fichte defines both a ‘people’ (Volk) and a ‘nation’ not, as is often assumed, through recourse to ethnic or racial categories, or even biological notions of descent, but rather, explicitly by language. This is evident in Fichte’s explanation of what makes the German people different from (and superior to?) other peoples of Teutonic descent (and why the French occupation of Germany is therefore unjust and detrimental to the German people and culture):

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Germans remained in the original dwelling places of their ancestral stock; whereas the latter [the other Teutonic peoples] emigrated to other places; the former retained and developed their original language of the ancestral stock, whereas the latter adopted foreign language and gradually reshaped it in a way of their own. This earliest difference must be regarded as the explanation of those which came later, e.g. that in the original fatherland, in accordance with Teutonic primitive custom, there continued to be a federation of states under a head with limited powers, whereas in the foreign countries the form of government was brought more in accordance with the existing Roman method, and monarchies were established, etc. (Fichte 1968 [1808]: 47)

Fichte stresses that it is the purity of the language of the German people (not the racial makeup of its speakers) and their ‘continuous communication with each other’, the ‘living power of speech … which has flowed down through all conditions without interruption’ (Fichte 1968: 49), that explains the German distinctiveness that is so unjustly and tragically under foreign yoke and deprived of its own autonomy and sovereignty. Fichte’s notion of language defining a community, constituting a nation through political and cultural identity, is very different from Locke’s instrumental notion of language that allows individuals to meet the precondition of commonality that makes communication possible.7 Yet this difference must be understood as something that also relates to their differences in terms of the artificial and arbitrary versus the natural character of language itself. Where Locke was clear that signs signify ideas only based on a conventional and arbitrary connection, Fichte’s theory of language began from an insistence that language is natural and that the meaning of individual words maintains a natural connection. Arash Abizadeh (2005) argues quite – 21 –

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convincingly that this connection smuggles ethnic nationalism back in to what would superficially seem to be merely linguistic-cultural nationalism. Herder is not as explicit about the connection between language and the identity of a people and a nation as Fichte. F.M. Barnard has cautioned against equating Herder’s notion of nationhood with the emergence of nationalism (2003: 30–33). Nevertheless, Herder agrees with Fichte that language is a central feature in defining a ‘people’. Perhaps more important here is Herder’s greater influence in arguing that thought and logic cannot be prior to nor separable from language, thus challenging Locke’s approach to language. This is not the place to analyze the debate about the ‘importance of Herder’, to use Charles Taylor’s title, but it will help to summarize it. Taylor claims that Herder created a ‘counterthrust’ to the previous tradition and pioneered a line of thinking that led to Wittgenstein and Heidegger (1995: 90–91). Others place Herder within earlier traditions of seeing language primarily as ‘nomenclature’ (Losonsky 2006: esp. 106–8). Most interpreters would agree, however, that unlike Fichte’s need to provide a theory of an original (unified) language, the ‘redirection of linguistic interest away from the origins of language to the mechanisms of linguistic activity is Herder’s most notable achievement’ (Losonsky 2006: 107). This linguistic activity is inseparable from the use of human reason (Herder 1966: 120). Thus, individual languages differ based on the experiences and abstractions that their speakers create (Herder 1966: 159), something that is then passed down to children through parents in a manner that celebrates what Locke decries as leading to the uncertainty and possible failure of communication. I have ventured only a short way down this path, and perhaps have opened a can of worms far too wiggly to contain here.8 My point is to illustrate that there are two opposing traditions within political theory that approach language from very different and, in certain senses, opposing perspectives. While both address the fact that language is not only an instrument for communication among individuals, but also plays an important role in defining political and cultural identities, they each privilege a different aspect and minimize the other.

Contemporary Uses of Two-Dimensional Language It is my contention that current debates around language politics often seem to replicate this basic difference between Lockean and Romanticist approaches to language (cf. Ives 2004c), but frequently hide or obscure this with a more sterile division between these two approaches by using metaphors that relate to language having two ‘aspects’ or ‘dimensions’. ‘Aspect’ – 22 –

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is an interesting metaphor that is etymologically related to the appearance of an object, the way it is looked at. ‘Aspect’ suggests that language may be many things of which its communicative function is just one, and its expressive or symbolic nature just another, but it implies that these two characteristics have no necessary relation or connection. The metaphor of ‘dimension’ is more specific in implying that there are necessarily numerous dimensions of different kinds – like height and width, for example. However, just as physical objects must have three dimensions, this metaphor implies that language must have more to it than just being communicative or just being expressive. Most importantly, the dimensions themselves are separate and independent. An object’s height tells us nothing of its width or depth. There can be tall and wide objects, as well as tall and narrow ones. In this sense, the two ‘dimensions’ of language are abstracted from each other. Such metaphors downplay or ignore what Joseph (2004) describes as the paradoxical nature of language. I argue that when the complexity and tensions concerning the question of how language is understood are dealt with by recourse to the abstracting and constraining metaphor of language having two ‘dimensions’ – the instrumental and the expressive – the real political dynamics at play are foreclosed, stuck in a static debate about what is an adequate acknowledgement of the expressive dimension vis-à-vis its role as an instrument of communication. I argue, however, that it is precisely the differences in these two approaches – of language primarily as a tool of communication versus language as the medium of community and reason – that have become the underlying ground of contention in debates concerning language politics. I will here use Peter Kraus’s excellent book A Union of Diversity: Language, Identity and Polity-Building in Europe (2008) as an example, not solely because his chapter in this volume deals with related issues, but also because Kraus shows an unusual attentiveness to political theory and precisely the types of questions that I am raising here. However, his use of the metaphor of language having two essential ‘dimensions’ illustrates my argument, and creates a clear contrast with Sue Wright’s analysis of the language politics of globalization. I could have used many other examples, including most of the contributions in the important volume within normative political theory that was edited by Will Kymlicka and Allan Patten (2003), or the debate over whether the massive spread of English across the globe is ‘linguistic imperialism’ or a necessary component of a cosmopolitan response to economic globalization (see Ives 2009, 2010). I do not wish to boil down any of these complex debates and the situations they attempt to understand. Instead, I want to highlight the importance of being explicit about what we imply and assume in our analysis of the relationships between language and identity. – 23 –

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Kraus argues that what is at stake in European Union language policy is the very success, democratic nature and future of the European Union itself. Language, Kraus argues, is central to whether or not the EU can adequately address the diversity that is inherent to its project. He also contends that because of its inadequate attempt to deal with language and language policy, ‘the EU has thus far not been able to live up to its normative potential and set up a truly innovative frame for responding to the challenges of diversity’ (Kraus 2008: 9). Kraus astutely relates debates concerning a European demos or ‘people’ to language policies. In so doing, he discusses the history of political theory, specifically Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835),9 in theorizing this expressive dimension of language. So while Kraus is fully aware of the different and competing theoretical traditions that serve as the grounding for language as something primarily instrumental versus language as being fundamentally related to cultural community, he, too, employs the metaphor of two ‘dimensions’ of language. He does not posit any necessary conflict or paradox between the two. Rather, he notes that both the ‘functional aspects’ and those related to ‘expressive authenticity … come together when a democratic public sphere is constituted. In the area of language policy, it has therefore always been difficult to distinguish the defence of instrumental interests from the struggle for the recognition of identities’ (Kraus 2008: 77). His analysis implicitly shows an awareness of the potential conflict between these two dimensions of language. His assessment of the debate between Jürgen Habermas and Dieter Grimm on the EU’s constitution relies on the conflict between these two dimensions of language. Kraus criticizes both sides in this debate for overemphasizing one aspect of language at the expense of the other. Where Habermas is accused, rightly from my perspective, of ‘downplaying the expressive binding power of particular linguistic identities in favour of the instrumental requirements of cosmopolitan communication’, Grimm, for his part, according to Kraus (and once again I agree), ‘correlates language primarily with the identity of nation-states’ (Kraus 2008: 142). Not wanting to overshadow the many other important contributions of Kraus’s analysis, this question of how to conceptualize language seems to be an underlying theme running through the book. Kraus also suggests that the key to the language politics in the EU is a correct, or convincing, relationship between these two dimensions of language. Kraus explicitly derives his position from the tradition of Herder and Humboldt, but especially as formulated by Charles Taylor (with significant contributions from James Tully and Axel Honneth). Kraus insists that ‘the expressive dimension of language is always a part of speaking’ (Kraus 2008: 83). This proposition is then central to Kraus’s argument that all minorities – 24 –

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and their languages must be able to engage in a process of ‘recognition’ where their perspectives and desires to retain their identity and language can be placed in a dialogic exchange with the rest of the society in question – in this case, the entire EU. Thus, like Taylor, Kraus embraces a type of liberalism that endorses individual rights, but not at the expense of, or in a manner that necessarily trumps, social and collective considerations (Taylor 1994: 59–65).10 One predictable response to Kraus’s position is that the communicative function should actually take priority over this expressive dimension. Many assessments of the spread of English across the globe suggest that to the extent that we are open to the lives of others around the world, the future will likely see many speakers choosing the communicative over the expressive dimension, even if the latter will always exist in some form (for an overview and discussion, see Ives 2006). The only crucial point, from such a position, is that English is not forced on individuals, but is the result of some process involving choice. This is the basic argument made by Sue Wright in emphasizing the impact of globalization. Her particular version involves the notion of bilingualism, where minority and ‘mother tongue’ languages are used by some with ‘a profound desire to maintain their affective links with the groups into which they were socialised’, but this occurs in tandem with those same people acquiring the lingua franca of English, with its ‘advantages in gaining access to the wider world’ (Wright 2004: 249). Thus, the symbolic dimension, Wright argues, can happily flourish next to the communicative dimension, precisely because they are separated into different languages, the communicative instrument, English, playing the more prominent role in worldwide interaction. Of course, particular individuals may hold their other language near and dear to their identity and believe it to be more important for their own values than the communicative lingua franca, but on the whole, the global language of communication is the more prominent. Wright tentatively proposes a future where the ‘withering of the state’ continues, enabling a world ‘where identity is served by membership of small language groups and communication is catered for as an ever-larger percentage of populations learn the current lingua franca’ (2004: 249). Here, global English is praised, because while there may be hierarchies of power and a detriment to nonnative speakers, the ‘one good thing about English and globalisation is that there is no actual exclusion’ (Wright 2004: 250). Thus, we have a debate between Wright and Kraus about central political issues concerning what type of world can foster freedom, equality and justice. Yet this debate is seemingly reduced to a question of which dimension of language should be given priority, or how these different dimensions should play off against each other. For Kraus, justice, equality – 25 –

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and freedom will be inhibited, and the EU will fail to live up to its potential, if the instrumental dimension of language is given too much priority and the expressive dimension is not adequately acknowledged. For Wright, since language is most fundamentally about communication between individuals, it is futile and detrimental, especially for the least advantaged in the world (or the EU), to put such weight on the expressive dimension that it impedes language as an instrument of communication. According to Wright, this also holds the danger of harkening back to the troubling aspects of preglobalized nationalism. The debate seems quickly reduced to the appropriate balance of the combination between the expressive and the instrumental dimensions of language. To a certain degree, unless we can find another way of approaching these issues, we will replicate some version of the debate between Lockean liberalism and German Romanticism.

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The Importance of Gramsci Fortunately, I think Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) provides just such an alternative to abstracting or dissecting language into two different ‘dimensions’ and then debating which should take precedence over the other. In Gramsci’s writings on language, I will locate an understanding of language both as a vehicle for communication and as a constituent element of one’s collective identity, including how one views the world. Rather than abstracting these two characteristics of language, however, I argue that Gramsci sees them as inextricable, as coterminous, as operating in a simultaneous manner that refuses any abstraction that could pit them against one another, or make one prior to or more fundamental than the other. For Gramsci, it is precisely the moment of communication in which the questions of collective identity and the power relationships that they involve come into play. I argue that Gramsci breaks the stalemate described above concerning how much weight to give to either dimension of language. For Gramsci, communication and expression of identity must be viewed together in time, in space and, most importantly, in the exercise of power. Gramsci’s wide influence comes not from his writings on language, but mostly through his conceptualization of hegemony to describe and analyze various ways in which governments with some formal claims to being democratic and constitutional are able to garner consent (active or passive) from those they govern, despite this governing often being contrary to the interests, desires and perspectives of those governed. His focus on varying hegemonic relations among social groups and classes broadens what had often been addressed more narrowly through the concept of ideology. There is much debate over the specifics of Gramsci’s writings on hege– 26 –

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mony, but it is generally accepted that he defined politics to include culture and literature and that he emphasized how dominant ideologies are propagated in complex ways and always through the functioning of various institutions, many of which exist not as explicit institutions of the state, but rather in civil society. Gramsci is not usually seen as being important for his contributions to the theorization of language. However, Gramsci trained as a linguist at the University of Turin under the supervision of Matteo Bartoli, a leading figure in Italian linguistics. Bartoli was engaged in debate with the neogrammarians, the dominant school of historical linguistics from which Ferdinand de Saussure arose. Gramsci saw language, and specifically the question of a nationally standardized Italian language, as a central political concern throughout his life. He clearly saw it as being inextricable from the conditions that enabled fascism to seize power with a large degree of popular support. Indeed, there is substantial evidence that one of his earliest encounters with the concept of hegemony, egemonia, was in linguistic circles, where it was being used along with fascino-prestigio (Lo Piparo 1979; Ives 2004a, 2004b). For my purposes here, the importance of Gramsci lies in his conceptualization of language as simultaneously an instrument of communication and rooted, not so much to any sense of a ‘people’ or Volk, but to people’s perspectives on the world, to what he called ‘spontaneous philosophy’ or ‘common sense’. Thus, not unlike Herder, Gramsci argues that language cannot be separated from the process of thinking, or reasoning: Having first shown that everyone is a philosopher, though in her own way and unconsciously, since even in the slightest manifestation of any intellectual activity whatsoever, in ‘language’, there is contained a specific conception of the world, one then moves to the second level, which is that of awareness and criticism. (Gramsci 1971: 323, translation slightly altered)

In this way, Gramsci approaches language not primarily as a vehicle to convey ideas, thoughts and emotions, but rather more like Herder and Fichte, as a conception of the world, as a necessarily ‘collective term’. As he writes, ‘Language also means culture and philosophy’. Unlike Herder and especially Fichte, however, who root this connection in a homogenous community, Gramsci sees language and culture as an arena of fragmentation, historical change and struggle. The above sentence continues: ‘and therefore the fact of “language” is in reality a multiplicity of facts more or less organically coherent and co-ordinated. At the limit it could be said that every speaking being has a personal language of her own, that is her own particular way of thinking and feeling’ (Gramsci 1971: 349, translation slightly altered). The question that Gramsci poses for both language and – 27 –

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culture is how they unify different people ‘in a series of strata, to the extent that they come into contact with each other, a greater or lesser number of individuals who understand each other’s mode of expression in differing degrees, etc.’ (Gramsci 1971: 349). This view of language explains why Gramsci is so critical of both Esperanto and Alessandro Manzoni’s strategy for creating a ‘standard’ Italian language after Italian political unification in 1861. The famous author of the classic novel The Betrothed, Manzoni was appointed to the government commission concerning the standardization of the Italian language in 1868. This commission was set the task of solving the problem of the lack of a ‘standard Italian language’. The host of different dialects were each incommunicable from north to south, and the written literary language, which Manzoni’s detractors wanted to be the base of ‘standard Italian’, was restricted to a tiny elite stratum. Somewhere between 2.5 and 12 per cent of the newly created Italian citizenry spoke something that could be called ‘Italian’ (cf. Ives 2004b: 36–37; De Mauro 1986). Manzoni advocated that the model for ‘standard Italian’ should be Florentine, as spoken by the bourgeoisie. The Italian government funded dictionaries and grammar books based on this ‘standard’. The newly established mandatory school system would try to recruit most of its teachers from the Tuscan region, and this dialect would be spread across all of Italy and become the national language (Haddock 2000; Migliorini 1966: 363–66; Reynolds 1950). Gramsci repeated the critique made by Isaiah Graziadio Ascoli, who argued that this strategy would not work in practice, since what he called the ‘linguistic substratum’ – the existing dialects – would continue to exert pressure on this ‘standard’ Italian, thereby altering it. Thus, Manzoni’s ‘solution’ would not be able to create a national, common Italian language (Gramsci 1985: 28–29). Ascoli argued that the cultural diversity, the very different social conditions and political asymmetries throughout Italy, of which the diverse dialects were an integral part, could not be reduced by imposing a language, the creation of which had nothing to do with these other differences. Gramsci compared Manzoni’s solution to the dream of Esperanto, noting that Manzoni (ironically influenced by German Romanticism and the valorization of spoken, living language) was expecting the majority of Italians to adopt a language that was artificial to their experiences, cultures, histories and views of the world. If language is just a vehicle for transporting ideas, emotions and feelings, the advantages of a ‘common language’ allowing national communication would be paramount. This is roughly equivalent to Locke’s approach to language. For Gramsci, however, precisely because language involves culture, spontaneous philosophy and how the world is viewed, as I have been highlighting in the German – 28 –

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Romanticist approach to language, this imposition would lead to the even greater passivity of citizens unable to become critically and politically engaged. It would further fragment their ability to make sense of the world. Like Fichte and Herder, Gramsci argues that there is no such thing as ‘philosophy in general’ not connected to particular people and their particular conceptions of the world. However, Gramsci notes that the ‘common sense’ or the ‘spontaneous philosophy’ of some social groups is only embryonic because, ‘for reasons of submission and intellectual subordination’, a nondominant social group will have ‘adopted a conception of the world which is not its own but is borrowed from another group; and it affirms this conception verbally and believes itself to be following it’ (Gramsci 1971: 327). Thus, unlike Fichte or Herder’s assumption of homogeneity within a ‘people’ defined by a given language, Gramsci shows much greater awareness of heterogeneity within any given culture or political identity. This means that many social groups have a confused conception of the world that is particularly divided along the lines of thought or language, on one side, and action and experience, on the other. Gramsci is extending Ascoli’s more practical concerns about whether a language can successfully be imposed to an analysis of the political effects of such an imposition. This is all based on the argument that language is not purely an instrument of communication, but related to how we perceive the world and, thus, who we are in the world. However, it is crucial to note that Gramsci’s understanding of this does not rest on any static notion of belonging to a community in some primordial and pure sense, as Fichte’s account suggests. Gramsci also analyzes the political importance of having an effective ‘common language’ in Italy to facilitate communication between the north and the south, as well as among the different classes and social groups. His diagnosis of why Italian society was ripe for fascism includes the sharp disparities along these geographical, social and class lines. He was harshly critical of the Socialists and some Communists for not creating necessary alliances between the northern urban workers and the southern peasants (Gramsci 1978: 441–62). This fragmentation across Italy allowed Mussolini to pit the north and south against each other and to consolidate an alliance between the southern landowners and the northern industrialists, with popular support from the petite bourgeoisie and reactionary forces. When the Fascist Education Act of 1923 reduced the amount of teaching of Italian grammar in primary education, Gramsci argued that because the children of the upper classes would learn ‘standard’ Italian informally from their families, the working-class and peasant children were the ones who would be disempowered. He went so far as to write: ‘On the contrary, it is rational to collaborate practically and willingly to welcome everything that may serve to create a common national language, the non-existence – 29 –

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of which creates friction particularly in the popular masses’ (Gramsci 1985: 182). Elsewhere, I have compared Gramsci’s position to those who support English as a lingua franca for reasons of social justice, such as Philippe Van Parijs (cf. Ives 2006). For my purpose here, however, it is enough to note Gramsci’s focus on language as a potential vehicle for communication, especially among different cultures, classes and social groups. Central to Gramsci’s position, and what distinguishes him from any simplistic notions of linguistic relativism or some version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, is his complex discussion of translation, which he sees not just as a technical, linguistic process, but as a cultural, social and political interaction (Ives 2004a: 97–133; Boothman 2010; Lacorte 2010). I will touch on this below, but must first introduce two concepts that Gramsci uses to theorize what I have called the coterminous nature of communication and the expressivity of language.

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Spontaneous and Normative Grammar As I have noted above, Gramsci introduces the idea that all individuals might be seen as having their own language, but taking it to this extreme, Gramsci argues, would be ridiculous and communication would be impossible. Gramsci explains this with reference to the etymology of the term ‘idiot’, coming from the Greek idios, meaning ‘private’ or ‘one’s own’ (Gramsci 1985: 124). Language must be structured and, as Locke admits (as noted above), for meaning to occur there must be a community of language users. Gramsci provides some crucial tools in analyzing the power relationships involved in determining how these structures are achieved, including when different structures or grammars come into conflict. It is the absence of such tools or considerations that are hidden by the metaphor of ‘dimensions’ of language discussed above. Gramsci suggests that there are two basic forms of grammar: those forms that are ‘spontaneous’ or ‘immanent’ and operate more or less unconsciously, ‘by which one speaks “according to grammar” without knowing it’ (Gramsci 1985: 180); and ‘normative grammar’, which is the conscious set of rules that dictate how a language should be used. These rules are often (but not always) written and are one of the primary resources for teaching language. Gramsci expands this traditional notion of ‘normative grammar’ by defining it as being made up of reciprocal monitoring, reciprocal teaching and reciprocal ‘censorship’ expressed in such questions as ‘What did you say?’, ‘What do you mean?’, ‘Make yourself clearer,’ etc, and in mimicry and teasing. This whole complex of actions and re– 30 –

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actions come together to create a grammatical conformism, to establish ‘norms’ or judgments of correctness and incorrectness. (Gramsci 1985: 180)

Note here how these questions all revolve around communication, that is, language use fulfilling its function of being a medium by which two or more people may understand each other. Yet, this is the very form of ‘normative’ imposition so crucial to those concerned with the expressive dimension of language. If you belong to a given community, political or cultural, on the grounds that you share its language (as we have seen stated most explicitly by Fichte), the question is, how does that belonging take place, and who gets to police its boundaries and the forms of speech that identify its users as belonging? Where Fichte was concerned with the culturally (and not yet politically) defined Volk, Gramsci also includes what we would today call collective identities, including but not limited to ‘class’ in the Marxist sense. By defining ‘normative grammar’ not just as the rules that dictate how a given language should be used, but also the processes by which these norms are taught and enforced (and when they are deemed to be breached), Gramsci is focusing on the power relations among speakers. He notes, however, that this power is often exercised by a refusal to understand, by the decision that language has not been a successful vehicle of communication – that is, when one interlocutor says: ‘Make yourself clearer.’ This is the process by which an individual is deemed by others to have or not have a given identity. Gramsci provides two pertinent examples, the peasant who migrates to the city and has to conform to urban speech, and country people who try to imitate urban speech on account of its prestige: ‘the subaltern classes try to speak like the dominant classes and the intellectuals, etc.’ (Gramsci 1985: 181). The question of who it is that gets to ask these questions, who gets to decide if communication has taken place (‘What do you mean?’), is the question of who has power and what is the extent of that power. This is most often the result of their social identity, who they are within a society, what social group they belong to. While Gramsci’s Marxist analysis clearly always sees economic class as important, Gramsci does not limit his notion of social group to issues of economic class per se. To explain Gramsci’s argument in terms of identity and identity politics, it is during actual linguistic interactions (among other events and phenomena) that both self-identification and the identifying of others occur. This can be at the level of a national identity, when an individual is ‘recognized’ or labelled as ‘not being Canadian’, for example, because their English (or French) is deemed inadequate (they are asked to make themselves understood), but it also occurs along other identity lines such as class, ethnicity, religion or region. – 31 –

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As noted in my opening, an American citizen in Arizona may be required to prove that they are not an illegal immigrant if a law enforcement officer thinks their English is not ‘fluent’ or appropriate. Since the law does not require that everyone be required to prove their immigration status, such proof is not demanded of individuals whose English is deemed acceptable (especially given the utopian stipulation that racial profiling cannot be used). Likewise, an illegal immigrant may easily ‘pass’, and not be required to prove their immigration status, because their command of English is quite fluent. Obviously, language fluency is sometimes connected to one’s life history and thus one’s immigration status, but the moment at which this becomes operative is the interaction in which law enforcement officers are required to make a judgement of identity. As this example shows, oftentimes it is explicit legislation that structures such interactions, and the state should never be ignored. Most frequently, however, such interactions in which individuals are ascribed or ascribe themselves to particular collective identities occur in more informal realms not dictated by the state or legislation, but by ordinary individuals in daily interactions. It is crucial here that Gramsci is not divorcing ‘spontaneous’ grammar from such questions of ‘normative’ grammar, which involve issues of imposition and of power. It may seem, at first blush, that Gramsci is making an analogous distinction to that noted above, that is, a normative versus spontaneous distinction similar to the communicative versus expressive one. Using language as an instrument to convey ideas requires following explicit rules, whereas expressing identity in one’s form of language is the ‘spontaneous’ mother tongue. If this were the case, it would seem to bring Gramsci into alignment with Herder and especially with Fichte’s notion of language being linked to a Volk, or a political and cultural identity. Gramsci argues, however, that one could ‘sketch a picture of the “normative grammar” that operates spontaneously in every given society, in that this society tends to become unified both territorially and culturally, in other words it has a governing class whose function is recognised and followed’ (1985: 181). The supposed ‘spontaneity’ or unconsciousness of a grammar does not free it from unequal power relations, nor make it a ‘natural’ expression of one’s being as opposed to the artificial imposition of a ‘normative’ grammar that originates from the ruling classes. Quite the contrary – in various contexts, Gramsci regards ‘spontaneity’ as being the result not of ‘free choice’, but of the fragmentary, incoherent and ultimately subjugated nature of subaltern conditions: The elements of ‘conscious leadership’ in the ‘most spontaneous’ of movements cannot be ascertained, simply because they have left no verifiable document. One may say that the element of spontaneity is therefore characteristic of the – 32 –

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‘history of the subaltern classes’ and, especially, of the most marginal and peripheral elements of these classes, who have not attained a consciousness of the class per se and who consequently do not even suspect that their history might possibly have any importance. (Gramsci 1996: 49)

‘Spontaneity’ for Gramsci is not simply a positive characteristic associated with the ability or capacity to choose for oneself, or to do what one wishes or decides is best for them. Nor is it a romanticized assumption about our ‘native’ language or ‘mother tongue’ somehow being imparted to us in a primordial fashion that is free from the educative and censoring processes of questions like, ‘Make yourself more clear’ or teasing. Rather, Gramsci defines ‘spontaneous grammar’ as being the result of the fragmentary and episodic character of the history of subaltern social groups (Gramsci 1971: 54). Gramsci does not see ‘spontaneous grammar’ as being free of the power dynamics found in the way that ‘normative grammar’ is imposed. He writes:

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In acquiring one’s conception of the world one always belongs to a particular grouping which is that of all the social elements which share the same mode of thinking and acting. … When one’s conception of the world is not critical and coherent but disjointed and episodic, one belongs simultaneously to a multiplicity of mass human groups. (Gramsci 1971: 324; cf. Green and Ives 2009)

Here, Gramsci is not referring to what we might today call ‘diversity’, be it cultural or social, but rather to the situation of subaltern groups with ‘two conceptions of the world, one affirmed in words and the other displayed by effective action’ (Gramsci 1971: 326), which entrenches their subordination, since the linguistic conception of the world ‘is not its own but is borrowed from another group’. Thus, for Gramsci, a normative grammar has the capacity to be more critical and coherent, to enable a greater degree of self-awareness and social solidarity, than spontaneous grammar, precisely because of its spontaneous character. Unlike the liberal tradition from Locke onwards that views language primarily as a vehicle for communication, Gramsci argues that it is central to one’s organization of the world and political awareness. In contrast to the German Romantic tradition, however, there is no inherent rootedness between an individual and a particular language that necessarily ties them to a group, culture or nation. Rather, for Gramsci, this connection comes from the experiences and histories of individuals and groups and is rarely pure or homogeneous. Indeed, from a Gramscian perspective, one can accept many of the critiques of Charles Taylor’s ‘politics of recognition’ because it contains quite a conservative impulse, where the recognition of diverse cultures positions them as more static and unchanging ‘traditions’ – 33 –

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than creative, living historical modes of interacting across cultures.11 Himani Bannerji has emphasized that Taylor’s notion of ‘recognition’ is something that the dominant groups are asked to grant the subaltern groups, and Glen Coulthard notes that this process actually repeats the colonial power relationships instead of showing a way beyond them (Bannerji 2000; Coulthard 2008). Gramsci’s notion of translation among cultures is perhaps a more fruitful approach that does not fall into such pitfalls. However, it is well beyond what can be covered in a single chapter to substantively summarize recent scholarship focusing on Gramsci’s writings on translation – not in a narrow technical sense of translation meaning the transfer from one language to another, but in the broader cultural and philosophical sense of how languages, cultures and worldviews interact and come to change one another (cf. Boothman 2010; Borghese 2010; Frosini 2010; Lacorte 2010; Ives 2004a: 97–133). Perhaps, rather than subscribing to Taylor’s ‘politics of recognition’, minority groups should demand ‘translation’ in the broad sense that Walter Benjamin invoked when he famously argued that the task of the translator is to alter both the target language into which a translation is made, and the original language from which it is translated (1968: 76).

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Conclusion What Gramsci provides is a way to theorize the concerns that others grapple with, by distinguishing and separating two dimensions, the communicative and the expressive, and then combining them in various and competing ways. Gramsci’s insight is to take both functions of language into account, but with the understanding that most often, they not only occur together – that language simultaneously functions as both communicative and expressive – but that they occur within the same process. ‘What did you mean?’ signifies both a failure of communication and the power of the speaker to demand a different way of speaking. The same can be said of ‘Make yourself clearer.’ The debate between Jürgen Habermas and Dieter Grimm about a language for the European public sphere cannot be reduced to the matter of which ‘dimension’ of language is given greater weight. Similarly, the real differences in the political values and positions between Kraus and Wright cannot be obscured by rendering them in terms that emphasize opposing dimensions of language. To go back to my opening example, it is in the act of communicating, the moment in which a law enforcement officer has the power to decide if someone’s English does or does not sound adequate enough to assuage suspicion that they might be an illegal immigrant. Language acting as a shibboleth of legal status is both – 34 –

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communicative and expressive, but it is in their relation that the uneven power relationship of a particular identity politic lies. While such a theorization of language does not hold out any easy answers or straightforward methods that can simply be applied to differing contexts, it does insist that language usage cannot be divorced from power relationships and provides some key concepts and ideas that help illuminate the complexities that the following chapters grapple with in various ways. Peter Ives is a professor in the Politics Department at the University of Winnipeg, where he primarily teaches political theory. He is author of Gramsci’s Politics of Language: Engaging the Bakhtin Circle and the Frankfurt School (Toronto, 2004, winner of the Klibansky Book Prize), Language and Hegemony in Gramsci (London, 2004) and various articles in Political Studies, Critical Review of International Social & Political Philosophy, Historical Materialism and Rethinking Marxism. He is also a member of the editorial board of Arbeiter Ring Publishing. His current research analyzes the politics of ‘global English’.

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Notes 1. In this chapter, I use political identity and communal identity roughly synonymously to mean the self-identification or identification by others of individuals as members of a specific social group, whether that group is defined in ethnic, cultural, religious, regional or class terms. I hold that both terms encapsulate a political consciousness of group belonging and that this goes beyond a mere objective classification of people into groups based on identifiable characteristics. 2. Ronald Schmidt Sr.’s chapter in this volume provides a general analysis of the circumstances of this case. 3. While signed into law in 2010, but did not go into effect due to a court injunction pending the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Arizona v. United States. While the U.S. Supreme court struck down some of its provisions, it upheld the law’s requirement of immigration status checks in June, 2012. 4. Thomas Bonfiglio (2010) provides an excellent historical discussion of the advent of the metaphor of the ‘mother tongue’ within European history alongside the rise of the modern nation-state and capitalism. This is also related to my critique of Will Kymlicka for conflating ‘vernacular,’ ‘native language,’ and ‘national language’ (Ives 2015: 56–61). 5. This notion is central to most everyday understandings of translation as the expression of the same content in a different language. I will touch on translation at the end of this chapter. 6. As Kraus discusses, John Stuart Mill offers a similarly liberal picture whereby the expressive dimensions of language are addressed and require a single, homogenous language, which is a prerequisite for the communicative function to come to the fore as the vehicle through which individuals can relay their individual freedom, as long as it does not threaten the freedom of others (such as the insistence on diversity or plurality of language) (see Kraus 2008: 83–88). 7. This contrast is also evident in Locke’s fear of the creative power of language as opposed to Fichte’s celebration of it. – 35 –

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8. For a more complete discussion of Locke’s position on language in relation to liberalism and contemporary politics see Ives 2014. 9. Wilhelm von Humboldt is an important figure who fits, I argue, between the traditions of German Romanticism and Anglophone liberalism – the complexities of which I address elsewhere (Ives 1997). 10. For two trenchant critiques of Taylor’s ‘politics of recognition’ that do not explicitly deal with language but highlight similar concerns about the implications of ‘recognition’, see Bannerji (2000) and Coulthard (2008). 11. In addition to Bannerji (2000) and Coulthard (2008), see Appiah (1994) and Habermas (1994).

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References Abizadeh, A. 2005. ‘Was Fichte an Ethnic Nationalist? On Cultural Nationalism and Its Double’, History of Political Thought 26(2): 334–59. Appiah, K.A. 1994. ‘Identity, Authenticity, Survival: Multicultural Societies and Social Reproduction’, in A. Gutmann (ed.), Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 149–64. Bannerji, H. 2000. The Dark Side of the Nation: Essays on Multiculturalism and Gender. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press. Barnard, F.M. 2003. Herder on Nationality, Humanity, and History. Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press. Benjamin, W. 1968. Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. H. Arendt, trans. H. Zohn. New York: Schocken. Bonfiglio, T. 2010. Mother Tongues and Nations: The Invention of the Native Speaker. New York: Walter de Gruyter. Boothman, D. 2010. ‘Translation and Translatability: Renewal of the Marxist Paradigm’, in P. Ives and R. Lacorte (eds), Gramsci, Language and Translation. Lanham, MD: Lexington, pp. 107–34. Borghese, L. 2010. ‘Aunt Alene on Her Bicycle: Antonio Gramsci as Translator from German and as Translation Theorist’, in P. Ives and R. Lacorte (eds), Gramsci, Language and Translation. Lanham, MD: Lexington, pp. 135–70. Coulthard, G. 2008. ‘Beyond Recognition: Indigenous Self-Determination as Prefigurative Practice’, in Leanne Simpson (ed.), Lighting the Eighth Fire: The Liberation, Resurgence, and Protection of Indigenous Nations. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Press, pp. 187–204. Dawson, H. 2007. Locke, Language and Early-Modern Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. De Mauro, T. 1986. Storia Linguistica Dell’Italia Unita. Rome: Editori Laterza. Fichte, J.G. 1968. Addresses to the German Nation, ed. G. Kelly. New York: Harper & Row. Frosini, F. 2010. ‘On “Translatability” in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks’, in P. Ives and R. Lacorte (eds), Gramsci, Language and Translation. Lanham, MD: Lexington, pp. 171–86. Gorman, A. and N. Riccardi. 2010. ‘Arizona Was Once Tolerant of Illegal Immigrants, What Happened?’, Los Angeles Times, 1 August. Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell-Smith. New York: International Publishers. ———. 1978. Selections from Political Writings, 1921–1926, ed. and trans. Q. Hoare. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 1985. Selections from Cultural Writings, ed. D. Forgacs and G. Nowell Smith, trans. W. Boelhower. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 1996. Prison Notebooks, vol. 2, ed. and trans. J. Buttigieg. New York: Columbia University Press. – 36 –

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Green, M. and P. Ives. 2009. ‘Subalternity and Language’, Historical Materialism 17(1): 3–30. Habermas, J. 1994. ‘Struggles for Recognition in the Democratic Constitutional State’, in A. Gutmann (ed.), Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 107–48. Haddock, B. 2000. ‘State, Nation and Risorgimento’, in B. Haddock and G. Bedani (eds), Politics of Italian National Identity. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, pp. 11–49. Herder, J.G. 1966. ‘Essay on the Origin of Language’, in J.J. Rousseau and J.G. Herder, On the Origin of Language, trans. J.H. Moran and A. Gode. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 85–166. Ives, P. 1997. ‘The Grammar of Hegemony’, Left History 5(1): 30–47. ———. 2004a. Gramsci’s Politics of Language: Engaging the Bakhtin Circle and the Frankfurt School. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ———. 2004b. Language and Hegemony in Gramsci. London: Pluto. ———. 2004c. ‘Language, Representation and Suprastate Democracy’, in D. Laycock (ed.), Representation and Democratic Theory. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, pp. 23–47. ———. 2006. ‘“Global English”: Linguistic Imperialism or Practical Lingua Franca’, Studies in Language and Capitalism 1: 121–41. ———. 2009. ‘Global English, Hegemony and Education’, Educational Philosophy and Theory 41(6): 661–83. ———. 2010. ‘Cosmopolitanism and Global English: Language Politics in Globalisation Debates’, Political Studies 58(3): 516–35. ———. 2014. ‘De-Politicizing Language: Obstacles to Political Theory’s Engagement with Language Policy’, Language Policy 13(4): 335-350. ———. 2015. ‘Global English and the Limits of Liberalism: Confronting Global Capitalism and Challenges to the Nation-State’, in T. Ricento (ed.), Language Policy and Political Economy: English in a Global Context. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 48–71. Jordon, M. 2010. ‘Arizona Grades Teachers on Fluency’, Wall Street Journal, 30 April. Joseph, J.E. 2004. Language and Identity: National, Ethnic, Religious. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave. Kraus, P.A. 2008. A Union of Diversity: Language, Identity and Polity-Building in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kymlicka, W. and A. Patten (eds). 2003. Language Rights and Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lacorte, R. 2010. ‘Translatability, Language and Freedom in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks’, in P. Ives and R. Lacorte (eds), Gramsci, Language and Translation. Lanham, MD: Lexington, pp. 213–26. Locke, J. 1995. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Lo Piparo, F. 1979. Lingua, Intellettuali, Egemonia in Gramsci. Bari: Laterza. Losonsky, M. 2006. Linguistic Turns in Modern Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Migliorini, B. 1966. The Italian Language. London: Faber and Faber. Reynolds, B. 1950. The Linguistic Writings of Alessandro Manzoni: A Textual and Chronological Reconstruction. Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons. Riccardi, N. 2010. ‘Police Guidelines Underscore Complexities of Arizona Immigration Law’, Los Angeles Times, 2 July. Taylor, C. 1994. ‘The Politics of Recognition’, in A. Gutmann (ed.), Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 25–74. ———. 1995. Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wright, S. 2004. Language Policy and Language Planning: From Nationalism to Globalisation. London: Palgrave Macmillan. – 37 –

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Chapter 2

THE POLITICS OF LINGUISTIC IDENTITY IN EUROPE Between the Expression of Power and the Power of Expressivity Peter A. Kraus

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A

s we learned in geography and history classes at school, the modern world map is composed of discrete units, all of which basically reflect the same institutional logic: the logic of nation-state formation. On political maps, each unit represents both a distinct and homogeneous entity that deserves its own particular colour. Each unit also has its own singular name. Such maps can be taken as a first piece of evidence of how ‘methodological nationalism’ works: from our school days on, we are familiarized with a view that structures social and political reality into national spaces, so that ‘banal’ forms of nationalism become a ubiquitous phenomenon, be it in educational systems, in the realm of sports or in weather forecasts (Billig 1995). Now, what is probably even more relevant in the light of our discussion here is that on the political map of contemporary Europe the name of each unit is in almost every case directly connected to a language, the majority language of that particular state. This is a feature that sets Europe apart from most other regions of the world. It shows the strong impact of language nationalism on the making of Europe as we know it today. As average European citizens, we have internalized the information that ‘France’ speaks French, ‘Sweden’ speaks Swedish, ‘Romania’ speaks Romanian, and so on. The list of similar cases is long, and there are few exceptions to the general pattern. In the European context, a lack of correspondence between language and state name tends to reveal some pecu– 38 –

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liarities or even ‘anomalies’, as is clear, for example, in a case such as that of Belgium – a country that has been exposed to protracted linguistic conflict and is subject to strong centrifugal pressures. When we now consider the main issues of language politics in Europe today, the situation could roughly be outlined in the following way: the legacies of the old persist and interact with the challenges of the new. By ‘legacies of the old’ I refer to the linguistic grievances that are connected with the formation of the system of nation-states in Europe. A significant number of minority groups, such as the Welsh or the Catalans, see themselves as victims of this process, and their members raise claims for the recognition of their particular linguistic identities, long marginalized by the dominant nations. In Eastern Europe, regulating the status of minorities has been one of the main issues on the political agenda since 1989. Meanwhile, indigenous groups, such as the Sámi, may be considered a special case on the minority map, since they do not ‘fit’ the national pattern of political organization particularly well. While the legacies of the old are still quite visible all over Europe, we are also forced to confront the new challenges of how to deal with immigrant minorities. The question of how to integrate immigration societies has an obvious linguistic dimension. Moreover, majorities exposed to the ‘new’ heterogeneity seem to be increasingly inclined towards supporting a politics that reaffirms their linguistic identity vis-à-vis migrant minorities: most European democracies with substantial portions of foreign populations place great emphasis nowadays on the acquisition of the national language in the context of regulating access to citizenship.1 In some cases, this trend may also be more generally connected to the linguistic consequences of Europeanization, a process that is triggering a debate on whether public communication in the emerging European polity should be based on a multilingual formula, or rather on ‘European English’. The triumph of English as the de facto European lingua franca also links Europeanization to the global dynamics of communication, and is apparently provoking nationalist responses from communities speaking languages that were long considered ‘dominant’. The most interesting laboratories for observing the interaction of the old and the new may well be cities such as Barcelona and – albeit thus far to a lesser extent – Helsinki, where the layers of linguistic differentiation introduced by immigrants in recent decades add to a historically entrenched ‘endogenous’ multilingualism. In such sociolinguistic settings, we may ask ourselves if we are dealing with a postmodern patchwork of crisscrossing identities that can be more or less freely chosen and articulated by the members of different groups, or if we are rather witnessing the birth of a ‘new medievalism’. The return to the Middle Ages would imply – 39 –

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that the patterns of stratification and of linguistic differentiation are tending to overlap once again, as in premodern times, at least when we look at the two ends of the social spectrum. Thus, the upper segments of the staff employed by transnational corporations, information technology experts, bankers and people working in research centres or universities increasingly use English as their basic means of communication. At the other end of the scale we find the bulk of immigrants from North Africa, South Asia, Turkey and other regions of the globe, who continue to use their mother tongues and thereby give languages such as Arabic or Turkish a significant weight on the sociolinguistic scene of Western Europe. The traditional autochthonous languages are thereby to a varying extent ‘sandwiched’ between the new, ‘exogenous’ linguistic layers. Such a ‘neomedieval’ trend, which is frequently observed with concern by members of the local middle classes, would be the imprint that remains in the sociolinguistic configuration of our urban spaces after the successive uncouplings of territoriality, political control and cultural identity (Sassen 2006). Obviously, we can take linguistic identity and language use as key indicators of sweeping sociocultural and sociopolitical transformations. After a long period that linked political integration with a striving for cultural and linguistic homogeneity, things now seem to be in motion again. Moreover, the tendencies I have been sketching out generally point to a repoliticization of language issues all over Europe. European high modernity was substantially based on the consolidation of a system of nation-states. Most of the units composing the system established a close link between their institutional identity and a single national language. This is reflected in the official denominations of European states, which generally hint directly at a particular language, as is the case with German in Germany, Italian in Italy or Estonian in Estonia. Such a correspondence is a specific feature of Europe’s political map: it cannot be found on the African continent or in the Americas. In a nutshell, it was the very dynamics of political modernization that made for a notably high political salience of linguistic identities in Europe. In this context, the attribution of unequal official status to different language communities can be seen, in retrospect, as the point of departure for struggles for recognition, in which minority groups have tried to capture public space in order to make themselves audible vis-à-vis the hegemonic majorities. Throughout the history of modern Europe, political mobilizations that have aimed for the equality of citizens have simultaneously been directed at achieving equal dignity for these citizens’ diverse cultural and linguistic identities. Language bears great relevance when it comes to articulating the political imagery of a community and its members. It creates a web of social attachments and reciprocal commitments in which instru– 40 –

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mental causes and expressive concerns tend to become intermingled in inextricable ways. This intermingling sets the foundations for the powerful role that language plays in identity politics. From the angle of many minoritized groups, struggling to overcome the subordinate institutional position of their vernacular is a critical factor for a self-categorization that is experienced as a decisive step on the path leading towards self-determination, both at the individual and at the collective level. In my attempt to determine the main parameters of the politics of linguistic identity in Europe today, I begin by recapitulating how language became a crucial variable in the formation of nation-states. The subsequent step brings into focus the manifold connections that can be made out between the politics of linguistic recognition and situations of diglossia, a concept coined to analyze settings in which two languages occupy hierarchically separate functional domains in a given society. The final sections of this chapter are devoted to assessing the extent to which the current dynamics of Europeanization may be changing the frame of language politics from both a minority and a majority perspective.

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Language and Nation-State Formation According to the estimates given by linguists, there are approximately 225 autochthonous languages spoken in present-day Europe. This is not a spectacular figure, if we compare it to the situation in Africa and Asia, where we get over two thousand languages in either case, or in the Americas, where the number of autochthonous languages is approximately one thousand. However, a key aspect that sets Europe apart from other world regions is the salience of the linguistic factor in the political structuring of the continent. The making of modern Europe was substantially linked to the emergence of a system of discrete nation-states, and in the course of this process, linguistic and political borders became increasingly interchangeable (Rokkan 1999: 170–90). The standardized vernaculars were not only used as mass communication tools, but they also attained an emblematic role symbolizing the institutional identity of particular nation-states. The idea of a national language can basically be seen as a European idea, which gave linguistic factors a great weight in the nationalist mobilizations that are characteristic of European modernity.2 The nation-states of modern Europe were thereby formed as spaces where political and linguistic cultures largely overlap. Together with religion, language was the principal element in the push for cultural standardization that underlies the dynamic of nation building. With the rise of absolutism, European states began to link the affirmation – 41 –

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of their territorial sovereignty to a striving for the creation of a culturally homogeneous domain of rule. In this sense, the adoption of the principle cuius regio, eius religio soon found its logical continuation in the implementation of the norm cuius regio, eius lingua. With historical hindsight, the processes of language standardization initially followed a top-down direction. In a nutshell, the pioneers of state formation (such as France) aimed at establishing uniform linguistic standards across their territory for reasons of administrative efficiency. This objective stood in clear correspondence with the imperatives of economic and bureaucratic rationalization thoroughly analyzed by Max Weber in his sociology of the state ([1922] 1980: 815–37). An early example of the priorities of absolutist language policy is the Ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts (1539), which prescribed that all written legal communication within the French state had to be in French ( Jacob and Gordon 1985: 111–12). By and by, the tendency to create a monolingual frame of communication between public authorities and the people they governed became a common feature of political modernization in Europe. The tendency became even stronger to the extent that language began to be conceived of as an identity marker that could be used for similar purposes, such as religion, and could serve the ‘protonationalist’ cause of strengthening the links between states, rulers and subjects. Within the Scandinavian area, even at an early stage, we find a high degree of interlocking between religious and linguistic factors in the making of collective identities: as a consequence of the establishment of Lutheran state churches, the vernaculars became the means for communicating religious ceremony and school instruction. This made for a setting in which ‘national cultures’ could be forged in smoother ways than was the case in Southern and Central Europe, where Latin retained a prominent position due to the unbroken strength of Catholicism. Over the course of the gradual transition to democracy that started with the French Revolution, linguistic nationalism gained momentum as a bottom-up phenomenon. Having served for centuries as an instrument of administrative penetration, the French language was now celebrated in the discourse of the Jacobins as a symbol of universal reason and as an asset for collective emancipation. Ultimately, the revolutionary zeal only increased the pressures on the speakers of the different vernaculars (such as Basque, Breton and the Occitan dialects), which were still used extensively in the peripheries until well into the nineteenth century, to embrace French as their ‘mother tongue’, given that the regional languages were now not only considered to obstruct the consolidation of uniform state structures, but were also put under the suspicion of sustaining potentially antirepublican purposes (Maas 1989: 39–41). Thus, albeit with a change of emphasis, the republican pattern of integration regarding language stood in continuity – 42 –

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with the absolutist legacy in the French case. In other parts of Europe, in contrast, the activation of the bottom-up dimension in language politics entailed a massive challenging of the former bases of cultural hegemony within given state structures. This tendency became particularly virulent in Eastern Europe: from the Czech lands to Ukraine, from the Baltic to the Balkans, nationalist movements assigned the defence and vitalization of the vernaculars a central place on their political agendas. The view that an individual language expressed the ‘soul’ of a people, and that all languages bore equal dignity, irrespective of the allegedly ‘lower’ or ‘higher’ status of the particular cultures they represented, became a recurrent motif of nationalist mobilizations (Hroch 1985). For those who embraced this view, the vernaculars were no less than the main template on which to articulate the struggle against national alienation and the collective revolt against an imperial rule, as was the case with respect to Turkish, Russian or German. In broad terms, we will find some combination of top-down and bottom-up dynamics in almost all settings where language became a salient political issue in Europe. The historically more entrenched – and, in general terms, larger – territorial European states, most of them in the west, tended to follow the strategy of an ‘official’ nationalism,3 whose goal was to achieve higher degrees of political legitimacy by compelling minorities to assimilate linguistically. In the eastern half of the Continent, in contrast, the movements constituted under the flag of linguistic emancipation ultimately triggered the crisis of ancient empires and opened the paths that led to the national independence of many countries. It has to be noted that, in general, the creation of these new states did not imply that their elites adopted an approach towards linguistic diversity that was more benign than that which had been seen under the former imperial rulers of the same territories. All over Europe, the social mobilization that made for a convergence of the quest for popular sovereignty and nationalist objectives in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries reinforced the weight of ‘national’ languages as languages that were considered to represent specific national identities (Deutsch 1966). Thus, the nation-states became the basic institutional ‘containers’ (Giddens 1985) of democratic politics in processes that largely ran parallel with the diffusion of standardized vernaculars. To acknowledge such parallelism, however, should not lead us to share in ‘grand national narratives’, according to which there are perennial bonds linking a particular nation to ‘its’ particular language, and a particular language to ‘its’ particular nation. Moreover, the appreciation of a historical trend should not become a source for drawing normative conclusions for the present, as the politics of cultural and linguistic standardization implied heavy costs for those groups on whom the standards of – 43 –

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the titular nations were imposed, such that they became minorities with a substantially reduced scope for collective self-determination. As Eisenstadt (1999) cogently shows, the Jacobin dimension has left a strong imprint on the institutional architecture of modernity. When it comes to the articulation of linguistic identity, the imprint has involved a massive push for homogenization. From the Jacobin perspective, linguistic diversity makes for a possible divide between political society and civil society and therefore has to be overcome for the sake of the national whole. At any rate, linguistic attachments that might give rise to claims for recognition must remain strictly subject to the control of the state. The closer modern European states followed this Jacobin line, and thereby strived to achieve cultural homogeneity both in terms of strengthening their administrative capacity and in terms of fusing patterns of cultural and political legitimation, the more they turned into linguistic assimilation machines. In its belligerent version, the European nation-state appears as a ‘glossophagic’ state (Laponce 1987: 201), a state that devours minority languages in order to establish a strict monolingual regime in the public realm. It is against this background that one may have to concede that there is a disturbing potential in the historical dynamics of democratization for inciting practices of homogenization that are hardly distinguishable from ethnic cleansing (Mann 2005). Democratic theory has tended to take for granted that democratic principles unfold in linguistically integrated spaces. Yet the actual interplay between democratization and linguistic integration/ assimilation in modern Europe would deserve a more thorough assessment. It has almost become commonplace to associate the rise of representative democracy with the development of a public sphere, in which enlightened citizens conduct an open debate on matters of general concern (Habermas [1962] 1990). Yet against this background, we should not ignore that in the institutional context of European modernity, the formation of public spheres followed the logic of nation-state construction.4 Thus, the public sphere did not only imply new options for political participation; it also involved the consolidation of a common discursive frame based on the homogenizing logic of the nation-state and in tension with sociocultural diversity. To the extent that such diversity resisted assimilation, the ‘official’ public narratives linking democracy and the nation clashed with counternarratives denouncing the hegemonic strategies underlying national integration. Although such constellations attained a particularly virulent character among the ‘late’ nationalizers in Eastern Europe, they are by no means absent in the west, as the cases of Belgium, the United Kingdom and Spain exemplify (Cederman and Kraus 2005: 293–97). In our collective imaginary, however, we tend to abstract the nationstate and cultural integration in Europe from the more discomforting as– 44 –

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pects of the history of democracy. Having been trained in cognitive environments largely shaped by methodological nationalism, we take for granted what the political maps of Europe show us by assigning particular colours, names and cultural attributes to discrete political entities. The observation also holds with regard to the institutional framing of linguistic identities. From the perspective of the standard European, ‘the’ standard is the majority standard: he or she will therefore not expect a Swedish citizen to be Sámi-speaking, a Spanish citizen to be Basque-speaking, or a Romanian citizen to be Hungarian-speaking. A citizen’s identity is tied to a nation-state, and what we consider to be the language of ‘the’ nation and of ‘its’ citizens typically is the majority language. Not only has the standard view become all-pervasive in our everyday understanding of democratic politics as politics within one country and in one language, but it has also been the main template from which social scientists assess political integration. Our notions of political development are based on an ideal-typical historical sequence, in which state making and the rationalization of government structures pave the way for the formation of a public sphere whose pressure then forces governments to legitimate their decisions on democratic grounds. Against this quasiparadigmatic template, we assume that the question of which language is used to communicate in the public sphere – which is nothing other than the language of democracy – has actually been ‘solved’ during the course of state formation, that is, before the democratic public begins to play its proper role. At the same time, an influential current in normative political theory, which goes back to John Stuart Mill ([1861] 1972: 391–98) and presently has a prominent advocate in the figure of Jürgen Habermas (2001: 116–24), maintains that the deliberative potential of a democratic public is contingent upon the existence of a common language in which those who constitute the public can expose their concerns to each other: without a shared linguistic medium, the argument goes, no shared political culture will emerge, and the resulting segmentation of the space of political communication will block the formation of a democratic public sphere. All in all, both empirical assessments of the communicative bases of modern democracies and normative considerations of what is required for a legitimate democratic politics tend to converge in the view that democracy is democracy in one language.

Minorities, Recognition and Diglossia What might ultimately be wrong with the ‘glossophagic’ state? Why do people reject linguistic assimilation? Why do minority languages survive? – 45 –

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Why are members of linguistic minorities prepared to incur great personal sacrifices when it comes to defending their language? What is important about maintaining a particular linguistic identity? To put it even more bluntly, where would the problem lie if we all woke up tomorrow speaking the same language (presumably English), thereby re-creating the world as it was before Babel? To tackle these issues from the angle of the politics of language, we have to take as a point of departure that the question of diversity occupies a central place in all attempts at elaborating a theory of democracy that is up to our times.5 Few other themes have attracted as much attention in the recent normative debates on how to articulate legitimate forms of rule for increasingly heterogeneous and complex societies. One strand of these debates, which has been highly influential for the argumentation put forward here, regards recognition as a key category for reconciling cultural diversity and democratic citizenship. However, political philosophers and theorists have tended to discuss the politics of recognition at a high level of abstraction. To better understand the linkage of diversity and recognition we have to rely on a political theory of language that devotes particular attention to the expressive aspects of linguistic identities and linguistic repertoires. From the expressive angle, language has a great bearing on the ‘self-understanding’ (in a very literal sense) of a community and its members. The recognition of linguistic identities contributes substantially to the protection of individual freedoms, as it endorses in the institutional realm the connections that exist between language as a social bond and language as a source of self-esteem. From the perspective of Herder and Humboldt, who both highlighted the social component of the expressive dimension of language, it is language that provides the key to understanding humanity as unity in differentiation. On the one hand, language is seen as a resource that is constitutive of human autonomy and freedom. On the other hand, this autonomy is socially embedded and relates to the collective practices of a language community. Language creates an elemental social bond. Thus, in a certain sense, individual speech acts always refer to a speech community. At the same time, it is ultimately language itself that defines and sustains the speech community. Wilhelm von Humboldt ([1830–35] 1963: 414–39) uses the image of a web – ein Gewebe – to describe how language simultaneously shapes and is shaped by human communication. The political relevance of what may be called the instrumental dimension of language is obvious: we have to be able to employ language in conformity with the specific functional requirements of different situations in all kinds of everyday contexts. How we realize our life chances depends to a considerable extent on our linguistic competence. As learning languages – 46 –

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involves costs, the right to use our mother tongue in as many social domains as possible has an instrumental character. It is the expressive dimension, however, that gives language its particular political salience, a salience that is frequently intermingled with claims for ‘recognition’. Language is a resource we need for individual communication. By acquiring this resource, we are attached to a specific, culturally defined community. If a language forms an irreducible social web – as the line of reasoning running from Herder and Humboldt via Wittgenstein to Taylor contends – the securing of the potential for individual development and freedom becomes a matter of collective support that must translate in modern polities into institutional provisions devoted to reproducing this web. Thus, if the dignity of individuals is to be respected, the linguistic and cultural identity of their communities of origin must also be recognized to a satisfactory extent (Taylor 1992). When the cultural bases that underlie our personal development and that we regard as authentic are institutionally ignored, negated or even repressed, our self-esteem, which is an asset of great significance in the process of building up and protecting our individual autonomy, will be severely hampered, too. Some thirty years ago, in a pioneering comparative study dealing with the causes and political implications of the ‘ethnic revival’ in modern, industrialized Western European societies – which is still today a highly recommendable read – the Finnish political sociologist Erik Allardt, having analyzed a broad sample of empirical cases, maintained that the mobilization of territorial linguistic minorities in the developed West should generally not, or at any rate no longer, be interpreted as a reaction against types of discrimination that are linked to social exclusion and bear negative material consequences. In contrast with the ethnic groups constituted by immigrants, Europe’s ‘autochthonous’ linguistic minorities were not in most cases struggling to overcome a situation of direct social and economic subordination, but rather they were struggling for recognition, as Allardt (1979: 43–47) put it in his pathbreaking analysis, thereby anticipating a current key debate in political theory. From Allardt’s viewpoint, by making such claims for recognition, their primary goal was to have their self-categorization accepted by the majorities. Indeed, up to the present day, for most of the minority groups in question, this self-categorization is not so much related to socioeconomic background conditions; ultimately, its core consists of a distinctive cultural identity whose principal symbol is language. In particular, groups with a relatively high capacity for political mobilization – such as the Tyroleans in Italy, the Basques and the Catalans in Spain, the Walloons and the Flemings in Belgium, or the Swedish-speaking Finns – cannot be adequately characterized by attributing to them an infe– 47 –

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rior position within the cultural division of labour. What they strive for are political and institutional provisions that allow them to reproduce a collective identity that they consider to be specific and that protects them from being assimilated into the majority. We are dealing with groups exposed to a peculiar dialectic of socioeconomic equality and cultural differentiation. Simplifying things, we can conclude that the major issues on Europe’s current language policy agenda are less related to questions of material status than to questions of self-respect and ‘honour’. In light of the evidence from recent decades, Allardt’s interpretation of the struggles for linguistic recognition has become even more persuasive: the rise of ‘identity politics’ on a global scale shows that the rejection of assimilation is a factor as relevant in the dynamics of political mobilization as is the will to overcome social exclusion and economic injustice. If we take what we learn from the political sociology approach applied by Allardt into the realm of political theory, we can conclude that in democratic settings, self-categorization is, in an elementary sense, a critical first step in the exercise of self-determination. This holds both at the level of the individual and at the level of groups. Even more significantly, it connects the two levels, and the connection is especially obvious when it comes to language, as linguistic self-categorization requires the availability of plausible categories, that is, of categories that are unavoidably tied to existing language communities. The linguistic identities we may adopt as individuals always relate to a socially – and hence collectively – produced symbolic universe. Language gives us a prime example of how the freedom and creativity that we have as individuals are situated, as they are embedded in a cultural context that is shaped by collective practices. Such situatedness becomes particularly relevant when it comes to political freedom: to develop our capabilities as citizens we have to act with others and rely extensively on linguistic (as well as extralinguistic) communicative skills. Quite obviously, the emergence of these skills is contingent upon cultural and social bonds. Now, with regard to language, taking situatedness seriously implies respecting and protecting linguistic diversity. To give a concrete example: the freedom of speech of the members of a language minority cannot be restricted to the right to freely communicate in the majority language; it must also include the right to freely acquire and use the minority vernacular. In a similar way, linguistic recognition also has to aim at alleviating the burden that members of minority groups have to carry in comparison with those who belong to a majority, if they want to be equally free. Typically, developing a multilingual repertoire (that covers the nondominant as well as the dominant language) is something minority individuals are supposed to do, whereas those who are in the majority will not face major problems if they rely exclusively on the dominant language in their day-to-day interactions. – 48 –

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Recapitulating Allardt’s account of the mobilization of linguistic minorities in Western Europe continues to be an instructive operation that allows us to take on some substantial political issues that are currently being raised by cultural and linguistic diversity in the European Union. If we want to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the conflict structures characteristic of multilingual contexts, we must still be prepared to take an important additional step: that of establishing a connection between the role of recognition in language policy and a prominent research tradition in sociolinguistics that has focused on the study of diglossia (Fishman 1967). The concept of diglossia refers to linguistic settings in which two or more languages occupy clearly separate functional domains within the same society. What is more, this functional separation generally overlaps with a social hierarchy. Typically, in this hierarchy, a ‘high’ language, which is the language used in the realms of education, administration, finances and the media, can be distinguished from a ‘low’ language. Societal bilingualism and diglossia combine in different ways, as Fishman (1971: 286–88) shows, and their correlation mirrors the dynamics of social and political change. Thus far, the historical experience seems to indicate that the coexistence on equal grounds of two (or more) languages within one territory requires major institutional efforts if politically virulent status conflicts – struggles over recognition in terms of equal dignity – are to be avoided. As has been observed (Laponce 1987: 33–42), societal bilingualism without diglossia tends to be intrinsically unstable. Indeed, in officially bilingual metropolitan environments such as Montréal, Brussels or Barcelona, we recurrently hear complaints about how the costs of developing and sustaining a bilingual communicative repertoire are not evenly shared by different language groups, so that bilingualism ultimately becomes asymmetric. In connection with theories of recognition, the concept of diglossia makes an important contribution to our understanding of linguistic conflict in Western democracies. Claims for recognition raised on the terrain of language policy are to a significant extent claims that are made in order to attenuate, or sometimes even to overcome, the effects of diglossia. By mobilizing for linguistic equality, the members of the groups exposed to diglossic institutional settings want to expand the range of the social and functional domains in which they have the possibility of using their vernacular language. Linguistic recognition then implies that individuals who belong to a minority group are given the option to live an everyday life that is not too far away from the communicative ‘normality’ that the members of the dominant culture are used to. In this context, it is revealing that asymmetries in bilingual repertoires are found to be particularly problematic within groups whose members experience diglossic situations as situations of status inconsistency. The revolt initiated by members of the – 49 –

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emerging Dutch-speaking middle class against the dominance of French in Belgium a few decades ago is a paradigmatic case in point in this respect. For many people language is a key to the realm of authenticity, an emblem of collective identity that must not be renounced by any means. In consequence, in sociocultural contexts that are characterized by diglossia, struggles over recognition often involve conflict over the status of languages. Often enough, the policies directed at equalizing the status of languages within a country contribute to dislodging old resentments held by speakers of what was formerly considered the ‘lower’ language, but those policies also create new resentments felt by members of the linguistic community that had previously been associated with a higher status. A democratically grounded language policy must therefore aim at overcoming collective resentment, thereby furthering the integration of different cultural groups within a common institutional framework. To take such an objective seriously means to be aware of the multiple challenges it involves.

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The Impact of Europeanization The concept of Europeanization, as I am using it here, has two main dimensions. On the one hand, it indicates the manifold regulatory competences that are nowadays in the hands of European Union institutions, or shared by the EU and its member states. On the other hand, it is meant to reflect the internalization of the European dimension by many other actors at other political levels. The ongoing Bologna Process is a good case in point in this respect: although education is not a union competence, the member states are still making considerable efforts to define common standards at the level of university instruction. Given these characteristics, what are the effects of Europeanization when it comes to issues of language and linguistic identity? The scene we are facing here is a complex one, because Europeanization is not an even and one-directional process, but rather a phenomenon full of tensions and contradictions. First, let me cut a long story very short and simply state that it is true that European integration entails a political dynamic that transcends the national. At the same time, however, it is also true that the main players in the Europeanization game are still national governments that represent the interests of nation-states. The respect of diversity – which, in the union’s institutional setting, has to primarily be understood as linguistic diversity – plays a salient role in Europe’s official political discourse. Here, on the one hand, the recognition of cultural diversity is expected to act as a normative safeguard against potential hegemonic pretensions within the EU, which could lead to conflicts – 50 –

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hampering the project of integration. On the other hand, the intercultural sensibility the EU claims to adopt in its dealings with the issue of diversity, which finds its most salient expression in the union’s embracing of multilingualism, is frequently presented as a normative plus when Europe is compared to other poles of regional integration in the world. Nevertheless, the European ‘politics of recognition’ is not exempt from significant inconsistencies. Recognition is biased towards the identities embodied by nation-states. Subnational, transnational or intercultural and ‘hybrid’ patterns of identification play a clearly subordinate role in the institutional approach taken by the European Union when it confronts diversity. The recognition and protection of cultural diversity in the EU refers primarily to those cultural identities that are institutionally embodied by nation-states. A consequence of this situation is that the pressure to recognize minorities is particularly strong when the status of these minorities is an issue of interstate relations in Europe. While minority protection and, in particular, the granting of linguistic minority rights has played a central role in the successive accession of countries from the Central and Eastern European area to the EU, its weight has been far less significant when it comes to the mutual monitoring of the more veteran EU members. The language regime applied in European Union institutions is another case in point in the same context: officially, it grants an equal status to all state languages, irrespective of demographic, economic or sociolinguistic criteria. However, such status equality is only granted to languages that are the languages of states. Accordingly, the speakers of Maltese (who number approximately 340,000) or Estonian (one million) enjoy a privileged position in comparison with the members of linguistic communities such as the Welsh (half a million) or the Catalans (seven million), whose languages enjoy official status in (a great part of) their respective territories, but are not state languages. As a result of the statist bias in the recognition of diversity, cultural identities often enter the political stage as tactical devices and are primarily used to underpin the articulation of nation-state interests in a system of protracted and tough intergovernmental bargaining. Identity politics then take the stage as a sublime surrogate for what would otherwise be considered plain national interest politics, a criticism that has sometimes been levelled with regard to the French calls to defend the exception culturelle in the field of audiovisual policies, for instance. Ultimately, the EU’s institutions seem overwhelmed by the dilemma involved in finding a balance between the protection of diversity and the development of a common framework of political communication for European citizens. Over fifty years have passed since the Treaty of Rome, and yet the EU continues to evade a thorough political debate on what linguistic justice in Europe – 51 –

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should mean today. Tackling the European language issue would require straightforwardly addressing the question of how multilingualism could institutionally be processed in a reflective way in European institutions, as well as in the communication between European institutions and European citizens. Notwithstanding the recurrent rhetorical invocation of the principle of unity in diversity, this very debate has been and continues to be absent from the EU’s political agenda.6 There is one important factor yet to be mentioned that adds more complexity to the picture: the silent yet powerful irruption of English as the de facto European lingua franca. Bologna speaks English. This process obviously has many important implications for all linguistic communities in Europe. The now apparently unstoppable spread of English as the main vehicle of trans-European communication is a manifest threat for the hegemony of national languages all over the Continent, as it involves a generalization of diglossic pressures and a strong push towards multilingualism. In larger European nation-states, such as France, Germany, Spain and Italy, the change may attain dramatic proportions. Accordingly, there is much speculation regarding a transformation of Europe’s sociolinguistic map in a direction that may bring us back to a situation offering many commonalities with the time before nationalism. This may be a somewhat simplistic reading of what is to come, as the national languages are institutionally well entrenched and are not going to give up their strongholds without conflict. At the same time, however critically we may look at the reasons underlying it, the spread of European English does not follow the logic of political imposition (Van Parijs 2004). This spread is softly transforming the relationships between former layers of linguistic diversity, between linguistic majorities and minorities, as it entails the formation of what we might call a ‘supermajority’ that encompasses the members of all other language groups. From the perspective that I have been putting forward here, a key question is whether or not the transformation will lead to new ways of experiencing and articulating authenticity, which would ultimately imply new approaches to recognition. Generally speaking, it seems thus far that members of linguistic minority groups are less worried about the rise of English than those who adhere to formerly well-established national languages (with the French, once again, possibly being the paradigmatic case in this respect). I think that we should not be too naïve about the dynamics involved in this issue. Yet, from the minority perspective, there may be at least one reason for moderate optimism: if Europeanization does not mean Anglicization tout court, but rather a substantial increase of multilingual repertoires across the Continent, it may also ultimately bring higher levels of sensitivity for the importance of linguistic identity among – 52 –

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members of majorities – or of former majorities – and thereby facilitate the understanding of minority concerns.

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Conclusion At present, the most characteristic feature of the European Union’s approach to recognizing languages may be its multiple contradictions. The recognition of cultural and linguistic diversity by and in EU institutions is normatively problematic, as it shows a pronounced bias towards enshrining the identities embodied by nation-states to the detriment of nondominant and ‘minoritized’ identities. Moreover, in the transnational citizenship regime established by EU legislation, there is a strong differentiation between ‘old’ and ‘new’ minorities, as well as between intra-European and extraEuropean migrants: the more migrant, and the more extra-European, a person is, the more restricted his or her cultural rights vis-à-vis European and national authorities will turn out to be.7 In spite of the continuous use of a rhetoric celebrating diversity, European language policy is still strongly marked by the legacies of the nation-state model. In the institutional framework of the EU, multilingualism ultimately becomes a function of adding together national monolingualisms. It is true that the European Union assigns linguistic diversity a high symbolic value: as it gives all state languages an officially equal status, the language regime of the EU has been labelled ‘integrally’ multilingual (Haarmann 1991). At present, the twenty-eight member states of the union include twenty-four state languages, which are in principle equally official at the level of European institutions. Here, however, lies the very point: the ‘integral’ dimension of EU multilingualism remains by and large statecentred. As the example of Maltese versus Catalan shows, European citizens bear linguistic rights to the extent that their languages are the languages of nation-states – there are no proper linguistic citizenship rights at the level of the EU for the members of those language communities who lack a state of their own (Kraus 2011a: 29–30). What the articulation of integral multilingualism in EU institutions ultimately entails is not so much the recognition of diversity in terms of recognizing the equal dignity of linguistically diverse citizens, but rather the reproduction of a hierarchical relationship between language communities, a relationship in which the differentials of linguistic status mirror the unequal access different language groups have to institutional power. In the realm of language, the European diversity discourse thereby loses substantial normative thrust, and the appreciation of an intricate multilingual reality hardly goes beyond symbolic politics. In practice, what Europe – 53 –

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has been adopting in recent years is a state-languages-cum-English approach, which we know from the Bologna Process: while in Germany, German students study predominantly in German, yet their temporary study abroad programme, say, in Sweden, for example, will have basically been arranged in English. Against the analytic frame sketched out in this contribution, it seems debatable whether such an approach will do for formulating an innovative response to the multiple challenges posed by the politics of language in contemporary Europe. Constructing an ‘English-only Europe’ (Phillipson 2003) would certainly fall short of the ambitious project of achieving political unity in a manner that actively safeguards the manifold linguistic and cultural affiliations that are characteristic of an increasingly complex trans-European citizenry. To argue that multilingualism lies at the normative core of Europe’s commitment to diversity is not a stark exaggeration. In accordance with this view, Julia Kristeva (2008) has spoken of the emergence of a new type of European, of a polyphonic subject, as she puts it, who is the polyglot of a multinational polity. However appealing this vision may be, it begs the question of the sociological grounds on which this kind of personality can flourish. In this respect, bringing the historical dimension back into the picture is an informative first step: in many cities of Central Eastern Europe, multilingualism remained a lively and palpable reality well into the twentieth century. A polyglot polyphony, to paraphrase Kristeva, represented the normal state of affairs for a long historical period in places such as Prague, Vilnius or Riga. Here, a variety of multilingual repertoires did not only leave their imprint at the societal level; coping with multilingualism in everyday life was also a constitutive part of many individual biographies. Thus, what Kristeva considers to be the emergence of something new may well come down, in quite a few contexts, to a resurfacing of the old, to the rediscovery of a legacy removed from the map of modern Europe by extreme nationalism and ethnic cleansing. A second step in the process of getting a sense for what the challenges of multilingualism practically entail could then take us from the macrolevel of the European polity to the microsceneries of those European cities that continue to exhibit a pronounced multilingual profile: locations like Barcelona and Helsinki, with their interplay of an endogenous patrimony of linguistic diversity and new forms of linguistic differentiation brought about by immigration, offer laboratory-like conditions for studying the intricacies of contemporary language politics (Kraus 2011b). In these settings, majority and minority languages interact in complex ways with both the languages of immigrant communities and with the local manifestations of ‘European English’. It is here that real multilingual citizens are forced to cope on a day-to-day basis with the issues connected to the management of – 54 –

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real language diversity. Their experience with multilingualism as a communicative toolkit for complex societies may offer us some valuable insights for better determining what it actually means to be a citizen of Europe today, to the extent that this implies finding reflective ways for expressing oneself and listening to others. Peter A. Kraus is a professor of comparative politics and the director of the Institute for Canadian Studies at the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences at the University of Augsburg. He has been the chair of ethnic relations at the University of Helsinki and an associate professor of political science at Humboldt University in Berlin. He has published widely and in several languages on cultural diversity and identity politics, ethnicity and nationalism, the dilemmas of European integration, and problems of democratization and democratic theory. His most recent publications are ‘The Diversities of Europe’ (coedited with G. Sciortino), a special issue of Ethnicities (vol. 14, no. 4, 2014), and The Challenge of Minority Integration: Politics and Policies in the Nordic Nations (co-edited with P. Kivisto, Warsaw/ Berlin: De Gruyter Open, 2015).

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Notes 1. See Hogan-Brun, Mar-Molinero and Stevenson (2009) for an overview. 2. See Coulmas (1985: 29–31); an account of the social and institutional uses of language in Europe before the high time of nationalism can be found in Burke (2004). 3. For an elaborate discussion of this concept, see Anderson (1991: 83–111). 4. The close links between the emergence of public spheres and nationalism are discussed from different angles in Calhoun (1992). 5. The following account draws on Kraus (2008: 78–105). 6. A critical evaluation of the institutional language policy of the European Union is presented in Kraus (2008: 111–38). 7. The Turkish government has recently tried to question this differentiation in its bilateral relations with Germany, claiming that the ‘German Turks’ should be assigned similar rights as national minorities, such as being provided with their own school and university system. See Spiegel Online (2008).

References Allardt, E. 1979. Implications of the Ethnic Revival in Modern, Industrialized Society: A Comparative Study of the Linguistic Minorities in Western Europe. Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica. Anderson, B. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. London: Verso. Billig, M. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage. Burke, P. 2004. Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. – 55 –

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Calhoun, C. (ed.). 1992. Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Cederman, L.-E. and P.A. Kraus. 2005. ‘Transnational Communication and the European Demos’, in R. Latham and S. Sassen (eds), Digital Formations: Information Technology and New Architectures in the Global Realm. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 283–311. Coulmas, F. 1985. Sprache und Staat: Studien zur Sprachplanung und Sprachpolitik. Berlin: De Gruyter. Deutsch, K.W. 1966. Nationalism and Social Communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Eisenstadt, S.N. 1999. Fundamentalism, Sectarianism and Revolution: The Jacobin Dimensions of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fishman, J.A. 1967. ‘Bilingualism With and Without Diglossia; Diglossia With and Without Bilingualism’, Journal of Social Issues 23(2): 29–38. ———. 1971. ‘The Sociology of Language: An Interdisciplinary Social Science Approach to Language in Society’, in J.A. Fishman (ed.), Advances in the Sociology of Language, vol. 1. The Hague: Mouton, pp. 217–404. Giddens, A. 1985. The Nation-State and Violence. Cambridge: Polity Press. Haarmann, H. 1991. ‘Monolingualism versus Selective Multilingualism – On the Future Alternatives for Europe as It Integrates in the 1990s’, Sociolinguistica 5: 7–23. Habermas, J. (1962) 1990. Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit: Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, new ed. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 2001. Zeit der Übergänge. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Hogan-Brun, G., C. Mar-Molinero and P. Stevenson (eds). 2009. Discourses on Language and Integration. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hroch, M. 1985. Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Humboldt, W. von. (1830–35) 1963. ‘Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts’, in W. von Humboldt, Werke in fünf Bänden, vol. 3, Schriften zur Sprachphilosophie. Berlin: Rütten & Loening, pp. 368–756. Jacob, J.E. and D.C. Gordon. 1985. ‘Language Policy in France’, in W.R. Beer and J.E. Jacob (eds), Language Policy and National Unity. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, pp. 106–33. Kraus, P.A. 2008. A Union of Diversity: Language, Identity and Polity-Building in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2011a. ‘The Language Issue and Political Legitimation in the European Union: Neither Unity nor Diversity?’, in A.L. Kjær and S. Adamo (eds), Linguistic Diversity and European Democracy. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, pp. 17–33. ———. 2011b. ‘The Multilingual City: The Cases of Helsinki and Barcelona’, Nordic Journal of Migration Research 1(1): 25–36. Kristeva, J. 2008. ‘Europe des Langues: Conférence de presse au Ministére de la culture avec Mme la Ministre Christine Albanel’, 16 September. Retrieved 27 April 2012 from http://www.kristeva.fr/europedeslangues.html Laponce, J.A. 1987. Languages and Their Territories. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Maas, U. 1989. Sprachpolitik und politische Sprachwissenschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Mann, M. 2005. The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mill, J.S. (1861) 1972. ‘Considerations on Representative Government’, in J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism, Liberty, Representative Government, ed. H.B. Acton. London: Dent, pp. 187–428. Phillipson, R. 2003. English-Only Europe? Challenging Language Policy. London: Routledge. Rokkan, S. 1999. State Formation, Nation-Building, and Mass Politics in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. – 56 –

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Sassen, S. 2006. Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Spiegel Online. 2008. ‘Erdogan fordert türkische Gymnasien und Universitäten in Deutschland’, 8 February. Retrieved 27 April 2012 from http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ deutschland/0,1518,534052,00.html Taylor, C. 1992. Multiculturalism and ‘The Politics of Recognition’. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Van Parijs, P. 2004. ‘Europe’s Linguistic Challenge’, Archives Européennes de Sociologie 45: 113–54. Weber, M. (1922) 1980. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 5th ed. Tübingen: Mohr.

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P A R T II

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LANGUAGE AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITY IN MULTILINGUAL STATES

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Chapter 3

LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY POLITICS IN BELGIUM Claude Javeau

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T

he territory presently occupied by the Kingdom of Belgium is the result of the Treaty of Campo Formio of 1797, which was signed by the French Republic and the Austrian Empire. In exchange for Venetia and other Italian territories that were handed over to Austria, France in turn was given the Low Countries. The northern part of these became the Batavian Republic, a satellite state of France. Previously known as the Austrian Low Countries, following the Treaties of Utrecht (1713) and Rastatt (1714), the southern part – an area that largely corresponds to present-day Belgium – was annexed by France, which joined it with the Principality of Liège, an independent state headed by a prince-bishop that had been in existence from the tenth century onwards. This incorporation echoed a wish held by the population of Liège, whose country had been occupied by French armies since 1794. Split up into nine départments, whose geographical boundaries, according to the scheme devised by the Convention nationale, took no notice of the partitions of the ancien régime, the territory that was to become the Kingdom of Belgium in 1831 may genuinely be considered a French invention (Dumont 2010). The division into départments was to remain almost unchanged when these became the provinces of the new kingdom. Belgium continued to be French – first as a part of the republic and then of the empire – until the Treaty of Vienna of 1815. It was thereafter united with the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which had been reestablished in 1813 after Napoleon’s defeat at Leipzig. A large Kingdom of the Netherlands was thus formed, which hobbled along until the Belgian Revolution of 1830. This revolution entailed the secession of the south– 61 –

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ern provinces, which united as the Kingdom of Belgium, a constitutionally hereditary and representative monarchy, whose constitution would serve as a template for many other constitutions in the world (Dumont 2005). Formerly a republic and then later the ephemeral Kingdom of Holland, the northern part of the Low Countries was incorporated into the French Empire after 1810, before again being reinstated as an independent nation under a monarchical government. It was the least wealthy and the least populated part of the unitary Kingdom of the Netherlands, which existed from 1815 to 1830. With a Protestant majority, its population spoke a Germanic language that is currently known as ‘Dutch’, but which was then actually a dialect from Holland that was only later to become the official common language. In the northernmost section of the southern part of the erstwhile Kingdom of the Netherlands – the area that would later become Belgium – dialects from Flanders, Brabant and Limburg that were more or less akin to that from Holland were also all in use. They are nowadays brought together under the term ‘Flemish’, somewhat inappropriately, since these dialects are in fact split into three linguistic subgroups: ‘Flemish’ per se pertains approximately to the two provinces of West and East Flanders; ‘Brabants’ is related to the provinces of Vlaams-Brabant, but also to the Flemings living in Brussels and Antwerpen; and ‘Limburgs’, which is more akin to the West germanic language of Plattdeutsch and is related to the province of Limburg. However, nearly all of the elites in the Flemish region spoke French, which was also the common language among the populations of the southern part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, where the vernacular dialects, destined to wane away rather rapidly, were of the Picard, Walloon (the most widely used in several variants), Lorrain and Champenois varieties. Moreover, the population that would become Belgian was Catholic in majority and resented a certain harassment by Dutch authoritarianism. This population was behind the Belgian Revolution of 1830. In 1832, the Belgians had to call for the help of France in order to eject the last Dutch troops still present in Antwerp. The official frontiers of the new Kingdom of Belgium were recognized by the Treaty of London of 1839. By 1900, this small state, a democracy according to the canons of the time, would be ranked tenth among the economic powers of the world (Mabille 1997).

French as the Official Common Language of Belgium It is important to bear in mind that prior to the First World War, the French language continued to benefit from great prestige throughout Europe and the rest of the world (Busekist 1998a). As the language of diplomacy par – 62 –

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excellence, it was also that of the ruling elites in many countries. With the awakening of nationalities, its predominance had been put in jeopardy, but the process took some time to be noticeable. The French language had been largely used for a long time in the territories that would one day form Belgium, namely, in Flanders, in Wallonia and in Brussels. At the time that the new kingdom was being set up, French was the language of the political establishment (the constitution was written in French), as well as the language of the economic elites and the cultural circles. French was at that time the language of the majority of the European elites. It had been used in Flanders (Bruges and Ghent) since the fourteenth century, namely, in commercial relations with France, and it was favoured by the Vienna court. In Brussels, it was used by the local government, especially in the circles surrounding the governor, Charles de Lorraine, who was of French origin and the brother-in-law of Empress Marie-Thérèse, who, as a member of the Habsburg dynasty, was as fluent in French as she was in German, her mother tongue. Until the complete ‘Flemishization’ of the University of Ghent in 1930, French was also the language of higher education, having already been that of middle education across the whole of the country. The spokespersons for the northern population – where dialects of Diets1 prevailed – had long striven for Dutch (the official idiom of the Netherlands and chosen as the referential language) to be set on the same footing as French (Witte and Van Velthoven 1999). Dutch would end up becoming the official common ‘vehicular’ language to the north of a linguistic frontier that had remained virtually unchanged since the sixth century. This frontier cuts through the country from west to east. The most notable exception to this immutable line is, of course, Brussels,2 a city that formerly spoke Diets, which presently has a high majority of French-speaking inhabitants, among them many Belgians of Belgian extraction, who form roughly two-thirds of the total population of the region. As far as the remaining third is concerned, one is led to think that French is also the majority language, but it should not be forgotten that in many cases, the non-Belgian population is in a situation of diglossia (with the original languages of the allochthonous settlers, such as Arab dialects, Portuguese, Turkish, etc.), so that it is not possible to assimilate, in this respect, vernacular and vehicular languages (Javeau 1997). No more than 10 per cent of Brussels inhabitants use Dutch as their vehicular language, with their vernacular being, as a matter of fact, a local dialect variant that is more or less similar to Dutch. An exception must be made for the Flemish cultural elite, very active in Brussels, whose vernacular is a high brand of Flemish, much closer to a Dutch-inspired vehicular language, like that favoured by the daily newspapers associated with the upper classes, such as the Right-oriented Standaard and the Left-oriented De Morgen. – 63 –

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The progressive Frenchification of Brussels – a phenomenon that dates back to the Austrian domination of the eighteenth century – is one of the most conspicuous expressions of the predominance of French in the new kingdom. However, the bourgeoisie of the main Flemish cities were also French-speaking at that time, and this phenomenon pertains to the strong, age-old roots of French in Bruges in the fourteenth century. French was used as the vehicular language of the educated elites of Ghent and Antwerp well before Belgium gained its independence.3 The domination of French as the official language in all public matters in the kingdom only reinforced this situation, even if this did not necessarily exclude a bit of diglossia, so far as the domestic staff in Flemish households was concerned, to give one example. Around 1900, the majority of the best-known Belgian writers that wrote in French happened to be French-speaking Flemings, such as Maeterlinck, Verhaeren, Rodenbach, Eekhoud, and so forth. Even the standard-bearers of the Flemish literary renaissance, such as Hendrik (Henri) Conscience, author of De Leeuw van Vlaanderen (The Lion of Flanders), were perfectly bilingual. Conscience, the son of a French sailor, was also a member of the Belgian notables, who wrote in French when dealing with the official authorities. In spite of the role that his magnum opus played in the awakening of the Flemish people,4 we would do well to remember how the move from the Diets dialects to Dutch, the official language of the Netherlands, was met with strong resistance among the population now known as Flemish (Witte and Van Velthoven 2010). The Catholic Church, for instance, had long been opposed to a language that it considered to be Protestant to the core. A priest, Guido Gezelle, a major poet, wrote his entire work, in the second half of the nineteenth century, in his local dialect of Kortrijk.5 This is in fact an extreme example, but many prominent Flemish writers have resorted to typical Flemish expressions or semantics, such as Hugo Claus, for example, who was targeted for his ‘misuse’ of genuine Dutch by the well-known Dutch writer Jeroen Brouwers, a longtime resident of Brussels and author of Sire, er zijn geen Belgen (Sire, there are no Belgians), which was published in Amsterdam in 1980. In Belgium, where Dutch was the ‘natural’ vehicular language of half its inhabitants, its enthronement took more than a century, and well after the end of the Second World War, French was still widely used by the Flemish elites. The first king to speak the Belgian variant of Dutch was Leopold III, in the mid-1930s, whose customary language was nevertheless French – which even today is still supposed to be the official language of the royal court. Undoubtedly, the privileged position enjoyed by French on the international level helped this language retain its dominant status in the Kingdom of Belgium over a long period of time. – 64 –

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Language and Identity Politics in Belgium

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From One Reform to Another During the first century of the kingdom, the Flemish movement consistently demanded a position of equality for the two ‘official languages’ of Belgium,6 but this claim was to some extent impaired by the fact that some proponents of the movement colluded with the German occupying forces during the First World War, which alienated the French-speaking elites and the French-speaking population as a whole. A first achievement was brought about in 1932 with the laws of 22 June and 14 July, which acknowledged and promoted unilingualism in Flanders and Wallonia, as well as bilingualism in Brussels. The second bill dealt more specifically with primary and secondary education, with similar content regarding unilingualism and bilingualism. Contrary to the expectations of the ruling classes, however, these matters were not definitively settled. The activists of the Flemish movement continued to point out the domination of French-speaking agents in the public service, as well as in the economic and cultural realms. Further laws passed in 1963 marked the beginning of the process of Belgian federalization: the law of 30 July 1963, which dealt with the linguistic regime in education, and laws passed on 2 and 9 August of the same year, concerning the use of languages in administrative matters and matters of the judiciary, which strengthened the earlier provisions of 1932 in a way that made them more favourable to the Flemings, who were by now a majority in the country (Mabille 2003). These laws promoted unilingualism for services within Flanders and Wallonia, while in Brussels, bilingualism of services was to be the rule, with the judicial system split between French-speaking and Dutch-speaking courts. This process expressed itself in the successive constitutional revisions of 1970, 1980 and 1988, which led to the country being split into three ‘regions’ (the Flemish, the Walloon and that of Brussels-Capital), as well as three ‘communities’ (the Flemish, the French7 and the ‘German-speaking’8). This very complicated institutional structure has many nuances, which have led to many debates within the State Council and the more recently established Constitutional Court (Gerlache et al. 2004). At the time of writing, it is not clear whether or not the process of disrupting the Belgian political institutions has yet come to an end. The difficulties in forming a federal government after the general elections of June 2010 plainly illustrate this trend towards a new definition of the ‘public space’ in Belgium. The Flemish circles are constantly asking more and more of it. It looks like the kingdom is now heading towards a confederal system, or even towards total implosion. No matter what may be thought about such a destiny, it certainly would not be wise to venture a forecast here.9 – 65 –

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Claude Javeau

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Language and National Identity These successive reforms, whose flow does not yet seem to have reached an end, have all been founded on ‘the linguistic problem’, as formulated by the Flemish activist elites during the first decades of the Belgian state10 (De Coster 2007). These have made language the principal token of identity to be viewed as ‘national’, that is, pertaining to the birth and development of a nation, in the classical sense of the word as it was elaborated in the nineteenth century (as theorized, for example, by Ernest Renan around 1880). It must be conceded that the Diets-speaking populations endured genuine oppression during the nineteenth century and a substantial part of the twentieth century. A classic example of this oppression is the fact that Flemish defendants were judged by the courts in French, a language they could neither speak nor understand. In the last century, the economic and political elites continued to use French for a long time. Nevertheless, the demographic and economic evolution of what has now institutionally become Flanders (Vlaanderen) has bestowed it with a serious advantage in the kingdom. A few decades ago, in the mid-1960s, Flanders had become more prosperous, had less unemployment (roughly 7 per cent of the active population, compared to more than double that rate in Wallonia, where unemployment was above the European average) and also showed a higher degree of entrepreneurial spirit than was the case in Wallonia. This region still suffers from having been, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the first country on the European mainland to enter the industrial age that was already evident in Great Britain. Limited to the production of semifinished goods, afflicted by aging infrastructures and owing its demographic survival only to the presence of immigrants initially appointed to perform the most gruelling chores, Wallonia lags behind its powerful neighbour, which regards it as a painful burden, contributing to the existence of what in Flanders is called a ‘a two-speed Belgium’ (Quévit 2010). On the other hand, a certain ‘inferiority complex’ still lingers on in Flanders, where the stigma that was once upon a time inflicted by the Frenchspeaking elites of the kingdom still seems to be present. Viewed as heavy and slow, speaking various kinds of pidgin languages that were inaccessible to civilized ears and subject to a backwards-looking Catholic Church that made use of its activist petty clerics in order to control a population that could once be considered one of the most devout in Europe, Flemings have long been looked upon as second-rate citizens by their French-speaking countrymen. Until the mid-1920s, users of a Flemish dialect were chastised in elite secondary schools in Flanders, where French was the language of education. For a long time, the French-speaking Belgians would look down on the Flemings for supposedly speaking some kind of uncivilized language – 66 –

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Language and Identity Politics in Belgium

and behaving like a sort of wild, second-rate people; social progress was not open to Flemings, even in Flanders, unless they mastered the French language. Incidentally, it must be said that things are greatly changed nowadays, and that the image of the ‘retarded’ Fleming – supposing it was ever relevant – has become obsolete. Yet a kind of collective resentment still feeds a nationalist overbid, often tainted with right-wing extremism, as incarnated by the political party Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest, formerly Vlaams Blok), which accounts for a substantial amount of voters in the Flemish Region. This party, together with other nationalist parties, including the Nieuwe Vlaamse Actie (New Flemish Action), which came first to Flanders in the latest general elections, hold firmly to the Flemish nature of Flanders, including the ‘communes with facilities’ (for the French-speaking settlers) in the Brussels periphery. In the long term, they advocate a ‘re-Flemishization’ of Brussels – which was originally a Flemish city. A Flemish nation effectively arose in the course of the twentieth century that based itself on a linguistic revendication. As a matter of fact, the ‘language’ in question happened to be a collection of dialects, not always translatable one into the other, that were linked to a reference vehicular language, Dutch, that was rarely spoken in everyday life by the majority of its speakers. To be sure, a vehicular language close to Dutch is taught at school; it exerts a certain influence on the usual dialects, in ways that vary according to social position. For the French-speaking Belgians who are forced to learn Dutch during their compulsory schooling, this situation is often one that proves disturbing, since this language is for them of weak avail in ordinary social interactions, except with people attesting to a rather high cultural level. In the best-case scenarios, Flemings often find themselves in a state of ‘Flemish-Dutch/Diets dialect’ diglossia. A similar situation may not be attributed to Wallonia, where the formerly spoken dialects have suffered a very serious setback. When still spoken, this is only by elders or by local intellectual activists, and only then in a very confidential manner. There also exists a playful way of using these dialects, for example, by inserting words into ordinary French discourse. Unlike the Flemish provinces, the Walloon provinces and the French-speaking inhabitants of Brussels have long since completed their linguistic unification around French as it is spoken in nearby France – with only differences in the local accents and some ‘Belgicisms’ the French like to mock, such as confusing savoir (can) and pouvoir (may), or saying J’ai facile (‘I have easy’) instead of Il m’est facile (‘It is easy for me’), to say nothing of the socalled Belgian accent. It is a well-known fact that the Belgian grammarians are the best defenders of French linguistic orthodoxy. If we exclude for a moment the speakers of German dialects from the German-speaking – 67 –

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Community (who are nevertheless members of the Walloon Region), it is rare to find someone among the native population in Wallonia who is not able to resort to speaking basic French, but it used to be the case that a majority of them were bilingual, and it now seems that this situation is less frequent than was formerly the case. It is not uncommon for films that are shot in the Netherlands and presented on Flemish television to be fitted with subtitles suited to the Flemish way of speaking Dutch. One must not forget, however, that Dutch, as an official language, was imposed upon the Flemings, while French was taken as a natural language by the vast majority of Walloons. It would not be irrelevant here to ask questions about the assimilation of ‘national feeling’, in which the Flemings are but one example among many, and the use of a language (or a collection of related languages) within a given territory – whereby the spatial diffusion of this language is used to delimit this territory. This conception hails back to the nationalist uprisings of the nineteenth century, which elected language as the main token of nationality (Busekist 1998b). Other tokens were also taken into account, such as religion, for instance, but it can be said that it is language, often referred to as ‘natural’, that has largely been used to rank this token in the first place. This spatiolinguistic conception may be opposed to a ‘classist’ version of demographic homogeneity – such as that which can be found in ‘proletarian internationalism’ – which was also born in the nineteenth century and was also stamped with a kind of romanticism. This may make a claim for having very ancient roots, pertaining to the never-ending conflicts between members of the upper classes and those of the lower classes. To some extent, the romanticism of language has succeeded in superseding that of class, thus hiding the reality of class division, and the fact that changes in linguistic usage among the higher classes, to take the example of Flanders, has not led to an abolition of the domination that those classes have never ceased to exert over the lower classes within the Flemish population. The territorialization of languages, as implemented by dominated people, led to what has occurred in long established nation-states, where a national vehicular language (French, English, Spanish) imposed itself in opposition to the Latin of the Church. For the promoters of the Flemish movement, the language they proposed as a marker of nationality was (rather artificially) meant to replace within Flanders the French of the ruling classes that was then in use on both sides of the linguistic border. By adopting Dutch, or rather a Koinè version of it, these ruling classes, while keeping a certain distance, now declining, and with the popular classes still clinging to their various dialects, have replaced one official vehicular language with another, thus forcing the Belgian state into a legal bi– 68 –

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Language and Identity Politics in Belgium

lingualism that continues to be beset by problems of interpretation and implementation.11

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From ‘Linguistic’ to ‘Community’ Affairs In truth, a Flemish nation has arisen since the beginning of the twentieth century, albeit one in which linguistic unification around a vehicular language used and understood by all concerned is not yet complete. As far as the users of French are concerned, the situation is quite different. If one looks at what is now known as Wallonia, the very idea of a Walloon nation is still in its early stages. Looking for causes for this state of affairs, one must first take into account that in the absence of a standard Walloon language, the French language plays only a weak role as a marker of identity, despite this language having been that of the ruling classes at the time of the creation of the kingdom, while Dutch, as a language, was unknown to the majority of the Flemings. One must also consider the presence of still vivid particularisms, especially in the region of Liège, where the memory of the old bishopric principality, however much it may have been mythified, still inspires quite a few political strands. A number of specific traits persist in the local constituency that are connected to a certain nostalgia for the old principality. A kind of esprit principautaire is very often attributed to the Liégeois, not only to the local elites, but also to the population as a whole. One must keep in mind that while Flanders and Wallonia never existed as distinct entities in historical times, at the time of the French Revolution, there were indeed two territories present on what is now Belgian soil: the so-called Austrian Low Countries and the Principality of Liège, which dates back to the tenth century. These two states comprised populations of both linguistic regimes. Finally, one must also consider the existence of a deep-rooted working class that favours a ‘classist’ type of identity, rather than one based on cultural traits such as language. The passing from a linguistic to an ethnic stance, which was particularly conspicuous in Flanders, where it helped to reinforce the claim to a specific nationality, engendered the building up of ‘communities’ within Belgium, in both the territorial and linguistic sense of the word. Brussels represents an exception, where the two main communities have mixed, in a very asymmetrical manner, on the same piece of land. This new institutional structure, the achievement of which has resulted in the demand for countless never-ending discussions and many provisional compromises,12 undoubtedly leads to the formation of territorial groupings with a national character. The word ‘community’, however unsuited, rests on a certain vi– 69 –

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sion of ethnicity, corresponding to a long-term sedimentation of linguistic usages closely related to territorial ascriptions (Javeau 1992). These three ‘communities’ (Flemish, French, and ‘German-speaking’), settled within boundaries said to be permanent, are to some extent challenged nowadays by other communities, in the common sociological sense of the word, that have also settled in Flanders, in Wallonia and in Brussels, where about two hundred thousand people from North Africa are now present. Their marker is no longer language (at least so far as the vehicular language is concerned) but religious belonging, a marker that is either claimed or the result of an undisputed earmarking. For the North Africans or the Turks living in Belgium, the ethnicity principle is drawn from Islam, which is generally perceived as a bearer of beliefs and behaviours alien to the indigenous traditions claimed by the three established communities. This point surely deserves a more detailed survey, addressing issues such as the enrolment of members of these allogenous communities within the political personnel of the institutionalized communities discussed above. As far as the two main communities are concerned, the gap goes on widening, owing to the differences of meaning ascribed to the notion of ‘ethnic’ identity by the leading strata on both sides of the linguistic rift. The reference to a unique Belgian space is waning away, to the benefit of regional claims to a distinctive identity. Flemings tend to think of themselves as Flemings, and Walloons are beginning to follow their lead. Even the Bruxellois are now making a claim for a specific identity, or at least the French-speaking ones, who do not wish to be included in an isolated Walloon nation still in the making. A recent survey indicated that no more than a third of this population would accept being included in a WalloniaBrussels federation rather than Flanders, if the latter were to secede from Belgium. Flanders, in fact, views itself as a full-fledged nation that includes among its citizens the Flemings that live in the Brussels-Capital Region, who are considered to be Flemings de jure living in a city that historically belongs to the Flemish realm. The same may not be said of the French-speaking denizens of the same region, who long for a national identity different from that of the Flemish. As a result, the process of decay in the unitary state established by the 1831 constitution has not yet come to an end, and the survival of the kingdom is no longer passed over in silence as a component of the public debates. Overtly separatist parties are met with growing success in Flanders, while the hypothetical annexing by France of Wallonia – with or without Brussels – is no longer thought of as a crazy dream (Javeau 2009). One would have to be prescient to predict the fate of the country that will continue for the meantime to be referred to as ‘Belgium’ (Barnard et al. 2005).13 – 70 –

Language and Identity Politics : A Cross-Atlantic Perspective, edited by Christina Späti, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2015.

Language and Identity Politics in Belgium

Claude Javeau has a PhD in social sciences (Université libre de Bruxelles, 1977) and is a professor emeritus of Université libre de Bruxelles since October 2005. He is an honorary director of the Revue de l’Institut de Sociologie and has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Paris V, Québec (Laval), Poitiers, Prague, Liège and Tunis 3. He is the author of more than thirty books, including Leçons de sociologie (Paris, 1997), Mourir (Brussels, 2000), Le Bricolage du social (Paris, 2001), Sociologie de la vie quotidienne (Paris, 2003), Les Paradoxes de la postmodernité (Paris, 2007), La France doit-elle annexer la Wallonie? (Paris, 2008) and Des Impostures sociologiques (Bordeaux, 2014). He is also the author of numerous essays, short stories and poems and was for a long time a chronicler of the Brussels daily press.

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Notes 1. Diets (known in French as thiois) designate the variety of languages for which ‘Dutch’ has now become the official reference. In Dutch, Diets is akin to Duits (German). Dutch, indeed, is one part of a larger Germanic whole. 2. ‘Brussels’ here means the area composed of the nineteen communes that now constitute the Brussels-Capital Region, an area with more than one million inhabitants. 3. The proportion of families in Ghent where French is still the vernacular language in domestic life has been estimated at 15 per cent. 4. Of whom it has been said that he learned his people to read (‘Hij leerde zijn volk lezen’). 5. According to authoritative sources, Dutch itself, as it is spoken in the Netherlands, is not spoken in Belgium by more than 2 per cent of the population. The standard language of the highly educated Flemings is a language akin to Dutch, but with notable differences in syntax and pronunciation. 6. There exists a third official language, namely, German, which is a vehicular language for a mere seventy thousand inhabitants of a small pair of districts at the eastern border with Germany. Most of these people ordinarily speak variants of the Rhenan dialect, or of the Luxembourgian language. 7. Importantly, this is the ‘French’ Community (Communauté française) and not ‘French-speaking’, which leads to many confusions, especially in France. One also speaks nowadays of the Community of Wallonia-Brussels. 8. Grouping together the small number of people at the eastern border with Germany who speak German as their vehicular language. 9. For more about the possible solutions to the Belgian muddle, see Javeau (2009). 10. In French, Flamingants, which designates not the Flemish-speaking people, but those fighting for the complete equality of French and Dutch in political circles, and the exclusive usage of Dutch (that is, the Belgian brand of Dutch) in the northern part of the country. For French-speaking Belgians, this word is of a derogatory nature. 11. For instance, in the six communes said to be with ‘facilities’ (of linguistic use), situated at the periphery of the Brussels-Capital Region, the French-speaking ‘minorities’ (which sometimes account for up to 80 per cent of the inhabitants) do benefit, while legally being Flemish citizens, from some privileges, namely, in schooling, which are regularly challenged by the Flemish governing bodies. 12. On the Flemish side, the ruling bodies of community and region have merged, while on the French side, those of the so-called French Community and the Walloon Region are – 71 –

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Claude Javeau

still distinct. The Brussels-Capital Region is dominated by its French-speaking majority; however, the Flemings legally dispose of seats within the regional government. They benefit from preferential treatment that does not respect the democratic principle of ‘one voter, one voice’. 13. Since the latest general elections of 2014, Belgium is now run by a center-right government composed of four Flemish parties and only one French-speaking one. It has decided not to address the so-called ‘communautarian’ problems until the end of the legislature. If this happens in due time, i.e. in 2019, the old feud between Flemings and Walloons will recede. Or not?

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References Barnard, B., et al. 2005. How Can One Not Be Interested in Belgian History? Ghent: Gents Academia Press. Busekist, A. von. 1998a. La Belgique: Politique des langues et construction de l’Etat. Brussels: Duculot. ———. 1998b. Nations et nationalismes XIXe–XXe siècle. Paris: Armand Colin. De Coster, M. 2007. Les Enjeux des conflits linguistiques: Le français à l’épreuve des modèles belge, suisse et canadien. Paris: L’Harmattan. Dumont, G.-H. 2005. Chronologie de la Belgique de 1830 à nos jours. Brussels: Le Cri. ———. 2010. Histoire de la Belgique. Brussels: Le Cri. Gerlache, A., et al. 2004. La Belgique pour débutants. Bruges: La Charte. Javeau, C. 1992. ‘Du mythe du contrat au mythe de la communauté’, Revue de l’Institut de Sociologie 1(4): 39–48. ———. 1997. ‘Le contexte socio-politique de la langue française à Bruxelles’, in D. Blanpain et al. (eds), Le français en Belgique. Louvain-la-Neuve: Duculot, pp. 250–58. ———. 2009. La France doit-elle annexer la Wallonie? Paris: Larousse. Mabille, X. 1997. Histoire politique de la Belgique. Brussels: CRISP. ———. 2003. La Belgique depuis la seconde guerre mondiale. Brussels: CRISP. Quévit, M. 2010. Flandre-Wallonie: Quelle solidarité? Charleroi: Couleurs livres. Witte, E. and H. Van Velthoven. 1999. Langue et politique: La situation en Belgique dans une perspective historique. Brussels: Vrije Universiteit Brussel Press. ———. 2010. Strjden om taal: De Belgische taalkwestie in historish perspectife. Kapellen: Uitgeverij Bekmans.

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Language and Identity Politics : A Cross-Atlantic Perspective, edited by Christina Späti, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2015.

Chapter 4

PLURILINGUALISM AND IDENTITY POLITICS The Case of Switzerland Christina Späti

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S

witzerland is often considered a model for the successful integration of linguistic diversity. Since its foundation in 1848, Switzerland has legally and normatively codified the protection of linguistic particularism and established plurilingualism as a basic component of its national identity. From the outside, Switzerland is generally perceived to be a model of linguistic harmony. Within Switzerland itself, however, descriptions of the coexistence of the four language groups are not always overwhelmingly enthusiastic. The oft-quoted citation ‘Les Suisses s’entendent bien parce qu’ils ne se comprennent pas’ (The Swiss get on well because they don’t understand what each other is saying) points to the fact that linguistic harmony is more likely to be based on a passive coexistence than on active co-operation. On the whole, however, and in comparison to what is seen in other plurilingual countries, Switzerland has managed linguistic diversity without any major disruptions. In this chapter, I will look at the institutional and cultural framework that lies at the core of this largely successful management of the cohabitation of the various linguistic groups. After providing an overview of the basic principles of Swiss plurilingualism, I will go on to address some of the specific political and institutional aspects of the Swiss political system. These elements are considered to represent the basic framework that has supported the successful management of linguistic diversity. Swiss federalism, power sharing and the crosscutting of various social, political and cultural cleavages are seen as the important prerequisites that have allowed for the protection of linguistic minorities. However, as we will see, there – 73 –

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are a number of cultural aspects that also play an important role in the way that language politics is debated and concrete policies are conceived. In these debates, the concept of identity plays an important role. As I will show, there is a fundamental dilemma between the idea that language constitutes an important marker of collective identity on the one hand, and the need to defend Swiss national identity as plurilingual on the other.

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Basic Principles of Swiss Language Politics Swiss language policies are legally based on four principles: the equality of the four national languages, German, French, Italian and Romansh; the freedom of language; the principle of linguistic territoriality; and the protection of linguistic minorities (Voyame 1989). The first of these principles, the equality of status, was inscribed in the first constitution of modern Switzerland as early as 1848. However, it only concerned the three main languages of German, French and Italian, which were named as the three national languages. Romansh was only recognized as a national language in 1938. While the other principles may have a long history as common law, they were only introduced into the constitution at a much later date. It was in 1996 that the revised language article guaranteed federal support to the cantons of Grisons and Ticino in their bid to preserve and promote the (minority) languages of Italian and Romansh. The very notion of ‘minority languages’, however, was conspicuously avoided. Freedom of language and the principle of territoriality were first laid down in the completely revised constitution of 1999. The principle of territoriality, predominant in most plurilingual states (McRae 1975; Mackey 1976), is considered to be the most important element of Swiss language policies. As a long-standing, unwritten law, it has guided language policies since the early twentieth century (Coray 2004a: 353). Surprisingly, despite its enduring history and significance, what it actually means is a topic for debate among legal scholars. It is usually agreed that it aims to attribute one language (or, under certain circumstances, several languages) to a particular territorially defined region (Thürer and Burri 2006: 259). Moreover, it is generally agreed that the principle of territoriality limits linguistic freedom (Weibel 1986; Wright 1999). Thus, these two principles are sometimes regarded as antithetic or even contradictory. In Switzerland, the principle of territoriality applies to the language used in official communications within the geographical limits of the cantons, whereas freedom of language relates to all instances of private communication (Weibel 1986; Labrie 1997). – 74 –

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Plurilingualism and Identity Politics

These principles, in particular the principle of territoriality, have contributed to the fact that, with the exception of Romansh, the language groups are territorially based. They show a far-reaching homogeneity within their linguistic borders. The principle of territoriality requests that when it comes to the official use of language (for purposes of administration, jurisdiction, education, etc.) people should assimilate to the locally spoken language when they move across the linguistic border. Thus, the principle of territoriality is often understood as an important measure for the protection of linguistic minorities (Rossinelli 1989; Laponce 1991; Froidevaux 1997; Richter 2005). As a result, within each territorial unit, most people are actually monolingual. While this is true with regard to speakers of the four official languages, most immigrants are bilingual, with figures standing at about 80 per cent (Franceschini 2003). It is only the very small minority of Romansh speakers who are generally bilingual (speaking Romansh and German). In addition to the territorial homogeneity of its language groups, Switzerland has demonstrated a marked stability in its language statistics over the last 150 years. The German-speaking majority of the Swiss population (excluding non-Swiss citizens) regularly amounts to around 70 per cent of the population. Over the same period of the last 150 years, the Francophones have accounted for between 20 and 24 per cent, whereas the much smaller group of Italian-speaking people has oscillated at levels between 4 and 6 per cent. The Romansh speakers are the only ones who have consistently lost ground, dropping from 1.7 per cent in 1860 to 0.6 per cent in the year 2000, a figure that translates to around thirty-five thousand citizens. As a consequence, while the German-speaking and the French-speaking groups are seen as stable, the smaller groups that speak Italian and, in particular, Romansh are perceived as being threatened. The case of the Romansh seems to be particularly difficult. Not only is their group very small, but instead of a single Romansh language, there are actually five different dialects, which vary so strongly that people from different valleys do not necessarily understand each other. Since the 1980s, a written Rumantsch Grischun has been developed, but this has encountered a lot of opposition, since it is considered to be an artificial language that threatens the traditional dialects (Coray 2008). Dialect is also an issue in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, where a diglossic situation is in place. This means that several Swiss German dialects exist alongside a standard written German, which is only used orally for official purposes. While Swiss Germans tend to value their dialects very highly, their insistence on using dialect to speak at all times can sometimes pose problems with regard to language politics. This is because – 75 –

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the French-speaking and the Italian-speaking inhabitants all learn the standard variety of German at school. It is not surprising, therefore, that the ideology of dialect within the German-speaking parts of Switzerland is closely monitored by representatives of these other linguistic groups, particularly the French speakers. The increasing use of dialect that has been observed since the 1970s has often been criticized for undermining national cohesion.

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Constitutional and Political Framework Research literature in the area of history, as well as in political science, lists a number of factors in the Swiss political system that form key points of reference for language politics and are seen as the principal factors that have contributed to the largely successful integration of the different linguistic groups and the maintenance of linguistic peace. These include consociationalism, federalism and crosscutting cleavages (e.g., McRae 1983; Schmid 1995; Linder 2005). Consociational democracy has influenced Swiss language politics in various ways. According to Arend Lijphart (1977), consociationalism is defined in relation to four elements.1 The most important of these is the existence of a grand coalition in the government, in which political leaders from all segments of society are represented. In Switzerland, this situation arises as a result of the so-called magic formula, which has incorporated all four of the major political parties within the Federal Council since 1959. Recent developments have, however, raised questions as to whether the idea of consensual democracy is still functioning in Switzerland. For example, the populist strategy that the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) has followed since the 1990s, of denouncing the other government parties and the political elite in general, as well as the increased polarization of party politics, seem to indicate profound fissures in the consensual modes of Swiss politics. The consociational system has been further unsettled by the fact that the SVP’s leading figure, Christoph Blocher, was voted off the Federal Council in 2007, which was followed by a year in which the SVP was absent from government. Moreover, Lijphart neglects the fact that the Swiss parties are not, as in some other plurilingual countries, based on linguistic or ethnic differences. Therefore, it is not very clear why the existence of a grand coalition in the government should contribute to the avoidance of tensions between language groups. Finally, and most importantly, Lijphart takes a primarily structuralist approach and is mainly concerned with institutional settings and effects on policy making. He pays little attention to the way that consociational democracy is constructed through the opin– 76 –

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ions and discourses presented by the political parties involved, or to the fact that the power of consociationalism lies more in the ways that it is presented and imagined than in how it is institutionalized. As we will see, it is precisely this notion of imagined consociationalism that is of such great importance when it comes to language politics. A second basic element of consociational democracy is the mutual power of veto, which serves as an additional layer of protection for minority interests. In Switzerland, according to Lijphart (1977: 38), this mutual veto is expressed in an informal, unwritten understanding. The principle of proportionality is a third element that can be found in consociational democracies. It guarantees the proportional representation of minorities, not only at the level of government, but also in parliamentary commissions and the state administration. According to Daniel Thürer and Thomas Burri (2006: 35), one of the secrets of Swiss linguistic peace lies in the fact that linguistic minorities are actually overrepresented in some areas of government and administration. Some of the quotas that should guarantee an equal representation of the linguistic minorities are settled in laws and directives, with respect to the federal administration, for example. However, there are also some unwritten rules, in particular with regard to the government at the federal level, as well as in relation to executives within those cantons that are plurilingual (Schmid 1995). One unwritten rule, for instance, says that two of the members of the seven-headed Federal Council should be Francophone, and that every now and then, the Italian-speaking population should also have representation, at the expense of a German-speaking person. Over time, this unwritten rule has been reasonably well adhered to (U. Altermatt 1991). A fourth basic element of consociationalism refers to segmental autonomy, which allows the minority to rule over itself within the area of the minority’s exclusive concern. Due to the federal structure of Switzerland, the power and actual competences of the federal state are limited with respect to language policy. The confederation’s competences in this matter are restricted to the use of language that takes place within the federal administration and in its communication with the population. Moreover, the federal constitution requires the confederation to act in favor of national cohesion, as well as to support the linguistic minorities and the plurilingual cantons. It is the cantons, however, that have the right to define their own language policies. They are thereby compelled by the constitution to uphold the freedom of language and the principle of territoriality. This means that in Switzerland, language protection is linked to territory, rather than to communities of people. The language article of the federal constitution states: ‘To maintain co-operation between the language communities, [the cantons] must take account of the traditional lin– 77 –

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guistic composition of their regions and show consideration to indigenous linguistic minorities.’2 In recent years there has been some discussion on the question of whether Swiss federalism is still de facto based on the cantons. As some authors have pointed out, over the course of the last forty years or so, the linguistic communities have become more important as partial public spaces and have therefore become more and more of a political and cultural entity, albeit an informal one (U. Altermatt 1996; Coray 2004b). Jan Erk (2007), for instance, argues that Swiss federalism has come to reflect the underlying ethnolinguistic divide between the German-speaking Swiss and the French-speaking Swiss. His argumentation is based on the fact that the areas of media and education are losing their traditional anchorage in the cantons and are instead developing within the boundaries of the linguistic communities. In education, for instance, there is a process of reform currently underway that aims at harmonizing the Swiss school system, which has until now been subject to considerable potential differences from one canton to another. The harmonization does not mean, however, that all study programmes will be the same at the national level, but rather within the four linguistic regions. Similar processes have also been observed in relation to secondary education. The media represent another area where linguistic regions tend to overlie the cantons. Constitutionally, public television and radio are under federal jurisdiction. In practice, however, they are divided into the three main linguistic regions (Wuerth 1999). With regard to television, for instance, there are two programmes for each of the three major linguistic regions. As a result, public space is strictly segmented along the borders of the linguistic communities (Kriesi et al. 1996). In recent years, the process by which the press has become more concentrated in terms of ownership has led to similar results. Many newspapers are no longer principally confined within cantonal borders, but instead cover linguistic regions. Many observers agree that all these recent developments have contributed to an increase in the ethnicization of politics in Switzerland. This means that there is a growing tendency to explain socioeconomic or political disparities by pointing to linguistic and cultural differences.

The Importance of Crosscutting Cleavages Another factor pertinent to an explanation of the Swiss case concerns the overlapping of affiliations. According to Seymour Martin Lipset’s prominent notion of ‘crosscutting cleavages’, the chances for a stable democracy are higher when groups and individuals have a number of crosscutting af– 78 –

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filiations that are politically relevant: ‘To the degree that a significant proportion of the population is pulled among conflicting forces, its members have an interest in reducing the intensity of political conflict’ (Lipset 1960: 88–89). In Switzerland, we can perceive an absence of clearly defined socioeconomic, religious and linguistic boundaries. Most importantly, religious, linguistic and socioeconomic cleavages do not overlap with the geographical borders of the cantons (Linder 1998). Given the historical importance of the canton with regard to the construction of local identities, this missing correlation has an important impact on the way that identities are constructed. Moreover, linguistic and religious affiliations do not necessarily go together. Prior to the 1950s, for example, the religious divide within the German-speaking minority in the bilingual canton of Fribourg was much stronger than any feeling of belonging to the German-speaking group. As mentioned above, it was only in the early 1980s that the emphasis on regional identities grew stronger and the cleavage between the French-speaking and the German-speaking regions became more salient. Some sections of the media began to write about a so-called Röstigraben, a ditch dividing the two linguistic regions that had supposedly become deeper since the late 1970s. Indicators for this development are usually identified in the ways that voting behaviour in the regions has been different when it comes to votes on popular initiatives and referenda. Increasingly, representatives of the French-speaking group have complained that they are being outvoted by the German-speaking majority. To some extent, however, this assessment contrasts with the findings of a study that analyzed the voting in 360 popular initiatives and referenda that took place in Switzerland between 1945 and 2003. Among the main cleavages to be found in voting behaviour, the rural-urban cleavage proved to be the single most important factor. This cleavage was significant in 189 of the 360 votes that were analyzed. The cleavage between the German-speaking and French-speaking regions is still the second most important factor, proving significant in 164 cases out of 360. According to the author’s conclusions, however, the cleavage between the German-speaking and the French-speaking regions has not actually become stronger in recent years, as many have claimed, but has instead become more obvious, since the overall number of popular votes has increased (Bolliger 2007).

Cultural Framing of Language Politics: Imagining the Swiss Nation Even though most political scientists insist on the importance of the institutional and political framework of Swiss language politics when ex– 79 –

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plaining the relatively peaceful linguistic situation that persists within Switzerland, it is important to note that there are a number of cultural elements that have contributed to the shaping of the country’s language politics. For instance, specific notions of national identity that have played a key role in the country’s historical narratives also help to understand the absence of linguistic nationalism in Switzerland. Moreover, the low-profile approach that has been adopted in language policies, and in issues relating to the status and the prestige of the four national languages, must also be considered. In Europe, as well as in many parts of the world, linguistic differences are usually associated with territorial differences (Alter 1985; Hobsbawm 1990; Schieder 1991). Linguistic nationalism in the nineteenth century therefore understood language to be the ‘soul of the nation’ (Gardt 2000). Thus, in the process of nation building, most nation-states sought to represent themselves as monolingual on the basis of a homogenized variety, although in reality, this was often not the case. The state language became one of the most important principles in organizing the modern nation-state (Haarmann 1993), thus establishing language as the main symbol of the state community. Moreover, the strong emphasis on one language implied a discrimination against speakers of minority languages. The role of language in the process of nation building can therefore be described as having an inclusive as well as an exclusive effect (Safran 2004). In terms of nationalism, Switzerland is often considered to be a special case within Europe (Ipperciel 2007). Given that first three and then later four languages were all declared as official languages, three of which with equal status, Switzerland is often seen as a nation-state in which linguistic nationalism plays a minor role, or no role whatsoever (Koller 2000; Schmid 2001; Wimmer 2002). Instead, national narratives that are important to all linguistic groups and that refer to a common history, to founding myths, to an alleged Swiss ‘exceptionalism’ or to the idea of Switzerland as a ‘voluntary nation’ all serve as binding elements and as markers of a common national identity across linguistic barriers. These are the elements that are brought forwards in debates about the strengthening of national cohesion in Switzerland. The political and social elites have consistently sought to avoid creating cleavages, or when they have appeared, they have sought means to compensate linguistic or cultural diversity by strengthening concepts that have allowed for references to Switzerland’s exclusiveness. Long-standing discourses pertaining to Switzerland as a special case have helped to create a feeling of national belonging based on inclusion beyond linguistic or cultural affiliation, whereas stoking fears about alleged ‘overforeignization’ has contributed to the shaping of national identity by excluding those who supposedly do not belong. – 80 –

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Moreover, it has to be pointed out that, historically speaking, no part of Switzerland has ever belonged to any other bordering preexisting nationstate, with the exception of some parts of Francophone Switzerland that belonged to Napoleon’s France for a very short period of time at the turn of the nineteenth century (Grin 2005). Since 1848, there have been no separatist tendencies of any real significance. It is also interesting to note that concepts of ethnicity or the idea of ethnic groups have barely found their way into the debates on language politics (Coray 2004b). Furthermore, none of the Swiss linguistic groups see themselves in terms of individual nations, or as ethnically belonging to a neighbouring nation-state (Dardanelli 2008).

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Language and Language Policies as Low-Profile Issues Compared with countries such as Belgium and Canada, language policy has long been an issue of minor significance in Switzerland (Weibel 1988; Coray 2004a). In 1966, historian Herbert Lüthy (1966) claimed that it would be more accurate to say that Switzerland has successfully avoided posing the language problem than to say that it has successfully solved it. Renata Coray has described Swiss language politics as being marked by a strategy of avoidance and the fading out of potential language problems as a perpetual ‘decision not to decide’ (Coray 2004a). Until 1996, the language article of the constitution went no further than indicating the initial three and later the four national languages of Switzerland. In 1996, two paragraphs were added stating that the confederation should encourage understanding between the linguistic groups and support the minority languages. It was only the completely revised federal constitution of 1999 that further elaborated on the language question. The first language act at the federal level was adopted in 2007, after a rather tedious process, and was only enforced by the federal government in late 2009. Similar tendencies can be observed at the cantonal level. Among the plurilingual cantons, only Grisons has a language law, which came into force in 2008. Politicians in the bilingual canton of Fribourg have been demanding since the early 1990s that the government elaborate a language law, although such interventions have always been debated very controversially. Thus far, the government has refused to present a language law. The low-profile approach to language policy is not only reflected in the concrete policies, but also in the relative sparseness of the research literature that was until recently available on the topic. Moreover, it is also reflected in the low levels of statistical data that are provided by the Swiss authorities. Jean-Guy Prévost and Jean-Pierre Beaud (2002) have examined the – 81 –

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way in which statistics are compiled in Canada, Belgium and Switzerland, and how they are applied when it comes to language and language politics. Where Canada turned out to be an exceptional case in terms of the huge amount of language variables that are measured, Switzerland proved to be rather moderate with regard to exploring the linguistic affiliations of the people in its census. Interestingly, Belgium has included no questions about language in its census since the 1960s. This ‘voluntary ignorance’ is the result of a kind of consensus in Belgium that prefers to turn a blind eye to the linguistic distribution that exists within each region, in view of the sensitivity of the question and its possible implications. With regard to the Swiss case, the authors conclude ‘that its “moderate” statistical inquisitiveness is quite in line with its fundamentally stable political-linguistic equilibrium’ (Prévost and Beaud 2002: 95). In view of the low-profile approach to language policy in Switzerland, however, this absence of statistical data can also be interpreted in a similar way as it is in the case of Belgium.

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Conception, Status and Prestige of Swiss Languages Language politics is not only about the coexistence of linguistic groups and the granting of linguistic rights to minorities. The perception of the languages involved also plays a key role. From this perspective, a number of factors are important with regard to the four official languages in Switzerland. First, it is essential to note that the three main languages have enjoyed equal status as national languages since the foundation of the modern Swiss nation-state. Even though, in terms of numbers, Italian clearly has the status of a minority language (being spoken by only about 4–6 per cent of the whole population), it has never been connoted as a minority language, as opposed to the language of the majority. When the recognition of Romansh as the fourth national language was debated in 1937–38, the message of the Federal Council explicitly stated that Swiss constitutional law does not use the term ‘linguistic minorities’, but draws only on the term of an ‘equality of languages’. It was only with the language article of 1999 that the notion of ‘linguistic minority’ was introduced, and then only with reference to the cantonal context. At the federal level, there is still no reference made to the term ‘minority’. In this way, the constitution underlines the equality of the linguistic groups and avoids depicting them in terms of a majority or minorities. Second, the three main languages of German, French and Italian all enjoy equal prestige, both linguistically and historically. This means that in the perception of the public, they are seen as being equally prestigious. – 82 –

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The opposite notions of ‘prestige’ and ‘stigma’ in the context of languages come from the field of sociolinguistics. Whereas in former times, languages were actually seen as being more or less prestigious, today it is generally recognized that these questions have less to do with the languages themselves than with questions of power (Edwards 1996). This means that the status attributed to a language will, for example, depend on the question of whether it is the majority or the minority language. Dialects, for instance, were (and are) usually seen as being less prestigious than the standard language. In Switzerland, however, such discussions never took place regarding the three main official languages of the country. Moreover, the Romansh language, which might otherwise have suffered even more, profited from the fact that it is spoken in Grisons, a canton situated in the Alps. The concept of the Alps has played a key role in the engineering of policies concerned with the ‘national spiritual defence’. This concept goes back to the time of the Second World War, when the political elites agreed that military defence should be accompanied by a strengthening of the country’s cultural traditions and values. During the Nazi era, this defence was primarily directed against Fascist regimes in the neighbouring countries, but it was adapted after the war to demonstrate Switzerland’s firm opposition towards communism. In the conception of the ‘national spiritual defence’, the Alps have played an important role as a symbol of Swiss willingness for combat. Accordingly, the significance of the Alps in Swiss mythology has contributed to the notion that the Romansh language deserves to be protected because it is the language of the alpine population. As has been shown by Renata Coray (2008), in such debates, the threesome of the Romansh language, the notion of freedom and the mountains were seen as a mythological unity. Such underlying assumptions can still be found in language debates today. Third, it is important to bear in mind that one of the languages that is spoken by a large majority of the people living in Switzerland is actually a dialect. While the Swiss German dialect is sometimes seen as a barrier to mutual understanding between the linguistic groups, there is also reason to believe that this in fact relieves the tension between the groups. Once again, this matter depends on the important role of the prestige that is attributed to the languages. It is often observed that there are some sentiments of inferiority among many Swiss Germans in relation to Germans who speak the standard variety. Moreover, speakers of the French language, though in a minority position, tend to see their language as being culturally superior to the Swiss German dialect. As some authors point out, the feeling of inferiority, as well as the positioning of the standard German against the dialectal variety, reinforces the perceived position that the French-speaking minority is supposed to enjoy (Rash 1998). – 83 –

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Language and Identity in Political Debates since the 1960s The fact that Switzerland is generally understood as a plurilingual state poses a fundamental problem with regard to concepts of identity and identity politics. On the one hand, it is generally assumed that language can be, or should be, considered an important marker of individual or collective identity. The emphasis hereby lies in the fact that identity – be it individual or collective – is framed by monolingualism. This assumption, on the other hand, raises the question of whether plurilingualism can also be used as a reference with which to construct identity, for example, national identity in the case of Switzerland. The dilemma arising from this question can be clearly observed by examining the parliamentary debates on language politics that have taken place at the national level in Switzerland since the 1960s. It is important to note that ethnic separatism plays no role whatsoever in Swiss politics. This is one of the reasons why no politician will wilfully question plurilingualism as a core factor of the Swiss nation-state. The idea of a plurilingual national identity has proven, however, to be rather difficult to communicate. Oft-cited references to the concept of a ‘unity in diversity’ that supposedly circumscribes Swiss collective identity persist, but this remains a generally vague and fluid concept. The phrase was used in order to resolve the contradiction between the frequently expressed assumption of a close link between language and identity on the one hand, and the fact of Swiss plurilingualism on the other. Together with the notion of Switzerland being a ‘voluntary nation’, traditional Swiss multiculturalism, restricted to the four autochthonous languages, was generally seen as being the essence of the country. Another notion that was important in connection with national collective identity was the term ‘mutual understanding’. Although it is not strictly speaking a legal principle, it is of the utmost importance in relation to Swiss language policy and as such figures in several language articles in the national and some cantonal constitutions. Even though it is a phrase that was often used in the parliamentary debates, its exact meaning and concrete implications remained unclear. The assumption is that national cohesion and identity would be strengthened by an improved mutual understanding among the four language groups. Supposedly, ‘mutual understanding’ should be reinforced by strengthening linguistic competences among the population, or by broadcasting national television or radio programmes in the various national languages. A second way of emphasizing the notion of national identity was seen in the guarantee of equality for language groups, most commonly expressed in the wish to have them equally represented within the federal administra– 84 –

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tion. While parliamentary interventions supporting this goal have usually found wide support among politicians from all parties, their implementation remains difficult, and in particular, the smaller language groups of the Italian-speaking and Romansh-speaking populations are still notoriously underrepresented in certain domains (Kübler, Papadopoulos and Mazzoleni 2009). While these discussions show that in parliamentary debates about Swiss language politics the definition of national identity has usually been dominated by inclusive aspects, we can also find discursive elements that have sought to demarcate. Most prominently, it was generally agreed that Switzerland is a quadrilingual state, as opposed to a multilingual country that would include a reference to the various nonautochthonous languages present in contemporary society. The emphasis on the four national languages was also used to counter the increasingly observed influence of the English language in various domains. It was also meant to point to the fact that the status of the four autochthonous languages should by no means be enlarged to include the acceptance of immigrant languages. In striking contradiction to the importance of conceiving a plurilingual national identity, the debates in the national and state councils on language politics show that parliamentarians frequently pointed to alleged links between one (territorially based) language and identity. As can be observed in many language debates, politicians generally agreed on the importance of language for people in general, and for individual or collective identity. It was often stressed that language has a very emotional value for people and that language policy debates and disputes were thus often difficult or sensitive. With regard to the supposedly close connection between language and collective identity, it was generally assumed that the four language groups in Switzerland also show collective identities that are clearly distinguishable from each other. In other plurilingual countries, such as Belgium or Canada, collective identity based on a regional language would be referred to as ‘ethnic identity’ or even ‘national identity’, for instance, with regard to the importance that French has for the Québec nation. However, these concepts are seldom, or in the case of ‘national identity’ never, used in Swiss language debates, where national identity always and exclusively refers to identity at the level of the Swiss nation-state. When the term ‘ethnic groups’ was used in Swiss language debates, it was mostly by representatives of the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino. However, it remained a vague concept. This can be seen, for instance, in the statement of Senator Sergio Salvioni, a representative of the Swiss Liberal Party from the canton of Ticino, who referred in 1995 to the ‘three or four linguistic and ethnic groups’ of which Switzerland was composed.3 – 85 –

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Apparently, he was unable to decide whether each of the four language groups in Switzerland amounted to an ethnic group. However, it was the term ‘language community’ that was most frequently used with reference to language politics. This suggests that language was seen as the main determinant of the four groups. Instead of linking language to ethnicity, most politicians preferred to point to cultural differences between the groups that stem from their specific linguistic identity. Language was thus seen as the main expression of cultural identity. For instance, in many debates that took place in the period after the late 1970s, French-speaking and Italian-speaking members of Parliament criticized the underrepresentation of their groups within the federal administration. They argued that this was not only a sign of discrimination against the smaller language groups, but also a disadvantage for the whole nationstate, since the absence of members of these language groups in the administration would cause the lack of an alleged esprit latin, or a ‘certain way of thinking’ within the administration.4 Even though members of Parliament generally avoided the term Röstigraben in order to downplay possible language conflicts, the majority of those who participated in language politics debates did not doubt that cultural differences between the language groups do exist. Others pointed to differences in ‘mentality’ between the language groups. It was generally agreed that there was no need to downplay or eliminate these differences; on the contrary, the ‘language communities’ should have the right to be different.5 However, it often remained unclear what these differences consisted of. Only rarely did members of Parliament draw on stereotypes and clichés in order to denote the language groups. On the occasions that they did, the German-speaking group was referred to as orderly, conservative and disciplined, whereas the French-speaking and Italian-speaking groups were supposed to be more liberal and open.6 Others, meanwhile, pointed to differences in the history of the language groups.7 On the whole, however, such ascriptions remained very rare, a fact that strongly contrasts with the widely held assumption that such cultural or mental differences between the language groups do exist. Given the fact that stereotypes and clichés about the language groups could have something of a negative connotation, it is understandable why politicians interested in the maintenance of linguistic peace would refrain from naming them in public. Another feature that was derived from the assumption of a close connection between language and collective identity was the idea that a language group’s identity could be threatened when exposed to the strong influence of another language. As a result of the downplaying of possible language conflicts and the widely held conviction that the principle of ter– 86 –

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ritoriality had the strength to maintain the linguistic borders, such threats were rarely ascribed to other autochthonous languages. While we do find some discussions about one autochthonous language threatening another being debated at the cantonal level – mainly in the canton of Fribourg, where some political actors since the 1980s have evoked the menace of the ‘Germanization’ of Francophone territory (B. Altermatt 2003) – this subject is generally avoided in language debates at the national level. This is not true, however, with regard to alleged menaces that are claimed to stem from allochthonous languages. In particular, the rise in the importance of the English language in recent years gave reason to debate whether this expansion had happened at the cost of the autochthonous languages. For instance, Bernhard Hess, a representative of the Swiss Democrats (a radical right-wing populist party) argued in a parliamentary intervention that European languages and cultures were increasingly being influenced by the Anglo-American linguistic and cultural heritage. In his eyes, this process was accompanied by a loss of identity among the European peoples and ethnic groups.8 Similarly, another representative of the same party, Rudolf Keller, warned that language contact due to increased immigration would lead to a mixing of languages, which would eventually result in language death.9 Such visions were usually confined to the radical Right, even though, as in the case of the intervention from Hess, they sometimes found support among representatives of the French-speaking Left and Green members of Parliament. Apart from these statements about an alleged close connection between language and collective identity, the parliamentary debates on language policies also gave rise to contrary statements that draw attention to differences within a language group and, by so doing, challenge the assumption of a collective identity strongly marked by a common language. In accordance with the efforts to downplay linguistic conflicts, several members of Parliament warned against according too much importance to linguistic affiliations and language as a political category in general, particularly in the aftermath of the popular vote on the adherence of Switzerland to the European Economic Area (EEA). This vote, which took place in December 1992, was considered one of the main examples of evidence supporting the existence of a so-called Röstigraben in Swiss politics. While the French-speaking cantons voted in favour of Switzerland adhering to the EEA by a majority of 71.3 per cent of the ballots, in German-speaking Switzerland, only 43.6 per cent voted in favour of the adherence, and in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino, support stood at a mere 38.5 per cent. After the vote, politicians such as the Liberal Andreas Iten rejected the idea of analyzing the political situation in the terms of and under the category of a political gap between the Swiss language groups. Instead of – 87 –

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reducing the analysis to linguistic and cultural criteria, he considered it important to point to other relevant tensions and cleavages in Swiss society, such as economic discrepancies or urban-rural cleavages.10 In other debates, politicians also made great efforts to point to cleavages and tensions within language groups. Another Liberal, Hans Rudolf Früh from the canton of Appenzell, even went so far as to state that ‘La Suisse alémanique n’existe pas’ (German-speaking Switzerland does not exist). Joined by other members of Parliament, he warned against reducing all conflicts to linguistic factors, thereby questioning, at least implicitly, the idea of language as a strong marker of collective identity.11

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Conclusion: Identity and Symbolic Politics The notion of ‘identity’ plays an important and rather varied role in Swiss debates on language policy. Generally speaking, its broad use was facilitated by the fact that ‘identity’ in itself is a rather vague concept with various divergent meanings. In the Swiss case, the ways in which language is linked with collective identity seem to be paradoxical. As a consequence, identity politics within the realm of language politics has taken on very different meanings depending on the question of whether collective identity is perceived as being associated with plurilingualism or monolingualism, and whether collective identity is linked to language policies at the national or at the cantonal level. First of all, at the federal level, Switzerland shows without any doubt that such a thing as a plurilingual collective identity is indeed possible. This perspective, of course, makes it difficult to maintain the idea that collective identity is closely linked to any one language. In a plurilingual state, the idea of a national identity that includes a plurilingual setting cannot be given up without questioning very basic fundaments of the state. In this case, as forcefully demonstrated by looking at Switzerland, identity politics takes on a very symbolic course when it serves as a means to strengthen national cohesion. In order to achieve this aim, language policies remain very vague and without strong policy goals. At most, they try in a very general way to achieve better mutual understanding of the language groups, for example, by broadcasting certain TV programmes across language regions. Yet when concrete policy goals are at stake, such as, for instance, taking measures to increase the proportion of representatives from the smaller language groups within the federal administration, these policies are often dismissed by the representatives of the linguistic majority, particularly when they have financial implications. Overall, given the vague conception of the ways in which language and collective identity are linked to– 88 –

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gether, and the limited outcomes that language policies have produced at the national level, one must conclude that the effects and influences of identity politics remain rather low. Then again, the notion that language represents a key component of collective identity has also played an important role in debates on language politics in Switzerland when its scope is monolingual. This is made possible by the fact that language policies lie in the realm of the cantons and by the significance of the principle of territoriality. Aimed at confining one language to a certain territory, this principle of language policy strengthens an imagined collective identity marked by the language spoken within that territory. Ideas about a unity of language and identity are supported by the principle’s aim of upholding linguistic homogeneity within the territory. Moreover, Switzerland’s federal structure, which assigns segmental autonomy in language questions to the cantonal level, and the persistence of crosscutting cleavages also make it easier to refer to monolingual collective identity, particularly since most of the cantons are actually monolingual. Finally, the idea of a close link between (one) language and collective identity is fuelled by more substantive and clear-cut statements than is the case when comments try to evoke the possible features of a collective identity based on plurilingualism. In summary, the dilemma over the different conceptions of collective identity (plurilingual vs. monolingual) is effectively solved by the differentiation of Swiss language policies stemming from the country’s federal structure. At the national level, symbolic references to the importance of plurilingualism as a key element of national identity are easily upheld, due to the fact that language policies are mainly delegated to the cantonal level. Here, the principle of territoriality is a powerful element of identity politics and ensures the homogeneity of language and collective identity, at least in the monolingual cantons, which are in the majority. In these cases, language is without doubt conceived as an important marker of collective identity. This notion of language as a key identity feature might help explain why Swiss plurilingualism (understood as quadrilingualism) is still seen as incompatible with the idea of a multilingual Switzerland, an idea that would valorize the presence of and recognize certain rights of allochthonous languages, spoken by a considerable number of immigrants, alongside the autochthonous languages. Christina Späti is an associate professor of contemporary history at the University of Fribourg. In 2008/9, she was a visiting scholar at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. Between 2006 and 2010 she codirected the SNSF-funded research project ‘Language and Identity Politics’. Her research focuses on language politics in multilingual states, institutional – 89 –

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and societal bilingualism, anti-Zionism and antisemitism, and 1968 in Western Europe, with a particular emphasis on Switzerland. Her recent books include Sprache als Politikum: Ein Vergleich der Schweiz und Kanadas seit den 1960er Jahren (Augsburg: Wißner, 2015) and Die 68er Jahre in der Schweiz: Aufbruch in Politik und Kultur (Baden: hier+jetzt, 2012, with Damir Skenderovic).

Notes 1. In more recent studies (1984, 1999), Lijphart added further characteristics and elements (see Bogaards 1998). However, the aspects listed in the 1977 study appear to be the most salient for the question of how to deal with linguistic diversity (Elazar 1985; Linder 2005). 2. Article 70 of the Swiss Federal Constitution of 18 April 1999. 3. Amtliches Bulletin der Bundesverfassung: Ständerat, 1995, p. 292. 4. Amtliches Bulletin der Bundesverfassung: Nationalrat, 1978, pp. 587–90. 5. E.g., Amtliches Bulletin der Bundesverfassung: Nationalrat, 1994, pp. 362–63. 6. Amtliches Bulletin der Bundesverfassung: Ständerat, 1993, pp. 1041–42. 7. Amtliches Bulletin der Bundesverfassung: Ständerat, 1993, p. 1037. 8. Amtliches Bulletin der Bundesverfassung: Nationalrat, 2000, pp. 656–57. 9. Amtliches Bulletin der Bundesverfassung: Nationalrat, 1993, p. 1561. 10. Amtliches Bulletin der Bundesverfassung: Ständerat, 1993, pp. 1040–41. 11. Amtliches Bulletin der Bundesverfassung: Nationalrat, 1994, p. 367.

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References Alter, P. 1985. Nationalismus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Altermatt, B. 2003. La politique du bilinguisme dans le canton de Fribourg/Freiburg (1945– 2000): Entre innovation et improvisation. Fribourg: Université de Fribourg. Altermatt, U. (ed.). 1991. Die Schweizer Bundesräte: Ein biographisches Lexikon. Zurich and Munich: Artemis Verlag. ———. 1996. Das Fanal von Sarajevo: Ethnonationalismus in Europa. Zurich: Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Bogaards, M. 1998. ‘The Favorable Factors for Consociational Democracy: A Review’, European Journal of Political Research 33(4): 475–96. Bolliger, C. 2007. Konkordanz und Konfliktlinien in der Schweiz, 1945–2003: Parteienkooperation, Konfliktdimensionen und gesellschaftliche Polarisierungen bei den eidgenössischen Volksabstimmungen. Bern: Haupt. Coray, R. 2004a. ‘Minderheitenschutz und Beziehungspflege: Die zweite Revision des Sprachenartikels (1985–1996)’, in J. Widmer et al., Die Schweizer Sprachenvielfalt im öffentlichen Diskurs: Eine sozialhistorische Analyse der Transformation der Sprachenordnung von 1848 bis 2000 / La diversité des langues en Suisse dans le débat public: Une analyse sociohistorique des transformations de l’ordre constitutionnel des langues de 1848 à 2000. Bern: Peter Haupt, pp. 247–427. ———. 2004b. ‘Die Transformation der Sprachenordnung und des nationalen Imaginären’, in J. Widmer et al., Die Schweizer Sprachenvielfalt im öffentlichen Diskurs: Eine sozialhistorische Analyse der Transformation der Sprachenordnung von 1848 bis 2000 / La diversité

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des langues en Suisse dans le débat public: Une analyse socio-historique des transformations de l’ordre constitutionnel des langues de 1848 à 2000. Bern: Peter Haupt, pp. 429–78. ———. 2008. Von der Mumma Romontscha zum Retortenbaby Rumantsch Grischun: Rätoromanische Sprachmythen. Chur: Institut für Kulturforschung Graubünden. Dardanelli, P. 2008. ‘Multinational Switzerland? A Comment on Donald Ipperciel’, Swiss Political Science Review 14(3): 551–77. Edwards, J. 1996. ‘Language, Prestige and Stigma’, in H. Goebl et al. (eds), Kontaktlinguistik: Ein internationales Handbuch zeitgenössischer Forschung. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, pp. 703–8. Elazar, D.J. 1985. ‘Federalism and Consociational Regimes’, Publius: The Journal of Federalism 15(2): 17–34. Erk, J. 2007. Explaining Federalism: State, Society and Congruence in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany and Switzerland. London: Routledge. Franceschini, R. 2003. ‘Stimmt das Stereotyp der mehrsprachigen Schweiz?’, in M. Duhem and S. Schmeling (eds), Sprache und Identität in frankophonen Kulturen / Langues, identité et francophonie. Opladen: Leske und Budrich, pp. 101–23. Froidevaux, D. 1997. ‘Construction de la nation et pluralisme suisses: Idéologies et pratiques’, Swiss Political Science Review 3(4): 29–58. Gardt, A. 2000. ‘Sprachnationalismus zwischen 1850 und 1945’, in A. Gardt (ed.), Nation und Sprache: Die Diskussion ihres Verhältnisses in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, pp. 247–71. Grin, F. 2005. ‘La gouvernance linguistique en Suisse’, in J.-P. Wallot (ed.), La gouvernance linguistique: Le Canada en perspective. Ottawa: Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa, pp. 39–54. Haarmann, H. 1993. Die Sprachenwelt Europas: Geschichte und Zukunft der Sprachnationen zwischen Atlantik und Ural. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus. Hobsbawm, E. 1990. Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ipperciel, D. 2007. ‘La Suisse: Un cas d’exception pour le nationalisme?’, Swiss Political Science Revue 13(1): 39–67. Koller, W. 2000. ‘Nation und Sprache in der Schweiz’, in A. Gardt (ed.), Nation und Sprache: Die Diskussion ihres Verhältnisses in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, pp. 563–609. Kriesi, H., et al. 1996. Le clivage linguistique: Problèmes de compréhension entre les communautés linguistiques en Suisse. Bern: Bundesamt für Statistik. Kübler, D., I. Papadopoulos and O. Mazzoleni. 2009. Le plurilinguisme de la Confédération: Représentation et pratiques linguistiques dans l’administration fédérale. Final report of the NRP 56 of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Labrie, N. 1997. ‘Le principe de territorialité: L’expérience suisse à la lumière du Québec/ Canada’, Swiss Political Science Review 3(2): 11–19. Laponce, J.A. 1991. ‘Reducing the Tensions Resulting from Language Contacts: Personal or Territorial Solutions?’, in D. Schneidermann (ed.), Language and the State: The Law and Politics of Identity / Langue et Etat. Cowansville, QC: Yvon Blais, pp. 173–79. Lijphart, A. 1977. Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press. ———. 1984. Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in TwentyOne Countries. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ———. 1999. Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Linder, W. 1998. Swiss Democracy: Possible Solutions to Conflict in Multicultural Societies, 2nd ed. London and New York: Macmillan.

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———. 2005. Schweizerische Demokratie: Institutionen – Prozesse – Perspektiven, 2nd rev. ed. Bern: Haupt. Lipset, S.M. 1960. Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Lüthy, H. 1966. ‘Politische Probleme der Mehrsprachigkeit in der Schweiz’, Civitas: Monatsschrift des Schweizerischen Studentenvereins 22(1–2): 39–47. Mackey, W.F. 1976. Bilinguisme et contact des langues. Paris: Editions Klincksieck. McRae, K. 1975. ‘The Principle of Territoriality and the Principle of Personality in Multilingual States’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language 4: 33–54. ———. 1983. Conflict and Compromise in Multilingual Societies: Switzerland. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Prévost, J.-G. and J.-P. Beaud. 2002. ‘Statistical Inquiry and the Management of Linguistic Plurality in Canada, Belgium and Switzerland’, Journal of Canadian Studies 36(4): 88–117. Rash, F. 1998. The German Language in Switzerland: Multilingualism, Diglossia, and Variation. Bern: Peter Haupt. Richter, D. 2005. Sprachenordnung und Minderheitenschutz im schweizerischen Bundesstaat: Relativität des Sprachenrechts und Sicherung des Sprachfriedens. Berlin: Springer. Rossinelli, M. 1989. ‘La question linguistique en Suisse: Bilan critique et nouvelles perspectives juridiques’, Revue de droit suisse / Zeitschrift für Schweizerisches Recht 108: 163–93. Safran, W. 2004. ‘Introduction: The Political Aspects of Language’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 20(1): 1–14. Schieder, T. 1991. Nationalismus und Nationalstaat: Studien zum nationalen Problem im modernen Europa. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Schmid, C. 1995. Comparative Intergroup Relations and Social Incorporation in Two Multilingual Societies: Canada and Switzerland. Global Forum Series, Occasional Paper no. 9503.1. Durham, NC: Duke University. ———. 2001. The Politics of Language: Conflict, Identity, and Cultural Pluralism in Comparative Perspective. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Thürer, D. and T. Burri. 2006. ‘Zum Sprachenrecht in der Schweiz’, in C. Pan and B.S. Pfeil (eds), Zur Entstehung des modernen Minderheitenschutzes in Europa: Handbuch der europäischen Volksgruppen, vol. 3. Vienna and New York: Springer, pp. 242–66. Voyame, J. 1989. ‘Le status des langues en Suisse’, in P. Pupier and J. Woehrling (eds), Langues et droit / Language and Law: Proceedings of the First Conference of the International Institute of Comparative Linguistic Law. Montreal: Wilson & Lafleur, pp. 343–50. Weibel, E. 1986. ‘Les rapports entre les groupes linguistiques’, in R.E. Germann and E. Weibel (eds), Handbuch politisches System der Schweiz, vol. 3, Föderalismus. Bern and Stuttgart: Haupt, 221–63. ———. 1988. ‘Sprachgruppen und Sprachprobleme in der Schweiz: Konflikte und Konfliktregelungsmodelle’, in H.-G. Wehling (ed.), Die Schweiz. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, pp. 79–99. Wimmer, A. 2002. Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict: Shadows of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wright, S. (ed.). 1999. Language, Democracy and Devolution in Catalonia. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Wuerth, A. 1999. ‘Mediensystem und politische Kommunikation’, in U. Klöti et al. (eds), Handbuch der Schweizer Politik. Zurich: Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, pp. 337–84.

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Chapter 5

LANGUAGES AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES IN SWITZERLAND The Case of Bilingual Cantons (Bern, Fribourg, Valais) Manuel Meune

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L

inguistic cohabitation in Switzerland has given birth to a rich literature devoted to the current complexity of the language landscape, or to the linguistic dimension of Swiss history. Political scientists, historians and sociologists have explored the links between minorities and majorities at the French-German language border (Altermatt 2003; Büchi 2000; Chiffelle 2004; Knüsel 1994; Lüdi and Werlen 2005; Schläpfer and Bickel 2000; Tendon 2004; Windisch 1992), but rarely explicitly from the identity angle (Widmer 2004). The following presents some results of a study in which I linked language and identity in a new approach by comparing the situation in each of the three officially bilingual cantons, Bern, Fribourg and Valais. The study targeted a specific group, namely, municipal councillors. While they are intended to represent the citizens as a whole (except for those residents who do not hold Swiss nationality, whose inclusion would have gone beyond the scope of this research), the members of this particular group are constantly invited to reflect on language and identity issues in the context of their municipal tasks and therefore make a significant contribution to the articulation of positions and solutions to problems. As residents of municipalities situated close to the language border, they are in direct contact with multilingualism and with what is often presented as an identity ambiguity. It appears particularly important to let them have their – 93 –

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say in order to understand certain aspects of the identity debate within Switzerland.

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Identity as a Construct Current definitions of identity follow the constructivist approach in which identity is not a given, or a content, but a process through which an individual adapts to a sociocultural environment by creating or assuming a self-image (Bassand 1981). Apart from some very specific aspects that arise from personal and especially family history, identity results from acts of loyalty or the refusal of loyalty to a group (Mucchielli 2009), and from acts that involve the claiming or rejecting of certain labels. In sociology, labelling refers to the description of a person or a group using a particular word or series of words in order to identify (ab)normal behaviour and (apparently) reduce social complexity (Becker 1963, 2007). Like stereotypes, labels are often seen as something necessary to facilitate communication; by making it possible to target others as different, they are essential to any politics aimed at gaining (symbolic) power. Labels are often thought of as being externally applied rather than internally felt: by recurrently naming others, individuals contribute to the construction of groups perceived as homogeneous. Yet, imputed labels also bring individuals to internalize attributed characteristics. Imposed ‘role identities’ or ‘categorical identities’ (Stryker, Owens and White 2000; Calhoun 1997) may differ from selfdesignations. Nevertheless, whether the attributes are real or imagined, both produce a sense of ‘we-ness’ in the interaction between targeted and targeting groups (Polletta and Jasper 2001). One should also underline the difference between identification (the way somebody feels part of a group at a particular point in time and adopts characteristics assigned to it) and identity (a more conscious, more enduring and more discourse-oriented self-affiliation). To activate an identification with a collective entity in a certain circumstance, there needs to be an available label that is part of the repertoire of identities that an individual has already claimed (Mucchielli 2009), in terms of socioeconomic occupation, ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation, activities, political affiliation, regional culture, and so forth. The broader context, shaped by national historical narratives, is often thought to be particularly important for the framing of collective identity – which in Switzerland, as we will see, is not based on ethnocultural culture, but rather on political mythology. Furthermore, the narrower context should be favourable to this or that identification: for example, in the general context, it might be easier for some U.S. citizens to call themselves Americans under Obama than it was – 94 –

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under Bush – or vice versa; and in the immediate context, a citizen will feel obliged to define himself as American more often if he is a tourist abroad than if he is in his own country. When one speaks of collective identities, one often postulates the existence of symbolic dimensions that may be hard to grasp yet do have an impact on life in society. Collective and personal identities are interconnected, insofar as individuals often see collective belonging as being relevant for their sense of self (Williams 1992). Thus, collective identity appears to be the sum of personal identifications in use, but, one should add, mostly of conscious identifications through which individuals reflect on their belonging to a collective, or at least recognize themselves as a constituent of it. Many identification patterns certainly do not result from conscious decisions, but some identities do remain private and independent from any collective frame of reference, and some individuals refuse (on principle, or in certain circumstances) to be identified as part of a group. Whether and to what extent it is possible to avoid an attributed affiliation depends on many factors, but individual identity is necessarily multifarious. Its new emblem is the migrant who speaks a different language and has several homelands, or verschiedene Heimaten, to use the phrase adopted by Swiss writer Hugo Loetscher (2009), quoting the Integration Office for the city of Zurich, which uses the rare plural form of the German word Heimat. For Loetscher, it is only the noncoincidence of identification and (collective) identity that makes the latter acceptable, as a field of tensions. This also gives rise to the complex question of language and origin as explanatory factors for political behaviour. There is no strictly causal relation, in the sense that nothing predetermines social representations and votes in a mechanical way. That is why Jean Widmer (2004: 11–28) prefers the metaphor of ‘architecture’ to characterize the language factor in political life instead of the concept of ‘collective identity’, which he suspects of producing reifications that lead to nationalist discourses. Every Swiss citizen knows, however, that in respect to some subjects, French and German speakers do vote in very different ways, and sociolinguists insist on the role of representations in the construction of group identities and in political patterns. Representations can be seen as a complex of opinions and attitudes, of subjective beliefs and objective information, as a form of common microtheories likely to be applied to any situation (Abric 1989; Jodelet 1989; Cavalli and Coletta 2003). In many societies, the minority dimension plays an increased role in identity politics, which as a strategy for legitimizing certain identities can be associated with powerful majority instances (the state), or with less powerful movements that carry ‘resistance identities’ (Castells 1997). New collective claims are being made in regard to ethnocultural or language – 95 –

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origin by individuals who identify as part of a minority collective. But a minority is no absolute reality. Depending on the context and the perspective, each individual might identify with groups that are both minority and majority. Some minorities are clearly depicted as such (the Romansh, for example), but the contours of some groups constructed by social scientists (such as women, racialized minorities, etc.) may be less sharp for the persons concerned. Developing a minority identity is also linked to the awareness of being dominated: those who do not see themselves as such might be blamed by ‘more aware’ persons for internalizing the oppression and reproducing the stigmatizing majority discourse that pictures minority attitudes as victimization patterns. In the case of a language minority, the nonrecognition of a collective identity by a majority group might reinforce the feeling of cultural dilution in the targeted group. No representative of the French state would be likely to mention la minorité bretonne, and the state would rather declare that such language-related questions are not collective issues and should instead be seen as individual questions. In this sense, the self-designation as ‘minority’ by citizens of a minority group can be a performative act (Austin 1962): the very use of a word is not so much aimed at designating reality, but at doing, at creating a new (political) object; it signals the goal of gaining a better balance of power. However, majority group citizens, too, may use ‘minority’ in a performative way: in such cases, the term can signal some goodwill and promise greater recognition, but it can also remind members of the minority group that, as such, they cannot demand too much and should aim for symbolic parity. No study of discourses on collective identity can omit the performative use of certain words – ‘minority’ being only one example – since the right command of key words is an essential part of any identity politics, especially for political decision makers. No typology of collective identities can be exhaustive, because they are contextually embedded and their empirical manifestations are not easy to locate. The groups of reference vary extremely in size and type of claims (from small gangs and celebrity fans to supranational social movements; Polletta and Jasper 2001). That might explain why research has often focused on bigger groups, with Benedict Anderson (1983) being emblematic of the interest in the construction of national identities. There is also a risk of reifying collective identity, of believing in an automatic link between individuals and the patterns they are supposed to share. To understand identity phenomena, however, one still has to look at how ‘identity work’ creates and modifies these patterns, and what type of references and acts people choose to express what they stand for (Snow and McAdam 2000). In his reflections on language and symbolic power, Pierre Bourdieu (2001: 287–88) underlines the role of ‘classification struggle’ (la lutte des classe– 96 –

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ments) or ‘representation struggle’, which he understands as a ‘struggle for the definition of “regional” or “ethnic” identity’. He interprets the concept of ‘region’ in an etymological sense, as an entity that has its origin in an authority performing regere fines, an act that consists of ‘drawing the borders as straight lines’ (tracer en lignes droites les frontières), separating the ‘interior from the exterior’ and ‘circumscribing the country, the territory’. Bourdieu equally rejects pure constructivism and the obsessive quest for criteria with which to define collective identity. According to him, one has to avoid, on the one hand, ‘objectivist arbitration’ that opposes representations of reality and forgets that representations ‘can make happen in reality’ (faire advenir dans la réalité), and on the other hand, ‘subjectivist commitment’ that, by privileging the representation, supports the militant attitude that aims to replace ‘the representation of the reality’ with ‘the reality of the representation’. Bourdieu cites the example of the regionalist Occitan movement and their use of the word ‘Occitanie’ to make the thing happen; one could also cite the separatists of the canton of Bern preferring the term ‘South Jura’ (Jura-sud) to ‘Bernese Jura’ (Jura Bernois) – in order to suggest that it is the destiny of their territory to join up with ‘North Jura’ (the canton of Jura).

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National Context and Cantonal Contexts Where does the debate about identity stand in Switzerland? There is no internal nationalist movement seriously competing with the official national narrative, but the identity energy invested in the cantons or in the ethnolinguistic groups (Swiss German, French-speaking Romand, Italian-speaking Ticinese, Romansh) can sometimes be reminiscent of the energy invested in competing national movements in other contexts. Yet, the Swiss Willensnation, built on the will to live together independent of cultural belonging, appears to be one of the few ‘genuine’ political nations in the Western world: Canada, Spain or Belgium, for example, are imbued with conflicts that call into question the idea of a united nation. The French political nation is often opposed to the German ethnolinguistic nation, but France is a rather ambiguous nation in which the majority language group used the political will resulting from revolutionary mythology to spread its language to the periphery and to gradually transform the country into a culturally homogeneous society. The difference between French speakers (20.4 per cent in 2000), German speakers (63.6 per cent), Italian speakers (6.5 per cent) and Romansh speakers (0.5 per cent) in officially quadrilingual Switzerland (7.2 million inhabitants) is a constitutive part of political life, but no linguistic minority perceives itself as stemming from any nation other than the Swiss nation. One can find references to the Jura people or the – 97 –

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Romand people (Hauser 2004: 62), but this has never called into question the common commitment to Switzerland. Some Québécois, Catalans or Flemings might not feel themselves to be Canadians, Spaniards or Belgians, but no French-speaking Swiss would refuse to call himself a Swiss. The Francophones have a more dominant role in the course of Swiss politics than the other minorities, but they are still no less regularly reminded of their minority status by the German-speaking Swiss than are the other minorities. In certain instances of voting, the map of yes or no votes coincides with the linguistic map. Since 1992, when German speakers refused in a majority to enter the European Economic Area, whereas French speakers were in favour of it, the media have evoked the image of the Röstigraben (‘the fried potato gap’, a phrase that alludes to a popular dish in German-speaking Switzerland) every time there is a difference linked to linguistic belonging (Büchi 2000) – at the risk of underestimating other explanations, such as the opposition between urban and rural areas, for example. Nevertheless, linguistic tension on a national scale has never been of the kind that can be observed in other comparable countries. This is particularly due to the fact that the history of multilingual Switzerland has never known coercive measures to impose a majority language, with the exception of the French-speaking parts where laws explicitly forbade the use of Franco-Provençal patois at school in order to impose French (Gadient 2010). Animosities do exist, but the occasionally vehement conflicts are usually settled within the limits of the cantons, which are sovereign in language- and culture-related issues: Article 70 of the Federal Constitution (1999) states that ‘cantons determine their official languages’. This sovereignty is especially important for the multilingual cantons, that is to say, the trilingual Grisons (German/Italian/Romansh) and the three bilingual (German/French) cantons of Bern (BE), Fribourg (FR) and Valais (VS), which represent distinct systems of reference and on which the focus will be drawn in this chapter. According to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, this is how languages were distributed in the year 2000: German – 84 per cent in BE (972,700 inhabitants), 29.2 per cent in FR (264,000 inhabitants), 28.4 per cent in VS; French – 7.5 per cent in BE, 63.2 per cent in FR, 62.8 per cent in VS; other – 8.5 per cent in BE, 7.6 per cent in FR, 8.8 per cent in VS. Among these cantons, Bern is the only one whose majority is German-speaking, and where the Francophones are not just a tiny minority, but also a double minority, that is to say, a minority both in the canton and within the confederation. This is linked to the ‘Jura question’, a historical and political debate on separatism (cantonal and not national) that came up in the French-speaking part of the canton. In 1978, after decades of tension, the inhabitants of the northern Jura region, where Catholics are in the majority, founded a new canton after a series – 98 –

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of referendums, while the inhabitants of the southern Jura region, mainly Protestants, remained faithful to Bern. The status of the Jura region that remained part of the canton of Bern continues to give rise to debates. Some advocate it should merge with the canton of Jura, while others support greater autonomy within Bern, and another group prefers the status quo. The question is complex, however, because Biel (Bienne), the only officially bilingual city in Switzerland, is situated at the language border, but is not part of Bernese Jura. In the event of a statutory change of Bernese Jura, the city’s bilingual character would be at stake, and Biel is thus regarded as the Gordian knot of the region. The canton of Fribourg appears to be a ‘reversed Switzerland’, since its (two-thirds) majority is Francophone and it hosts a German-speaking minority. Its capital, Fribourg, is de facto bilingual, but in terms of its majority – and officially – it is Francophone. The situation in the canton of Valais is similar, but one does not find an equivalent to Biel or Fribourg. Despite the presence of German speakers in Sion, the capital, and in Sierre, close to the language border, these cities are not considered to be part of a de facto or de jure bilingual zone, such as Fribourg or Biel, respectively.

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Identity Pyramids It can seem delicate to compare types of identity constructions in a sociolinguistic context of such variety, but the quantitative study enables me to ask specific questions in regard to each cantonal context, and common questions for all three cantons – which can show different identity patterns depending on the canton. I distributed 2,285 questionnaires (of which 55 per cent were in French and 45 per cent in German) in 341 municipalities in order to observe the relevance of a number of available identities ranging from local to universal: municipality, canton, language group (Romand/Swiss German), Switzerland, Europe, world. The 962 municipal councillors who responded to the one hundred questions (both multiple choice and open) about identity and language issues allow us to compare six collective entities – with two language groups in each of the cantons. The response rate (around 42 per cent) was similar for both languages, and the number of responses across the three cantons is comparable (BE: 312; FR: 322; VS: 327). The actual number of responses to the questions reprinted in this chapter varies very little; therefore, the diagrams in the following pages will only indicate percentages. The very satisfactory response rate might have to do with the particularly high status of municipal councillors in Switzerland (linked to the strong powers of Swiss municipalities) and with their ensuing sense of responsibility. – 99 –

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Asking respondents to establish a hierarchy of identifications forces them into a little spontaneous gymnastics, and this does not render the complex coexistence of different types of belonging, which are complementary rather than competing. Nevertheless, the intuitive classification of identities is not uncommon: everyone has to measure more or less consciously, in various communication situations, the intensity of the (real or presumed) identification(s) of an interlocutor in order to adapt a discursive strategy. Does the accent of this individual betray a foreign origin that might lead the hearer to censor some of his thoughts? Does the habitus of that individual evoke a class affiliation? Does the next person support this country or that country during the football World Cup? Moreover, since the administrative identity – the one that appears on the official identity card in Switzerland – does not always match with the subjective social identity (Hogg and Abrams 1988), this hiatus is sometimes used in the media and the political field to justify accusations of disloyalty and discourses of exclusion. Our respondents were all Swiss citizens, so the question of classifying national belongings did not arise; or perhaps only a little, since a small percentage of the population is naturalized. Yet, the responses are an indication of the articulation of existing collective identifications – and of possible tensions. What kind of ‘identity pyramids’ does one obtain if one asks the respondents to classify the proposed affiliations by order of importance? The Francophones in the canton of Bern put more insistence on belonging to their language group (Romand) than on their cantonal belonging, which can be found in last position – mirroring a discomfort that does not only stem from people with a separatist background. The Francophones who want Bernese Jura to join the canton of Jura might only represent onethird of the respondents, but those presenting themselves as dissatisfied in their responses to other questions (regarding language coexistence in their canton) are far more numerous. In turn, the German speakers attribute less importance to their identification with the language group than with their cantonal tie, but above all with their national belonging, since they are the only ones who place it in first position, a choice that minimizes their role as municipal councillors (figure 5.1). This contrast in belonging types according to language evokes Bourdieu’s ‘classification’ or ‘representation struggle’. What is striking in the case of Valais and Fribourg, however, is that the German and French speakers have the exact same identity pyramid – even if it differs from one canton to the other (figure 5.2). In each of these cases, both language groups classify identity layers in the same fashion, proving that behaviours can be generated through cantonal history and culture regardless of the language. The inhabitants of Valais are the only ones to place cantonal belonging – 100 –

Language and Identity Politics : A Cross-Atlantic Perspective, edited by Christina Späti, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2015.

Languages and Collective Identities in Switzerland

Figure 5.1. Differentiated Identity Pyramids: Canton of Bern [Bottom of the pyramid: identification most frequently placed in first position] How would you define yourself in order of priority? [Order from 1 to 6, where 6 is the most important]

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• • • • • •

Inhabitant of your municipality Bernese [C = canton] Romand/Swiss German [LG = language group] Swiss European [E] Citizen of the world

ahead of national belonging. The fact that they frequently call themselves ‘Valaisans’ rather than ‘Swiss’ does not mean that they do not also feel themselves to be Swiss, but this phenomenon of predominantly identifying with the canton is unmistakable. It is bound up with historical aspects (the particular way that the canton was treated during the Napoleonic period) and geographic aspects (Valais remained largely isolated until tunnels were pierced through the Alps), but also with linguistic aspects, since the German speakers here have a very different dialect compared to the ‘rest of Switzerland’, and they insist on what distinguishes them from what they often refer to as ‘outer Switzerland’. Both cantons have experienced episodes of relatively high tension, but in direct contrast to the canton of Bern, the feeling of unity is predominant. In the canton of Fribourg, the status of languages has changed over the course of centuries, and after a period in which German was in the more powerful position – especially after Fribourg joined the confederation in 1481 – it is French that has prevailed since the Napoleonic era. In Article 6 of the current cantonal constitution, both are now ‘official languages’ without further conditions, but the German speakers had to wait until 1990 to obtain this parity of languages, and to feel themselves less discriminated as a minority, inasmuch as Article 21 of the former constitution had for decades given legal primacy to the French language (‘Laws, decrees and orders shall be published in French and German. The French text is declared the original text’). Certain German speakers, in the hope – 101 –

Language and Identity Politics : A Cross-Atlantic Perspective, edited by Christina Späti, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2015.

Manuel Meune

Figure 5.2. Common Identity Pyramid for French and German Speakers: Cantons of Fribourg and Valais [Bottom of the pyramid: identification most frequently placed in first position] How would you define yourself in order of priority? [Order from 1 to 6, where 6 is the most important]

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• • • • • •

Inhabitant of your municipality Inhabitant of Fribourg/Valais Romand/Swiss German [LG = language group] Swiss European [E] Citizen of the world

of turning the de facto bilingual city of Fribourg into an officially bilingual one, tend to point out that, historically, the city has always been bilingual. The French speakers, on the other hand, who feel insecure because of their status as a national minority, emphasize their status as both a cantonal majority and a national minority as a way to reject officializing bilingualism. Yet in spite of the sometimes vehement tensions, as we will see later, the belonging to a historically unique collective entity – the canton – is never called into question. This holds for Valais as well. As early as 1907, this canton was the first to declare itself bilingual without one language being given precedence over the other. In the canton’s constitution, French and German were ‘declared national’ and it was stated that ‘equality of treatment of both languages must be observed in the legislation and in the administration’. German, however, has been in decline since the Napoleonic period. It had previously long been dominant when the French-speaking Lower Valais was subject to the German-speaking Upper Valais. The tensions are certainly recurrent, with regard to the representation of German speakers within the cantonal executive and the administration, for example. Nevertheless, the inhabitants of Upper Valais seem to be relatively content with their status as a cantonal minority, and once again, this does not challenge a very solid pan-Valaisan identity. – 102 –

Language and Identity Politics : A Cross-Atlantic Perspective, edited by Christina Späti, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2015.

Languages and Collective Identities in Switzerland

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Language, Border and Territory in Regard to Homogeneity To understand the ‘classification struggle’ and the various types of connection with territory, it is also interesting to observe perceptions of the language border, of the territoriality principle and of the – assumed – process of Germanization. The results, which vary between linguistic groups and/ or between cantons, mirror the existing visions of linguistic homogeneity or linguistic mix. If one asks the respondents whether they consider the language border in their canton to be a ‘strip’ or a ‘line’, one observes the following: more than three-quarters of respondents from the canton of Fribourg perceive the language border as a ‘strip’ rather than as a ‘line’, which is in greater numbers, as one might expect, than those from Valais, where half of respondents perceive the border in such a way. The configuration of the language border is indeed a winding one in the canton of Fribourg, and here one finds a contact zone constituted by linguistically mixed municipalities. The Bernese, likewise faced with a relatively complex border, come close to those from Fribourg in their results, and here, too, the perception of a border ‘strip’ dominates (figure 5.3). However, if one looks at the ‘language’ variable, this perception of the border as a strip is less evident among Francophones – from all three cantons – who favour the linear approach in greater numbers. The deviation between the language groups is no less than twenty-five percentage points in the case of the Bernese. This divergence can be seen as a sign of discomfort among the Francophones in regard to the linguistic mix, as an indicator of a ‘wish’ (that is to say, the wish that the border might prevent the overlapping of language territories, that it might become more of a line). Where the very use of a word is an act, performative language can call into existence (or reinforce) the indicated reality: asserting that the border is a Figure 5.3. Representations of the Language Border (%) Do you consider the language border in the canton to be more like: (1) A line, precisely drawn (2) A strip, with blurred contours

– 103 –

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line even if it is obvious that a bilingual contact zone does exist indicates the desire for a solid rather than an elastic border. This displays a certain fear of identity dilution and linguistic confusion, a fear partially linked to the national minority status of all Francophones, as well as to the double minority status of those from the canton of Bern. The linguistic identity is associated with a desire for homogeneity rather than a desire for hybridity. These representations of the border are connected to those of the ‘territoriality principle’. It should be recalled that the latter means that only one language is attributed to a cantonal territory (or to parts of the territory in the case of multilingual cantons). Consequently, in the monolingual canton of Geneva, German-speaking parents must send their children to a Francophone school. This principle has the reputation of contributing significantly to a stable linguistic border. However, Switzerland also acknowledges the ‘principle of liberty’ (or of ‘personality’), which authorizes the choice of language, in a sometimes subtle dialectic. Thus, the Bernese constitution is based on the principle of territoriality (without using this wording), and in Article 6 assigns the districts in a precise fashion to German and/or French: ‘French and German are the national and official languages of the canton of Bern. … The official languages are: a) French in Bernese Jura, b) French and German in the district of Biel, c) German in the other districts.’ However, the liberty of language is explicitly ‘guaranteed’ in Article 15, and Biel appears to be the perfect example of an applied principle of liberty in Switzerland: historically, this principle has consolidated the position of Francophones, who today constitute one-third of the population. Before the arrival of clock and watch industry workers from Jura in the nineteenth century, the city was German-speaking, but it gave up territoriality (which ensured the assimilation of migrants) and granted school rights to Francophones. In the case of Biel, however, one could speak of a ‘bilingual territoriality’, which is underlined by systematically bilingual signs. Not only can individuals choose their language of administration and education, but, in addition, municipal institutions must function according to a system of language parity across the entire municipal territory. Both principles also coexist in the canton of Fribourg. In 2004, after a turbulent debate, this canton was the first to enshrine territoriality in its constitution – the judicial and administrative practices were already based on this principle. Article 6 asserts that ‘[the] use [of official languages] is regulated in respect of the principle of territoriality: the state and the municipalities attend to the traditional territorial distribution of languages’. Nevertheless, Article 17 foresees the principle of liberty explicitly (‘The liberty of language is guaranteed’) – certainly with a focus on cantonal institutions located in the capital: ‘He who goes to an authority whose jurisdiction covers the whole canton can do that in the official language of his choice.’ – 104 –

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Languages and Collective Identities in Switzerland

Article 17 also refers to the principle of liberty indirectly by allowing a municipality to become officially bilingual: ‘The official language of the municipalities is French or German. In municipalities with an important autochthonous language minority, French and German can be the official languages.’ However, not many municipalities have made this choice, often because of political resistance and also because the criteria are hardly clear. In 1993, a commission (led by Urs Schwaller) suggested that a municipality become bilingual if the minority has constituted at least 30 per cent of the population for at least two censuses; it also mentioned the criteria of contiguity and historicity, but its conclusions were never approved, and linguistic territories were never officially defined. Therefore, Fribourg remains a Francophone city with a minority that has the right to receive certain services in German and where the effort of bilingualism is usually left to the German speakers. In contrast to Biel, Fribourg is not a bilingual entity where all the signs have to exist in both languages. Regarding school matters within the canton, there exists a certain freedom in the choice of school; a child can go to a school in another municipality for language reasons, on condition of this being accepted by the schools inspector. Yet a regulation of the canton’s school law (16.12.86) states that school fees stay under the provision of territoriality, since the municipality of residence can decide whether to bear the costs or charge them to the child’s parents. The linguistic border in Valais is particularly unambiguous in the absence of an official or unofficial mixed zone. Here again, one finds both principles. An administrative regulation (15.1.97) asserts that ‘procedures will be followed in respect of the principle of territoriality, by employing the language in use in the respective region, at least for the decision’. The law on public instruction (4.7.62), however, also refers indirectly to liberty of language – in a less clear fashion than in Fribourg, since school fees, in the event of a school district change, are always to be paid by the parents. The ambiguity remains, and it is compounded by the fact that interpretation plays such an essential role in these concepts. In 1989, a governmental report (Saladin 1989: 162–75) emphasized that the principle of liberty should not be applied everywhere in Switzerland, but preeminently in zones close to the French-German language border where strict territoriality is inapplicable and where French is not threatened – unlike Italian or Romansh. It added that the two principles cannot hold the same legal weight in every situation and should be tempered by a third principle, the ‘principle of proportionality’. Yet, for some analysts, the jurisprudence of the Federal Tribunal tends to give more and more importance to the liberty of language (Papaux 2003). Since much is at stake, there are stormy political debates, and the positions are contrasting. When the respondents of – 105 –

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the cantons of Fribourg and Bern are asked if they would wish for a ‘strict’ or a ‘soft’ application of the principle of territoriality (or even to give it up), opinions diverge depending on the linguistic group. On the Francophone side, one can observe a fear of the ‘nibbling away’ of the French language in the event of an overly soft application, should too many concessions be made to the other language group: almost one Francophone in every three in the canton of Bern and one in four in the canton of Fribourg desires a ‘strict application’, compared to only one German speaker in every ten in the canton of Bern and one in every twenty in Fribourg. In turn, this concern hardly exists in Valais (figure 5.4). The issue does not divide citizens, since in Valais there are no linguistically mixed zones comparable to the ones in the cantons of Bern or Fribourg. In the case of Fribourg, the polarization of opinions is connected to the official bilingualization of municipalities now possible, which is especially a concern in the historically mixed zone, with de facto bilingual municipalities that are nonetheless officially Francophone. Therefore, the Francophones have ‘more to lose’, and, being the majority in the canton but a minority in the confederation, they often see municipal unilingualism as a bulwark against Germanization – with bilingualism being the Trojan horse. The debate gained momentum when the municipality of Marly, officially Francophone, welcomed a big Swiss German company. Its German-speaking employees sometimes wished to send their children to German-speaking schools in Fribourg. The municipality was willing to pay the additional expenses for schooling and transport, but some people emphasized that this would call the principle of territoriality into question and jeopardize the integration of the newcomers (Tendon 2004). With regard to Germanization (figure 5.5), the Francophones are, of course, more eager to believe in its existence, but this is above all valid Figure 5.4. Perception of the Territoriality Principle (%) Regarding the territoriality principle in the canton, do you generally support: (1) A strict application (that guarantees the most homogeneous linguistic zones possible) (2) A soft application (that permits accommodations for the linguistic minority) (3) The giving up of the territoriality principle

– 106 –

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Languages and Collective Identities in Switzerland

Figure 5.5. Perception of ‘Germanization’ (%) In your opinion, do you consider the ‘Germanization’ that some people evoke within the canton to be:

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(1) (2) (3) (4)

A reality A risk An exaggerated fear A myth

for the two northern cantons: in the canton of Fribourg, one-third of the Francophones (38.1 per cent) see Germanization as a ‘reality’ or a ‘risk’, compared to 3.8 per cent of the German speakers. The proportion of Francophones in the canton of Bern that fear Germanization rises to more than half (56.5 per cent). It should be noted that even among German speakers in Bern, one-quarter of them (24.7 per cent) believe in the existence of Germanization, which serves as an indication of the extent of awareness of the fragility of the double minority within the canton. In Valais, where the issue of the linguistic border is not a divisive one, the difference between groups is small, and nearly four respondents in every five see Germanization as an ‘exaggerated fear’ or as a ‘myth’ (French speakers, 83.7 per cent; German speakers, 92.5 per cent). It should be remarked that no statistic shows a process of Germanization actually taking place in the language border regions. In Valais, the border has moved since the nineteenth century at the expense of German speakers. In the canton of Fribourg, residential mobility has certainly modified the local language distribution: in the Lake district, several municipalities have become more bilingual, practising a soft territoriality, with accommodations made in school matters. However, the Sarine district has witnessed a decrease in the proportion of German speakers in numerous municipalities, which are tending to become more homogenous (if one only takes into account the cantonal languages and excludes the allophones). Nevertheless, none of this has changed the proportions among the language groups in the canton (Altermatt 2003). As far as the canton of Bern is concerned, the Jura region did actually experience a process of Germanization in the nineteenth century, when many traditionally Francophone municipalities – 107 –

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Manuel Meune

saw their German-speaking minority grow over several decades, and in some cases even saw them become the majority. However, this movement was reversed long ago and replaced by a phenomenon of Francization: for instance, Moutier had 38.1 per cent German speakers in 1888 and 8.9 per cent in 1990 (Chiffelle 2004: 27). Except for a few micromunicipalities with a German-speaking (often Anabaptist) majority, only La Neuveville, located close to Biel, hosts a significant German-speaking minority (19.2 per cent in 1990). However, the perception of a process of Germanization lags behind actual developments and is still a significant influence on political life. In the years following the foundation of the canton of Jura, the separatists have largely used the spectre of Germanization to reinforce their political agenda, and the fact that the balance of languages might shift to the detriment of the Francophones remains deeply inscribed in the collective memory of the inhabitants of Bernese Jura and shapes their identity discourse.

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Multilingualism: Practices and Perceptions Regarding individual bilingual skills (figure 5.6) – which might influence identity construction – it appears that German speakers more often declare themselves bilingual in the cantons where Francophones are in the majority (Fribourg and Valais). Here, we set aside the question of what respondents understood by ‘bilingual’, which is a fairly ambiguous concept (Lüdi and Py 2003). Their status as a cantonal minority in part explains this high level of bilingualism. In the case of the respondents from Fribourg, 39.2 per cent of them declared themselves to be bilingual on the French-speaking side, but 72.9 per cent did so on the German-speaking side. In Valais, the gap is even more significant (21 per cent of French speakers; 42.2 per cent of German speakers), but broadly speaking, the inhabitants of Valais appear less bilingual, because neither of the two groups contains a majority composed of bilinguals. This corresponds, undoubtedly, to a reduction in the number of opportunities for practising bilingualism because of the absence of a ‘buffer zone’, since the canton works as a juxtaposition of two monolingual zones. In the canton of Bern, German speakers certainly appear to be less bilingual than French speakers, but the difference is marginal. Even though German speakers are a double majority, on both the national and cantonal scale, more than half consider themselves bilingual (52.1 per cent compared to 58.8 per cent of Francophones). This reminds us that, historically, unlike the case, for instance, of Canada, it has been the linguistic majority here that has made the bigger effort to learn French, because of the traditional prestige that French has enjoyed throughout Europe. – 108 –

Language and Identity Politics : A Cross-Atlantic Perspective, edited by Christina Späti, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2015.

Languages and Collective Identities in Switzerland

Figure 5.6. Individual Bilingual Skills (%) Do you consider yourself to be bilingual (French/German)?

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(1) (2) (3) (4)

Yes, absolutely Rather yes Rather no No, not at all

Does this lead to divergences between cantons in the perception of bilingualism at school? When it comes to the general extension of bilingual education in their canton, one can observe that in each of the three cantons, German speakers are more approving of bilingual education, which suggests a correlation between the practice of bilingualism – stronger developed among German speakers – and openness toward bilingualism at school. Yet the difference between the two groups is the least prominent in Valais: by a majority, German speakers as well as French speakers here see bilingual education as something ‘positive and with a promising future’, in contrast to the canton of Fribourg, where only German speakers approve it by a majority. In this case, it can be postulated that there exists a correlation between the lower rate of individual bilingualism in Valais and the ‘demand’ for bilingual education, in the sense of being aware of the necessity to ‘catch up’. In addition, one can observe that the Bernese Francophones, though slightly more bilingual than the German speakers of the canton and a lot more so than the Francophones of other cantons, are particularly numerous in fearing the effects of a general bilingual education, out of a concern that it might be ‘dangerous for the future of French’. To explain the reduced openness of Francophones towards bilingual education in the canton of Fribourg and particularly in the canton of Bern, one has to consider the specific identity fears already mentioned. In these cases, this is due to the fear that bilingualism at school may lead to a certain assimilation into Swiss majority culture (in 2000, after a lively and revealing debate, Fribourg’s voters refused the general extension of bilingual immersion education recommended by the government), whereas the Francophones in Valais, reassured by the existence of monolingual territories, are less afraid of the effects of language overlapping (figure 5.7). – 109 –

Language and Identity Politics : A Cross-Atlantic Perspective, edited by Christina Späti, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2015.

Manuel Meune

Figure 5.7. Bilingual Education in the Canton (%) Would the general extension of bilingual education (by ‘immersion’) at the schools of the canton be:

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(1) (2) (3) (4)

Dangerous for the future of French Dangerous for the future of German Basically a good idea, but difficult to put into practice Positive and with a promising future

In a way that is not the case in most other European countries, language and identity issues in Switzerland are also strongly linked to diglossia (Lüdi 1990), that is to say, the coexistence of a standard language largely reserved for the written word (in this case, standard German) and a vernacular language reserved for informal use but common to all social groups (Alemannic dialects, often referred to as ‘Swiss German’). The debates within Swiss politics and the media are recurrent. The vernaculars are largely seen as an element central to Swiss German identity, but for the Romands, who often reject them, these dialects can be a way to reinforce their own identity, precisely by collectively rejecting Swiss German alterity. The allusion to the supposedly unpleasant sonority of the dialect is very frequent, and not always in the spirit of a benevolent humour. It should be recalled that these dialects are spoken by the entire population in all informal situations, and even in some formal situations. In some television programmes, the newsperson may switch from standard language to dialect, depending on whether he or she is presenting the news or conducting an interview with someone – such as a member of the government, for example. Even though, unlike Dutch in the Netherlands, the Alemannic dialect in Switzerland has not broken away from German to become a standardized written language, it certainly can be written – for literary purposes, or in order to communicate electronically via chatting or texting. In any case, Swiss German remains very difficult to understand for German speakers who were not brought up in Switzerland. Those who speak it perceive it as a distinct language, and Swiss Germans rarely speak standard German. Francophones only learn standard German at school and call it le bon allemand (good German), which underlines a normative conception – 110 –

Language and Identity Politics : A Cross-Atlantic Perspective, edited by Christina Späti, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2015.

Languages and Collective Identities in Switzerland

of the French language, which tends to depreciate dialectal fragmentation. They often complain of not having enough opportunities to practise it, which is sometimes a convenient way to mask a lack of interest in German in general. In accordance with this scheme, a lot of French-speaking respondents believe that the dialect is an ‘obstacle to the coming together of the Swiss’, whereas German speakers almost unanimously think that the dialect is ‘not a problem’, since ‘Swiss Germans can communicate in standard German or French if needed’ (figure 5.8). The misunderstanding could not be more complete. Although, in the canton of Bern, Francophones already master the dialect in greater numbers than anywhere else, they are also more numerous in thinking that Francophones should learn Swiss German. Furthermore, in another question, they display their sympathy for Swiss Germans more often than is the case in the other cantons, despite the political tensions. They appear, however, to have a somewhat different vision of the ‘linguistic market’, to use the words of Bourdieu: a correlation certainly exists between their likeliness to be bilingual and their openness towards Swiss German alterity, but the attitude might be linked not only to the cultural benefit of bilingualism, but also to the economic advantage gained through it, since a good command of German (and Swiss German) has proven to be necessary in order to have access to certain jobs, in the case of apprentices in Biel and the surrounding areas, for example (Thomas 1999). Moreover, it should not be disregarded that this openness shows itself among the same people who fear an identity dilution, as stated in their answers to other questions.

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Figure 5.8. Perception of Swiss German (%) Regardless of whether or not you know Swiss German, with which of these statements do you agree the most? (1) Swiss German is an obstacle to the coming together of Swiss people, and Swiss Germans should speak standard German much more often. (2) Swiss German is not a problem, since Swiss Germans can communicate in standard German or French if needed. (3) Swiss German is the mother tongue of Swiss Germans and Romands should learn it in addition to standard German.

– 111 –

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Despite these divergences, there is a profound identity convergence between Swiss Germans and Romands, more precisely regarding the representations of multilingual Switzerland. Since the canton is the place for the articulation of language conflicts, the respondents, particularly if they are in the minority in their canton, show their dissatisfaction in questions that deal with cantonal linguistic relations. However, when asked to evaluate linguistic tensions on a national scale by saying if they are ‘satisfied with the relation between French and German speakers’, a very large majority answers ‘Yes, absolutely’ or ‘Yes, somewhat’. One is struck by the high degree of satisfaction in the three cantons among both French speakers (BE: 72.8 per cent; FR: 69.8 per cent; VS: 74.4 per cent) and German speakers (BE: 77.8 per cent; FR: 62.6 per cent; VS: 68.8 per cent). In addition, the answers to the question regarding the justified or unjustified nature of ‘the good reputation of Switzerland in matters of multilingualism’ show that the Swiss model is overwhelmingly supported. The great majority sees itself as living in a multilingual nation that tends to allow the linguistic tensions in the cantons to be forgotten (figure 5.9).

A Crosslinguistic, Consensual Swiss Identity?

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These data about Switzerland as a consensual identity reference are confirmed by the results indicating various types of pride. The concept of pride – particularly national pride – is sometimes met with distrust by those for whom it is linked to an attitude of superiority, arrogance or aggressiveness, and can only be used in exclusionist discourses. In postwar Germany, the Figure 5.9. Reputation of Multilingual Switzerland (%) Regarding the good reputation of Switzerland in matters of multilingualism, would you tend to say that: (1) (2) (3) (4)

Switzerland has achieved something no other country has succeeded in doing. Despite some problems, the model works well. When one looks deeper into it, serious problems remain. This good reputation does not correspond at all to reality.

– 112 –

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Languages and Collective Identities in Switzerland

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word Nationalstolz tended to be in use only on the (extreme) right of the political spectrum, until it became more accepted in mainstream society in the 1990s. In 2006, the relaxed mood during the football World Cup in Germany was often interpreted as the definitive proof that a ‘healthy pride’ was possible. Pride is linked to identity insofar as identity needs are often justified in terms of a lack of individual (and therefore collective) self-esteem. Many identity-based liberation movements insist on the need for a better self-image rooted in a stronger sense of pride: this applies to African Americans, gays and lesbians, or to language-based movements like the national ones in Québec or Catalonia, but also, to a certain extent, to movements like the more discrete German speakers’ movement in the canton of Fribourg (Boschung 1991). Those who legitimize pride regard it as a mere indicator of belonging, as an antidote to hate and therefore as a component of social peace. In this sense, the opposite of pride is not so much humility but self-hatred. Thus, a strong sense of pride can be connected to the unproblematic identification with a certain collective entity, that is, with the ‘success’ of a given identity construction. Among the politicoterritorial entities suggested to the respondents, Switzerland is the object of pride par excellence. The six groups display a very high level of Swiss pride (‘Yes, absolutely’ or ‘Rather yes’). While this is a little less valid for the Francophones of the canton of Bern, where regional dissatisfaction interferes with the perception of Switzerland, the differences are relatively minor (figure 5.10). Here, one can see that the concept of national pride, which is often applied to an exclusive ethnolinguistic identity, is well adapted for the political construct of Switzerland, whose multilingual character excludes neither national depth nor nationalistic discourse. Since the nineteenth century, subscribing to (auFigure 5.10. Index of Swiss Pride (%) Are you proud to be Swiss? (1) (2) (3) (4)

Yes, absolutely

Yes, absolutely Rather yes Rather no No, not at all

Rather yes

Rather no

No, not at all

– 113 –

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Manuel Meune

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tochthonous) pluralism has become a significant feature in Swiss identity discourse, as much as embracing an ideology of monolingualism in its French equivalent, and it appears to be no more than a particular version of potentially essentializing national ideologies. Max Weber (1971: 416– 24) already noted that the absence of a common language was by no means damaging to Swiss national feeling, since only shared values define what a nation is; in that sense, ethnic-national and political-national solidarities are very similar, and the subjective belief in common origin has little to do with any actual common genetic origin. As for ethnolinguistic pride (Romand/Swiss German), it differs from group to group. The French speakers are clearly more eager to declare themselves proud to be Romands than the German speakers are to call themselves Swiss Germans. And in Valais, a particularly high number of German speakers distance themselves from the Swiss German reference (‘Rather no’: 37.8 per cent), which reinforces certain responses where the respondents of Upper Valais very frequently do not see themselves as Swiss Germans (figure 5.11). The Valaisans appear to be the champions of cantonal identification; more than 80 per cent of them declare themselves ‘absolutely’ proud to be Valaisans. However, this does not mean that they would not also identify as Swiss, since they are also the ones that feel the most Swiss pride (see above). One can see that far from competing with one another or creating loyalty conflicts, so long as they are nonproblematic and adopted without any particular awkwardness, the various identifications actually reinforce each other. The strength of the cantonal affiliation is a lot less obvious in the other cantons, especially among the Bernese Francophones, where Figure 5.11. Index of Ethnolinguistic Pride (%) Are you proud to be Romand/Swiss German? (1) (2) (3) (4)

Yes, absolutely

Yes, absolutely Rather yes Rather no No, not at all

Rather yes

Rather no

No, not at all

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the haunting Jura question projects the image of a canton that cannot give rise to an unconditional pride, even among the German-speaking majority. As demonstrated by the identity pyramids, the reservations that the Bernese express in cantonal matters are compensated, among the Francophones, by the reference to the Romand ethnolinguistic group. Among the Swiss Germans, they are counterbalanced by the affirmation of the Swiss identity, as if in a complex mechanism of ‘communicating vessels’ (figure 5.12). The identity strategies of the municipal councillors in the bilingual cantons are multifaceted and rich in contrast. In the course of Swiss history, the variety of sociolinguistic situations has led to many adjustments, sometimes vigorously discussed – particularly when aimed at allowing the coexistence of the principles of territoriality and liberty. However, the great majority of the German-speaking and French-speaking respondents are able to recognize themselves within the functioning of a country whose multilingual dimension, probably more than any other country in Europe, leads to a particular sense of pride. If the canton of Bern has never experienced the emergence of a sense of belonging that everyone might share, the other two cantons, in spite of quarrels and discontent articulated here and there, provide examples of rather unproblematic cantonal identities – particularly in Valais. Furthermore, the affiliation to the ethnolinguistic group is more embodied among the Romands than among the Swiss Germans, but despite their divergent infranational perceptions, what filters through is the identity consensus that is inspired by a Swiss reference with which everyone seems to be particularly comfortable.

Figure 5.12. Index of Cantonal Pride (%) Are you proud to be Bernese/Fribourgeois/Valaisan? (1) (2) (3) (4)

Yes, absolutely

Yes, absolutely Rather yes Rather no No, not at all

Rather yes

Rather no

No, not at all

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Manuel Meune

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Conclusion In 1985, under the entry for ‘identity’, the French dictionary Petit Robert gave only a number of definitions that were all linked to individual identity. Since then, the concept of identity applied to groups has invaded the fields of politics, university and social life, and it nourishes what sometimes seems to be a new metaphysical quest. In its newest edition, the Petit Robert contains a reference to ‘cultural identity’ (identité culturelle) and to ‘an individual’s sense of belonging to a group’ ([le] sentiment d’appartenance d’un individu à [un] groupe). The identity question thus seems to have taken the place of the Marxist paradigm, according to which the examination of vital economic needs was the principal axis of perception of the social world. However, the Swiss example reminds us of how important it is to approach identities through their historicity, and not through an essentialist point of view: identities do not possess any measurable authenticity, as would be the case in the phantasmagorical idea of an organic identity, but they are rather a matter of dialectic, construction, negotiation. ‘And yet … they exist’, we can say, like so many modern descendents of Galileo, as we study the modalities of the numerous discourses that deal with the concept of identity or reveal a general quest for identity. This is what the responses of municipal councillors from Swiss bilingual cantons suggest. When French speakers and German speakers seem to react in a clearly nonidentical fashion, one is quick to attribute their perceptions to a strong language-based collective identity. Yet other questions show that additional variables also have to be taken into account, such as cantonal belonging, for example (when French and German speakers tend to react in a similar way), or belonging to a cantonal minority (where Deutschfreiburger and Jurassiens bernois have similar reflexes). Identity as a fixed point that one believes to have finally ‘discovered’ quickly disappears as soon as other issues display different logics. The relationship to territory and language, the perception of the language border and assimilation (where wishful thinking is often observed) remind us just how multifaceted the phenomenon of identity construction actually is. As much as one can attest that the sense of national identity (filtering through responses about Swiss pride or identification as Swiss) may be one of the easiest to locate in a society, one should not forget that it still is only one of many possible markers with which to interpret social complexity. Manuel Meune is a professor of German studies at Université de Montréal. He received his PhD from the Université Marc Bloch in Strasbourg, France. His first research interests were the historical memory of German immigrants to Canada and Canadian-German cultural relations. His cur– 116 –

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rent work is about identity and language questions in Switzerland, in particular in the three bilingual cantons (Bern, Fribourg, Valais) and in the trinational region around Basel. He published Au-delà du Röstigraben: Langues, minorités et identités dans les cantons suisses bilingues (Geneva: Georg, 2011). He is also the director of the journal Revue transatlantique d’études suisses.

Note I express my deep thanks to Björn Brömmelsiek, whose substantial translation work helped me to finalize this article. All translations from French or German (questionnaires, legal texts, sources not in English) are ours.

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References Abric, J.-C. 1989. ‘L’étude expérimentale des représentations sociales’, in D. Jodelet (ed.), Les représentations sociales. Paris: PUF, pp. 205–23. Altermatt, B. 2003. La politique du bilinguisme dans le canton de Fribourg/Freiburg (1945– 2000): Entre innovation et improvisation. Fribourg: Presses de l’Université de Fribourg. Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and the Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Austin, J.L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon. Bassand, M. (ed.). 1981. L’identité régionale: Contributions à l’étude des aspects culturels du développement régional. Saint-Saphorin: Georgi. Becker, H. 1963. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press. Becker, H.S. 2007. Telling About Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Boschung, P. 1991. Freiburger Lesebuch. Freiburg: Paulus. Bourdieu, P. 2001. Langage et pouvoir symbolique. Paris: Seuil. Büchi, C. 2000. ‘Röstigraben’: Das Verhältnis zwischen deutscher und französischer Schweiz. Zurich: NZZ-Verlag. Calhoun, C. 1997. Nationalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Castells, M. 1997. The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture, vol. 2, The Power of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell. Cavalli, M. and D. Coletta. 2003. Langues, bilinguisme et représentations sociales au Val d’Aoste. Aoste: IRRE-VDA. Chiffelle, F. 2004. L’Arc jurassien romand à la frontière des langues: Faut-il craindre la germanisation? Lausanne: Payot. Gadient, I. 2010. ‘Patoiseinschränkungsdebatten im Kanton Freiburg (1872–1887)’, master’s thesis. Freiburg: University of Freiburg. Hauser, C. 2004. L’aventure du Jura. Lausanne: antipodes & SHSR. Hogg, M.A. and D. Abrams. 1988. Social Identifications: A Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations and Group Processes. London: Routledge. Jodelet, D. (ed.). 1989. Les représentations sociales. Paris: PUF. Knüsel, R. 1994. Les minorités ethnolinguistiques à territoire: L’exemple du cas helvétique. Lausanne: Payot. Loetscher, H. 2009. ‘Schweizstunde, un cours de Suisse’, Le temps, 28 April. Lüdi, G. 1990. ‘Diglossie und Polyglossie’, in G. Holtus, M. Metzeltin and C. Schmitt (eds), Lexikon der romanistischen Linguistik, vol. 5. Tübingen: Niemeyer, pp. 307–34. Lüdi, G. and B. Py. 2003. Être bilingue, 3rd ed. Bern: Peter Lang. – 117 –

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Lüdi, G. and I. Werlen. 2005. Le paysage linguistique de la Suisse. Neuchâtel: Office fédéral de la statistique. Mucchielli, A. 2009. L’identité. Paris: PUF. Papaux, A. 2003. ‘Droit scolaire et territorialité des langues: Bilan critique de la jurisprudence récente du Tribunal fédéral’, Revista de llengua i dret 40(1): 140–84. Polletta, F. and J.M. Jasper. 2001. ‘Collective Identity and Social Movements’, Annual Review of Sociology 27: 283–305. Saladin, P. (ed.). 1989. Le quadrilinguisme suisse – présent et futur: Analyse, propositions et recommandations d’un groupe de travail du Département fédéral de l’intérieur. Bern: Chancellerie fédérale. Schläpfer, R. and H. Bickel (eds). 2000. Die viersprachige Schweiz. Aarau: Sauerländer. Snow, D.A. and D. McAdam. 2000. ‘Identity Work Processes in the Context of Social Movements: Clarifying the Identity Movement Nexus’, in S. Stryker, T.J. Owens and R.W. White (eds), Self, Identity and Social Movements. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 41–67. Stryker S., T.J. Owens and R.W. White (eds). 2000. Self, Identity and Social Movements. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Tendon, S. 2004. Des Romands et des Alémaniques à la frontière des langues: Les cas de Von Roll à Choindez (JU) et de Ciba-Geigy à Marly (FR). Courrendlin: CJE. Thomas, R. 1999. La formation professionnelle dans la région bilingue Bienne/Seeland/Jura bernois. Bienne: Direction des Écoles et de la Culture. Weber, M. 1971. Économie et société, vol. 1, trans. J. Freund et al. Paris: Plon. Widmer, J. 2004. Langues nationales et identités collectives: L’exemple de la Suisse. Paris: L’Harmattan. Williams, G. 1992. Sociolinguistics: A Sociological Critique. London: Routledge. Windisch, U. 1992. Les relations quotidiennes entre Romands et Suisses allemands: Les cantons bilingues de Fribourg et du Valais [vol. 1: Fribourg, vol. 2: Valais]. Lausanne: Payot.

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Chapter 6

LANGUAGE RIGHTS AND LANGUAGE ENDANGERMENT IN CANADA The Case of Indigenous Languages Donna Patrick

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C

anada, like other settler states, has a long history of European colonialism and imperialism. As such, its state formation has encompassed the political, linguistic and cultural struggles both of settlers from the colonial empires and other parts of the world and of indigenous peoples, who were displaced and dispossessed as settlements expanded across the country. From the perspective of these struggles, the latter half of the twentieth century is undoubtedly the most significant period in Canada’s history, given the reshaping of the liberal-democratic state that took place during this time and the emergence of social movements against an international backdrop of human rights and postcolonial struggles. In Canada, the social movements in question included the mobilization of French-speaking Québécois, other immigrant groups of non-British origin and indigenous peoples. These have played a key role in reshaping Canadian law and policy. In particular, they have led to legislation establishing official bilingualism (1969); to the introduction of multiculturalism, first as policy in 1971, and then as law in 1988; and to the constitutional entrenchment, in 1982, of a range of rights, including Aboriginal rights. Significantly, the appearance of the term ‘Aboriginal’ in the Canadian constitution, referring to the three major categories of indigenous peoples, First Nations, Inuit and Métis (mixed peoples of European and indigenous descent), marked the beginning of the term’s ascent to prominence in social, legal, political and cultural discourse, where it is now a widely used umbrella term to describe indigenous peoples in Canada.1 – 119 –

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These political and legal initiatives now characterize Canadian state regulations and management of ethnocultural and racial diversity. Aboriginal groups, as just noted, and French-speaking minorities are both recognized and accorded a range of rights in Canada’s Constitution Act (1982), its primary constitutional document. Yet, it is worth considering just what these ‘rights’, and the rights discourse in general, have meant for languages, identities and social relations between the various groups that now constitute Canada’s diversity. While the hegemony of the British and American empires has shaped the country politically, economically and culturally, it has also led to the undermining of indigenous languages and cultures, in particular through colonial laws and policies and the implementation of residential schooling in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It has also perpetuated a racialized hierarchical ordering based on centuries of rule by an Englishspeaking elite (Haque 2012).2 Yet despite the effects of centuries of English dominance, French has remained a majority language in Québec, multilingualism has transformed urban linguistic landscapes in recent decades and according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),3 eighty-eight indigenous languages are still spoken in Canada. Although UNESCO has classified these languages as ‘endangered’, many are being revitalized, with their speakers receiving increased institutional and local support (Patrick 2010). In other words, collective linguistic and cultural identities in Canada continue to shape and be shaped by the laws, policies and practices that have come to characterize Canadian governance. In this chapter, I wish to examine the issue of identities in multilingual states through the lens of indigenous language collectivities in Canada. In order to do so, I offer an analysis of the ways in which indigenous language rights and recognition issues have been linked to the political and social mobilization of indigenous groups in Canada and of how particular identities have been formed as a result of these linkages. The key questions to be addressed concern how indigenous language politics is tied to indigenous political movements and how, in turn, language politics is linked to contemporary social and political indigenous identities. My basic claim is that rights and recognition discourses can play an active role in shaping linguistic, social and political identities, but only when they are tied to specific languages and to indigenous political struggles for more institutional control over education and other spheres in which language is prominent. As such, these discourses can constitute social transformation in liberal-democratic societies when both local engagement and material resources are behind the policies and initiatives aimed at indigenous language promotion and revitalization. – 120 –

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As I will show, the recognition of language rights in policy or law can become more than a symbolic gesture when funding and bottom-up initiatives are in place to raise awareness and to promote the use of indigenous languages in informal and formal (institutional) spheres. Indeed, such recognition can reshape indigenous-settler and indigenous-state relations.4 The links between language, politics and identity can thus emerge not only in the reconfiguration of language hierarchies, as seen most clearly in schools, government and the workplace, on public signage and in other sites of struggle between languages, but also in processes of decolonization and ‘critical individual and collective self-recognition’ (Coulthard 2008: 201). The rest of the chapter elaborates on these processes of language and identity formation as connected to language and indigenous rights discourses. The next section situates indigenous language politics in Canada in colonial history, when English and French settler policies and practices had the objective of assimilating indigenous language speakers. It then moves on to discuss twentieth-century rights discourses and how these have been used strategically by indigenous groups in Canada in their struggle for the recognition of ‘Aboriginal rights’ (the rights to pursue traditional practices on traditional lands or waters), ‘treaty rights’ (the rights that flow from treaties made between certain indigenous groups and the Crown) and ‘Aboriginal title’ (basically, the collective ownership of traditional lands).5 In the following section, I examine contemporary language identities, with examples drawn from British Columbia, where over 60% of indigenous languages in Canada are spoken. I then pursue the discussion of indigenous language issues with a focus on Inuit groups in the Canadian Arctic. This section expands on the regional and national focus of language rights discourses discussed earlier, turning to initiatives related to the role of ‘national’ Inuit identities in the global circumpolar sphere and the recent initiatives regarding language policy and practice in Nunavut and Nunavik. What I will also show is that while language initiatives and activities at different scales do overlap, there are still significant differences between them, which are related to the reasons behind language promotion and the ways in which language has been and is being promoted. What we see, then, is the co-occurrence of two rather different processes: one that functions at a regional level and focuses on state processes such as education and public service and involves the accommodation of indigenous interests to Western state and institutional structures; and another that functions at a local level and is more cultural in orientation, is inherently collective in nature and involves goals of individual, local, and regional decolonization. While distinct, these processes have significant overlap and share the objective of self-determination. All of these – 121 –

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social and political developments, I will argue, shape language identities and ways of being ‘Inuit’ in the twenty-first century.

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Indigenous Language Politics and Canada’s Colonial History In order to proceed with this investigation of indigenous language rights in Canada, it is helpful to situate them in a historical context. Colonialism in Canada began with the arrival of merchants, missionaries, governors, and other colonial agents from France and later England. It involved a long process of appropriation of indigenous land for settlement and capitalist exploitation of labour and natural resources – actions that were justified through imperialist ideologies involving racial hierarchies and legal doctrines such as the Doctrine of Discovery and terra nullius.6 (Though of course, from an indigenous perspective, the land had already been settled before the arrival of Europeans and was the territory of the indigenous peoples themselves.) In the seventeenth century, treaties such as the Treaty of Albany (1664; see Hill 2008: 31ff.) and the Peace and Friendship Treaties (1670–71) between the Crown and the Wabanaki Confederacy were negotiated between indigenous groups and Europeans in order to share land and to foster military and economic alliances. These were effectively nation-to-nation agreements, and the indigenous inhabitants have never relinquished ‘their claims of ownership’ over these lands (Turner 2006: 4; Borrows 1997; see also Ladner and Dick 2008). Significantly, the appropriation of land and other material resources was closely linked to the appropriation or demonization of traditional cultural, linguistic and spiritual knowledge and practices – by proselytizing missionaries and others, whose practices led to cultural and spiritual assimilation. Cultural and linguistic knowledge thus became threatened by the loss of speakers, whether through the physical concomitants of contact, such as disease, famine, forced dislocation and violence, or through other means, all of which have drastically reduced the numbers of indigenous people over the centuries. Despite this history of assimilation, dispossession and state violence, the numbers of indigenous people in Canada (and elsewhere) have been growing steadily in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (Smith 2007). Thus, indigenous peoples have survived these assimilationist ideologies and practices – which continue to shape their economic, social, linguistic, cultural and territorial struggles in the contemporary Canadian political context. The rise of indigenous collectivities in regional, national and international political arenas speaks to the resilience of indigenous peoples and their continued resistance to colonial processes. It also signals the forma– 122 –

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tion of unique historical, linguistic and ethnocultural identities, in that these collectivities highlight the role of shared language, culture, place and history in mobilizing people to counter past injustices in both political and legal domains. In Canada, as elsewhere, injustices relating to indigenous peoples have involved the illegal expropriation of land and resources for activities such as logging, fishing, farming and mining. They have also involved assimilationist laws and policies extending from colonial times to the present, which in Canada have included the Indian Act (first enacted in 1876 and still the law – albeit subject to various revisions over the years – governing numerous aspects of the lives of ‘status Indians’) and over 150 years of residential schooling (Miller 2000, 2004). While these assimilationalist policies, in particular, are commonly assumed to be a major source of the decline in indigenous language use in every region of Canada, the encouragement of capitalist economic development and economic factors more generally have also favoured English- or French-language schooling and language choice. Furthermore, indigenous language promotion has in fact played a secondary role in the mobilization of indigenous groups, whose primary objective has been greater institutional control and control over land and economic development through land claims and other political processes. More recently, however, there has been a growing prominence of indigenous language claims in Canada, rooted in the mobilization for indigenous rights, as groups have sought resources for language promotion and maintenance. Rights discourses have permitted the formation of distinct linguistic-cultural identities, shaped by specific language claims, as well as the formation by indigenous groups of distinct political identities. These political identities became more prominent in the 1960s and 1970s, as Canada was reconfiguring the social, linguistic and cultural hierarchies of citizenship through official bilingualism and multiculturalism, as mentioned earlier. In this era of liberal rights discourses, indigenous groups coalesced into larger political organizations that allowed them to more effectively voice their concerns and to win a more prominent place in the new political and legal order. This was especially important for participation in legal cases that served to clarify the notions of ‘Aboriginal title’ to traditional lands and of ‘Aboriginal rights’ as recognized in the 1982 Constitution Act. What is noteworthy about the formation of these political groups is that – in addition to lobbying for funding, policy changes and social programmes to assist the indigenous groups that they represented – these groups have all played a role in shaping state (top-down) political indigenous identities. While state-driven identities such as ‘indigenous’, ‘Aboriginal’, ‘Status’ and ‘non-Status Indian’, ‘First Nations’, ‘Métis’ and ‘Inuit’ remain fluid and dynamic, they intersect with linguistically prescribed identities such as – 123 –

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Cree, Anishnaabe, Inuinnaqtun and Mi’kmaq. Regardless of the category, however, the primary identity marker is still rooted in shared notions of indigeneity – in large part adopted through indigenous rights discourses – and also in notions of group ‘distinctiveness’ and specific notions of historical, ethnic, linguistic and cultural ‘difference’. As noted earlier, the strategic use of rights discourses for indigenous groups led to a number of successful Supreme Court of Canada decisions on ‘Aboriginal title’ and ‘Aboriginal rights’ beginning with the 1973 Calder v. British Columbia case. Although the issues of land and hunting and fishing rights initially dominated indigenous political protest and action, the issues of language and culture and the rights associated with them gained prominence in the early twenty-first century. In particular, the 2005 report of the Task Force on Aboriginal Languages and Cultures drew heavily on language rights discourses in the arguments that it presented for the funding of bilingual and immersion indigenous language schooling, and for the support of language programmes more generally (Patrick 2007). This report thus used French and English language rights as a means to legitimize indigenous language rights, based on a direct challenge to the notion of ‘two founding peoples’. As the report argued, ‘the First Nations, Inuit and Métis were founding peoples alongside the French and the English’ (Patrick 2007: 49). The funding for the languages of these peoples, therefore, should be brought, ‘at a minimum, [to] the same level as that provided for the French and English languages’ (Task Force on Aboriginal Languages and Cultures 2005: 75, cited in Patrick 2007: 50). The linkage of Aboriginal language rights claims in Canada with French and English language rights is not new. In fact, when the Official Languages Act came into effect in 1969, the languages of ‘other ethnic groups’, including indigenous languages, were excluded, falling much later within the purview of the Multiculturalism Act (1988). Alongside this initiative was the Canadian Heritage Languages Institute, which was formed in 1987 to bring ‘ethnic’ language interests together,7 but failed to adequately consult with indigenous groups (Patrick 2007: 42). In fact, the resulting heritage language legislation, Bill C-37 (1989), was prepared with the virtual exclusion of the interests of indigenous groups. This oversight was not rectified until 2003, when the Aboriginal Language Task Force was established with funding from the Ministry of Canadian Heritage and a mandate to ‘propose a national strategy to preserve, revitalize and promote First Nation, Inuit and Métis languages and cultures’ (Task Force on Aboriginal Languages and Cultures 2005: i, cited in Patrick 2007: 42). Such developments with respect to indigenous language issues and rights, which have been decades in the making and still lack the funding required to implement key changes, can nevertheless now be seen as part of the federal political landscape. – 124 –

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Contemporary Language Identities This narrative of political process, indigeneity and language rights leads to a number of questions regarding contemporary language identities. These include such questions as what this national initiative means for indigenous language identities in Canada; how specific language identities such as Cree, Inuit or Haida are linked to other forms of indigenous politics; and what the role is of top-down language processes (such as regional, national and international organizational reports and initiatives) on local ethnolinguistic identities and language politics more generally. One way to address these questions is by looking at some recent developments in British Columbia, a province where over 60 per cent of Canada’s indigenous languages (FPHLCC 2010) are spoken.8 Many of these languages are spoken in the province’s interior and northern regions; however, the most linguistically diverse area of the province is that which represents the Northwest Coast area of North America, a region with five distinct indigenous language families and numerous language varieties (see UNESCO n.d.). The five families in this area are (1) Salishan, which includes Coast Salish languages such as Halkomelem, Musqueam and Sto:lo; (2) Wakashan, which includes languages on the western coast of Vancouver Island, Nuu-chah-nulth (or Nootka) and Ditidaht, and those to the north, Haisla, Heiltsuk and Kwakwaka’wakw (or Kwakiutl); (3) Haida; (4) Tsimshian, which includes Nisga’a and Gitksan; and (5) Tlingit. Although there remains a great wealth of linguistic diversity among the indigenous languages of British Columbia, their viability is far from assured. This conclusion was highlighted by the Report on the Status of B.C. First Nations Languages 2010 (FPHLCC 2010), which called for greater awareness of the ‘troubling state’ of British Columbia’s languages and the need for more funding to continue ongoing revitalization efforts, in the form of ‘pre-school’, ‘master-apprentice’ and ‘immersion’ programmes, and for initiatives to develop curricula and to track the state of indigenous languages in the province (FPHLCC 2010: 39). Although such revitalization efforts in British Columbia and elsewhere in Canada have so far received limited funding, the social and cultural resources devoted to these programmes provide some hope for language activists that an increase in communities’ use of indigenous languages is possible. Moreover, state-driven (largely institution-based) language revitalization efforts have resulted in other kinds of language activities, with more obvious political effects. These include indigenous place-naming efforts for maps, road signs and other visually prominent sites that more directly confront indigenous-settler relations in shared urban and rural places. – 125 –

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A very prominent example of such a naming effort is one that figured in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. As part of the arrangements for this international event, the provincial government of British Columbia partnered with the Squamish and Lil’wat First Nations, two Vancouver-area First Nations, to initiate a ‘Naming and Recognition Project’. This allowed for indigenous as well as English place-names for shared territories in the area. In this way, indigenous place-names, in indigenous languages, gained wider recognition in the broader settler society.9 There have been other recent indigenous place-naming initiatives in British Columbia, which shed light on the relationship between language, identity, space and place. One of these was the renaming in December 2009 of the Queen Charlotte Islands (named after the wife of King George III in 1778) to Haida Gwaii, a renaming in which the Haida Nation itself played a key role. Another was the July 2010 renaming of the Strait of Georgia, a body of water between the city of Vancouver and Vancouver Island, which was originally named by Captain George Vancouver in 1792 in honour of King George III. The new name given to this waterway was the Salish Sea, to honour the Coast Salish nations, who have inhabited this area for thousands of years. A final, and far more contested, place-name change involved Stanley Park in downtown Vancouver, which lies in the traditional territory of the Squamish and other Salish groups in the Vancouver area (Barman 2005). The Squamish have called this site ‘Xwayxway’ (pronounced ‘Whoi Whoi’) for thousands of years and have suggested that it officially be given its original indigenous name. This suggestion has, however, been rejected by the federal Department of Canadian Heritage, which has claimed that the English name is well established and recognized internationally. It is clear, then, that not all public ‘places’ are open to indigenous claims to shared sovereignty and that not all historical connections to land can be recognized through language. What is equally clear is that renaming is not a mere symbolic gesture, but part of a larger political project, with political repercussions. Changes from colonial place-names to indigenous ones have become an arena where language, politics and indigeneity are intertwined.

Language, Identity and Politics: Nunavut and Nunavik The connection between language, indigeneity and rights can also be seen in the context of the Canadian Arctic, where what is at stake – economic, cultural and territorial sovereignty – becomes more pressing given the advent of global warming and the opening up of the Northwest Passage. To proceed with this focus on the Arctic, it is worth noting that this region plays a key role in issues pertaining to climate change; natural re– 126 –

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source development and the rising price of commodities such as oil, gas and diamonds; and emerging Arctic shipping routes, which promise to save billions in transport costs across North America from Asia to Europe, as ships are diverted from southern routes that make use of the Panama Canal. All these issues are of concern to the approximately fifty-five thousand Inuit who inhabit the Canadian Arctic and who are related to the Greenlandic, Alaskan and Siberian peoples living to the east and west. Since 1996, the Arctic Council – composed of eight member nation-states and six participating indigenous organizations – has taken Inuit interests into consideration by including the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), an indigenous organization, as a permanent participant.10 The rise of pan-indigenous and pan-Inuit interests across the Arctic has created new challenges for Inuit political mobilization. As Russia, the United States, Canada, Denmark and Norway, the five states bordering the Arctic Ocean, enter into disputes over boundaries and territorial control, indigenous interests risk being sidelined. These interests include indigenous claims to what they consider to be their lands (and homelands), protection of the environment and sustainability of natural resources linked to the land and sea. All of these, including control over underwater resource development and transportation passage rights, are implicated in current global political and economic debates. These issues are also paramount to Inuit struggles for self-determination, increased territorial autonomy and decolonization. These emerging challenges give greater urgency to the need for a unified Inuit political voice in the international arena. But this need in turn creates new challenges for the pursuit of indigenous language issues. In particular, the linguistic demands of the political engagement necessary to pursue these goals require a high level in English and other dominant European languages. In fact, as Inuit participation in global spheres and resource markets increases, so does the need for effective communication in English and thus for English-language education. At the same time, Inuit languages remain a significant focus of concern, involving attention to the varieties of Inuit languages and to the local indigenous identities associated with them. This is because speaking Inuit languages, which are central to millennia-old cultural and economic practices, continues to define one as an Inuk in the Arctic context – even if it is only one’s parents or grandparents who speak (or spoke) the language. These tensions – between the need for a lingua franca that crosses local, regional, and national borders and local desires to maintain localized linguistic and cultural practices and identities – are in constant play, shaping language practices and social interaction. As it happens, these tensions and paradoxes form part of contemporary indigenous realities around the – 127 –

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globe, wherever indigenous territory, language, politics and economic interests are intertwined. However, the Canadian Arctic offers a particularly complex and vivid picture of these tensions. On a circumpolar scale, discussions between Arctic states have led in turn to discussions between Inuit groups in these states for fostering communication and sharing strategies for Inuit language revitalization, retention and promotion. One result has been the launching of initiatives to raise collective language consciousness across geopolitical boundaries and to foster ‘cross-boundary’ communication in a rapidly changing Arctic. These initiatives have included two international youth symposia on language recently hosted by the ICC, one in Iqaluit in August 2005 and one in Kotzebue, Alaska, in July 2007; as well as an Arctic Indigenous Languages Symposium involving the five Arctic member states, held in Tromsø, Norway, in October 2008.11 However, what complicates discussion of indigenous language issues among Inuit groups is the question of which varieties of Inuit languages ‘count’ in this discussion. To clarify this question, it is necessary to recognize that Canadian Inuit inhabit four distinct land claim regions, in each of which different Inuit language varieties are spoken.12 The number of varieties itself is a matter of dispute: according to the ‘UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger’ (UNESCO n.d.),13 there are eleven, whereas the figure given in the Canadian census is only three, albeit with many dialects of each variety. Yet even the higher UNESCO number given for Inuit languages does not account for the large number of local varieties in use: the UNESCO atlas lists a total of eighty-eight indigenous languages in Canada, a far greater number than the ‘50 or more’ cited in previous census documents (see Norris 2007). What this means, then, is that the identification of particular local, regional and ‘official’ UNESCO-identified varieties of Inuit languages represents a constant tension between local, regional and national Inuit identities and language practices. Moreover, because only neighbouring Inuit language varieties are mutually intelligible, no one variety of these languages can serve as a lingua franca to enable communication across Inuit groups in a circumpolar context. This places Inuit languages in a position subordinate to English in uniting Inuit groups supranationally. As we ‘jump scales’ from local to regional to national and finally to international arenas, local ‘language’ varieties are ‘absorbed’ into broader language categories, and new forms of ‘Inuit language identities’ come into play. Thus, what might be a particular language variety specific to Kuujjuarapik, Québec (Patrick 2003), becomes absorbed into a larger ‘Hudson Bay’ Nunavimmiutitut variety, which then merges with a ‘Hudson Strait’ variety into a single ‘Nunavimmiutitut’ language for the purposes of classification in the UNESCO atlas. This variety is – 128 –

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then absorbed into the still larger category of ‘Inuktitut’ in descriptions of ‘Canadian Inuit’ languages. While this successive taxonomic ‘absorption’ may well be of little practical concern for local speakers, it is nevertheless an important aspect of contemporary configurations of ‘language’ and ‘identity’ across social and political space. The interplay between local language use and identities and regional, national and supranational identities can also be seen in other domains of Canadian Inuit life, where politics, language and cultural identities are tightly intertwined. These include two kinds of initiatives related to Inuit language awareness and use: on the one hand, ‘top-down’ legislative initiatives related to language policy and language politics in the territory of Nunavut; and on the other, ‘bottom-up’ grassroots language awareness initiatives in Nunavik, the Arctic Québec region south of Nunavut. These two regions have similar goals: to work collectively to achieve Inuit language revitalization and maintenance and to foster a role for the Inuit language in Inuit self-determination—that is, in the formation and support of Inuit-dominant political, economic and territorial collectivities. However, they have taken different paths to achieve these goals, with Nunavut pursuing the path of language legislation, and Nunavik the path of more informal, face-to-face workshops in local communities, facilitated by Inuit themselves. The former process in Nunavut leaves open the possibility of further face-to-face local and collaborative consultation in order to, among other things, standardize Inuktitut to facilitate the implementation of (top-down) language policies. By contrast, the latter process in Nunavik leaves the door open to the implementation of language policy within Nunavik’s regional jurisdiction. Both approaches highlight the tension between ‘local’ and ‘regional’ collective identities, and both involve a process of social interaction across boundaries (or ‘scale jumping’), as Inuit negotiate both local and regional (wider) Inuit identities and participate in both personal and larger decolonization projects. The broader goal remains constant: the struggle for stronger political, economic and environmental Inuit voices, and participation in national as well as global arenas. To provide some background on these processes, let us begin with Nunavut. The Nunavut Land Claims Agreement was signed in 1993, and in 1999, Nunavut was established as a ‘territory’ in Canada. Since then, there have been negotiations for an implementation contract for the period of 2003–13, to ensure that the details laid out in the agreement have been implemented after an initial ten-year period. In order to reconcile differences between the positions of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (the Nunavut land claims organization) and the government of Nunavut, on the one hand, and the federal government, on the other, Thomas Berger was appointed as conciliator. Berger’s final report, published in 2006, was prefaced with – 129 –

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a letter to Jim Prentice, the then federal Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, that arguably sums up the current concerns of Inuit in Nunavut and in Canada more generally: ‘It is now six years on since the creation of Nunavut. Nunavut today faces a moment of change, a moment of crisis. It is a crisis in Inuit education and employment, a crisis magnified by the advent of global warming in the Arctic and the challenge of Arctic sovereignty’ (Berger 2006: i). The ‘crisis’ in education alludes to the main argument of the report: that Article 23 of the agreement, whose objective was ‘to increase Inuit participation in government employment in the Nunavut Settlement Area to a representative level’, has not been implemented. This, Berger argues, speaks to the need for Inuit employment in the public service and an overhaul of the education system in order to fulfil this need. The main thrust of the ‘overhaul’ is the introduction of ‘bilingual education’ throughout the school system: that is, replacing English-medium instruction with Inuktitut-medium instruction at all levels of education, with English being taught as a second language and as the medium of instruction in certain subjects. As Berger notes in the same letter: There will have to be major changes in the education system in order to vastly increase the number of Inuit high school graduates; in my view a new approach is required, a comprehensive program of bilingual education. … Nunavut [has] not produced an adequate pool of qualified Inuit. The schools are failing. They are not producing graduates truly competent in Inuktitut; moreover, the Inuit of Nunavut have the lowest rate of literacy in English in the country. … [A] strong program of bilingual education must be adopted. … Inuktitut is the language of instruction from kindergarten through Grades 3/4. In Grades 4/5 Inuktitut is abandoned as a language of instruction, and Inuit children are introduced to English as the sole language of instruction. Many of them can converse in English. But they can’t write in English, nor are their English skills sufficiently advanced to facilitate instruction in English. In Grade 4, they are starting over, and they find themselves behind. (Berger 2006: iv–v)

The answer, according to Berger, is not more English-language instruction but a more solid Inuktitut-medium education, which builds a linguistically strong bilingual and biliterate people, ready to take on the task of running their own affairs in a rapidly changing and modernizing world. Nunavut, as a territory, has its own legislative assembly and can enact its own laws in a range of legal domains. Accordingly, at about the same time that the Berger report was being researched and released, work was underway to enact two language statutes, the Nunavut Official Languages Act (2008) and the Inuit Language Protection Act (2008). These would also put Nunavut ‘on the map’ with respect to indigenous language policy in Canada. The former statute recognizes three official languages: the ‘Inuit language’ (a category comprising the five different languages in – 130 –

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Nunavut recognized by UNESCO in addition to other language varieties), English and French. Rights are guaranteed for the use of these three languages in the legislature, courts and public services. The latter statute deals with language protection in the area of ‘standardization’, in order to implement Inuit language rights and protection under the law;14 the right to work in the Inuit language in government offices; and the right to services and education in the Inuit language. While not as strong as Québec’s language legislation – in particular, Bill 101 – in protecting French, Nunavut has made use of a discursive and political space in Canada to move towards legislating language promotion in public places, the workplace and education. Nunavik, in contrast, does not have the status of a territory; it is a region of Québec and thus subject to Québec law, although it has won a certain measure of Inuit self-government through the provisions of the James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement, signed in 1975 by the Inuit, the Cree (another indigenous group) and the provincial and federal governments. In seeking to achieve similar long-term goals as Nunavut with respect to Inuktitut language use, Nunavik has adopted a ‘consultative’, ‘local’ approach in the form of a project called Inuktituurniup Saturtauninga, which is run through Nunavik’s cultural organization, Avataq.15 While this nonlegislative approach might be more in line with Nunavik’s status as a region, it also reflects a particular Inuit approach: to consult with speakers and raise language consciousness among them at a grassroots level, and from this process to build consensus for language legislation, especially with respect to Inuktitut language use in schools.16 Only once this consultation is complete will the question of policy and how to protect Inuktitut and ensure its ‘visibility’ in the public sphere be addressed. As is shown by the processes just described, language policy and institutional support for Inuktitut have come to the fore in both Nunavut and Nunavik. In particular, as Inuit state processes develop, the paradox of the need to modernize – and in particular to be able to function in the bureaucratic sphere in English – and yet to maintain Inuitness by maintaining fluency and literacy in Inuktitut becomes more prominent. Furthermore, as highlighted by current processes in the Canadian Arctic, the emergence in the twenty-first century of more pressing issues across scales has meant that educational outcomes and Inuit language identities become even more relevant to the goals of Inuit self-determination and territorial autonomy and sovereignty. For Inuit to manage their own affairs, they will need a qualified bilingual (or trilingual) Inuit public sector to maintain legitimacy within and across local, regional, national and international borders; this has become a key challenge for future governance in Inuit jurisdictions. Thus, language revitalization is indeed alive and well at many levels, in – 131 –

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Canada and across the Arctic – in regions where there is much more at stake than a mere ‘symbolic’ use of language. On the contrary, language is tied to very real political, material and processual concerns about how indigenous peoples will continue to develop and foster nation-to-nation and decolonizing relationships with old and new colonizing forces.

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Conclusion In this chapter, I have addressed the key questions of how indigenous language politics have been tied to indigenous political movements and how language politics have become linked to contemporary social and political indigenous identities. These processes constitute forms of social transformation in liberal-democratic societies such as Canada, where both local and material resources come into play to shape larger collective language policies and other initiatives aimed at indigenous self-awareness and political engagement across local, regional, national and international scales. Significantly, struggles for the recognition of indigenous language rights are linked in various ways to political struggles for indigenous rights and for the recognition of indigenous control over land, economic activities and cultural sovereignty, and these struggles have made similar strategic use of language and other rights discourses. Not only have claims to indigenous language rights been made on the basis of the constitutional recognition of ‘Aboriginal rights’, but they have also been framed by analogy to entrenched French minority language rights and in terms of the need to recognize the ‘founding nation’ status of indigenous peoples in Canada (Patrick 2007). In other words, language struggles can be seen as continuous with political ones; and complex collective identities have emerged from the linkages between language and politics at local, regional, national and international levels. In demonstrating these linkages, I have drawn on examples from British Columbia and from the Canadian Arctic, focusing on the Inuit from two of the four land claim regions: Nunavut and Nunavik (Arctic Québec). What I have shown is that rights and recognition discourses have played an active role in shaping indigenous linguistic, social and political identities, and in struggles for indigenous sovereignty, control over lands that have been occupied and used ‘since time immemorial’, greater control over education and greater access to well-paid employment, particularly in public service (Berger 2006). This is especially true when these discourses have been tied to specific languages – as in the case of signage, place-naming and language revitalization in British Columbia – and to indigenous po– 132 –

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litical struggles for greater institutional control over education and other spheres in which language is prominent – as in Nunavut and Nunavik. I have also shown that the recognition of language rights, policies and laws is much more than a symbolic gesture. Top-down and bottom-up initiatives are both at play, which not only raise language awareness, but also promote and use indigenous languages in both informal and formal (institutional) contexts and are part of larger projects of political autonomy, selfdetermination and decolonization. These forms of language recognition are in play now, actively reshaping indigenous-settler and indigenous-state relations. Yet, there is a fundamental tension between the use of these rights discourses, which centre on individual rights, and the collective goals that indigenous peoples in Canada have espoused (Monture-Angus 1999; Borrows 2002; Turner 2006). Nevertheless, the appeal to rights discourses, and their prominent use both in community-based language revitalization efforts and in language initiatives seeking to unite Inuit within and across borders, speaks to the discursive space in Canada for language-based rights claims. These claims offer new ways to imagine local and regional Inuit identities and new forms of global political engagement in Arctic and circumpolar affairs. Donna Patrick is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario. Her research interests include language rights, language endangerment discourse and the political, social and cultural aspects of language use, particularly as these pertain to Aboriginal languages in Canada. Recent research has examined these issues as they relate to Inuit literacies in Ottawa and Inuit-centred programming in Ottawa and Montreal. Earlier research, as described in her book, Language Politics and Social Interaction in an Inuit Community (De Gruyter Mouton, 2003), examines these issues as they relate to Northern Québec. Other publications include an edited volume with Jane Freeland, Language Rights and Language Survival (St. Jerome Press, 2004), and a number of articles on indigenous language endangerment and language rights discourses in Canada.

Notes 1. In this chapter, I use the term ‘Aboriginal’ when appealing to this legally defined category, which came into use in Canada in the 1980s, after the entrenchment of ‘Aboriginal rights’ in the 1982 Constitution Act. 2. This racialized ordering was arguably reaffirmed through official French-English bilingualism (Haque 2012).

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3. UNESCO lists eighty-eight languages, which is a much more nuanced classification than previous Canadian government analyses, which have relied on census data and list around fifty separate languages. Nevertheless, what counts as a ‘language’, a ‘dialect’ or a ‘language variety’ without the status of a ‘language’ remains a political, and sometimes contentious, issue. 4. While ‘settler’ often refers to the entire ‘society’ of nonindigenous people, including the state, I separate ‘settler relations’ from ‘state relations’ here to emphasize two different kinds of relations. The first involves face-to-face and mediated ‘everyday’ interactions between indigenous and settler populations, whether in personal encounters or through media representations; the other involves larger state processes or structures of governmentality (governing practices in both processual and structural ways), which include law, policy making and implementation, and other colonizing practices that have led to land dispossession and subjugation of indigenous peoples within the larger settler state. 5. The landmark Supreme Court of Canada case about ‘Aboriginal title’ is Calder v. British Columbia, Attorney General (1973). 6. The Doctrine of Discovery is an international law principle whereby European Christian ‘explorers’ could claim indigenous lands that belonged to those who were not subjects of a European Christian monarch. Terra nullius is a legal concept, literally meaning ‘the land of no one’, describing territory not belonging to any particular nation or monarch. 7. Of course, ‘ethnic’ should also include French and English, although the dominant usage of the term since the Report of the Bilingualism and Biculturalism Commission (1968) has been in reference to non-English and non-French language groups. Indigenous groups, however, have steadfastly refused to be categorized under the ‘ethnic’ label. 8. According to the report (FPHLCC 2010), the First Peoples’ Heritage Language and Culture Council (FPHLCC) is a British Columbia Crown corporation with the mandate to support First Nations in their efforts to revitalize their languages, arts, cultures and heritage. The council has distributed more than $21.5 million to British Columbia Aboriginal communities over the past twenty years (see www.fphlcc.ca). 9. See the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre website at http://www.slcc.ca. 10. The Inuit Circumpolar Council (formerly the Inuit Circumpolar Conference) was founded in 1977 and obtained official UN nongovernmental organization (NGO) status in 1983. It serves the interests of Inuit groups from Siberia to Greenland. 11. See http://www.arcticlanguages.com/index.html. 12. In this world of national and international ‘scale jumping’ of social actors representing different Inuit constituencies, Canada’s national Inuit organization, Inuit Tapariit Kanatami (ITK), plays a role in addressing regional representation (of Inuit in the four land claim areas) in the broader, pan-Arctic, circumpolar world. 13. The ‘UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger’ (UNESCO n.d.) lists North Alaskan Inupiaq (which is also spoken in Canada); two varieties of Western Canadian Inuktitut, Siglitun and Inuinnaqtun; five varieties of Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, Natsilingmiutut, Aivilingmiutut, Kivallirmiutut, Qikiqtaaluk uannangani (North Baffin) and Qikiqtaaluk nigiani (South Baffin); one Arctic Québec (Nunavik) variety, Nunavimmiutitut; and two varieties from Labrador, Nunatsiavummiutut and Rigolet Inuktitut. 14. In Nunavut, language ‘standardization’ has become an issue as the new language laws come into effect. This includes shared terminology and orthographic systems. In February 2011, the Inuit language authority of Nunavut, Uqausinginnik Taiguusiliuqtiit, held a symposium on language standardization. 15. As the Avataq website, http://www.avataq.qc.ca, notes: ‘This project begun when the negotiators of the Nunavik Aquvvinga autonomous government requested a report on measures to protect minority languages. A second phase of the project assessed the language situation in Nunavik in light of measures in force in other parts of the world.

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However, the research team concluded that a valid assessment could only come from the communities themselves, and so a series of local workshops were integrated into the project. The Inuit of Nunavik expressed growing concern for the survival of Inuktitut, and in response, Avataq Cultural Institute, with the support of Nunavik Aquvvinga and Makivik Corporation, launched the Inuktituurniup Saturtauninga project. The project’s objectives are to prevent the erosion of the Inuktitut language and to ensure that, in a milieu dominated by English and French, it maintains its position as the main language shared by the majority of the population of Nunavik.’ 16. It is noted on the Avataq website that Nunavik, as ‘an autonomous government, [would have] an Inuktitut Language Commission [that] would supervise the protection and development of Inuktitut. Language protection (language in the workplace and of signs) must be a priority of Nunavingmi Aquvvinga.’ Regarding schools, another goal for Nunavik is to follow initiatives in Nunavut and move towards more Inuktitut-media instruction beyond the current grade 3/4 level. See http://www.avataq.qc.ca/en/Institute/ Departments/Inuktitut-Language.

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References Barman, J. 2005. Stanley Park’s Secret: The Forgotten Families of Whoi Whoi, Kanaka Ranch and Brockton Point. Madiera Park, BC: Harbour Publishing. Berger, T. 2006. Conciliator’s Final Report, 1 March 2006, ‘The Nunavut Project’. Retrieved 26 July 2015 from http://www.nunavuteconomicforum.ca/public/files/library/EDUCATIO/ berger_final_report.pdf Borrows, J. 1997. ‘Wampum at Niagara: The Royal Proclamation, Canadian Legal History, and Self-Government’, in M. Asch (ed.), Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in Canada. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. ———. 2002. Recovering Canada: The Resurgence of Indigenous Law. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Coulthard, G. 2008. ‘Beyond Recognition: Indigenous Self-Determination as Prefigurative Practice’, in Leanne Simpson (ed.), Lighting the Eighth Fire: The Liberation, Resurgence, and Protection of Indigenous Nations. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Press, pp. 187–204. FPHLCC [First Peoples’ Heritage, Language, and Culture Council]. 2010. Report on the Status of B.C. First Nations Languages. Brentwood Bay, BC. Retrieved 26 July 2015 from http://www.fpcc.ca/files/pdf/2010-report-on-the-status-of-bc-first-nations-languages .pdf Haque, E. 2012. Multiculturalism Within a Bilingual Framework: Language, Race, and Belonging in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Hill, S. M. 2008. ‘Travelling Down the River of Life Together in Peace and Friendship, Forever: Haudenosaunee Land Ethics and Treaty Agreements as the Basis For Restructuring the Relationship with the British Crown’, in L. Simpson (ed.), Lighting the Eighth Fire: The Liberation, Resurgence, and Protection of Indigenous Nations. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Press, pp. 23–46. Ladner, K and C. Dick. 2008. ‘Out of the Fires of Hell: Globalization as a Solution to Decolonization’, Canadian Journal of Law and Society 23: 63–91. Miller, J.R. 2000. Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian White Relations in Canada, 3rd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ———. 2004. ‘Designer Labels’, in Lethal Legacy: Current Native Controversies in Canada. Toronto: McLelland & Stewart, pp. 1–51. Monture-Angus, P. 1999. Journeying Forward: Dreaming First Nations’ Independence. Halifax, NS: Fernwood.

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Norris, M.J. 2007. Aboriginal Languages in Canada: Emerging Trends and Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition. Ottawa: Statistics Canada. Patrick, D. 2003. Language, Politics and Social Interaction in an Inuit Community. New York and Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. ———. 2007. ‘Indigenous Language Endangerment and the Unfinished Business of Nation-States’, in M. Heller and A. Duchêne (eds), Discourses of Endangerment: Interest and Ideology in the Defence of Languages. London and New York: Continuum, pp. 35–56. ———. 2010. ‘Canada’, in J. Fishman and O. Garcia (eds), Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 286–301. Smith, T. L. 2007. ‘The Native and the Neoliberal Down Under: Neoliberalism and “Endangered Authenticities”’, in M. de la Cadena and O. Starn (eds), Indigenous Experience Today. Oxford and New York: Berg, pp. 333–52. Task Force on Aboriginal Languages and Cultures. 2005. Towards a New Beginning: A Foundational Report for a Strategy to Revitalize First Nation, Inuit and Métis Languages and Cultures. Ottawa. Retrieved 26 July 2015 from http://www.afn.ca/uploads/files/education2/ towardanewbeginning.pdf Turner, D. 2006. This Is Not a Peace Pipe: Towards a Critical Indigenous Philosophy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. UNESCO. n.d. UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. Retrieved 26 July 2015 from http://www.unesco.org/culture/languages-atlas/index.php

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P A R T III

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LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY POLITICS IN IMMIGRATION SOCIETIES

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Chapter 7

IMMIGRANTS AND THE REFRAMING OF LANGUAGE AND NATIONAL IDENTITY POLITICS IN THE UNITED STATES Ronald Schmidt Sr. .

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A

s is true in many parts of the globe, recent decades have witnessed a sharp increase in the prevalence and salience of identity politics in the United States, and conflict over language policy has played a prominent role in this phenomenon. This chapter aims to make sense of a significant shift in the discursive role of language diversity in U.S. identity politics, a shift occasioned by the increase in immigration to the United States during the past four decades. The central thesis of the chapter is that the dramatic increase in immigration – especially from Latin American countries – has enabled U.S. assimilationists to successfully reframe U.S. language diversity as an immigrant phenomenon, rather than an ethnic minority phenomenon, thereby deploying identity politics to undermine efforts made by Latino political activists and their allies towards building a bilingual language policy regime in the United States. The premise of this chapter is that no political group – and no nation – is created by nature; rather, every political group is socially constructed through discursive political action (Anderson 1983). Moreover, every contemporary state is composed of multiple and often competing social identity groups (such as gender-based groups, ethnic groups, religious groups, racial groups and sexual orientation groups) whose collective social identities serve as bases for political interest articulation and mobilization (Parekh 2008). The political conflicts that engage these social identity groups – – 139 –

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Ronald Schmidt Sr.

including conflicts over language policies – are what is meant here by the term ‘identity politics’. As Smith (2003) has argued, national identities are constructed through the interactions of often competing ‘stories of peoplehood’ deployed by would-be political leaders (among others) who aim to convince their constituents that they are a collective entity – or ‘a people’ – sharing such characteristics that would make these particular aspirants, rather than their competitors, best-suited for the task of group leadership. As a result, every national community has a history of contending narratives regarding the nature and meaning of their collective identity that informs political conflicts between groups within that country. So ‘identity politics’ is not a new phenomenon, but it does wax and wane over time, depending on the fault lines that most preoccupy political communities in particular contexts.

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Language Diversity and Identity Politics in the United States The population of the United States has contained diverse ethnolinguistic groups since it was founded as an independent country in the late eighteenth century. Language has played a prominent though disputed role in the creation of an American national identity throughout the country’s history (Baron 1990; Kloss 1977). As detailed elsewhere (Schmidt 2000), there have been two primary political camps in the U.S. identity politics ‘culture wars’ of the past four decades – the assimilationists and the pluralists – and this division has deep roots in U.S. history. Both camps have a story of U.S. peoplehood that purports to explain the origins of the country’s ethnocultural diversity and articulate a vision of how that diversity should be dealt with by public policy, including language policy. Both historically and more recently, assimilationists have been the dominant camp in U.S. identity politics. Regarding the origins of U.S. ethnolinguistic diversity, assimilationists assert that the United States was founded by English-speaking settlers, and that ethnolinguistic diversity emerged for the most part through the immigration of people (most of whom arrived as individuals or in small family groups) that were eager to gain access to the economic, religious and political freedoms perceived as central characteristics of the ‘American way of life’. Assimilationists assert that until recent decades, most of these immigrants have been eager to ‘become American’ as quickly as possible, and that most non-English-speaking immigrants worked very hard to acquire fluency in the English language and American culture as quickly as they could manage to do so, a process facilitated by an assimilationist curriculum and teaching staff in the nation’s publicly funded schools (Schlesinger 1992; Huntington 2004). – 140 –

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Immigrants and the Reframing of Language Politics

Seeking to replicate this perceived smooth process of immigrant incorporation in the contemporary era of identity politics, U.S. assimilationists have fought for language policies they believe will encourage and facilitate the speedy acquisition of English-language fluency by non-English speakers, and the sole use of English in the public spaces and civil society domains of the United States. They claim, however, that in recent decades, the assimilation process has been obstructed by pluralistic language policies (such as bilingual education and the use of non-English-language ballots in elections) that have been enacted under the sway of Hispanic political leaders seeking to promote their own narrow political interests by convincing immigrants – especially those from Latin America – that they are now part of an oppressed minority that needs to unite and protect the language and culture of their heritage. In opposition to this perceived campaign to ‘Balkanize’ the United States, assimilationists have sought to eliminate bilingual education programmes from publicly funded schools and to end the provision of non-English ballots in elections. They have also promoted the adoption of official language policies that would make English the sole legitimate language of U.S. government and public spaces. Thus, the vision of American peoplehood embraced by assimilationists is one in which both voluntary private actions and public policy combine to ensure that ethnolinguistic diversity is a temporary phenomenon occasioned by immigration, but soon eliminated by language and cultural shifts to English and the absence of languages other than English in the country’s public sphere. Immigrants should be eager to embrace this vision because they are, after all, newcomers who are voluntarily choosing to become part of a very successful national project, and assimilating will help them gain a leg up in this highly competitive society and culture. In that project, the nation is united by a common language and culture, and its people are able to work together productively through political and economic institutions undivided by ethnocultural conflicts. American ethnocultural pluralists, in contrast, offer a quite different story of the country’s peoplehood. They, too, view immigration as an important source of U.S. ethnolinguistic diversity, but they see immigration as only one of several of its important origins. Particularly for Hispanics/Latinos and American Indians, it is important to recognize that coercive incorporation played a highly significant role in the creation of an American people. The indigenous populations of the United States became ‘Americans’ only after their lands were invaded and they were conquered and dominated by European colonialism, and by the descendants of European settlers and the immigrants who followed in their wake. Moreover, most Mexican-origin and Puerto Rican Latinos (who make up about 75 per cent of the country’s Hispanic population) became Amer– 141 –

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icans only after their lands were forcibly acquired by the United States in two separate nineteenth-century wars. Mexico was required to ‘sell’ nearly half of its territory to the United States (including the contemporary states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California and Nevada, as well as parts of several other states) following its humiliating defeat in a war (1846–48) that was initiated by the United States in support of the mostly U.S. expatriate Texans who had seceded from Mexico and were now clamouring for the United States to annex Texas. Similarly, Puerto Ricans became part of the U.S. population following the U.S. acquisition of the island after the defeat of Spain in the Spanish-American War of 1898. In the aftermath of these wars, both Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans experienced long periods of racialized discrimination and domination by their conquerors (Barrera 1979; Menchaca 2001; Urciuoli 1996). In addition, a number of other U.S. ethnolinguistic groups migrated to the United States as refugees in the aftermath of U.S. military force in their home countries (including Cuba, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Chile and others). So, pluralists claim, multilingualism has been a permanent feature of the ‘American way of life’ throughout its history, and should not be viewed as a temporary aberration due to immigration. In part, this is a result of the many ethnolinguistic groups making up the American people who were incorporated initially through the might of the American military and not through the voluntary immigration of individuals and families seeking freedom from want and persecution. Moreover, pluralists point out, a more accurate understanding of those individuals and families who have immigrated voluntarily in the past would include a recognition of the large number who made strenuous efforts to retain their languages and cultural traditions, and to pass them along to their children and grandchildren, even while seeking a successful adaptation to life in the United States. The vision of American peoplehood promoted by pluralists has not been one of ‘Balkanization’ and separate ethnolinguistic ‘enclaves’, they say, but rather that of an integrated yet diverse nation. In the pluralist vision, such a diverse nation recognizes and supports the freedom to be ‘different’ in the context of an egalitarian democracy that aims for the identification and realization of a common good that is genuinely common, rather than a false conception of a ‘common good’ that in fact reflects the interests of the most powerful groups (Schmidt 2000: chap. 8). To further this vision, the language policies sought by pluralists have focused on language education and ‘linguistic access’ to civil and political rights. Pluralists have been particularly active in promoting a ‘maintenance’ approach to bilingual education, one that aims at producing bilingual adults who are fluent and literate in two languages: in English, as well as in an– 142 –

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other American language (whether the native language of the English learner, or a second language for those who are native English speakers). With respect to linguistic access policies, pluralists have promoted access to the right to vote through non-English ballots and election materials. Pluralists have also fought to ensure that equal opportunity policies protect against language discrimination in access to jobs, public education, mass media outlets, public information provided by government agencies and more. The pluralist ethnolinguistic vision of American national identity, in sum, is one in which everyone is encouraged to be fluent in the common English language of the country and to integrate into the common civil society, but in which those from ethnocultural minority communities are also encouraged to maintain their heritage languages and cultural practices to the degree that they wish to do so.

Social Context and the Politics of Framing

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The social and political context in which these competing camps in U.S. identity politics have played out their conflict has changed in important ways over the course of recent decades, and those changes have had a dramatic effect on the political strength of the competing narratives of U.S. national identity. To briefly summarize what follows, in the 1960s and 1970s, pluralists made unprecedented headway in changing U.S. ethnolinguistic policies, but in the 1980s, a changing social and political context driven by high levels of immigration from Latin America began to shift the ground for the politics of framing to the advantage of assimilationists, a shift that has seemed to accelerate in the years that followed.

The Pluralist Frame Ascendant: 1960s–1980s The partially successful pluralist framing of the language policy debate took its bearings from the struggles over racial equality that held centre stage in American politics in the 1960s. The U.S. civil rights movement fought for equal rights for African Americans, and the venues for its struggles included street demonstrations and civil disobedience, litigation in the courts, and electoral politics and lobbying activities in executive and legislative arenas. This movement had a number of successes in the 1960s, culminating in the congressional passage of a number of significant laws. Most notably, these included: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed racial discrimination and segregation in all levels of government, as well as in a number of different areas including public education, private – 143 –

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and public employment, and the provision of public accommodation; the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, which outlawed various forms of racial discrimination in voting and authorized federal government control of local elections where the law was violated; and the Housing Act of 1968, which outlawed racial discrimination in the sale or rental of most housing in the United States. This social movement and its successes were highly influential for U.S. Latinos and Asian Americans, as well as many American Indians, in mounting their own efforts to overcome racial discrimination. When Chicanos/ Mexican Americans (mainly located in the southwestern states) and Puerto Ricans on the mainland (especially in the northeastern cities) mobilized within their own antiracism movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s, changes in language policy were high on the priority lists of activist organizations. High school and college students, for example, demanded to be taught their own culture, including the Spanish language, and to have teachers and professors that were knowledgeable about and supportive of their efforts to sustain their cultural beliefs and practices (Muñoz 2007). Similarly, with assistance from the Ford Foundation, a Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and a Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund were started, modelled on the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP)’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund. As was the case with the efforts of the NAACP, these groups sought landmark cases that would interpret U.S. equal opportunity and anti-discrimination policies in ways that would protect the language and cultural rights of Latinos in the United States. Similar organizational efforts occurred among Asian American political activists and attorneys, particularly in California and New York. The political mobilization for bilingual language policies by Latino political activists in the 1960s and 1970s developed out of this social context of struggle against racialized cultural discrimination. Latino proponents for bilingual education policies emphasized that, while they wanted Latino students to become literate and fluent in English, they also wanted them to become literate and fluent in the Spanish language of their parents and grandparents. These activists also sought an end to the long-standing state school practices of issuing punishment for speaking Spanish in class and in playgrounds, and the disparagement of their community’s language by teachers and other school personnel. In short, they wanted Spanish to be recognized as an American language, and to be taught as such in the schools. When the Bilingual Education Act was adopted by Congress in 1968, however, a somewhat different rationale was provided by its leading spon– 144 –

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sor, Senator Ralph Yarborough (Texas). Yarborough argued that teaching disadvantaged and low-income Mexican American students in their native Spanish while still learning English would help them to ‘keep up’ with native English speakers in other subjects while they learned the country’s dominant language, and thus increase the educational achievement rates of Latino students. In both cases, nevertheless, the rationale for bilingual education was premised on there being a native Spanish-speaking population in the United States, and it was not viewed as a programme for immigrant children. A similar minority-based argument was made in the landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in the class action suit Lau v. Nichols (1974), in which both the plaintiff’s attorneys and the court’s decision (by Justice William O. Douglas) claimed that a school district’s failure to provide education in a language that students could understand violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by depriving the students of their equal right to an education (the plaintiff in this case was a Chinese-speaking student in San Francisco’s state school system). When Latino political activists and attorneys pressed Congress to amend the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to include the rights of U.S. ‘language minorities’, Congress responded affirmatively in 1975 by officially finding that ‘voting discrimination against citizens of language minorities is pervasive and national in scope’ (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 1981: 120). Accordingly, Congress amended the VRA to require that geographically concentrated language minority communities be provided with ballots and election materials in their non-English languages. Again, this amendment was articulated by Congress as a response to educational and language discrimination against language minorities; it made no reference to immigrants, who were still required to pass an English-language exam in order to become naturalized U.S. citizens. The broader historical context for this framing of the politics of language in the United States was shaped not only by the mobilization against the country’s history of racialized discrimination against blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans and American Indians, but also by the fact that there had been relatively low levels of immigration to the United States from the late 1920s until after the passage of the 1965 Immigration Reform Act by Congress. Most of the activists and political leaders working for a pluralistic language policy in the United States in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were not themselves immigrants, nor did they think of the potential beneficiaries of their work as immigrants. Rather, they were racialized minorities being discriminated against not only in terms of the colours of their skins, but also because of their cultural traditions and practices (Urciuoli 1996; Schmidt 2002). – 145 –

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U.S. Immigration and Demographic Change: 1965 to Present During the very period, however, that saw the political and policy efforts for ethnolinguistic pluralism described above, the social landscape of the United States was being transformed by a massive increase in immigration seemingly initiated by the 1965 Immigration Reform Act. This 1965 law removed racially discriminatory quotas that had operated since the 1920s to restrict the immigration of people from areas other than Northwestern Europe and the British Isles. By the late 1970s, observers were noting a sharp increase in immigration to the United States from Latin America, Asia and Africa, and by the 1980s immigration had once again become a ‘hot’ issue on the public policy agenda. Particularly disturbing to many Americans was the fact that a very high percentage of the new immigrants were Spanish speakers from Latin America, and that many seemed to be unauthorized (or ‘illegal’) migrants from Mexico. A 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act aimed to reduce unauthorized immigration by beefing up border patrol efforts and penalizing employers who employed unauthorized immigrants, and to ‘fix’ the problem presented by those unauthorized migrants who had already become stable parts of their communities by enacting a ‘onetime’ amnesty. While this law did enable some three million migrants to ‘regularize’ their status and become citizens of the United States, it did little to stem the tide of new migrants, both authorized and unauthorized. As the country entered the twenty-first century, it was clear that this so-called third wave of immigration was transforming the country’s demography permanently, and particularly its ethnoracial makeup (Schmidt et al. 2010: chap. 1). Perhaps the most noteworthy sign of these changes was the fact that by the 2000 census, U.S. Hispanics/Latinos had surpassed African Americans as the country’s largest minority group. More broadly, U.S. Census Bureau statistics indicated that the Hispanic/Latino population had grown from 4.5 per cent of the U.S. population in 1970 to 15.1 per cent in 2007, while during the same period, the black population had grown from just over 10 per cent to 12.4 per cent of the population. The Asian American population had also grown at a rapid rate (by nearly 400 per cent) to reach 4.4 per cent of the country’s population. Meanwhile, the white non-Hispanic percentage of the U.S. population had decreased from nearly 84 per cent in 1970 to less than 66 per cent in 2007. That immigration was the driving force in this transformation can be seen in the fact that by 2007, 40 per cent of the U.S. Hispanic/Latino population was foreign-born, as was also the case for more than two-thirds (67 per cent) of the country’s Asian American population (U.S. Census Bureau 2008). – 146 –

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This immigration-driven ethnoracial change in the population also produced a dramatic increase in the linguistic diversity of the United States. By 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), nearly one-fifth (19.7 per cent) of the U.S. population usually spoke a language other than English at home. Of these more than 55 million people, nearly two-thirds (62.3 per cent) were Spanish speakers. Furthermore, according to the ACS, some 47 per cent of these Spanish speakers spoke English ‘not very well’ or not at all. Again, immigration plays a major role in producing this high percentage, with slightly more than half (51 per cent) of the 34.5 million Spanish speakers indicating they were foreign-born, and 73 per cent of foreign-born Spanish speakers claiming that they did not speak English at all, or spoke it ‘not very well’ (Shin and Kominski 2010).

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The Assimilationist Frame Rebounds: 1980s to the Present This dramatic change in the ethnolinguistic and ethnoracial composition of the U.S. population operated strongly to the advantage of the assimilationist framing of the country’s language policy conflict, and it did so through a shift in public discourse in the framing of Spanish speakers (in particular) from a ‘language minority’ to an ‘immigrant group’. From the very beginning of the upsurge of political activism among ethnolinguistic pluralists in the 1960s, assimilationist activists – who formed national political mobilization and lobbying organizations such as U.S. English and English First (see Schmidt 2000: chap. 1 for a more elaborate description) – had decried the pluralist efforts as a wrong turn, a turn that would undermine the ‘successful’ formula of assimilating ‘newcomers’ into the dominant English language and British-origin culture of the country. A framing strategy identifying non-English speakers as ‘foreign immigrants’ rather than U.S. ‘minority groups’ was among the most prominent of the assimilationists’ political efforts. The immigration-driven demographic changes described in the previous section enabled the assimilationist political activists to regain the upper hand in the U.S. politics of language. A 1990 essay by Gary Imhoff, a spokesperson for U.S. English (the largest assimilationist group), illustrated this political framing move well by asserting that in the past (i.e., before the pluralist narrative gained credence among policy makers in the 1960s), ‘the experience of Hispanic Americans was predominantly regarded as analogous to that of other immigrant groups’, and that ‘sociologists carefully distinguished the experience of Hispanics from that of black Americans’ (Imhoff 1990: 57). – 147 –

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That this conflict of framing plays a central role in the identity politics debate over U.S. language policy is revealed in the next step taken in Imhoff’s analysis:

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The problems that arise between an immigrant and his or her society are solved primarily by the efforts of the immigrant. The problems that arise between a minority and his or her society are presumed to be caused by – to be the fault of – the society. The responsibility for solving these problems, therefore, lies with the society. … Society’s responsibility to the immigrant is providing opportunity; society’s responsibility to the minority is providing entitlements. (Imhoff 1990: 58)

Among the primary ‘problems’ faced by immigrants, Imhoff emphasized, is the problem of speaking a language such as Spanish rather than English. By framing Spanish as a foreign language and Hispanics as an immigrant group, the moral and political onus is on Spanish speakers to shift to English in order to become Americans. Without doubt, the dramatic growth of the U.S. immigrant population over the course of the past four decades – and especially that of the Latino/ Hispanic immigrant population – has increased the popular acceptance and political strength of the immigrant frame for U.S. linguistic diversity. Since the 1980s, momentum within the politics of language in the United States has in most respects shifted away from the pluralist agenda and towards the assimilationist agenda. This shift has been most apparent in the stalling of the adoption of new pluralist language policies at all levels of government, and a sharp reversal of the fortunes of bilingual education across the country. The signs of a change in political momentum were already evident by the early 1980s. In 1982, for example, a U.S. senator from California, S.I. Hayakawa (an immigrant and former linguist), introduced into Congress a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would make English the sole ‘official’ language of the United States. While his proposal was not approved by Congress, a similar measure has been introduced in every Congress since that time, and nearly thirty U.S. states and many municipal governments have adopted ‘official English’ laws or constitutional amendments. Another sign of the shifting tides in U.S. language policy was President Ronald Reagan’s appointment of William Bennett as the U.S. Secretary of Education in 1985. Both Reagan and Bennett were strongly opposed to a ‘maintenance’ approach to bilingual education, and Bennett soon launched a concerted and highly publicized campaign to shift federal government resources away from bilingual education and towards ‘English immersion’ programmes. While George H.W. Bush, who followed Reagan in – 148 –

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the White House, appointed a strong advocate of bilingualism to head the Department of Education, and President Clinton adopted a ‘hold steady’ approach to language policy, the presidency of George W. Bush marked another major blow to a bilingual approach to language policy at the federal government level. Bilingual education, for example, was virtually eliminated as a term of use in federal education policy with the adoption of President George W. Bush’s major reform of federal education policy (the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002). Approved with support from most Democrats as well as Republicans in the Congress, the new education law included a change of title for the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, which was renamed the English Language Acquisition Act. The law also resulted in the reorganization and renaming of the administrative unit responsible for implementing education programmes for non-English-speaking students, which changed from being the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs to the Office of English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement for Limited English Proficient Students. Beyond these symbolic changes, as education activist and journalist James Crawford summarized, the new law marked ‘a 180-degree reversal in language policy. Whereas the 1994 version of the Bilingual Education Act included among its goals “developing the English skills … and to the extent possible, the native-language skills” of LEP [limited English proficient] students, the English Language Acquisition Act stresses skills in English only’ (Crawford 2008: 124–25). At the state and local levels, meanwhile, bilingual education has been severely curtailed, if not eliminated, in most of the school districts with the heaviest concentrations of non-English-speaking students. California, for example, the state with the largest number and highest percentage of ‘limited English proficient’ students in the country, rescinded its bilingual education policy in favour of a one-year ‘English immersion’ programme through a voter initiative passed in 1998. Similar initiatives were passed in Arizona, Massachusetts and several other states (the only loss for language assimilation advocates was in Colorado in 2002). Thus, as the number and proportion of non-English-speaking students has increased, the number of bilingual classrooms has shrunk. Linguistic assimilation has become the dominant approach to language education policy in nearly every part of the country. Additionally, a number of court cases have resulted in rulings undermining pluralist efforts both within and outside government to protect the nondiscrimination rights of language minority employees and others (Schmidt 2000: 22–28). For reasons having more to do with ethnoracial politics than with language policy, the one major area of public policy that has remained firmly – 149 –

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oriented towards the pluralist frame is the Voting Rights Act. Approaching a 2006 renewal of the VRA, and with Congress having a conservative Republican majority in both houses, many ethnolinguistic pluralists feared that the language minority provisions of the VRA would be eliminated. Despite the efforts of some Republican members of Congress (Gaouette 2006), however, the language minority provisions were kept in the law without being weakened, and the law was given a twenty-five-year renewal. With this exception of the Voting Rights Act notwithstanding, it is nevertheless clear that the forces of assimilation have had the upper hand politically for more than two decades, and that linguistic pluralism as a political movement has been fighting a ‘rearguard’ defensive struggle throughout that period.

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Concluding Analysis I: An Assimilationist Future for the United States? Assessing the future prospects for the role of language policy in U.S. identity politics is problematic. On the one hand, it is possible that there will be a relatively smooth process of continuing linguistic and cultural assimilation on the part of Latinos and other immigrant groups. Other lessons from the past and present, however, point to a more contentious future of continued identity politics in which language policy may again play an important role. There are numerous scholars who believe that the country is already well on the way towards replicating the remarkable assimilative incorporation of previous immigrant communities from virtually every corner of the globe. While immigration restrictionists in the 1920s fretted about the seeming impossibility of successfully incorporating Catholics and Jews from Eastern and Southern Europe, there was little question by the 1960s, when the contemporary phase of identity politics began, that these immigrant groups had been successfully assimilated and accepted by nearly everyone as core members of the American population. One recent and prominent sociological analysis has suggested that a similar assimilative process among contemporary Asian and Latin American immigrants is already well advanced, and that the current process of immigrant incorporation is occurring even more rapidly than that of the previous era of high immigration, in the period from the 1880s to the 1920s (Alba and Nee 2003). For the purposes of this chapter, among the most important bits of evidence marshalled to support this expectation of assimilation is the rapid language shift to English among contemporary immigrants. A number of scholarly studies point to the continuation of the American tradition of – 150 –

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linguistic assimilation to monolingualism in English by the third generation in the immigrant incorporation process (for documentation of that earlier tradition, see Veltman 1983). For example, the study of 2007 Census Bureau data cited above found that 75.7 per cent of those who usually speak a non-English language in the home are able to speak English ‘very well’ or ‘well’ (Shin and Kominski 2010: table 1). Among immigrant children and the grandchildren of immigrants, the shift toward English-only language ability is quite prominent, as indicated in Alba’s (2004) analysis of the 2000 U.S. census. Alba found, for example, that bilingualism is common among second-generation children, that is, those growing up in immigrant households – most speak an immigrant language at home, but almost all are proficient in English. Among Hispanics, 92 per cent speak English well or very well, even though 85 per cent speak at least some Spanish at home. The equivalent percentages among Asian groups show that 96 per cent are proficient in English and 61 per cent speak an Asian mother tongue. In the third (and later) generation(s), the predominant pattern is English monolingualism; that is, the children speak only English at home, making it highly unlikely that they will be bilingual as adults. Among Asians, the percentage that speak only English is 92 per cent. This is lower among Hispanics (72 per cent), but still a clear majority. The very high immigration level of the 1990s does not appear to have weakened the forces of linguistic assimilation. Mexicans, by far the largest immigrant group, provide a compelling example. In 1990, 64 per cent of thirdgeneration Mexican American children spoke only English at home; in 2000, the equivalent figure had risen to 71 per cent (Alba 2004: 2). Some assimilationists (e.g., Huntington 2004) acknowledge that immigrants may be learning English when they are integrated into English-dominant neighbourhoods and schools, but they argue (without supportive data) that the alarming growth of non-English-dominant neighbourhoods in states like California is enabling the establishment of ‘foreign’ regions in which Spanish will become the permanent dominant language. This perception has been challenged directly in a recent study by three prominent scholars of immigration, who summarize the political significance of their survey findings as follows: ‘[T]hose who worry about linguistic balkanization because of heavy immigration from Spanish-speaking countries have nothing to fear, because use of Spanish dies out rapidly across the generations, even in the area of highest Hispanic immigrant concentration in the United States’ (Rumbaut, Massey and Bean 2006: 448). Noting that Southern California has the highest concentration of recent immigrants and Spanish speakers in the country, they nevertheless find that the ‘life expectancy’ (i.e., the continuing ability to speak the non-English language fluently) of languages other than English is very short. Among speakers of – 151 –

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Asian languages, that ‘life expectancy’ is two generations, while for Mexican Spanish speakers it is 3.1 generations (Rumbaut, Massey and Bean 2006: 458). These scholars, then, describe Southern California as a ‘graveyard for languages’: Although the life expectancy of Spanish may be appreciably greater among Mexicans in Southern California, its ultimate demise nonetheless seems assured by the third generation. Like taxes and biological death, linguistic death seems to be a sure thing in the United States, even for Mexicans living in Los Angeles, a city with one of the largest Spanish-speaking urban populations in the world. (Rumbaut, Massey and Bean 2006: 459)

In summary, a growing body of evidence indicates that U.S. immigrants are learning English, even switching to English as their dominant (and often sole) language within one or two generations of their families arriving in the United States. So, contrary to the fears of many assimilationists, and the hopes of many pluralists, the progeny of recent U.S. immigrants seem to be opting for a future in which the American national ethnolinguistic identity will not include multilingualism as part of its core. Evidently, an important part of being an ‘American’ will mean being someone who is monolingual in English. In this sense, the linguistic front in the U.S. ‘culture wars’ of recent decades seems to have witnessed a decisive victory for the forces of assimilation.

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Concluding Analysis II: Factors Tending Toward a Pluralistic U.S. Future There is another side to the story, however, especially in relation to U.S. Latinos/Hispanics. Two factors may undermine the smooth assimilationist narrative outlined above: Latino political support for a bilingual language policy, and Latino reactions to anti-Hispanic sentiment among the white population of the United States. The first factor in this speculative alternative prognosis is that in U.S. public opinion polls, Latinos have consistently expressed support for a bilingual future for themselves and their families. As the data presented above would indicate, and as public opinion studies over the past forty years have repeatedly found, there is virtually no resistance among Hispanics/Latinos to their acquisition of English language fluency and literacy. Among the most recent evidence of this is the Latino National Survey, conducted in 2006, which found that 98.7 per cent of the U.S. Latino respondents think that the ability to speak English is either ‘very important’ or ‘somewhat important’ for those living in the United States. Only 1.3 per cent thought – 152 –

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that English-speaking ability is only ‘a little’ or ‘not at all’ important (Latino National Survey 2006: 7). Among the 67 per cent of Latino respondents who are immigrants, the Latino National Survey found that 99.3 per cent believe that it is ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ important to be able to speak English in the United States (Latino National Survey 2007: slide 23). At the same time that U.S. Latinos express a strong preference for wanting to know and use English, however, they also express an almost equally strong desire for their families to retain facility in their native tongues. The Latino National Survey, for example, found that 97 per cent of its national sample believes it ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ important that their families maintain the ability to speak Spanish. It also seems very significant that the Latino National Survey found that the vast majority (88.9 per cent) of even fourth-generation Latinos believe that it is ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ important for them and their families to maintain the ability to speak Spanish (Latino National Survey 2007: slide 23). This same survey also finds some evidence that the shift toward monolingual English speaking among Latinos may not be as dramatic as indicated by the Los Angeles study (Rumbaut, Massey and Bean 2006) reported above. In the Latino National Survey, the most comprehensive survey ever done among U.S. Latinos, 69 per cent of the third-generation and 61 per cent of the fourth-generation respondents claim to have Spanish-speaking proficiency (Latino National Survey 2007: slide 22). Moreover, multiple surveys of Latino public opinion over the past thirty years have found that at least two-thirds of the respondents (in every Hispanic national origin group) favour a bilingual approach to the education of their children (see Schmidt 2006 for a summary of these surveys). The second factor that might tend towards a revitalization of a pluralistic approach to language policy can be found in the political and social repercussions of increased anti-immigrant sentiment – and particularly anti-Latino immigrant sentiment – among the U.S. population at large, and particularly among its white population. As Scott (1990) found in a meta-analysis of studies on the subject of the intensity of ethnic identification, perception of ethnic opposition is the single most important variable in determining how intensely individuals feel attached to their ethnic identities. To the degree that Latinos increasingly perceive themselves as facing opposition because of their ethnoracial identities, then, it seems likely that they will mount a defensive effort to enhance the political standing and positive recognition of their group in U.S. society. There is also evidence accumulating from public opinion surveys that Latinos increasingly feel that anti-Hispanic sentiment is growing, and that discrimination against Latinos is increasingly becoming a ‘major problem’ in the United States. A recent study by the Pew Hispanic Institute, for – 153 –

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example, found that 61 per cent of its Latino respondents agreed that ‘discrimination against Hispanics is a major problem’ in the United States (Lopez, Morin and Taylor 2010: i), which reveals a significant increase compared with similar public opinion surveys that were done in previous decades (see also Santa Ana 2002 and Chavez 2008 for insightful analyses of the construction of anti-immigrant and anti-Hispanic sentiments among the U.S. population). It also appears that these perceptions of anti-Latino sentiment and increased discrimination against Latinos in the United States are directly tied, on the one hand, to the conjunction of a growing backlash against immigration – particularly unauthorized immigration from Latin America – and increasingly strident calls for ethnolinguistic assimilation, on the other. Organizationally typified by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, on the one hand, and U.S. English, on the other, the fact that these two movements share overlapping memberships and sometimes coordinated leaderships is not lost on Latino activists seeking to counter these efforts. It is important for this chapter that language may play an important role in the development of anti-Latino sentiment and may again come to play an important role in the development of a counterstrategy by Latinos and their political allies. A microanalysis by Urciouli, for example, suggests that Spanish-speaking, low-income Puerto Ricans in New York are often subjected to a ‘race/class conflation’ in which black or Hispanic or Puerto Rican become metonyms for (naturally connected to) the idea of an underclass. In this metonym, class/race difference becomes morally marked. Activities seen as typical of bad citizens (dropping out of school, becoming teenage mothers, taking drugs, committing crimes, going on welfare) are habitually associated with, for example, Puerto Ricans, and become ‘explanations’ for their ‘failure’. Terms that do not fit the moral picture disappear from the discourse. … Language figures into this race/class conflation in several ways. Hegemonically, Spanish itself is regarded as a barrier to class mobility because it displaces English. Accents, ‘broken’ English, and ‘mixing’ become signs of illiteracy and laziness, which people are morally obligated to control. … Bilingual neighborhoods are equated with slums, an equation familiar to people who live in them. (Urciuoli 1996: 26)

Similar analyses have been made in relation to the experiences of Mexican Americans in the southwest, in which use of the Spanish language is marked as signifying ‘low class’ and ‘foreign’, as well as racially ‘other’, by non-Hispanic whites (e.g., García Bedolla 2005; Menchaca 2001). In this context of ethnic and ethnolinguistic opposition, it is possible that Latino activists and their allies hoping to counter the perceived anti– 154 –

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Immigrants and the Reframing of Language Politics

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Hispanic sentiment and anti-Latino discrimination among some groups in the U.S. population may seek to redeploy the narrative of U.S. nationhood that proclaims the United States as a multilingual and multicultural nation, and thereby aim to integrate Latino immigrants through a pluralistic, bilingual approach to immigrant integration. Though this potential political move (i.e., focusing on a bilingual ethnolinguistic policy aim) does not yet appear to be developing among Latino elected officials and political activists, the fact that a large majority of Latinos in the United States favour a bilingual approach to language policy suggests that such a political strategy would find a favourable response among the Latino public. The political question is whether or not such a strategy could find allies among non-Latino political elites and in the public at large. Ronald Schmidt Sr. is a professor emeritus of political science at California State University, Long Beach; since 2013 he has been a visiting professor at Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina. He is the author of Language Policy and Identity Politics in the United States (Temple University Press, 2000; winner of a Best Book Award from the Organized Section on Race, Ethnicity and Politics of the American Political Science Association) and the lead author of Newcomers, Outsiders, and Insiders: Immigrants and American Racial Politics in the Early Twenty-First Century (University of Michigan Press, 2010). Schmidt has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on the politics of language in the United States and Canada, on the politics of immigrant integration in the United States and Canada, and on Latino politics in the United States. He has been president of the Western Political Science Association and copresident of the Organized Section on Race, Ethnicity and Politics of the American Political Science Association. In 2005, Schmidt was the Fulbright-Enders Research Chair at the University of Montréal.

References Alba, R. 2004. ‘Language Assimilation Today: Bilingualism Persists More Than in the Past, but English Still Dominates’, Working Paper 111. Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California, San Diego. Alba, R. and V. Nee. 2003. Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso Press. Baron, D. 1990. The English-Only Question: An Official Language for Americans? New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Barrera, M. 1979. Race and Class in the Southwest: A Theory of Racial Inequality. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. – 155 –

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Chavez, L.R. 2008. The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Crawford, J. 2008. Advocating for English Learners: Selected Essays. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Gaouette, N. 2006. ‘House GOP Group Targets Bilingual Ballots’, Los Angeles Times, 6 May. Retrieved 6 May 2006 from http://articles.latimes.com/2006/may/06/nation/ na-bilingual6 García Bedolla, L. 2005. Fluid Borders: Latino Power, Identity, and Politics in Los Angeles. Berkeley: University of California Press. Huntington, S. 2004. Who Are We: The Challenges to America’s National Identity. New York: Simon & Schuster. Imhoff, G. 1990. ‘The Position of U.S. English on Bilingual Education’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 508 (March): 48–61. Kloss, H. 1977. The American Bilingual Tradition. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Latino National Survey. 2006. ‘Toplines’. Retrieved 9 May 2012 from http://depts.washing ton.edu/uwiser/documents/LNS_toplines_FIP_Dec6.pdf ———. 2007. ‘Redefining America: Findings from the 2006 Latino National Survey’. Presentation to the Latino Issues Forum, San Francisco Foundation, 23 February. Retrieved 9 May 2012 from http://depts.washington.edu/uwiser/documents/BayAreaD_2.23.07 .ppt Lopez, M.H., R. Morin and P. Taylor. 2010. Report: Illegal Immigration Backlash Worries, Divides, Latinos. Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Institute. Retrieved 29 October 2010 from www.pewhispanic.org Menchaca, M. 2001. Recovering History, Constructing Race: The Indian, Black, and White Roots of Mexican Americans. Austin: University of Texas Press. Muñoz, C., Jr. 2007. Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement, expanded ed. New York: Verso Press. Parekh, B. 2008. A New Politics of Identity: Political Principles for an Interdependent World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Rumbaut, R.G., D.S. Massey and F.D. Bean. 2006. ‘Linguistic Life Expectancies: Immigrant Language Retention in Southern California’, Population and Development Review 32(3): 447–60. Santa Ana, O. 2002. Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse. Austin: University of Texas Press. Schlesinger, A.M., Jr. 1992. The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society. New York: W.W. Norton. Schmidt, R., Sr. 2000. Language Policy and Identity Politics in the United States. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ———. 2002. ‘Racialization and Language Policy: The Case of the U.S.A.’, Multilingua 21: 141–61. ———. 2006. ‘Immigration and the Future of Political Conservatism in the United States’. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Center for International Studies (CERIUM), Montréal, Canada, 31 March. Schmidt, R., Sr., et al. 2010. Newcomers, Outsiders, and Insiders: Immigrants and American Racial Politics in the Early Twenty-first Century. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Scott, G.M., Jr. 1990. ‘A Resynthesis of the Primordial and Circumstantial Approaches to Ethnic Group Solidarity: Towards an Explanatory Model’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 13(2): 147–71. Shin, H.B. and R.A. Kominski. 2010. Language Use in the United States, 2007. American Community Survey Reports. Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce.

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Smith, R.M. 2003. Stories of Peoplehood: The Politics and Morals of Political Membership. New York: Cambridge University Press. Urciuoli, B. 1996. Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences of Language, Race, and Class. Boulder, CO: Westview. U.S. Census Bureau. 2008. American Community Survey, 2007. Washington, DC: Department of Commerce. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. 1981. The Voting Rights Act: Unfulfilled Goals. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Veltman, C. 1983. Language Shift in the United States. Berlin: Mouton, Walter de Gruyter.

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Chapter 8

CHALLENGES OF DIVERSITY Language and Immigration in Switzerland Damir Skenderovic

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O

n 1 January 2008 a legal ordinance came into effect at the federal level in Switzerland giving cantonal authorities the right to link the extension of residential permits for foreign citizens to their language proficiency. Two years later, in March 2010, the lower house of the Swiss Parliament, the National Council, went a step further – in an extraordinary parliamentary session on immigration policy – by passing a proposition requesting that a sufficient degree of language proficiency should be mandatory in order to receive a residential permit. The proponent, a Member of Parliament (MP) from the right-wing populist Swiss People’s Party (SVP), argued that only those who are able to speak a language of the country can integrate themselves and contribute to a peaceful coexistence of different cultures. In the same parliamentary session, another proposition demanding that only those with good knowledge of one of the country’s official languages be able to obtain Swiss citizenship was also accepted by Parliament. This time, the request had been filed by an MP from the Christian Democratic People’s Party (CVP), a centre-right party that up until then had not really been involved with issues related to immigration policy for a considerable period of time.1 Finally, on 15 May 2011 new laws on the use of Swiss German dialects in nursery schools passed popular scrutiny in the cantons of Zurich and Basel-City after cross-party committees submitted popular initiatives on the issue. Both proposals were intended to target the growing immigration from Germany, which in the view of the laws’ initiators would result in the expansion of standard German among pupils and gradually oust the – 158 –

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use of Swiss German dialects. In Zurich, a majority of 53.6 per cent of the voters accepted the initiative, replacing the rule that teaching should be ‘partly’ conducted in standard German with the principle that dialect should ‘essentially’ be the language of teaching in nursery schools. In Basel, the voters also accepted an initiative with the same objective, though in the tiebreak question, they opted for a more moderate counterproposal that put standard German on par with Swiss German. These developments in Switzerland are telling examples of how the issue of language has taken the forefront in political and legal debates on integration in European immigration societies (Maas 2008). It confirms the assessment made by Allan Patten and Will Kymlicka (2003: 9) that ‘language now occupies a central place in the larger debate on immigrant integration’. As the Swiss case also shows, there is a widely shared expectation that the achievement of linguistic proficiency is the most efficient way of measuring the level of integration of immigrants in a society. To many, the ability to communicate in the local language is something that can be aligned with living according to the norms and customs of the receiving society, with both regarded as key aspects in the process of integration. From this perspective, the better one performs linguistically, the higher the degree of one’s integration – something that is also eventually reflected in the immigrants’ status hierarchy within different areas of society, including economy, education and social life. As this chapter shows, two notions of language – communicative and identitarian – have consistently resonated when questions of immigrant integration have been at stake in Switzerland since the 1960s, even though, for a long period of time, the issue of language requirements was rarely on the agenda of immigration politics, reflecting the low interest that the decision makers of that time attributed to provisions of accommodation. In fact, certain arguments that were developed in this low phase of linguistic debates were picked up again in the 1990s, when language became a key issue in public and political discussions of immigration. The recent developments also demonstrate the growing significance of language ideologies, and as Jan Blommaert (1999: 427–28) observes, they highlight the way that ‘language ideological debates [have] occurred in contexts that have had to do with the elaboration of a variety of nationalist agendas’. As will be further argued, the way in which language has been perceived in recent years by politicians, media and the public must be seen in the context of increased concern over integration policy, but also against the background of a forceful emergence of identity politics and the quest for cultural homogeneity, both of which are at the heart of the rising anti-immigration parties in Europe, among which one of the model political parties resides in Switzerland (Art 2011). – 159 –

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Integration and Language In debates on integration, many argue that the goal of incorporation and accommodation policies should facilitate equality of treatment and result in full access to a set of economic, political, social and cultural rights and opportunities. The incorporation of immigrants is thus seen as being achieved when inequalities and conflicts are settled with regard to the workplace, public services and the cultural sphere. The successful accommodation of immigrants depends not only on equal opportunities for participating in the receiving society, but also on the success of their struggle for recognition and their efforts to be able to express their demands in public media and political space (Joppke and Morawska 2003). In Western Europe, this long-term process of accommodation has stretched over different phases in the process of settlement that immigrants have undergone throughout the postwar era. In practice, each phase contained the design and implementation of a series of political interventions, policies and legal norms, which together laid the foundation for an integration policy within a given country. Basically, this included legal and social protection, naturalization, citizenship and other residence-based rights, antidiscrimination laws, policies on the tolerance of cultural practices and multicultural education policy, as well as access to language and cultural courses (Favell 2001). Many critics argue, however, that the notion of integration remains diverse and rather elusive when looking at public debates as well as research literature, and the fuzziness of such a concept is open to different interpretations and expectations. Moreover, the understanding of integration would imply the idea that despite growing social diversity and inequalities, as well as increased mobility and transnationality, there exists such a thing as an integrated society into which immigrants are required to incorporate themselves (Wicker 2009; Terkessidis 2010). At first glance, in the debates and policies on integration, language assumes the function of a means of communication and is therefore an essential resource for helping individuals to improve their social inclusion (Esser 2006). The knowledge of language should facilitate immigrants in finding their way around in work and everyday life. As Rainer Bauböck (2003: 43) commented: ‘First and foremost democratic community requires the capacity of all citizens to communicate.’ An approach based on the communicative value of language is the inspiration for numerous initiatives and projects proposed by the political authorities, social workers, linguistic experts and teaching personnel who primarily deal with the organization, coordination and provision of language courses and proficiency tests. Putting the primary focus on integration through language, as – 160 –

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Language and Immigration in Switzerland

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Michael Bommes (2006: 56) has put it, initially appears to give an answer to the question of how integration can be organized. Such a pragmatic approach to the sense of language contrasts, however, with the widely recognized role that language has taken in processes of nation building and the nationalization of European societies since the nineteenth century, in which nation-states have sought to achieve homogeneous national societies through language management and the control of language practices (Hobsbawm 1990; Anderson 1991). Taking this view of linguistic assimilation and homogenization, it becomes clear that language is closely linked to the construction of collective identity, national culture and the national space; it serves to draw a boundary between other linguistic groups; and it plays a key role in the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion. Looking at the debates on integration, the focus on issues related to language and immigration draws attention to two particular dimensions. On the one hand, there is the way in which authorities and political actors perceive and present the notion of linguistic diversity within the framework of an existing language and immigration regime. On the other, the focus is on policies and practices proposed and implemented by state administration, private organizations and social groups seeking to manage the increasing linguistic variety of languages in an immigration society (Vertovec and Wessendorf 2005). It is a crossroads that marks the intersection of language ideology and language management, where neither one of them can really be analyzed without giving due consideration to the other, and where concrete policies are designed and implemented against the background of distinct interpretations negotiated in public debates.

Switzerland: An Immigration Country and Its Anti-immigration Parties Like other countries of Western Europe, Switzerland gradually developed into a country of immigration over the course of the postwar era (Cerutti 2003; Piguet 2005). It became the country with the highest immigration rates in Europe. During the initial phase of postwar immigration, the percentage of immigrants in the population increased from 5.2 per cent during the war to 6.1 per cent in 1950 and 10.8 per cent in 1960. By the late 1960s, the Swiss authorities had begun to make attempts to control and limit immigration, but the share of immigrants continued to grow and reached 15.9 per cent of the population by 1970. In the same year, the Swiss government made a shift in its immigration policy by adopting a policy of stabilization and introducing a global ceiling with strict annual immigration – 161 –

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quotas. By the mid-1970s, when the country had started to be affected by the worldwide economic crisis, the Swiss authorities reacted by reducing the number of foreign workers allowed to enter the country. While annual quotas continued to regulate immigration up until the 1990s, the workforce needs of the economy and the liberalization of family reunification policies were principal factors behind the increase in immigration during that time (Mahnig and Piguet 2003). Moreover, in 2002, the agreement on the free movement of persons within the European Union entered into force and was first applied to the fifteen ‘old’ EU member states, and since 2006 to the ten ‘new’ EU member countries. Accordingly, immigration rates have steadily risen since the 1980s, from 14.4 per cent in 1980 to 16.4 per cent in 1990, 19.3 per cent in 2000 and 23,8 per cent in 2013. Earlier than was the case in other countries of Western Europe, an increase in immigration in Switzerland had already been set in motion shortly after the end of the Second World War. Since the country’s economic and financial system had emerged unscathed from the war, its economy expanded very rapidly in the years immediately following its end, and Switzerland recruited a large number of worker immigrants in order to fulfil the needs of the labour market and to facilitate economic growth. Thus, in the 1950s and 1960s, immigration policy was shaped, above all, by matters of economic interest and concerns about labour market shortages. This resulted in a laissez-faire policy, with rather liberal immigration regulations aimed primarily at making the importation of so-called Gastarbeiter or guest workers as unbureaucratic and flexible as possible (Schmitter Heisler 1988; Mahnig 1998). The guiding principle of the admission policy at that time was the so-called rotation model, which was the basis of the guest worker system, a system that was also applied in West Germany and that presupposed that immigrant workers would only stay for a short time before returning to their home countries. Overall, the Swiss industry and business sector had an interest in immigration remaining a low-profile issue in political and public debates – a strategy advocated by centre-right and left-wing political parties in most Western countries (Freeman 1995). On the other hand, Switzerland was the first country in Europe where anti-immigration parties made their political appearance (Skenderovic 2014), and they contributed a great deal to the fact that ‘the immigration issue has almost constantly occupied Switzerland’s political agenda since the 1960s’ (Mahnig and Wimmer 2003: 135). Political parties such as National Action, Vigilance and later the Swiss Republican Movement fiercely opposed the government’s immigration policies and took views that aimed to evoke forms of resentment against immigrants. In their campaigns they were able to draw on the discourse of ‘overforeignization’, which has marked the perception of immigration in Switzerland throughout the twentieth – 162 –

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Language and Immigration in Switzerland

century and in which those who are of foreign origin are presented as a menacing danger to the country, using demographic, cultural and social threat scenarios (Skenderovic 2003). However, the idea that the country was in danger from ‘overforeignization’ was also supported by a wider section of Swiss politics and society, including representatives from state authorities, Social Democrats and trade unions, and it still serves today as an influential frame of interpretation when issues of immigration are discussed. While the anti-immigration parties were splinter actors in the Swiss party system, they managed to counterbalance their rather marginal position in the parliamentary arena by making frequent use of the instruments of direct democracy and thereby exerting significant influence on Swiss immigration policy (Skenderovic 2007). During the course of the 1990s, the well-established Swiss People’s Party became increasingly preoccupied with immigration and took over the legacy of the smaller anti-immigration parties, which were eventually ousted by the SVP. By using a strategy of steady campaigning, the party succeeded in politicizing immigration as a constant topic of controversy to keep it high on the agenda of national politics throughout the course of the last twenty years (Geden 2006). Having operated as a right-wing conservative force in the Swiss party system since the 1910s and as a member of the government since 1929, the party went through a fundamental structural and programmatic transformation from the onset of the 1990s that was comparable to that of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) after Jörg Haider took power in 1986. Compared with the splinter parties, the SVP had much better preconditions in terms of organizational structure, internal party cohesion and capacity for mobilization. Since the SVP was not a newly established party, it already had a stable party structure in place at the start of its transformation process that enabled it to build up strength. Eventually, the party achieved an unprecedented electoral success by more than doubling its share of the vote from 11.9 to 26.6 per cent in the years between 1991 and 2011, becoming one of the strongest anti-immigration parties in Europe.

Countering ‘Overforeignization’ and Preserving Linguistic Peace From the 1950s to the 1970s, immigrants have been, as Hans-Joachim Hoffmann-Nowotny (1985: 216) has put it, ‘desirable only as manpower’ in Switzerland, and immigration into the country has been regarded as something temporary and transitional. Max Frisch’s famous phrase – suggesting that Switzerland had called for workers, but it was human beings that came – went largely unheard. While authorities showed no real inter– 163 –

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est in proposing measures to incorporate immigrants politically and socially in Swiss society, to many, the labour market was seen as the main area in which immigrants should demonstrate their will and ability to integrate (Mahnig and Wimmer 2003). Thus, questions of language and the linguistic skills of immigrants were rarely raised as issues of contention. Every now and then, however, when distinct proposals for immigration policies were put forwards, language was brought up for discussion. For example, the very influential published report of a state commission from 1964, which was appointed by the federal government to examine the policy on foreign labour, included sections on the issue of language and immigration and, in a more general way, on the relation between language, identity and culture. First of all, the report attributed language an important unifying function in nation-states, arguing that a single national language represents ‘strong support for the national characteristic’ and serves as a ‘demarcation towards foreign countries’. This advantage of monolingualism, however, was put in contrast with the linguistic situation of Switzerland, where a single national language firmly rooted in the ‘spiritual life’ of the country was not present. Even though multilingualism was presented as an important ingredient of the country’s national identity and something distinguishing it from other countries, the lack of a monolingual setting would supposedly make Switzerland more fragile in terms of national cohesion and more exposed to the loss of its cultural distinctiveness through ‘increasing overforeignization’ (Federal Office of Industry, Commerce and Labour 1964: 133). The report further emphasized the particular value of Swiss German dialects, referring to distinct images and representations. Dialect was presented as a key element that serves to bind together the heterogeneous groups of the Swiss nation, at least in the German-speaking region, and therefore creates a unity despite diversity. As dialect was transposed into an imagery that represents the nation’s values and traditions, featuring aspects such as democracy, egalitarianism and heterogeneity, it was used as a protective wall against foreigners and foreign influences. In view of that, when the report called for the state to promote Swiss German dialects in order to support the country’s cultural defence, the dialects were portrayed as steady pillars of the country’s federalism, as well as a protective barrier against the ‘spiritual overforeignization’ (geistige Überfremdung) that the country was said to be facing. While it was admitted that there are differences between these dialects, it was also stressed that they were all animated by the same ‘linguistic spirit’. According to the report, the dialects should be taken as being languages of the various native groups and as a forceful expression of the democratic attitude of all social classes (Federal Office of Industry, Commerce and Labour 1964: 136–37). – 164 –

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When issues of immigration were debated in Parliament, the interventions from MPs were also marked by the strong belief that restrictive immigration policies would have to be introduced in order to protect the country’s distinctiveness. In this argumentation, language was also thought to be a key element of the country’s national and cultural identity and served as the very concrete point of reference when it came to stressing the alleged threat coming from immigrants living inside the country. In 1964, in order to meet this danger of ‘overforeignization’, an MP from the Liberal Party proposed an amendment to the Swiss constitution that aimed at strengthening the preservation of the country’s national, cantonal and regional distinctiveness that, in his view, was most evocatively expressed in its specific languages, customs and traditions.2 After family unification had been facilitated by the 1964 treaty between Switzerland and Italy, more immigrant children came to Switzerland, which somewhat increased the interest in language policy issues, particularly with regard to education and school matters dealing with foreign-language immigrant children. There was large agreement among political parties that immigrant children and pupils should be able to take classes in their native language. To this end, Courses in Native Language and Culture (Kurse in heimatlicher Sprache und Kultur) had been in existence since the early 1960s and were mainly sponsored by the home countries, but also supported by Swiss institutions (Kurmann 1983). This was in line with the so-called rotation principle constitutive of Swiss immigration policy, which implied that most immigrant workers and their families would return to their home countries. Teaching immigrant children in their first language would help them to stay culturally attached to their home country. On the other hand, it was seen as sufficient for immigrants to learn a basic vocabulary that would allow them to manage everyday life and to communicate at their place of work. In some ways, this can be taken as an early example of what Rainer Bauböck (2003: 45) has called ‘linguistic liberty’, indicating that immigrants have the right to use their own language in both the private and the public sphere, although so liberal an attitude is strongly constricted by precarious legal modes within the guest worker system. On the other hand, there was also the strong belief that those immigrants who would like to settle permanently in Switzerland should linguistically assimilate themselves. Such linguistic assimilation, as MPs regularly argued in parliamentary debates in the 1960s and 1970s, would certainly help to reduce the danger of ‘overforeignization’, because people who were culturally and linguistically assimilated would no longer be foreign to the country.3 One should not forget that this assimilationist approach also corresponds to the territoriality principle, which is considered to be – 165 –

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a key element of Switzerland’s so-called linguistic peace.4 Not only immigrants but Swiss citizens, too, are expected to assimilate linguistically when they move from one language region of the country to another. As a national councillor from the right-wing Farmers, Artisans and Citizens Party put it in 1965, just as the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino and the French-speaking part of Switzerland oppose the ‘Germanization’ of their regions, so the German-speaking part of Switzerland should also protect itself against the establishment of ‘foreign islands of language and culture’ and a ‘European hotchpotch’ that would jeopardize the linguistic peace of the country based on clear-cut language boundaries.5 This line of argumentation was taken further by anti-immigration parties in the 1980s, when one of their national MPs argued that increasing immigration would represent a threat to the country’s ‘language peace’. He warned that immigration was undermining the territoriality principle of Swiss language politics, which should be seen as a well-proven foundation for people from the four native language groups to live together peacefully. He also claimed that the growing ‘overforeignization’ of the country would put German-speaking Swiss in the situation that, in addition to immigrants speaking a Roman language, they would increasingly be confronted with people who spoke Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, Turkish and other languages.6

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Integration Policies: The Gap between the Federal and Local Levels Since the 1960s, whenever the Swiss Parliament has endorsed an array of policy measures in order to support the process of linguistic assimilation, it has insisted that the measures be carried out by municipalities and civil society organizations. This reflects the federalist structure of the Swiss political system, which is the basic functioning mode nationally for numerous public policies, and is of far-reaching consequence for questions of integration. When it comes to matters of education, schooling and teaching programmes, all of which are key areas of integration policy, it is the cantons and municipalities that are mainly in charge (Cattacin and Kaya 2005). Faced with increasing numbers of immigrant children in the 1960s, the question of how to integrate them linguistically in the school system was addressed pretty early on by authorities, school bodies and teacher organizations at the local level (Gomolla 2005). For example, in 1962, the school authorities of the canton of Solothurn were among the first to decide to offer German courses to Italian pupils, an offer that was then gradually introduced in most cantons. Nonetheless, since the 1960s, local MPs have continuously expressed their concern about the problems that – 166 –

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Language and Immigration in Switzerland

the presence of foreign-language immigrant children would cause for the functioning of classes in school. In 1972, the local authorities in Zurich released the comprehensive report School Problems of Foreigners, which pointed in particular to the importance of language skills when it comes to the integration of immigrant children. At the same time, however, the report also emphasized the limits of linguistic assimilation by arguing that even a child who speaks ‘our language’ and has assumed ‘our ideas’ is still far from being attached in terms of ‘emotions and associations’, since in its feelings, the child is still rooted in the world of its home country (City Commission on the Foreigners Question 1972: 27). In the same year, the Conference of Cantonal Education Authorities, a body composed of cantonal government members, started to publish, on a regular basis, pedagogical recommendations emphasizing the need to improve the integration of immigrant children, including in terms of linguistic proficiency. In stark contrast to such calls for incorporative measures, the number of foreign-language pupils in special classes – a separation often based on assessments of linguistic proficiency – continued to increase, which was seen by many as a sign of discrimination in the Swiss education system (Allemann-Ghionda 1997). With respect to concrete policies at the federal level, questions of integration continued to receive little attention from the authorities and the state administration. The most important body was the Federal Consultative Commission for the Foreigners Problem (EKA), which was founded in 1971 and later renamed the Federal Commission for Foreigners. It was an early and prominent advocate of integration policies and regularly issued recommendations that covered various areas including accommodation, workplace, school system and welfare state. However, since the EKA only had the status of an advisory body, its propositions had little impact on the way in which policy makers took action (Niederberger 2004). Moreover, National Action, the country’s prime anti-immigration party at the time, had two seats in the newly founded EKA, while immigrant organizations were not represented until 1980. In the late 1970s, when the federal government projected a revision of the Federal Statute of the Abode and Settlement of Foreigners (ANAG) – the Aliens’ Law of 1931 – it was a first indication that immigration policy should not principally be a labour market policy aimed at regulating the admission of a foreign workforce, but should also include policies designed to facilitate the political and social incorporation of foreign residents. While the government’s message on the law’s revision stressed that integration should be an important aspect of a comprehensive approach to immigration, it noted that a lack of language ability should not limit the immigrants’ rights. Thus, the government tried to accommodate the – 167 –

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immigrants’ linguistic disadvantages and proposed, for example, that work contract forms should be written in both an official language and a language that the immigrant worker was able to understand.7 In parliamentary debates, too, immigrants speaking a foreign language were also met with quite a degree of understanding. In a parliamentary proposal that found support from the federal government and a large part of the lower house, an MP from the Social Democratic Party suggested that convicted foreign offenders should be able choose the canton in which they wanted to serve their sentence according to their linguistic preferences.8 In debates on citizenship laws, the immigrants’ will to improve their competence in the local language was highlighted, such as when it was suggested in 1983 that facilitating naturalization procedures for second-generation immigrants, as proposed by the government, would only round off the integration that they had already achieved linguistically. However, all these government reform proposals were fiercely opposed by the anti-immigration parties and were eventually rejected at the polls in the early 1980s. As a consequence, the initial determination to carry out comprehensive legislation reforms faded away and authorities and policy makers became reluctant to propose wide-ranging integration policies at the federal level until the late 1990s (Niederberger 2004).

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Language as a Key to Integration Over the course of the 1990s and 2000s, the role of language in debates on immigration and integration has changed fundamentally. First, when compared to the previous period, the number of parliamentary interventions and policy proposals concerned with the issue of language in the Swiss Parliament has multiplied. Second, there has been a growing tendency for law projects, such as a new citizenship law and the new Aliens Law, to be closely linked with linguistic matters. One reason for this growth in political and legal activity was the fact that the absence of integration policies coordinated and implemented by the federal state came under increasing scrutiny, and large Swiss cities such as Bern, Zurich and Basel started to develop overall policy concepts of integration (D’Amato and Gerber 2005). Thereby, they also kicked off wider public debates on modes of integration, particularly emphasizing the importance of language requirements and the offer of language courses. As Basel’s influential policy concept stated, ‘the acquirement and the promotion of language skills has priority’ (Ehret 1999: 13). Eventually, such activism at the municipal level set off stronger concern in the federal authorities on matters of immigrant incorporation and language issues. As a result, the federal state has become much more – 168 –

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involved in designing the general direction that integration policies should take, including those related to language, and in 1998, a specific integration article was included in the Aliens Law. The shift from policies of immigration control to policies concerned with immigrants and integration was accompanied by the changing lines of argumentation being used in some debates on immigration. While arguments based on economic concerns and crafted in terms of economic stabilization were common between the 1960s and the 1980s, conceptions of culture and identity were the issues most frequently debated in the 1990s and 2000s (Piñeiro, Bopp and Kreis 2009). Significantly, the Swiss People’s Party started to focus on questions related to the immigrants’ integration and incorporation and contributed to the culturalist turn by emphasizing the so-called cultural distance of immigrants coming from non-European countries and from Southeastern Europe. The party claimed that the immigrants’ cultures and ways of life should be seen as distinctive characteristics, which were uniform and immutable. It also argued that there was a high degree of incompatibility between cultures that were bound to clash, and that there was little chance of overcoming cultural differences (Skenderovic and D’Amato 2008). The SVP’s strategy turned out to be rather successful, as various surveys conducted since the 1990s have confirmed the growing importance of real or supposed differences in the way that immigrants are perceived by the Swiss population (Cattacin et al. 2007). The emphasis on cultural incompatibility also has to be seen against the background of the policies developed by the Swiss government, which, in 1991, presented the so-called three-circle model, which differentiated who should be allowed to immigrate to Switzerland according to country groups and their supposed ‘cultural distance’. In view of such increased concern over culture and identity, language received new significance in national debates on integration in the 1990s and 2000s (Gould 2006). This was best reflected by two parliamentary proposals that were filed in 1998 by national MPs from the Christian Democratic People’s Party and that serve as revealing examples of the emerging ‘language debate’, symbolizing a change of paradigm in the way in which language was discussed with regard to immigrants and their integration.9 In both these proposals, language was declared to be ‘a key to any integration’, and the acquisition of language knowledge was presented as the first step for immigrants seeking to overcome their marginal position in Swiss society. The proposals went on to argue that language proficiency would reduce the risk of immigrants being socially excluded and living in ‘ghettos’, and that immigrants would eventually be less exposed to the appeal of political radicalism and religious fundamentalism, or to the influence of criminal organizations. Taking this view, language was not only seen as a – 169 –

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means of communication and an individual resource, both of which would be of some help in the process of social and professional integration, but also as a vehicle that provides a sense of collective identity as well as feelings of group belonging. As an extension of this argument, the lack of language skills was seen as a reason for social and individual disintegration, which would eventually result in an unsettled society divided into numerous culturally and linguistically defined subgroups. In order to prevent the disintegrating effect of heterogeneity as a result of language diversity, the aim should be linguistic homogeneity and unity. In this sense, there has been a return to the principles of assimilation and homogenization in the way in which language policies have begun to be conceived in the area of immigration and integration policy (Kavacik and Skenderovic 2011), a development that has been observed in recent years in other European countries (Hogan-Brun, Mar-Molinero and Stevenson 2009) as well as in the United States, as Ronald Schmidt Sr. demonstrates in his chapter in this volume. The general shift in the debates on integration and language was supported by almost all political parties and has shown its effect in different areas of policy making. A number of laws and policies were passed without great opposition on the federal, cantonal and municipal levels that introduced language courses for adult immigrants as an obligatory requirement for the right to stay in the country. By concluding a so-called integration contract, immigrants have to commit themselves to passing, on a regular basis, exams conducted by authorities that are designed to prove their desire for integration, mainly by improving their knowledge in one of the national languages. However, while mandatory language courses for adults can help immigrants in terms of upwards social mobility and can be justifiable ‘as a form of benign paternalism’ (Bauböck 2003: 46), defining and engineering such interests without the consent of the immigrants and their communities remains highly questionable. Ultimately, the linguistic competences of immigrants seem to be ‘used to benchmark the “success” or “failure” of integration’ (Vertovec and Wessendorf 2005: 39), while other aspects such as socioeconomic situation, educational opportunities or political rights are seen as less important. An indication of the assimilationist trend in language policies towards immigrants can also be detected in the shifting position regarding the Courses in Native Language and Culture that have a long tradition in Switzerland. While a federal decree on integration from 1996 still noted that the federal state could sponsor activities that enhanced the relation of immigrants to their native language and culture, this line of text was deleted without replacement in the 2007 version.10 This was in line with an intervention from a national MP from the SVP in 2007, who argued that – 170 –

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improving the competency of immigrants in their native language was in clear opposition to what integration should mean.11 At the local level, numerous heated debates have taken place since the 1990s over naturalization procedures and the requirements that immigrants should fulfil when they ask to obtain Swiss citizenship, and these were telling examples of how questions of language and language skills have received increasing attention. In Switzerland, naturalization procedures are still shaped by cultural-assimilationist notions of citizenship requiring foreign residents who aspire to Swiss citizenship to show that they have fully adapted to the country’s customs, traditions and culture (Koopmans et al. 2005). This found expression in the enforced requirement to prove competency in one of the national languages. In some municipalities, naturalization guidelines even went so far as to demand that one must understand Swiss German dialect and also speak it in an appropriate way (Schneider et al. 2006). In the city of Zurich in 1996, when the city council made an attempt to introduce new naturalization guidelines and to remove the dialect paragraph, the Swiss Democrats, a right-wing populist party, called for a referendum. Eventually, the reform was rejected by 62 per cent of the voters. A few years later, Zurich introduced the common norm that applicants must understand Swiss German and speak standard German in an appropriate way (Arn and Fasnacht 2004). In the still continuing debates on this matter, it appears that the patterns of argumentation on naturalization procedures in Switzerland closely resemble those described by Patrick Stevenson in respect to other countries of Western Europe, where, on the one hand, the requirement to demonstrate competence in the ‘legitimate’ language of the majority population is represented in official discourses as a question of good ‘faith’ and consequently, foreign-language speakers are pushed to demonstrate their will to reduce or even give up their ‘otherness’ and to accept the request of the majority as being legitimate. On the other hand, the requirement of linguistic competency is presented as a policy of ‘good governance’, since it should enable immigrants to participate in democratic practices and public discussions. (Stevenson 2004: 160)

Conclusion: Towards Assimilation and Homogenization Since the 1990s, like other countries of Western Europe such as Austria, Germany, or the Netherlands, Switzerland has witnessed a revitalization of the assimilation and homogenization paradigm in linguistic policies towards immigrants. While certain lines of argumentation that have been used in debates on language and immigration since the 1960s have been – 171 –

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recycled, disclosing certain patterns of continuity, the overall emphasis on language and on the importance of language competency as a criteria of integration has significantly increased. Thereby, in addition to notions of language as a means of communication and the promotion of language skills for the purpose of sociostructural integration, an increasing understanding of language as an identity marker and a tool of delimitation from other linguistic groups became noticeable in politics and public debates. While speaking a language other than one of the local languages was considered to be a severe deficit in individual immigrants that ultimately questioned their will to integrate in the receiving society, the growth of groups speaking foreign languages was seen as menacing the country’s already fragile linguistic stability. Overall, in these imageries of threats, the reference to language has often implied the notion of language as a vehicle that expresses affiliation to a linguistically and culturally defined community. This emphasis on the cultural and identitarian function of language has taken place against the background of the growing culturalization of Swiss immigration policy, which has been ongoing in political and public debates since the 1990s and to which the Swiss People’s Party has contributed a great deal. Some have argued that the increasing cultural diversity of immigrants who have come to the country since the late 1980s has made it necessary to enforce integration policies, particularly in terms governing linguistic diversity. However, one should not forget that in the 1960s and 1970s, symbolic boundaries were drawn between Switzerland and immigrants from Southern Europe, particularly those from Italy and Spain, who were perceived as being ‘culturally’ other – according to the same arguments with which immigrants from Southeastern Europe, Arab and African countries are nowadays exposed to a ‘cultural othering’. It seems more plausible that multiculturalism and multilingualism have, since the 1990s, increasingly been framed as expressions of social segregation, of the breakdown of social cohesion, and as threats to national identity. In order to counter trends concerning the alleged loss of identity in a diversified society and a globalized world, issues related to immigration have increasingly been discussed as a matter of identity politics, putting emphasis on clearly defined identities in a way that promises guidance through concrete points of reference. In language policies, this idea was translated into what Jan Bloemmart and Jef Verschueren (1998: 194–95) have called the ‘dogma of homogenization’ – based on ‘a view of society in which differences are seen as dangerous and centrifugal and in which the “best” society is suggested to be one without intergroup differences’. As immigration has been presented as a threat to Swiss identity and to the cultural and social cohesion of the national community, integration and its linguistic aspects in particu– 172 –

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lar have turned out to be convenient issues through which the dialectical purpose of identity politics, aimed both at inclusion and exclusion, could be pursued. Finally, the manner in which the growing linguistic diversity within Swiss immigration society has been discussed is in marked contrast to the idea of the country being an exemplary case of a successfully functioning multilingual nation, and to the widespread understanding that the heterogeneity of Switzerland, with its distinct linguistic groups, symbolizes a unique achievement. In fact, the notion of Swiss multilingualism relates only to the four national languages and is exclusively relevant with regard to traditional language groups. At the same time, the linguistic peace among traditional language groups is presented as being rather fragile, and this argument serves to reject the option of moving along the path of a multilingualism that would take into account the increasing linguistic diversity of an immigration society. As a consequence, the frameworks within which immigrant languages are discussed are not influenced by policy initiatives and language ideologies concerning regional minority languages. The history of multilingualism is not taken as a model for integrative opportunity structures, and the country’s own multilingual experience does not serve as an efficient countermodel to the ideas of linguistic homogeneity and cohesion that are at the base of recent integration policies. Damir Skenderovic is a professor of contemporary history at the University of Fribourg. Since 2004 he has codirected three larger research projects on radical right-wing populist parties and migration policy; on language and identity politics; and on the postwar history of election campaigns, all funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. His research focuses on the radical right, political parties, populism, migration and the 1968 movement in Western Europe, with a particular emphasis on Switzerland. Among his books are Mit dem Fremden politisieren: Rechtspopulismus und Migrationspolitik in der Schweiz seit den 1960er Jahren (Zurich: Chronos, 2008, with Gianni D’Amato), The Radical Right in Switzerland: Continuity and Change, 1945–2000 (Oxford New York: Berghahn Books, 2009) and Die 68er Jahre in der Schweiz: Aufbruch in Politik und Kultur (Baden: hier+ jetzt, 2012, with Christina Späti).

Notes 1. The present chapter was completed in summer 2012. Since then, the developments described in this chapter have been reinforced by a number of public policies, particularly related to integration and naturalization. For a recent study, see Flubacher 2014. – 173 –

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2. Motion NR Kurzmeyer (98/9131), Massnahmen gegen die Überfremdung, 2 December 1964, Übersicht über die Verhandlungen der Bundesversammlung: Nationalrat, Winter Session, 1964, pp. 74–78. 3. For examples, see Amtliches Bulletin der Bundesversammlung: Nationalrat, Spring Session, 1965, p. 240; Motion Borel (109/9631), Assimilations- und Einbürgerungspolitik, 21 December 1966, Übersicht über die Verhandlungen der Bundesversammlung: Nationalrat, Winter Session, 1966, pp. 168–86. 4. See the contribution of Christina Späti in this volume. 5. Amtliches Bulletin der Bundesversammlung: Nationalrat, 1965, pp. 228–29. 6. Interpellation Hegg, Sprachliches Territorialitätsprinzip, 19 September 1984, Amtliches Bulletin der Bundesversammlung: Nationalrat, Autumn Session, 1984, pp. 1946–47. 7. Botschaft zum Ausländergesetz, 19 June 1978, Bundesblatt, vol. 2, 1978, pp. 184–85, 208. 8. Motion Carobbio, Strafvollzug im Sprachgebiet, 19 March 1981, Amtliches Bulletin der Bundesversammlung: Nationalrat, Spring Session, 1981, pp. 398–401. 9. Motion Bircher (98.3465), Ausländische Wohnbevölkerung: Förderung der Sprachkenntnisse, 8 October 1998, Curia Vista, Geschäftsdatenbank: Nationalrat. Retrieved 30 June 2011 from www.parlament.ch; Motion Simmen (98.3445), Förderung landesüblicher Sprachkenntnisse bei der ausländischen Wohnbevölkerung, 7 October 1998, Curia Vista, Geschäftsdatenbank: Ständerat. Retrieved 30 June 2011 from www.parlament.ch 10. Verordnung über die Integration von Ausländerinnen und Ausländern (VIntA), 24 October 2007. 11. Amtliches Bulletin der Bundesversammlung: Nationalrat, Summer Session, 2007, p. 1091.

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lation migrante sur le plan local en Suisse’, in H. Mahnig (ed.), Histoire de la politique de migration, d’asile et d’intégration en Suisse depuis 1948. Zurich: Seismo, pp. 288–320. Cattacin, S., et al. 2007. Monitoring Misanthropy and Rightwing Extremist Attitudes in Switzerland: An Explorative Study. Geneva: Department of Sociology, University of Geneva. Cerutti, M. 2003. ‘La politique migratoire de la Suisse 1945–1970’, in H.-R. Wicker, R. Fibbi and W. Haug (eds), Migration und die Schweiz: Ergebnisse des Nationalen Forschungsprogramms ‘Migration und interkulturelle Beziehungen’. Zurich: Seismo, pp. 89–134. City Commission on the Foreigners Question (Subcommission Schooling). 1972. Schulprobleme der Ausländer. Zurich: City Commission on the Foreigners Question. D’Amato, G. and B. Gerber (eds). 2005. Herausforderung Integration: Städtische Migrationspolitik in der Schweiz und Europa. Zurich: Seismo. Ehret, R. 1999. Leitbild und Handlungskonzept des Regierungsrates zur Integrationspolitik des Kantons Basel-Stadt. Basel: PMD. Esser, H. 2006. Sprache und Integration: Die sozialen Bedingungen und Folgen des Spracherwerbs von Migranten. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus. Favell, A. 2001. ‘Integration Policy and Integration Research in Europe: A Review and Critique’, in A. Aleinikoff and D. Klusmeyer (eds), Citizenship: Comparisons and Perspectives. Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, pp. 349–99. Federal Office of Industry, Commerce and Labour. 1964. Das Problem der ausländischen Arbeitskräfte. Bericht der Studienkommission für das Problem der ausländischen Arbeitskräfte. Bern: Federal Office of Industry, Commerce and Labour. Flubacher, M. 2014. Integration durch Sprache - die Sprache der Integration. Eine kritische Diskursanalyse zur Rolle der Sprache in der Schweizer und Basler Integrationspolitik 1998 2008. Göttingen: V&R unipress. Freeman, G.P. 1995. ‘Modes of Immigration Politics in Liberal Democratic States’, International Migration Review 29(4): 881–902. Geden, O. 2006. Diskursstrategien im Rechtspopulismus: Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs und Schweizerische Volkspartei zwischen Opposition und Regierungsbeteiligung. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Gomolla, M. 2005. Schulentwicklung in der Einwanderungsgesellschaft: Strategien gegen institutionelle Diskriminierung in England, Deutschland und in der Schweiz. Münster: Waxmann. Gould, R. 2006. ‘The European Paradox: Swiss Discourses of Identity Between Dependence and Xenophobia’, in C. Mar-Molinero and P. Stevenson (eds), Language Ideologies, Policies and Practices: Language and the Future of Europe. Basingstoke, UK, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 162–76. Hobsbawm, E. 1990. Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hoffmann-Nowotny, H.-J. 1985. ‘Switzerland’, in T. Hammar (ed.), European Immigration Policy: A Comparative Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 206–36. Hogan-Brun, G., C. Mar-Molinero and P. Stevenson (eds). 2009. Discourses on Language and Integration: Critical Perspectives on Language Testing Regimes in Europe. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Joppke, C. and E. Morawska. 2003. ‘Integrating Immigrants in Liberal Nation-States: Policies and Practices’, in C. Joppke and E. Morawska (eds), Toward Assimilation and Citizenship: Immigrants in Liberal Nation-States. Basingstoke, UK, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–36. Kavacik, Z. and D. Skenderovic. 2011. ‘Renaissance der Homogenitäts-Ideologie: Integrationspolitik und Sprache in Deutschland und der Schweiz’, WZB Mitteilungen 131: 30–33. Koopmans, R., et al. 2005. Contested Citizenship: Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. – 175 –

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Kurmann, W. 1983. Schule in der Emigration – Emigration in der Schule: Die Verhandlungen der italienisch-schweizerischen Ad-hoc-Kommission für Schulfragen 1972–1980. Geneva: EDK. Maas, U. 2008. Sprache und Sprachen in der Migrationsgesellschaft: Die schriftkulturelle Dimension. Göttingen: V & R Unipress. Mahnig, H. 1998. ‘Between Economic Demands and Popular Xenophobia: The Swiss System of Immigration Regulation’, in A. Böcker et al. (eds), Regulation of Migration: International Experiences. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, pp. 174–90. Mahnig, H. and E. Piguet. 2003. ‘Die Immigrationspolitik der Schweiz von 1948 bis 1998: Entwicklung und Auswirkungen’, in H.-R. Wicker, R. Fibbi and W. Haug (eds), Migration und die Schweiz: Ergebnisse des Nationalen Forschungsprogramms ’Migration und interkulturelle Beziehungen’. Zurich: Seismo, pp. 65–108. Mahnig, H. and A. Wimmer. 2003. ‘Integration without Immigrant Policy: The Case of Switzerland’, in F. Heckmann and D. Schnapper (eds), The Integration of Immigrants in European Societies: National Differences and Trends of Convergence. Stuttgart: Lucius & Lucius, pp. 135–64. Niederberger, J.M. 2004. Ausgrenzen, Assimilieren, Integrieren: Die Entwicklung einer schweizerischen Integrationspolitik. Zurich: Seismo. Patten, A. and W. Kymlicka. 2003. ‘Introduction: Language Rights and Political Theory – Context, Issues, and Approaches’, in A. Patten and W. Kymlicka (eds), Language Rights and Political Theory. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–51. Piguet, E. 2005. L’immigration en Suisse depuis 1948: Une analyse des flux migratoires. Zurich: Seismo. Piñeiro E., I. Bopp and G. Kreis (eds). 2009. Fördern und Fordern im Fokus Leerstellen des schweizerischen Integrationsdiskurses. Zurich: Seismo. Schmitter Heisler, B. 1988. ‘From Conflict to Accommodation: The “Foreigners Question” in Switzerland’, European Journal of Political Research 16(6): 683–700. Schneider, G., et al. 2006. Rahmenkonzept für den Nachweis der sprachlichen Kommunikationsfähigkeit im Hinblick auf die Einbürgerung: Kurzbericht. Fribourg: Federal Commission for Foreigners. Skenderovic, D. 2003. ‘Constructing Boundaries in a Multicultural Nation: The Discourse of “Overforeignisation” in Switzerland’, in R. Ohliger, K. Schönwälder and T. Triadafilopoulos (eds), European Encounters: Migrants, Migration and European Societies since 1945. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, pp. 186–209. ———. 2007. ‘Immigration and the Radical Right in Switzerland: Ideology, Discourses and Opportunities’, Patterns of Prejudice 41(2): 155–76. ———. 2014. ‘Rechtspopulismus in Westeuropa nach 1945: Die Schweiz als Vorläufer und Vorbild’, Revue transatlantique d’études suisses 4 : 43-59. Skenderovic, D. and G. D’Amato. 2008. Mit dem Fremden politisieren: Rechtspopulismus und Migrationspolitik in der Schweiz seit den 1960er Jahren. Zurich: Chronos. Stevenson, P. 2004. ‘National Languages in Transnational Contexts: Language, Migration and Citizenship in Europe’, in C. Mar-Molinero and P. Stevenson (eds), Language Ideologies, Policies and Practices: Language and the Future of Europe. Basingstoke, UK, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 147–61. Terkessidis, M. 2010. Interkultur. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Vertovec, S. and S. Wessendorf. 2005. Migration and Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Diversity in Europe: An Overview of Issues and Trends. Working Paper 18. Oxford: University of Oxford. Wicker, H.-R. 2009. ‘Die neue schweizerische Integrationspolitik’, in E. Piñeiro, I. Bopp and G. Kreis (eds), Fördern und Fordern im Fokus: Leerstellen des schweizerischen Integrationsdiskurses. Zurich: Seismo, pp. 23–47.

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Chapter 9

LANGUAGE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF IDENTITY POLITICS IN MINORITY FRANCOPHONE COMMUNITIES IN CANADA Between Collective Linguistic Identity and Individualistic Integration Policies Nicole Gallant

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T

his chapter explores immigrant integration into the linguistic minority within a bilingual state.1 Throughout the first decade of the new millennium, a small set of strategies were developed and implemented by the Canadian federal government in order to foster Francophone immigration to different parts of the country. The core objective was to counteract the demographic decline of Canadian Francophone minorities outside the province of Québec. However, the success of these initiatives might have seemed somewhat unlikely. It seemed improbable that Francophone minorities could serve as full host societies for French-speaking newcomers, parallel to the mainstream Anglophone host society. Two key elements were lacking. On the one hand, throughout Canadian history, minority Francophone populations have traditionally defined themselves as hereditary, Francophone and Catholic communities, a type of self-representation not readily inclusive for new immigrants. On the other hand, language policy in Canada is not designed in a way that recognizes Francophone minorities as communities, which would be a prerequisite for integrating newcomers within the minority.

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In this chapter, I will develop two lines of thought regarding how Francophone minorities have managed to circumvent this unlikely context, first by transforming their identity discourse through focusing on language, and second by centring integration dynamics at the local community level, thus reinventing the dominant integration paradigm in Canada. To begin with, I will explore the rationale behind this new federal strategy of increasing numbers of French-speaking immigrants in parts of Canada other than Québec; I will do this by briefly looking at the history and demographics of Francophone populations in the country, and by overviewing the recent process of implementing the new strategies. Then I will address how identity definition has moved from a religious and ethnic-based discourse to one that focuses on language. I will look at recent transformations in the identity discourse of minority Francophone organizations and explore how these changes are also perceivable in the general Francophone population’s views of Francophone identity. Finally, I will argue that the new Francophone immigration strategy is placed at the crossroads of two very different visions of Canadian cultural and linguistic identity. From an Anglophone perspective, this governmental strategy is incongruous because it concedes special treatment for the Francophone minority, by deliberately increasing numbers of French-speaking immigrants to Canada, in contrast to the usual liberal individualistic view of linguistic identity and of immigrant integration in Canada. From a Francophone perspective, the way this strategy is written, interpreted and implemented does not sufficiently recognize the collective communitarian context necessary for integrating these new French-speaking immigrants into the existing Francophone communities. I will conclude the chapter by addressing the potential impact of these transformations for the future of Francophone minorities in Canada.

Overview of the Historical, Political and Demographic Context Historically, there have been substantial Francophone populations in Canada from the onset of European colonization. French settlement in what is now Canada initially took the shape of two distinct colonies, each with their own history: first Acadia, a small colony on the Atlantic coast; and then Nouvelle France, in what is now the province of Québec. Acadia was founded in 1604 by approximately one hundred families in what is now Nova Scotia, and that figure quickly grew to fourteen thousand by 1755 (Ouellet 1999: 117–18). The colony was exchanged several times through treaties between France and Britain, until the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 definitively gave Acadia to the British. However, British authorities doubted the French settlers’ loyalty and deported the popula– 178 –

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tion in 1755, thereby taking over the fertile grounds of Nova Scotia. Some Acadians fled to what is now New Brunswick, where some other French colonists had previously settled, and many others joined them there upon returning from exile. By the turn of the nineteenth century, eighty-four hundred Acadians lived in the area, scattered in isolated villages. Being on the margins of British colonies, they did not thrive economically, but they had a strong clergy, which founded local institutions such as schools, convents and hospitals (FCFA 2006). In other parts of Canada, French settlements mostly grew westwards from Nouvelle France. In what is now Ontario, the first settlers arrived in 1610, but it was mostly after 1850 that many French Canadians gradually migrated there. Further west, during the seventeenth century, the first Europeans to settle in Manitoba (in 1738), Saskatchewan (in 1752) and Alberta (in 1795) were French fur traders and other explorers (FCFA 2006; Jaenen 1992), who mingled with the local natives to form a new ethnocultural group called the Métis. French fur traders and voyageurs also travelled with British explorers to reach British Columbia in 1793. However, it was only later, over the course of the nineteenth century, that larger, more stable settlements developed, through the establishment of Catholic missions. Like the Acadians, they also developed small communities structured around Catholic parishes, building schools and crafting a rural economy. By 1763, however, Britain had acquired Nouvelle France and reigned over what is now Canada, where, in many areas, Francophones largely outnumbered the British. In 1839, Lord Durham’s Crown-commissioned report on the governance of British North America recommended the union of Upper and Lower Canada into a single province in order to accelerate the assimilation of the French. Despite this unconcealed determination to diminish Francophone power, several constitutional dispositions of Canada’s inception in 1867 protected the group, albeit on religious rather than linguistic grounds (Foucher 1999: 314). At the provincial level, however, there were some dispositions regarding language. For example, the 1970 Act of Manitoba recognized the cultural and linguistic duality of the province; English and French were deemed equal languages in the provincial parliament and in the courts (FCFA 2006). When Saskatchewan and Alberta also joined the Canadian federation in 1905, dispositions allowed the use of French in public schooling, public administration and justice. However, these dispositions were not entrenched in the constitution and were thus largely ignored by the authorities. Moreover, as the demographic ratio of Francophones dropped drastically (from over half in 1870 to just over 10 per cent in 1886 in Manitoba, for instance), within a quarter of a century, provincial legisla– 179 –

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tures abolished confessional schools and the use of French as an official language. Being under different jurisdictions in different provinces, each subgroup was generally left on its own to fight for its rights. Throughout the early twentieth century, Francophone associations sprouted in each province, amid the creation of Francophone newspapers and radio stations. This mobilization allowed them to gradually regain the right to schooling in French (between 1927 and 1984). In 1969, Canada’s Official Languages Act proclaimed French and English the two official languages of the country. Under this act, all federal institutions must provide their services in either English or French, at the customer’s choice. In 1982, Article 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms constitutionalized the right to schooling in official languages for minorities. The Supreme Court later stated that this also implied school management by the minority (Foucher 1999: 315); thus, in the mid-1990s, relying on court actions, Francophone minorities gradually gained control over Francophone school boards in each province. In Ontario, a law on services in French (in twenty-five designated areas) was passed in 1989. Several provincial governments now have some official secretariat, commissioner or designated Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Francophone affairs. By contrast, in New Brunswick, the situation was quite different. The banishment of Francophone schools was abolished as early as 1860, and the Acadian minority was gradually becoming more prosperous, which led to the founding of the Société Nationale de l’Assomption (now the Société Nationale de l’Acadie) in 1881, as well as colleges and other institutions. By 1911, Francophones constituted 28 per cent of the population. New Brunswick was proclaimed bilingual in 1969, under the first Acadian prime minister, Louis J. Robichaud. Duality in the Department of Education was soon to follow. In 1981, the law on bilingualism was revised to become An Act Recognizing the Equality of the Two Official Linguistic Communities in New Brunswick, which was entrenched in the Canadian constitution in 1993. New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province in Canada. There also existed a fundamental distinction from early on between Francophones living in what was to become the province of Québec and the rest of French Canadians. Being the majority in this province, the Francophones soon acquired and maintained some control over local politics and adopted several protectionist language laws, especially during the course of the twentieth century. In terms of demographics, the province of Québec now counts 7.5 million inhabitants, of which 6 million have French as a mother tongue. In the rest of Canada, there are just over a million citizens whose mother tongue is French. In all, Francophones represent 22.3 per cent of the total – 180 –

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Canadian population, but only 4.25 per cent of the population outside Québec. In the rest of Canada, most of these Francophones (54 per cent) live in Ontario, where, numbering 533,000, they constitute only 4.5 per cent of the provincial population. Though not the most sizable community (numbering some 238,000), Francophones in New Brunswick are still the most prominent in terms of demographic weight (32.7 per cent in 2006), whereas in the other provinces they are less than 5 per cent (Statistics Canada 2014; Lachapelle 2009).

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A Strategy to Foster Francophone Immigration Outside Québec Although their total numbers have grown from seventy-five thousand in 1951 to just over a million now, the Francophone population outside Québec has been demographically declining in terms of ratios. Throughout national history, Canadian immigration policies brought new colonists to develop Canada; these immigrants were largely integrated or assimilated into the English-speaking majority. Nonetheless, for some time, the French-speaking group maintained its demographic weight: as Catholics responding to an elite discourse on procreation and the expansion of the French in North America, they tended to have more children than the English speakers. However, this tendency receded in the mid-twentieth century, while Canadian immigration was still thriving. Thus, despite the demographic growth in numbers, Francophones outside Québec dropped from being 7.3 per cent of the population in 1951 to only 4.4 per cent some fifty years later. Moreover, while nearly half (48 per cent) of Francophones outside Québec live outside of the twenty-eight metropolitan areas of Canada, Francophone villages are nevertheless gradually depopulating as a consequence of urbanization. Moving to the city has often led to assimilation into the English language (Robichaud 1985; Castonguay 2002).2 Indeed, the assimilation rate was evaluated at 36 per cent in 1996, ranging among 25- to 34-year-olds from only 9 per cent in New Brunswick to 44 per cent in Ontario and over 50 per cent in all other provinces (Castonguay 1999). In light of such demographic decline, Francophone community leaders were soon to develop a discourse on immigration as a somewhat instrumental solution to this problem (Belkhodja and Gallant 2004). The umbrella organization Fédération des communautés Francophones et acadiennes du Canada (FCFA) launched the movement in the early 1990s with two initiatives to foster closer relationships between traditional Francophone groups and French-speaking newcomers to Canada. In time, they successfully negotiated a special agreement that took the form of an official federal strategy. Indeed, by 2002, several departments – 181 –

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of the federal government had become involved in this transformation process. Some language dispositions were incorporated in the Immigrants and Refugee Protection Act of 2002. That same year, the Citizenship and Immigration Canada-Francophone Minority Communities Steering Committee was created to conceive initiatives for fostering Francophone immigration to different parts of Canada. This CIC-FMC Steering Committee was composed of two copresidents – one representing the federal CIC and the other representing ‘Francophone minority communities’ – assisted by some ten other representatives of various CIC departments, fourteen representatives of various governmental institutions (federal departments and agencies, as well as some provincial governments) and ten representatives from Francophone communities in various provinces, as well as a handful of observers. Together, these representatives designed a Strategic Framework to Foster Immigration to Francophone Minority Communities in November 2003, just after the Canadian federal government published the 2003– 2008 Action Plan for Official Languages. The Strategic Framework, which has been renewed several times since, focuses on the number of French-speaking immigrants (including those outside Toronto and Vancouver) in order to give more demographic weight to Francophone minority communities, Francophone reception and settlement infrastructures, and the economic, social and cultural integration of French-speaking immigrants (CIC 2003). It is also echoed in the Roadmap for Canada’s Linguistic Duality 2008–2013 that was produced by the Department of Canadian Heritage. This overall strategy has borne its fruits and has led to some increases in Francophone immigration. In a five-year span, the proportion of French-speaking immigrants choosing parts of Canada other than Québec grew from 2 per cent in 1999 to 5 per cent in 2004 (Houle and Corbeil 2010). As a consequence, the face of minority Francophone communities is changing and becoming more diversified. Depending on how it is measured, roughly 10 to 15 per cent of the minority Francophone population is of immigrant origin, compared to 20 per cent for the whole of Canada ( Jantzen 2008; Statistics Canada 2010). However, this diversity is far from evenly spread across Canada: immigrant presence among Francophones ranges from 24 per cent in British Columbia to only 1 per cent in New Brunswick, with 13 per cent in Ontario and Alberta, and 4 to 6 per cent in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia (Lachapelle 2009).

Evolution of Francophone Identity The new federal strategy to increase Francophone immigration outside Québec has both required and led to a major shift in identity discourse and – 182 –

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politics among Francophones. Minority Francophone identity has needed to evolve from ethnic to civic conceptions of belonging. From as early as 1810 until 1950 (and beyond), the Catholic Church was the core identity reference for French Canada’s self-representation as a nation (Dumont 1993; Ouellet 1999; Frenette 1998: 70): ‘Francophone Canada was first and foremost symbolically nourished and institutionally structured by the Catholic church’ (Warren 2007: 22).3 Through the influence of an elite discourse on national identity articulated by historians as well as literary and political leaders in Québec and spreading to Acadia and then to Western Canada, French Canadians thought of themselves as a race, distinct from the British, not only because of language and country of origin, but also especially because of faith. For instance, one nationalist historian wrote in 1845 that French Canadian nationality was a ‘gift from God’ that French Canadians were born with, and that they had the mission to perpetuate (François-Xavier Garneau, cited in Ouellet 1999: 101); another wrote in 1924: ‘Our ancestors felt they were the sons of one same Church before they felt they were subjects of the same state, and it is the bond of faith which was the first bond of nationality’ (Lionel Groulx, cited in Warren 2007: 36–37). The church not only provided beliefs and a strong sense of belonging to a larger, noble cause, but it also provided social institutions (Warren 2007: 31). Naturally, there existed concurrent visions of French Canada (see, e.g., Denis 1996), but the indissoluble association with Catholicism was largely dominant (Warren 2007: 22). During this period, French Canadians also perceived themselves as a race. In this historiography, the French Canadian race was mostly rural and agrarian, which fed their strong will to survive as a group amid what they perceived as a hostile environment. This will for survival, called survivance, was also a recurring theme of these writings, in which the returning deported Acadians were portrayed as a ‘masterpiece’ of survivance (Lionel Groulx in 1917, cited in Ouellet 1999: 120). In sum, the elite dream of French settlement implemented throughout Canada was first and foremost racially French Canadian, religiously Catholic and socially agrarian (Ouellet 1999: 113). In this dominant discourse, race, religion and language, as well as rurality and survival, overshadowed all other identity markers shaping the lives of Francophone Canadians, such as ‘territorial rooting, belonging to France, attachment to the monarchy and the shared will to live together’ (Ouellet 1999: 99). However, there existed a hiatus between this elite discourse and the real life of the men and women of the ‘nation’. For instance, the insistence on rural agrarian life was relevant for only a (albeit large) portion of the Francophone population. Although French Canadians generally remained – 183 –

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largely rural, many moved to the cities and became labourers, and even the agrarian population was in constant interaction with other ethnic groups and did not live in the cultural isolation promoted by elites and the clergy (Ouellet 1999: 117). Moreover, people’s real motivations for migrating west were probably largely economical, rather than being founded in the dream of a strong French Canadian nation gaining ground over Anglophone Protestants (Ouellet 1999: 109–10). Furthermore, despite this unity in the national discourse, French Canadians were far from homogenous. The population was fragmented along the lines of provincial jurisdictions, but also into small villages, often far apart. They also differed in ways based on ‘origin (some were Canadian migrants, others came from France, but also Belgium and Switzerland), sometimes on religious beliefs, and, more often, by degree of schooling, occupation, economic status and prestige’ (Ouellet 1999: 115). Nonetheless, this people remained ‘surprisingly unified through race, language and religion’; indeed, they were more alike across the provinces than they resembled other local groups, most notably because they shared a common experience of disadvantages (instruction, status, economics, etc.) and of perceived cultural threat (Ouellet 1999: 125). There thus existed a French Canadian nation, not only in elite discourses, but also most likely in the self-representations of ordinary citizens as well. Nonetheless, at the turn of the twentieth century, this shared identity discourse began to be modulated differently in different parts of Canada. As early as 1881, Acadia distinguished itself from the French Canadian nation by adopting its own national discourse, a movement crystallized by the adoption of a national flag and a distinct national day. In Ontario, the congress of 1910 marked the inception of a specific Ontario type of discourse (Dionne 1995). In the western provinces, even in the face of their day-to-day isolation and autonomy, elites maintained a strong narrative within the French Canadian nation, of which they thought of themselves as a specific branch (Ouellet 1999: 115, 117). However, Québec’s Quiet Revolution in the mid-twentieth century was to herald the end of Québec’s strong presence in the French Canadian nation. Indeed, French Canadians in the province began to call themselves Québécois (Quebeckers) rather than ‘French Canadians’. This transition was perceived by Francophones in other parts of Canada as an abandonment of some dream of ‘French Canadian’ unity. The Québécois had also shed the religious overtones of their national narrative, a change that occurred only later in the other parts of French Canada. Concurrently, political discourse began reifying Québec as a ‘nation’: in this discourse, the word ‘national’ is now used to refer to institutions of Québec (while panCanadian institutions are referred to as ‘federal’). After two referendums – 184 –

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(in 1980 and 1995) narrowly failed to provide a majority for secession, the federal government passed a motion in 2006 that recognized ‘that the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada’. In Québec, the expression ‘French Canadian’ now evokes a past identity, with hoary racial overtones. Indeed, even in the other provinces, ‘French Canadian’ is now seldom used. Mostly in reaction to Québec recentring their identity and politics at the provincial level, Francophones in other parts of Canada began by first defining themselves in relation to and in contrast to Québec, calling themselves ‘Francophones outside Québec’. This expression has now shifted to ‘Francophones in minority situation’, which is mainly a somewhat technical term used in politics, but is not particularly identity-inspiring for ordinary citizens. In terms of identity, naming was recentred on each province: Fransaskois, Franco-Manitoban, Franco-Ontariens or Ontarois, and so forth. Acadians, for their part, had always kept the name and thus remained united in name despite great discrepancies in demographic and political status in the three main provinces in which they lived. In all provinces, the content of Francophone identity remained an unresolved, overdiscussed issue, with a variety of identity models in all areas (as demonstrated for Acadia by Bérubé 1987 and Trépanier 1994).

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Towards a Civic Self-Representation When representative organizations began to present the idea of immigration as the ideal solution to the demographic imbalance and decline, they sought immigrants first as allies, not as group members. They sought to join forces and create ‘dialogue’ with already established French-speaking immigrants. These were relatively few, and they lived and especially organized themselves politically in a way that was largely set apart from provincial Francophone minority associations (Prithipaul 2012). Simultaneously, organizations developed sensitizing campaigns to raise awareness in the population as to the demographic need. The main shortcoming of this approach is that it presented immigrants as different and as necessary, instrumental allies. In these narratives, immigrants were set as forever different and distinct; they were ‘others’, with whom ‘we’ ought to collaborate more (Gallant and Belkhodja 2005). French-speaking immigrants were thus not really invited to join the Francophone minority by building a sense of belonging to the community. Yet this sense of belonging and solidarity seems to be a prerequisite for contributing to the political struggles of the minority. The Fransaskois were probably the first to speak of ‘inclusion’ as opposed to ‘dialogue’ as the foundation of their relationship to immigration. – 185 –

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Yet by 2008, in all provinces, the discourse had already become increasingly inclusive, and organizations had moved or were moving away from a narrative stressing difference. This somewhat new discourse (not entirely absent but seldom present in 2004) now presents the ‘we’ as being diverse, and showcases this diversity as enrichment (Gallant 2010). Even the ethnic composition of minority Francophone provincial organizations now reflects somewhat this inclusion, albeit unevenly in different regions (Gallant 2010). Ordinary citizens also seem responsive to this new narrative.4 Generally speaking, they believe that immigrants can become Fransaskois, Franco-Manitoban or Acadian: over two-thirds believe this is possible (one-third ‘entirely’ and another ‘somewhat’), whereas only 16 per cent believe this is ‘not at all’ possible (with the remaining 16 per cent believing that immigrants will ‘never quite’ be Fransaskois, Franco-Manitoban or Acadian). This data shows that French Canadian identity is now narratively very inclusive, but that it still has ethnic overtones for several people. This is mostly the case in Acadia, where the genealogical identity discourse and reference to survivance after deportation remain very present, even among the youth (Gallant 2008, 2011). Nonetheless, this ethnic type of narrative seems to be receding. Thus, ethnicity is no longer at the core of identity boundary markers. When asked about their attitudes towards a variety of symbolic markers of a ‘true’ Fransaskois, Franco-Manitoban or Acadian, respondents tend to consider civic types of markers (such as living in the province or knowledge of French) as ‘very important’ (49 per cent) or ‘somewhat important’ (42 per cent), whereas ethnic criteria (such as French as mother tongue, having Acadian or French Canadian ancestors or being born in the province) are more often considered ‘of little importance’ (42 per cent) or ‘somewhat important’ (28 per cent), or even ‘not at all important’ (23 per cent). More cultural criteria (such as speaking French at home or having a Fransaskois/Franco-Manitoban/Acadian lifestyle) are most often deemed ‘of little importance’ (67 per cent) (figure 9.1). Even when fragmented by region (as shown in figure 9.2), civic types of symbols (marked by an asterisk) dominate all lists, followed by cultural traits (marked by a +) and then more ethnic criteria (marked by a –). In sum, Francophone Canadian identity is transforming from an ethnicbased discourse into a more civic self-representation. But this is not a homogeneous movement, and some resistance is expressed by certain people. Although their justifications are manifold, one of the core preoccupations of this resistance is the fear that new immigrants might ‘dilute’ Francophone identity (Gallant 2008). Indeed, if knowledge of language is becom– 186 –

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Figure 9.1. Average Importance of Identity Markers According to Survey Respondents, by Type of Marker

ing the core cohesive factor between existing Francophone minorities and new immigrants, there is a risk for the community, because they may not share a common vision of the French language. While traditional Francophones have a sense of belonging to a cultural conception of language,

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Figure 9.2. Identity Markers Ranked by Importance According to Survey Respondents, by Region (Based on Average Importance) Fransaskois

Franco-Manitobans

Acadians

* Knowledge of French

* Knowledge of French

* Pride in being Acadian

* Pride in being Fransaskois

* Pride in being Franco-Manitoban

* Knowledge of French

* Feeling Fransaskois

* Living in Manitoba

* Feeling Acadian

+ Having a Fransaskois culture

* Feeling Franco-Manitoban

+ Having an Acadian culture

* Living in Saskatchewan

+ Having a Franco-Manitoban culture

+ Living in French at home

– Being an ‘ayant-droit’

– French as mother tongue – Acadian ancestors

+ Living in French at home + Living in French at home – French as mother tongue – Being an ‘ayant-droit’

– Raised in a Fransaskois family – French as mother tongue

– 187 –

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many new immigrants only view French in instrumental ways (see Ives, this volume). This seems to be the core paradox of Francophone immigration to Canada outside Québec: in attempting to maintain themselves as a group, Francophone minorities invite new immigrants to join them, but this invitation entails and requires a redefinition of the group, thus jeopardizing the very entity that they are trying to protect. Indeed, an instrumental approach to language is conducive to an inclusive identity – which is required to integrate immigrants – but it may not be a cohesive one – thus, there is no clear community in which to integrate immigrants. If immigrants view French as no more than a communication tool, they will swiftly join, and assimilate into, the Anglophone majority (especially since learning English is almost indispensable for finding work and for accessing most provincial public services in almost all Canadian provinces outside Québec). For them to remain attached to the Francophone minority, there needs to be a stronger bond relating them to the community or communities. Québec has been somewhat able to circumvent this problem, because civic senses of belonging may centre on the provincial unit, whereas Francophone minorities outside Québec do not have political nor territorial boundary markers towards which they can develop a civic sense of identity. As we will see in the next section, they also do not have their own government, which prevents them, in theory, from developing and especially imposing their own immigrant integration model. In sum, Francophone minority identity has needed to become more inclusive, and has thus relied on a somewhat instrumental representation of language. Identity discourses, however, also need to maintain a somewhat national type of narrative, which presents the community as cohesive beyond language. This is most likely why so many respondents feel that ‘pride in being Fransaskois/Franco-Manitoban/Acadian’ and ‘feeling Fransaskois/Franco-Manitoba/Acadian’ are such important criteria for being a true Fransaskois/Franco-Manitoban/Acadian. Instrumental knowledge of French alone does not seem sufficient to build and maintain a strong sense of belonging to the community. However, we will see in the next section that the dominant integration model and the majority’s understanding of language duality are individual and instrumental rather than collective and cultural. Canadian language policy does not seem to view Francophone minorities as communities. As a result, Francophone minorities’ attempts to articulate immigration debates as a component of their identity politics are not always well received or well understood by the department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada, which has a more individualistic vision of integration and of bilingualism. – 188 –

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Identity Politics and Immigrant Integration Models in Canada and Québec There are currently two dominant, officially recognized integration models in Canada: the multicultural model and the intercultural one. By integration model, I mean a more or less abstract representation of the space that immigrants ought to have in society. It distinguishes itself from an immigration model or policy in that it is aimed at the whole society and not just at immigrants themselves (their numbers and provenance, for instance, or the criteria for admission). An integration model is neither a list of characteristics of what would be perceived as the ‘ideal’ immigrant nor a typical pathway expected of immigrants or a list of integration indicators (such as employment, language proficiency or participation, etc.). Indeed, instead of focusing solely on the immigrants themselves, an integration model involves a social representation of all society, and the immigrants within it. Classic and somewhat simplistic examples of integration models include the distinction between the American melting pot (a somewhat assimilationist model in which immigrants are melted into the whole cauldron, while slightly transforming the whole if they come in sufficient numbers) and the Canadian multicultural mosaic (where immigrant and ethnic communities are allowed and even expected to maintain traditional cultures, thus resulting in the juxtaposition of distinctive cultural communities). Beyond this simplistic dichotomy, several more complex typologies of integration models have been suggested in the literature (e.g., Poirier 2005; Abu-Laban and Mottershead 1981). In the Canadian multicultural integration model, cultural integration is seen as a choice made by individual immigrants. Those who choose to maintain ethnic customs and traditions are thus encouraged to do so (at least in theory). This leads to the idea of society as a cultural mosaic, where diverse, juxtaposed ethnocultural communities coexist, bound together by a common sense of pride in Canada and adherence to shared basic political values. At first glance, this ideology seems compatible with the new identity self-representations of Francophone minorities as ethnoculturally diverse language groups that I have analyzed in the previous section. Thus, one could imagine a Canada where two host societies coexist, one Francophone and one Anglophone, each of which is its own mosaic of different colours. Nonetheless, in practice in the current Canadian context, the multiculturalist integration model does not foster immigrant integration into Francophone minorities. Outside Québec, Francophones of a variety – 189 –

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of origins do not readily constitute one shared mosaic that includes both native Francophones and those of immigrant origin. This difficulty is also largely related to another dominant view of Canadian identity, that of linguistic duality. Indeed, both duality and multiculturalism are embedded together at the core of Canadian political identity. However, the Anglophone majority has a somewhat different understanding of duality than do Francophone minorities. At the core of this discrepancy lies the concept of ‘community’. Multiculturalism and duality are twin concepts in Canada, bred together from the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism of 1969; they are based on the same representation of ideal society. Founded in then Prime Minister Trudeau’s somewhat classic liberalism (Trudeau 1998), these two policies both rest on a fundamental belief in individual freedom. In this ideology, the individual is to be free to make choices, and the state’s purpose is to provide a context for this freedom to exist and be protected. Individual freedom was at the heart of Trudeau’s view of both multiculturalism and linguistic duality: it is the individual who may choose to maintain the customs, traditions and beliefs of his ancestors, whatever their origin, and it is the individual who may choose to express himself ‘in the language of his choice’. Although governments have changed, this core ideology remains the foundation of Canadians’ representation of their ethnocultural and linguistic identity. Thus, in the dominant Anglophone view, Canadian linguistic duality means equality between languages, and an obligation to provide services to individuals in the two official languages. This is also the case for French-speaking immigrants, according to the current Roadmap for Canada’s Linguistic Duality, which states that ‘[w]orking with service providers, the Government will implement measures to ensure the best possible integration of French-speaking newcomers by facilitating their access to French services adapted to their needs’ (emphasis added). However, integration into Francophone minorities has not been well served by this view of duality. Indeed, the typical pathway of a French-speaking immigrant arriving into a duality seen as access to services in French does not lead to their integration into the Francophone minority (Gallant and Fournier 2010). When they first encounter the Francophone population, immigrants typically find them ‘open’, ‘warm’ and ‘welcoming’. However, very often there is a lack of settlement services in French, or a lack of information on their existence; thus, many French-speaking immigrants do not receive services in French or are unaware that these exist. Yet even when they are in French, the settlement services are typically provided by Anglophone organizations (a situation that seems to be rapidly changing, however, as we will see). These Anglophone organizations spontaneously guide immigrants towards the neighbourhoods and institutions of the ma– 190 –

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Identity Politics in Minority Francophone Communities in Canada

jority (schools, banks, health services, etc.); indeed, they know little about the Francophone institutions and school system. Moreover, through English as a second language courses (which French-speaking immigrants take along with allophone immigrants), they describe ‘Canadian’ society and culture. All of this hinders the development of social networks in French and delays encounters with the local Francophone community. As a consequence, French-speaking immigrants, even when they have received some services ‘in French’, are integrated, socially and institutionally, into the majority. In sum, some Anglophone organizations do provide integration services in French, but the service they provide is integration into the Anglophone majority. This majority does not seem to perceive this as a problem. In their view, there were individual immigrants who received services in French, as they were entitled to, and who then integrated into the larger Canadian mosaic; if these citizens choose to maintain French as the main language spoken in their homes, then they are seen as part of the Francophone minority. This view of duality and multiculturalism has a blind spot: it does not perceive that these immigrants have not been integrated into a Francophone community. Indeed, this conception of duality as an access right, as a freedom to choose and as an obligation to provide services in French to individuals precludes the notion of community. However, where the majority perceives duality as meaning two equal languages, the minority sees two equal communities (Asselin 2001). This discrepancy is best illustrated by the case of Québec, where the notion of community is at the heart of identity politics and where governmental policy was used to impose a certain notion of linguistic community as superseding some individual rights and freedoms. Provincial language protection policies (regarding schooling and commercial signage, etc.) have been designed to counteract the effects of some individualistic choices that may jeopardize the status of French in Québec. Québec is a very liberal province in many respects (especially regarding morality issues, such as divorce and homosexuality), but some individual linguistic freedoms are bound by certain laws as opposed to being voluntary choices, as is the case in the abovementioned view of duality. With this protectionist language policy as a backdrop, Québec has developed a distinct integration model for immigrants who come to the province. While Canadian multiculturalism views a multitude of theoretically equal, juxtaposed cultural groups, Québec’s interculturalism is based on an interaction between the existing (Québécois) community and other cultural communities stemming from immigration. Immigrants are thus invited to join the existing community and integrate into its public life, which, by law, occurs in French. – 191 –

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However, the larger community with which immigrant communities are expected to interact is notoriously difficult to define. Indeed, as suggested above, language alone does not seem to hold a community together; one must also define a set of core values or shared cultural practices that serve as the cornerstone of the community. This remains one of the most pressing ongoing public and political debates in Québec today. In sum, where the multicultural mosaic fails, the intercultural model succeeds, that is, in fostering immigrant integration in a minority linguistic community. However, it is not applicable to Canadian Francophone minorities outside Québec, for two main reasons. First, there is no government or equivalent with the power to impose such protectionist policies. Indeed, Francophone representative associations behave politically as interest groups (Forgues 2010; Fournis 2010) rather than as elected officials, such as the Sámi Parliament of Norway would, for instance (Semb 2005; Yacoub 1998). And even those that are elected (e.g., the Assemblée communautaire fransaskoise) do not have coercive powers to impose such a model. Second, Francophone minorities outside Québec are geographically scattered throughout the country. There is thus no specific territory where such uniform protectionist norms could be applied. Francophone rights are typically ‘personal’ rather than territorial (Laponce 1992; Messara 2005). Yet, it would seem inconceivable to apply personalistic laws to recently arrived immigrants based on language proficiency or country of origin (e.g., where French-speaking immigrants from Congo would be coerced to have their children attend Francophone schools, whereas an immigrant from Bulgaria would not). Indeed, this seems highly incompatible with the dominant political values of Canada and of its Francophone minorities. However, Francophone minorities may currently be developing their own integration model, albeit somewhat haphazardly and not deliberately. Indeed, in concrete terms, Francophone minorities all over Canada have launched a multitude of organizations providing local services that cater to French-speaking immigrants. This practice enables them to introduce new French-speaking immigrants to local, Francophone institutions (schools, banks) and help them find housing in Francophone neighbourhoods (where they exist). They also organize multicultural social events and are able to connect French-speaking immigrants to local, Francophone happenings such as recreational sports teams and other leisure activities. In sum, they foster Francophone social networks for these new immigrants, who may build bonds with these often warm and welcoming people. In other words, when put into contact with the local Francophone minority, new French-speaking immigrants may in time develop a strong sense of belonging that may in turn counteract the assimilation pressures they might feel in the Anglophone-dominant workplace. Indeed, it seems that iden– 192 –

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Identity Politics in Minority Francophone Communities in Canada

tity construction these days rests less on abstract discourses about what Weber called the secondary group than on direct interaction with primary group members (Gallant and Friche 2010). In other words, migrants’ sense of belonging to ‘imagined’ communities (Anderson 1991) seems to be built through contacts with real people belonging to the group more than through elite identity discourses. This may not be an integration model according to the definitions used above, in the sense that it is not articulated within an ideal representation of the whole society. Yet, while this needs further documentation, these concrete integration practices seem to be yielding positive results in terms of including French-speaking immigrants in local Francophone minority communities without diluting the core identity that justifies the very existence of these communities.

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Conclusion In this chapter, I documented the reshaping of Francophone minorities in Canada brought about by French-speaking immigration: identity discourse has been transformed and distinct immigrant integration strategies are being developed. I also discussed the crucial role played by community organizations in these processes, as these civil society organizations are the bearers of minority identity politics. This raises the issue of a potential further fragmentation of Francophone minorities. Indeed, identity markers and symbols vary greatly from one province to the next, due to local history and current provincial policy as well as the composition of the local Francophone population. Each provincial association, and often different regions within each province, thus develops their own identity discourses and local integration practices. This behaviour is in line with the proximity required of the new integration practices they are developing. Yet, in order to obtain and maintain support of federal and even provincial authorities regarding French-speaking immigrant selection and integration, the Francophone minority needs to articulate a coherent, collective discourse in which to entrench its claims. The historical overview in the first section has shown that this common sense of nationhood has been possible throughout Canadian history, despite different provincial statuses in the federation and various contexts. Their common background, a shared experience as a linguistic minority facing direct threats and assimilation, has maintained a strong sense of solidarity among Francophone minorities throughout Canada. The departure of Québec from the ‘French Canadian nation’ model has shaken the foundations of the Francophone minority, but strong bonds have remained. – 193 –

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They have also shared similar political strategies, for instance, when provincially appealing to courts to regain French schooling rights. Today, the FCFA still plays a crucial coordinating role as well as being one of the main interlocutors with the federal government regarding Francophone issues, including immigration. For Richard (2012), immigration might become as crucial an issue for Francophone minorities’ preservation and identity in the twenty-first century as the struggle for French education was in the twentieth. The risks of failure are undeniably present: fragmentation of Francophone minorities between provinces and regions as they compete to attract French-speaking immigrants in the current economic ideology of Canadian immigration policy; Francophone minority identity dilution into an instrumental conception of language; and assimilation of French-speaking immigrants – as well as ethnic Francophones – into the Anglophone majority. On the other hand, Francophone minorities seem to be demonstrating a typically strong resilience by adjusting very quickly and somewhat innovatively to this new challenge. If this partly nondeliberate strategy works, then new French-speaking immigrants will become part of the newly defined Francophone minority and help maintain the Francophone presence in Canada outside Québec. Moreover, even many English-speaking immigrants are learning French, because they believe bilingualism is an important Canadian value and a strong symbol of the country (Fraser 2012). This representation of Canada is also perceivable in general population surveys, which show that having two official languages (English and French) is important to the sense of what it means to be Canadian in the minds of most Canadians (over 60 per cent) and especially Canadian youth (over 70 per cent) (PALO 2006). However, as this chapter has shown, the matter of French-speaking immigrant integration into Francophone minorities pinpoints that different groups in Canada may have very different understandings of just what it means to ‘have two official languages’ in Canada. Nicole Gallant is an associate professor and researcher in social sciences at the INRS Urbanisation Culture Société university and received her PhD in political science from Laval University. Her central research interests focus on issues of identity and span ethnocultural and linguistic minorities, as well as youth. Currently the director of the Observatory on Youth and Society, she has also been actively involved in Metropolis research on immigration in Canada over the past fifteen years. She has published several papers in Canadian Ethnic Studies, Politique et Sociétés and Liens social et politiques, as well as various book chapters. She recently coedited a volume on youth identity titled La construction identitaire des jeunes at the Presses de – 194 –

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l’Université Laval. Two more volumes (L’engagement des jeunes dans diverses sphères de la vie and Les jeunes et l’action politique) are in preparation.

Notes 1. The research presented in this chapter was made possible by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Centre de Recherche sur la Francophonie minoritaire at University of Regina and the Atlantic Metropolis Centre. 2. However, this trend of assimilation through urbanization seems to be decreasing among urban youth today, who maintain the use of French more than their urban elders (Gallant 2009). 3. All translations of French quotes are the author’s. 4. Data on ordinary citizens is drawn from a phone survey of over nine hundred Francophones living in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and New Brunswick, commissioned by the author in 2008/9.

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References Abu-Laban, B. and D. Mottershead. 1981. ‘Cultural Pluralism and Varieties of Ethnic Politics’, Canadian Ethnic Studies 13(3): 44–63. Anderson, B. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London and New York: Verso. Asselin, R. 2001. L’article 41 de la Loi sur les langues officielles: Portée, évolution et régime d’application. Library of Parliament: Parliamentary Research Branch. Bérubé, A. 1987. ‘De l’Acadie historique à la Nouvelle-Acadie: Les grandes perceptions contemporaines de l’Acadie’, in J. Lapointe and A. Leclerc (eds), Les Acadiens: État de la recherche. Québec: Conseil de la vie française en Amérique, pp. 198–228. Belkhodja, C. and N. Gallant. 2004. ‘D’un déficit de diversité … à la production de la diversité: L’expérience immigrante francophone au Canada et au Nouveau-Brunswick’, in J. Gatugu, S. Amorantis and A. Manço (eds), La vie associative des migrants: Quelles (re)connaissances? Réponses européennes et canadiennes. Paris: L’Harmattan, pp. 79–94. Castonguay, C. 2002. ‘Note critique: Pensée magique et minorités francophones’, Recherches sociographiques 43(2): 369–87. Castonguay, C. 1999. Évolution démographique des minorités de langue officielle. Court challenges programme, Conférence linguistique. Retrieved 3 August 2015 from http:// ccppcj.ca/fr/castonguay.php CIC (Citizenship and Immigration Canada). 2003. Strategic Framework to Foster Immigration to Francophone Minority Communities. November. Retrieved 3 August 2015 from http:// www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/publications/settlement/framework-minorities.asp Denis, C. 1996. ‘La patrie et son nom: Essai sur ce que veut dire “Canada français”’, Francophonies d’Amérique 6: 185–98. Dionne, R. 1995. ‘Une première prise de parole collective en Ontario français’, in Les Cahiers Charlevoix, vol. 1. Sudbury: Prise de Parole, pp. 16–124. Dumont, F. 1993. Genèse de la société québécoise. Montréal: Boréal. FCFA (Fédération des communautés francophones et acadiennes du Canada). 2006. Profil des communautés francophones et acadiennes du Canada. 3rd ed. Retrieved 17 August 2012 from www.profils.fcfa.ca Forgues, É. 2010. ‘La gouvernance des communautés francophones en situation minoritaire au Canada’, Politique et sociétés 29(1): 71–90. – 195 –

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Foucher, P. 1999. ‘Les droits linguistiques au Canada’, in J.Y. Thériault (ed.), Francophonies minoritaires au Canada: L’état des lieux. Moncton: Les Éditions d’Acadie, pp. 307–23. Fournis, Y. 2010. ‘Un immobilisme républicain en trompe-l’œil? Région, politique linguistique et pays en Bretagne: L’institutionnalisation au prisme de l’informel’, Politique et sociétés 29(1): 45–70. Fraser, G. 2012. ‘Allocution prononcée dans le cadre de la Journée pré-congrès sur l’immigration francophone au Canada’. Paper presented at the Congrès Métropolis, Toronto, February. Frenette, Y. 1998. Brève histoire des Canadiens français. Montréal: Boréal. Gallant, N. 2008. ‘Représentations de la francophonie locale chez les jeunes: Comparaison de l’Acadie et de la Fransaskoisie’, Canadian Journal of Social Research 1(1): 79–102. ———. 2009. Les comportements langagiers des jeunes francophones en milieu minoritaire dans les villes. Unpublished report, Canadian Heritage, March. ———. 2010. ‘Représentations sociales et représentation politique: Présence immigrante dans les organismes de la francophonie minoritaire au Canada’, Politique et sociétés 29(1): 181–201. ———. 2011. ‘Les communautés francophones en milieu minoritaire et les immigrants: Entre ouverture et inclusion’, Revue du Nouvel Ontario 35–36: 69–105. Gallant, N. and C. Belkhodja. 2005. ‘Production d’un discours sur l’immigration et la diversité par les organismes francophones et acadiens au Canada’, Canadian Ethnic Studies 37(3): 35–58. Gallant, N. and C. Fournier. 2010. ‘Trajectoires d’immigrants francophones en Atlantique’, in Cahier de la recherche actuelle sur l’immigration francophone au Canada. Métropolis, pp. 18–21. Retrieved 3 August 2015 from http://canada.metropolis.net/publications/franco phone_compendium_f.pdf Gallant, N. and C. Friche. 2010. ‘Être ici et là-bas tout à la fois: Les réseaux sociaux en ligne et espaces d’appartenance chez les jeunes immigrants au Québec’, Lien social et politiques 64: 113–24. Houle, R. and J.-P. Corbeil. 2010. Portrait statistique de la population immigrante de langue française à l’extérieur du Québec (1991 à 2006). Statistics Canada. Retrieved 3 August 2015 from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-641-x/89-641-x2010001-fra.htm Jaenen, C. 1992. ‘The French Presence in the West, 1734–1874’, The Journal of the Manitoba Historical Society 24: 21–23. Jantzen, L. 2008. ‘Les liens entre diversité et minorités de langue officielle’, Thèmes canadiens/Canadian Issues, spring: 10–14. Lachapelle, R. 2009. ‘La diversité de la francophonie Canadienne’. Paper presented at the Rendez-vous de la Francophonie, March. Retrieved 17 August 2012 from http://www .statcan.gc.ca/about-apercu/powerpoint/La_diversite_de_la_francophonie_canadienne .ppt Laponce, J. 1992. ‘L’heure du fédéralisme personnel est-elle arrivée?’, in J. Lafontant (ed.), L’État et les minorités. Saint-Boniface: Éditions du Blé, pp. 55–65. Messara, A. 2005. ‘Principe de territorialité et principe de personnalité en fédéralisme comparé: Le cas du Liban et perspectives actuelles pour la gestion du pluralisme’, in J.-F. Gaudreault-DesBiens and F. Gélinas (eds), Le fédéralisme dans tous ses États: Gouvernance, identité et méthodologie. Montréal: Éditions Yvon Blais, pp. 227–60. Ouellet, F. 1999. ‘L’historiographie francophone traditionnelle au Canada’, in J.Y. Thériault (ed.), Francophonies minoritaires au Canada: L’état des lieux. Moncton: Les Éditions d’Acadie, pp. 99–130. PALO (Programme d’appui aux langues officielles) and Décima. 2006. Attitudes et perceptions à l’égard des langues officielles au Canada. Résumé du sondage Décima Research. Department of Canadian Heritage.

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Poirier, C. 2005. ‘Dynamiques et enjeux de la gestion de la diversité ethnique au sein des villes canadiennes’, in H. Destrempes and J. Ruggieri (eds), Rendez-Vous Immigration 2004: Enjeux et défis de l’immigration au Nouveau-Brunswick. Fredericton: Policy Studies Centre, Université du Nouveau-Brunswick, pp. 525–40. Prithipaul, D. 2012. ‘Quelques aspects du mouvement associatif immigrant francophone en Alberta, 1980–2010’, in L. Guilbert et al. (eds), Mouvements associatifs dans la francophonie nord-américaine. Sainte-Foy: Presses de l’Université Laval, pp. 239–55. Richard, R. 2012. ‘Allocution prononcée dans le cadre de la Journée pré-congrès sur l’immigration francophone au Canada’. Paper presented at the Congrès Métropolis, Toronto, Feburary. Robichaud, N. 1985. ‘Le comportement langagier du minoritaire en milieu urbain’, Revue des Sciences de l’Education Montréal 11(1): 3–14. Semb, A.J. 2005. ‘Sami Self-Determination in the Making?’, Nations and Nationalism 11(4): 531–45. Statistics Canada. 2010. Population selon le statut d’immigrant et la période d’immigration, chiffres de 2006, pour le Canada, les provinces et les territoires. Online table, last modified 3 May 2010. Retrieved 3 August 2015 from http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/ 2006/dp-pd/hlt/97-557/T403-fra.cfm?Lang=F&T=403&GH=7&GF=13&G5=1& SC=1&SR=1&S=1&O=D&D1=1 Statistics Canada. 2014. Le français et la francophonie au Canada. No 98-314-X2011003 au catalogue (last modified 14 January 2014). Retrieved 3 August 2015 from https:// www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/as-sa/98-314-x/98-314-x2011003_1fra.cfm. Also: http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/as-sa/98-314-x/ 98-314-x2011003_1-fra.pdf Trépanier, C. 1994. ‘À la recherche de l’Acadie et des perceptions identitaires des Acadiens des provinces maritimes du Canada’, Études canadiennes 37: 181–95. Trudeau, P.E. 1998. Trudeau: L’essentiel de sa pensée politique [The essential Trudeau]. Montréal: Le Jour. Warren, J.-P. 2007. ‘L’invention du Canada français: Le rôle de l’Église catholique’, in M. Pâquet and S. Savard (eds), Balises et références: Acadies, francophonies. Sainte-Foy: Presses de l’Université Laval, pp. 21–56. Yacoub, J. 1998. Les minorités dans le monde: Faits et analyses. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer.

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THE PROBLEMATIC NEXUS OF LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY Some Concluding Remarks Robert Gould

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A

s Christina Späti points out in the introduction, Kraus (this volume) argues that it is the expressive dimension of language that gives it its particular political importance: that is, among other features, its power to define and to stimulate emotional attachment to a national or regional or ethnic or linguistic group – or to any combination of them. Referring to points made in preceding chapters, this conclusion aims to show how the practices outlined for the situations, countries and regions concerned also apply, mutatis mutandis, to additional countries or situations. From the foregoing chapters it emerges that, whether at the national or subnational level, there are broad areas of agreement on the functioning of language in identity politics and that this is always an area of great sensitivity. This is related to the important point that Späti makes in her chapter, and that is echoed in other chapters: ‘Language politics is not only about the coexistence of linguistic groups and the granting of linguistic rights to minorities. The perception of the languages involved also plays a key role.’ We, the scholars, may analyze, but to a very significant degree, politics is about impression and perception. This remains particularly important, as one further factor fundamental to the contributions by Schmidt and Skenderovic is that these explorations and expressions of language and identity are occurring in a period of significant international and intercontinental population movements, at the same time that there are notable developments in the notion of human rights. Taken together, these factors mean that neither new arrivals nor old arrivals (by which I mean the aboriginal peoples of Canada or the United States) expect to remain in their previously ac– 198 –

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Conclusion

cepted situation of isolation, dependence or domination. The continuation of past practices is not an option. Just how far this new politics of language and identity can reach can be seen in the statement by Maria Böhmer, the German Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Migration, Flüchtlinge und Integration (Federal Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration), who urged increased attendance by children under three at day care centres in order to promote language acquisition and integration among the population from immigrant backgrounds (Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung 2010). But as Ives and Kraus make explicit, and as emerges in other chapters, what is fundamental is power and its exercise: who uses it and to what end? This is the case even in the instances cited by Meune, where power is used to reduce the constitutional or legal position of superiority previously granted to a single language: the legal disposition of 1990 ensuring the equality of German and French in Fribourg, and the earlier provision in the 1907 constitution of Valais providing the same guarantee. But as I shall indicate below in the case of Latvia and the very recent (2012) failed attempt there to revise the constitution in order to grant Russian (the native language of a very large segment of the population) equal status with Latvian, the same magnanimity does not apply everywhere. In the following discussion, then, after some introductory remarks around a statement on language and identity made in the August 2012 election campaign in Québec, I shall concentrate on two smaller countries in the European Union: Ireland and Latvia. These countries are seeking to preserve and assert their national language and identity after long periods of foreign domination, while at the same time melding their identity with that of the supranational EU. In their different ways, developments in those countries illustrate Kraus’s statement in this volume: ‘Thus far, the historical experience seems to indicate that the coexistence on equal grounds of two (or more) languages within one territory requires major institutional efforts if politically virulent status conflicts – struggles over recognition in terms of equal dignity – are to be avoided.’ In Latvia, ‘virulent status conflicts’ have not been avoided. Just how potent and just how sensitive the areas of language policy and politics are was once more demonstrated in the general election campaign for the Assemblée nationale of Québec in late August 2012. Pauline Marois, leader of the Parti Québécois, stated that, in accordance with a bill entitled Loi sur l’identité québécoise (An Act concerning Québec Identity), which she had previously presented to the assembly and which strongly links the French language to Québec identity, Anglophones, allophones (persons whose native language is neither English nor French) and Aboriginals would have to demonstrate competence in French in order to be eligible for any elected office under provincial jurisdiction.1 As was to be – 199 –

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expected, reaction was immediate, including a correction from her own party, no doubt aware that the party leader’s statement was in conflict with the human rights charters of both Canada and Québec.2 The reaction took the form of a press release dated 22 August 2012 indicating that ‘Québec citizenship would automatically be granted to all citizens resident in Québec at the time this law is sanctioned. Subsequently, new arrivals could obtain Québec citizenship by demonstrating an appropriate knowledge of Québec and of the French language’ (Parti Québécois 2012).3 As citizenship confers the right not only to vote but also to stand for election, all persons already domiciled in Québec could, in fact, run for office and, if elected, take up the position. However, according to the daily newspaper Le Devoir, a further strong reaction came from the chief of the Assemblée des Premières Nations du Québec et du Labrador (Assembly of the First Nations of Québec and Labrador), who stated that none of the First Nations of Québec would accept ‘une loi étrangère adoptée par un gouvernement provincial’ (an alien law adopted by a provincial government) (Dutrisac 2012). Here, all together, the elements of language and identity politics are all combined within the specific complexities of the Canadian federal system: questions of federal or provincial jurisdiction, constitutional/human rights principles, First Nations people, internal migration and inward migration – the latter phenomena both captured in the term ‘les nouveaux arrivants’ (the new arrivals). With the exception of Aboriginal people, the chapters in this volume have shown how these same factors impact the field of language politics in Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe. At the same time, the Québec example just cited demonstrates the multifunctionality of language, not only for the purposes of defining group identity, but also the use of language and its accompanying identity politics for electoral purposes. Indeed, as revealed by the Élections Québec website that was set up specifically to enable the voter to compare the parties’ positions on a range of topics, all five parties undertook to strengthen the position of French, particularly among immigrants and within the business world (Élections Québec 2012). In her chapter in this volume about the situation of Aboriginal languages in Canada, Patrick notes that ‘[t]hese tensions – between the need for a lingua franca that crosses local, regional, and national borders and local desires to maintain localized linguistic and cultural practices and identities – are in constant play, shaping language practices and social interaction’; this holds equally true, as Freake, Gentil and Sheyholislami (2011) show, for the position of French in Québec and the demands and constraints of economic life in a business world dominated by the English of the province’s political and economic partners on either side of the international border. – 200 –

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Conclusion

The term ‘linguicism’ has been used to describe the categorization of languages according to ‘ideologies, structures and practices which are used to legitimate, effectuate and reproduce an unequal division of power and resources (material and immaterial) between groups which are defined on the basis of language’ (Phillipson 1992). One can see this process at work here in a form attenuated by the position of English in North America, by the presence in Québec of federal institutions where English is coequal with French, as well as the fact that English may be used in Québec courts and (though rarely in oral deliberations) in the Assemblée nationale, according to Section 133 of Canada’s 1982 Constitution Act. I shall shortly return to this process of the reproduction of an unequal division of power in the case of Latvia, which, despite the presence of a very large majority of Russian speakers (approximately 48 per cent of the population), opted after the renewal of independence for a state policy of official monolingualism, where the barely majority Latvian-language population was more equal than the very nearly majority Russian-language population. Although much discussed in recent literature, this linking of language and identity is, of course, neither new nor exclusively regulated by law. Two examples: Räthzel (1997) points out that Article 113 of the Weimar Constitution of Germany (passed on 31 July 1919) provided certain language rights for minorities (Danes, Frisians, Lithuanians, Poles and Sorbs). However, these rights, including the use of these languages for instruction in schools, and thus their consolidation in the minds of the children, were only minimally implemented, if at all, which had a significant impact on the self-image of the children (Boquedano-Lopez and Kattan 2008; Heller 2008). At the same time, Article 148 of the Weimar Constitution contained a provision emphasizing that the education process in all schools should be in conformity with ‘the spirit of German national identity’ (im Geist des deutschen Volkstums), where the central term Volkstum is fundamentally essentialist and stands in contrast to any notion of identity and civic citizenship based on shared norms and principles. As a second example, the debates in the Senate of Ireland in Dublin in 2002 on the Official Languages Bill 2002 (later the Official Languages Act 2003) contain the following passage outlining the drastic way in which Irish had been affected, not by legislation, but by English social, political and economic practices in the country. Mr. Mooney: As the House will be aware, Soviet domination was somewhat similar to the domination experienced in this country. It was not just a physical domination, it was also cultural in nature. In this country, this domination literally wiped out the Irish language. Fortunately, that did not happen to the same extreme in, for example, the Baltic states and in some of the countries, such as Slovenia, which made up the former Yugoslavia.4 – 201 –

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This is not the place to argue the extent to which British (essentially, of course, English) policies and practices in Wales, Scotland and Ireland deliberately or in a collateral manner contributed to the almost complete eradication of the Celtic languages of those countries as part of a process of identity construction and destruction. On the other hand, it is clear that those languages were severely affected. In Ireland, as exemplified in the debates, the lack of a strong Irish language was seen as a severe blemish on Irish identity, very visible in the dominance of English in government services and the justice system. The aim of the act is to repair this situation, which had arisen from the earlier process of ‘linguicism’ as outlined above and which had continued even after independence in 1922 and the later extinguishment of the last constitutional link to the United Kingdom in 1949.5 The proceedings in both the Senate (the Seanad Éireann) and the Dáil Éireann, the lower house, raise further issues around language and identity and the capacity of language to either include or exclude, issues surrounding what Kraus in this volume calls language’s capacity for ‘articulating the political imagery of a community and its members’ and for ‘creat[ing] a web of social attachments and reciprocal commitments’. In his statement quoted above, Senator Mooney spoke of language issues in the Baltic states, to which I shall return later. But questions were later asked in the Dáil Éireann about the status of Irish in the European Union, in light of the fact that ten new member states were to be admitted, including those referred to by the senator. Given these future admissions, there was clearly concern that the modest but symbolically significant rights granted to Irish in the European Union would be diminished: in other words, that Irish identity as expressed through language might be compromised. The minister of foreign affairs was able to assure the deputy (Mr. P. Breen) who had raised the matter that Irish would remain a ‘treaty language’, that the constitutional treaty then under negotiation already existed in an Irish version, and that the rights of citizens to communicate with the European Union and its ombudsman in Irish remained untouched.6 The status quo ante for the Irish language and Irish identity would be preserved even within the enlarged European Union. This importance of Irish as a marker of the identity and the independence of the State was emphasized on 18 May 2011 when Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom opened her speech at the banquet held during her State Visit to Ireland (the first ever to the State) with the words ‘A Uachtaráin agus a chairde’ (President and friends), in Irish (Elizabeth II 2011). The RTÉ (Radio and Television of Ireland) visual record of the event clearly shows President Mary McAleese’s reaction, saying or mouthing the words, ‘Oh wow!’7 The greeting was followed by a round of applause. The significance of this language choice and use is such that – 202 –

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Irish media outlets keep it in the original, without translation (RTÉ 2011; Collins and Hennessy 2011; Connolly and O’Doherty 2011). Questions regarding the symbolic value of the Irish language are discussed by O’Reilly (2003), while the intricacies of its governance and the significant level of attachment to the language on the part of the Irish people, even though it is the normal vehicular language of only 1.8 per cent of the population, are further examined by Walsh (2012). Senator Mooney’s awareness of the language shifts that had been deliberately engineered in the Baltic states since the Soviet takeover at the end of the Second World War and his pleasure at the fact that the situation for their languages was less problematic than that of Irish is also an indicator of how sensitive the question of language and identity is within small countries that have spent long periods under the influence of larger and more powerful neighbours. The intersection of this with the question of EU membership is captured in the title of H. Morris’s (2003) article ‘EU Enlargement and Latvian Citizenship Policy’, which concludes that external pressure on Latvian policy makers during the accession process led to a significantly more liberal and inclusive citizenship law than might have otherwise been adopted (see also H. Morris 2004; Schmid 2008). Nic Craith (2006: 34) holds the view that the linking of language competence with citizenship in the Baltic states was essentially inevitable due to the fact that the initial movement for independence had been rooted in the language movement. That may be the case in this particular instance; however, it is not to be overlooked that in their naturalization processes a number of European states (as well as Canada and the United States) explicitly require the demonstration of competence in the official or national language. Given that the fundamental nature of all these states is participation in processes of government and public life, it is hard to object to the principle. Arguments and objections may be justified only on the manner of testing, the degree of competence required and, importantly, on the real goals of the language test (Hogan-Brun n.d.; Milani 2008; McNamara 2009; Huddleston et al. 2011). Skenderovic (this volume) points out some of the sensitivities in the Swiss case concerning primary education and the acquisition by immigrant children of the language variety spoken locally. Whether the German children in question will stay in Switzerland is another issue, but one can argue that the policy in the cantons in question is in conformity with the 2004 EU recommendation concerning basic principles of immigrant integration, including that providing such basic language knowledge is also a ‘strategic investment in the economic and social well-being of society as a whole’ (Council of the European Union 2004: 20). Skenderovic and others in this volume also draw attention to Patten and Kymlicka’s (2003) view (widely – 203 –

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shared) that languages occupy a central place in immigrant integration. To return to Latvia again, which provides very cogent examples of language as a multifunctional tool, this fundamental point about the acquisition of the local language occupying a central place in immigrant integration is present in a very particular form in relation to the Russian-speaking population, many (though not all) of whom are either immigrants or the immediate descendants of immigrants brought to the country in the Soviet period from other parts of the Soviet Union in order to deliberately shift the ethnic balance to the disadvantage of ethnic Latvians. The cases of Latvia and Ireland also bring into focus specific examples of the repercussions of language and identity in a situation in which a country is confronted by radical change in its sovereign status: the (re)attainment of independence in the modern world, and accession to a supranational organization. In the case of Latvia this was accompanied by the aim and prospect of admission to the European Union and other European organizations, CSCE / OSCE and CoE and their requirements, which include respect for, and protection of, minorities. These requirements include postwar developments in the notions of human rights, language rights, citizenship rights and citizenship itself. For more on these and their European dimension, see Kraus (this volume). And, as was seen in the case of the prolonged and heated debates in Germany around the reform of the Citizenship Act (finally passed on 7 May 1999), where language was not an issue, any extension of citizenship in a country that is (or was) a country of immigration but does not want to recognize the fact becomes contentious, particularly if the principle of jus soli is alien to citizenship legislation or thinking. In addition, in the case of Latvia, as indicated by H. Morris (2003), at the same time that the Latvian Parliament was considering revised citizenship legislation that would satisfy EU requirements, there were also debates on the restrictive Language Act concerning the use of Latvian in the commercial and public spheres. For domestic politics, the two were not to be separated. Both concerned questions of national identity and both were, or had been, in conflict with European principles. These had a significant impact on the developing legislation and the ratification of the Citizenship Act in a referendum (Ozolins 2003). As will be further discussed below, the debate on citizenship continued, with efforts being made in 2012) to collect sufficient signatures to be able to present a draft bill to the Saeima (Latvian Parliament) that would grant citizenship to ‘non-citizens’. However, at its meeting on 1 November 2012 the Central Election Commission decided that the draft bill ‘could not be considered as fully elaborated’ (presumably because it made no reference to language ability) and consequently declined to authorize the next round of signature collection which would have been required before submission – 204 –

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to the Saeima (Centrālā vēlēšanu komisija 2012b). Thus ‘non-citizens’, principally ethnic Russians with a legal status granting more rights than those held by ‘permanent residents’ but without citizenship, remain excluded from voting and eligibility for office, as well as from many public sector jobs (Krūma 2009 and 2015; Latvijas republikas Ārlietu ministrija 2015). On the related though not identical language issue, efforts have been ongoing to increase Latvian language proficiency among adults with the goal of better integrating them into the labour market and promoting citizenship in the sense of increased participation in society (Djačkova 2003). For younger persons, reforms in the education system that came into force in 2004 proceeded with broadly the same goals, though not without national and international controversy (Hogan-Brun 2006). And here one comes to a factor that sets the Latvian debate over language, identity and citizenship apart from the circumstances examined in the chapters in this volume. With Canada, the United States and Switzerland, where – other than in the case of Romansh in Switzerland and French in Canada – the languages are contiguous with large states beyond the national borders, the latter have not intervened. Russia has, by contrast, and quite belligerently (Hogan-Brun 2006; Ozolins 2003); and there is speculation that the Russian position played some role in attenuating the position of the European Commission in the negotiations surrounding the Citizenship Act (H. Morris 2003: 25–26). To my knowledge there have been no efforts on the part of countries contiguous to Canada, the United States or Switzerland to influence the language policies and practices of their neighbours. It is the particular presence in both Estonia and Latvia of significant numbers of ex-Soviet citizens with Russian as their native language that marks the distinction here and provided Russia with a tool to use for its own ends in the language debates and the closely related field of citizenship. As mentioned earlier in this conclusion, the Russian speakers in Latvia are predominantly an immigrant population in the sense that they or their parents or grandparents arrived between 1945 and 1990. Schmidt (this volume) points out the significance of the ‘naming’ of the recently arrived, predominantly Hispanophone population in the United States: the clear framing strategy in the past few years towards speaking and thinking of them as ‘foreign immigrants’ rather than as U.S. ‘minority groups’. He states that ‘[b]y framing Spanish as a foreign language and Hispanics as an immigrant group, the moral and political onus is on Spanish speakers to shift to English in order to become Americans’. This framing not only delegitimizes the ‘foreign immigrant’, but it also relieves the majority of the obligation to provide accommodations. In connection with the presence of the legacy populations of the Soviet Union, Aneta Pavlenko (2011) draws attention to a comparable rhetori– 205 –

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cal framing that has operated (and is still operating) in Latvia. She writes that ‘framing Russian speakers as Russian nationals allows the author [i.e., speaker or writer] to erase ethnic and socioeconomic variation within this population and to present it as a single cohesive group. … This population is then linked to the larger historic narrative of Soviet occupation or colonization’ (Pavlenko 2011: 46). This reduction of a ‘social complexity’ (Becker 1963, 2007; see Meune, this volume) to a binary opposition in fact goes beyond what Pavlenko has noted. It permeates media and political discourses. In the Latvian-language press and in the Latvian Parliament, ethnic Russians resident in the country are frequently attributed negative characteristics (Rožukalne 2010; Golubeva and Kažoka 2010). In addition, as Cheskin (2010: 137) points out, the print media landscape is sharply divided, with the implicit but clear understanding that Russian-language newspapers are designed solely for native speakers of Russian and are not also intended for ethnic Latvians (very many of whom also understand and speak Russian), and that the Latvian-language press functions in exactly the same way, solely for ethnic Latvians but not for ethnic Russians (very many of whom also speak and understand Latvian). However, despite this significant degree of personal bilingualism, which is also increasing among ethnic Russians, and despite the fact that a growing proportion of Russian speakers are Latvian citizens, Rožukalne (2010) found that Latvijas Avīze, the leading Latvian-language newspaper, maintained a consistent strategy of presenting ethnic Russians as a threat. On 18 February 2012 the referendum on the constitutional proposal to give the Russian language a status coequal with that of Latvian as an official language of the country was clearly defeated: 74.8 per cent of those voting rejected it, with a participation rate of 71 per cent. In light of the media discourse just noted, the result cannot be viewed as surprising. Excluded from the vote was a large group of persons very directly concerned: non-citizens. Within the polarized political discourse noted above, they are considered to be uniformly Russian. However, that is not actually the case (Jubilus 2001), though Russian may be their lingua franca. On the other hand, even if all non-citizens had been able to participate and had voted yes, their numbers would not have been sufficient to change the result. At the time of the referendum there were approximately 268,000 non-citizens resident in Latvia (Krūma 2015), but the referendum was defeated by 548,375 votes: 821,722 voted no and 273,347 voted yes (Centrālā vēlēšanu komisija 2012a). Consequently, the rejection has unassailable legitimacy. The foreseeable outcome of the vote raises the question of why it was held. Without access to the councils of the groups that forced the referendum by means of the collection of signatures, one can only speculate. However, along with Nils Ušakovs (mayor of Riga and leader of – 206 –

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the political party Harmony Centre), it appears reasonable to think that it was done in order to remind the general population that the language issue was not dead and that ethnic issues remain important (Ušakovs 2012b), and possibly also, as he speculates in a longer Russian-language text concerning the proposed referendum being mooted in August and September 2012 on granting citizenship to all non-citizens, to keep activists and the base happy and prepared for the next election (Ušakovs 2012a). But although the various reasons for the defeat of the language referendum may be debated, it also strongly suggests that, among other factors, what Nic Craith called ‘the discourse of autochthony’ (2006: 159), here inseparable from language, also contributed to the outcome. A further possible result is the maintenance of what Kraus (this volume) calls the ‘divide between political society and civil society’. It is this ‘discourse of autochthony’ that provides a link to what Skenderovic (this volume) concludes concerning Switzerland, where it is clearly also present. Of that country, he writes: ‘As immigration has been presented as a threat to Swiss identity and to the cultural and social cohesion of the national community, integration and its linguistic aspects in particular have turned out to be convenient issues through which the dialectical purpose of identity politics, aimed both at inclusion and exclusion, could be pursued.’ What he is pointing to is a paradoxical situation. As far as Latvia is concerned, as noted above, successful efforts are being made to encourage and increase the knowledge of Latvian among citizen and non-citizen ethnic Russians. This is a clear case of integration and its linguistic aspects, with repercussions for the labour market and participation in the public dialogue. On the other hand, Latvian-language media discourses and those of numerous parliamentarians present ‘Russians’, to use Skenderovic’s words, as a threat to Latvian identity and to the cultural and social cohesion of the national community, while the Russian-language media use a similar threat topos but with Russophones as the victims (Golubeva and Gould 2010; Hogan-Brun 2006: 324). The potency of the threat topos, whose logic is based on the binary opposition of them versus us, has frequently been noted both by scholars (Busse 1997; Cesari 2010; Gould 2010; KhosraviNik, Krzyzanowski and Wodak 2012) and political communicators (Geden 2004; Henckel 2009; Kimmelman 2010).8 It is a background element in a number of the preceding chapters and forms a fundamental part of many political discourses dealing with immigration. Differences in language are a means to this end, a convenient and obvious phenomenon on which to base the process of rejection and othering, inclusion and exclusion (Krzyzanowski 2010). In the electoral process they represent a temptation that, as emerges from the Canadian example at the beginning of this chapter as well as from other – 207 –

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discussions, politicians have a great deal of difficulty resisting. To refer again to the introduction, political entrepreneurs use identity as an instrument with which to induce people to collective action by referring to an alleged collective identity. One can argue that, within the European Union, this phenomenon runs contrary to the broad aims of EU aspirations that aim to respect linguistic diversity, as stated and enshrined in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights (European Union 2000), which also covers regional and minority languages. But within the member states of the EU, the paradox is that effective control over language policies lies with the national governments, not with Brussels – as, of course, does citizenship (Nic Shuibhne 2008). Consequently, questions of language are subject to national or subnational politics, and political parties are notably utilitarian and attracted to positions and statements that gain votes. This represents a serious challenge, particularly in an age in which population movements have been taking place on a massive scale since the end of the Second World War, against a background of increasingly broadly defined human rights. Thus, as very briefly touched on earlier in this conclusion, domestic language politics can also become an international issue. In a contribution to a recently published book, Michael Morris (2011) laments that in global issues textbooks and global issues writing, so little attention is paid to either language or culture, and that consequently textbooks implicitly present language and culture as being of relatively little importance. Many of the language issues raised in the preceding chapters are also ones of human rights or population movements, or both. In many cases language issues are also inseparable from questions of (national) culture. If, as Morris says, ‘the literature identifies culture and language as useful variables … but this remains more as a research agenda rather than as a careful assessment of relationships’ (2011: 152), then the current volume represents a step towards remedying the situation, presenting, as it does, a more careful assessment of the delicate relationships between language, identity and politics. At the same time, however, as was noted in the introduction, ‘as a practical category, identity is used to pursue political interests’. And political interests are constantly shifting. This means that this area will only ever remain a research agenda: the relationships between language, identity and politics are simply too variable for a definitive assessment to be possible. Robert Gould is an adjunct research professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, where he is also associated with the university’s Centre for European Studies. Since 2000 his research has focused on discourses of immigration and identity in a range of European countries. Recent publications include ‘Managing Ambivalence and Identity: Immigration Discourses and (trans)national Identities’ in Transnational Europe: Promise, Paradox, Limits – 208 –

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(Palgrave MacMillan, 2011); ‘Rejection by Implication: Christian Parties, German Identity, and the Power of Discourse, 2001–2002’ in Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies (2012); ‘“Alien Religiosity” in Three Liberal European States’ in Politics, Religion & Ideology (2013); ‘Roma Rights and Roma Expulsions in France: Official Discourse and EU Responses’ in Critical Social Policy (2015) and ‘Islam returns to Spain: Religious Diversity, Political Discourse and Women’s Rights’ in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations (2015).

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Notes 1. Assemblée Nationale, Québec, 2007, Première session, trente-huitième législature, projet de loi 195, Loi sur l’identité québécoise. 2. For a relevant view on the intersection of parliamentary membership, language requirements and human rights in Europe and specifically Latvia, see Ozolins (2003: 225). 3. ‘[L]a citoyenneté québécoise serait automatiquement accordée à tous les citoyens vivant sur le territoire du Québec au moment de l’adoption de la loi. Par la suite, les nouveaux arrivants pourraient obtenir leur citoyenneté québécoise en démontrant une connaissance appropriée du Québec et de la langue française.’ 4. Seanad Éireann, 2002, vol. 169, 24 April, p. 1795. 5. The Official Languages Act 2003 is described in the following manner: ‘An Act to promote the use of the Irish language for official purposes in the State; to provide for the use of both official languages of the State in parliamentary proceedings, in acts of the Oireachtas, in the administration of justice, in communicating with or providing services to the public and in carrying out the work of public bodies.’ The Senate debates on 24 April 2002 contain references to the ways in which Irish had been allowed to decline after independence and even after the constitution of 1937 had made it an official language. 6. Dáil Éireann, 2003, vol. 571, 2 October, Written Answers: EU Treaty Languages. 7. You can see the reaction at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGs6Jxla2ZY, retrieved 29 August 2012. 8. Among political practitioners, the following two statements are particularly noteworthy: ‘Aber gehen wir vielleicht einmal zu ihren Schwerpunkten, speziell in der Ausländerpolitik. Was ist der Hintergrund? Es ist die Angst der Menschen, der Österreicher in dem Fall, vor Verlust der eigenen Identität’ (But let’s move on to the topics that interest you, particularly the question of immigration. What’s the background? It’s people’s fear, in this case Austrians’ fear of losing their identity) (Geden 2004). And second: ‘Genau wie das Spiel mit der Angst. … Das gehöre zur Politik dazu, hat der SVP-Werber Segert … gesagt. “Es ist absolut legitim, dieses Gefühl anzusprechen, sonst geht die politische Botschaft, links wie rechts, an den Leuten vorbei”’ (‘“Just like playing with fear. … That’s part of politics too”, remarked Alexander Segert, communications consultant for the Swiss People’s Party. “It’s absolutely legitimate to appeal to this emotion, otherwise the political message gets lost, whether on the left or the right”’) (Henckel 2009).

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Boquedano-Lopez, P. and S. Kattan. 2008. ‘Language Socialization in Schools’, in P. Duff and N. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd ed., vol. 8, Language Socialization. New York: Springer, pp. 161–73. Busse, D. 1997. ‘Das eigene und das Fremde: Annotationen zu Funktion und Wirkung einer diskurssemantischen Grundfigur’, in M. Jung, M. Wengeler and K. Böke (eds), Die Sprache des Migrationsdiskurses: Das Reden über ‘Ausländer’ in Medien, Politik und Alltag. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, pp. 17–35. Centrālā vēlēšanu komisija (Central Election Commission of Latvia). 2012a. Referendum on the draft law ‘Amendments to the Constitution of the Republic of Latvia’. Retrieved 27 August 2012 from http://web.cvk.lv/pub/public/30287.html Centrālā vēlēšanu komisija (Central Election Commission of Latvia). 2012b. ‘About the voters’ initiated draft law “Amendments to the Citizenship Law”’. Retrieved 1 August 2015 from http://www.cvk.lv/pub/public/30436.html. Cesari, J. 2010. ‘Introduction’, in J. Cesari (ed.), Muslims in the West after 9/11: Religion, Politics, and Law. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 1–6. Cheskin, A. 2010. ‘The Discursive Construction of “Russian-Speakers”: The Russian-Language Media and Demarcated Political Identities in Latvia’, in M. Golubeva and R. Gould (eds), Shrinking Citizenship: Discursive Practices that Limit Democratic Participation in Latvian Politics. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, pp. 133–54. Collins, S. and M. Hennessy. 2011. ‘What Were Once Hopes for the Future Have Now Come to Pass’, Irish Times, 19 May, p. 1. Connolly, S. and C. O’Doherty. 2011. ‘The Queen’s Speech’, Irish Examiner, 19 May, p. 1. Council of the European Union. 2004. Council of the European Union Press Release, 19 November, 2618th Council Meeting, 14615/04 (Presse 321). Djačkova, S. 2003. Latvian Language Proficiency and the Integration of Society. Riga: Centre for Public Policy PROVIDUS. Dutrisac, R. 2012. ‘Citoyenneté québécoise: Le PQ corrige Pauline Marois’, Le Devoir, 23 August, p. A2. Élections Québec. 2012. ‘Comparateur de programmes’. Retrieved 24 August 2012 from http://elections.ledevoir.com/elections-quebec-2012 Elizabeth II. 2011. ‘The Queen’s Speech in Dublin Castle, 18 May. RTÉ – Ireland’s Public Service Media. Retrieved 31 July 2015 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= HKz-6vn_i00. European Union. 2000. Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Brussels: Official Journal of the European Communities. Freake, R., G. Gentil and J. Sheyholislami. 2011. ‘A Bilingual Corpus-Assisted Discourse Study of the Construction of Nationhood and Belonging in Quebec’, Discourse and Society 22(1): 21–47. Geden, O. 2004. ‘Interview Eduard Mainoni: Korrigierte und autorisierte Fassung 15.1.2004’. Retrieved 3 October 2009 from http://www.florianklenk.com/2006/09/22/ mainoni-das-ungekurzte-interview-aus-dem-bauch-der-fpo/ Golubeva M and R. Gould (eds), 2010, Shrinking Citizenship: Discursive Practices that Limit Democratic Participation in Latvian Politics. Amsterdam and New York. Golubeva, M. and I. Kažoka. 2010. ‘Moral Superiority and the Soviet Stigma: Parliamentary Speech and Attribution of Blame in Political Discourse’, in M. Golubeva and R. Gould (eds), Shrinking Citizenship: Discursive Practices that Limit Democratic Participation in Latvian Politics. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, pp. 171–93. Gould, R. 2010. ‘Some Recent Discourses of Exclusion in the EU’, in M. Golubeva and R. Gould (eds), Shrinking Citizenship: Discursive Practices that Limit Democratic Participation in Latvian Politics. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, pp. 15–50.

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Heller, M. 2008. ‘Language Choice and Symbolic Domination’, in M. Martin-Jones, A.M. de Mejía and N. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd ed., vol. 3, Discourse and Education. New York: Springer, pp. 201–10. Henckel, E. 2009. ‘Streit um Minarettenverbot erreicht Deutschland’, Die Welt, 16 October. Retrieved 20 October 2009 from http://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article4867285/ Streit-um-Minarettenverbot-erreicht-Deutschland.html Hogan-Brun, G. 2006. ‘At the Interface of Language Ideology and Practice: The Public Discourse surrounding the 2004 Education Reform in Latvia’, Language Policy 5(3): 313–33. ———. n.d. ‘Régimes de tests de langue en Europe’. Retrieved 12 December 2012 from http://canada.metropolis.net/pdfs/Hogan_Brun_paper_f.pdf Huddleston, T., et al. 2011. Migration Integration Policy Index III. Brussels: British Council and Migration Policy Group. Jubilus, N. 2001. Nationalism and Democratic Transition: The Politics of Citizenship and Language in Post-Soviet Latvia. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. KhosraviNik, M., M. Krzyzanowski and R. Wodak. 2012, ‘Dynamics of Representation in Discourse: Immigrants in the British Press’, in M. Messer et al. (eds), Migrations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Vienna: Springer-Verlag, pp. 283–95. Kimmelman, M. 2010. ‘When Fear Turns Graphic’, New York Times, 14 January, p. AR1. Krūma, K. 2009. ‘Checks and Balances in Latvian Nationality Policies: National Agendas and International Frameworks’, in R. Baubök, B. Perching and W. Sievers (eds), Citizenship Policies in the New Europe, expanded and updated ed. IMISCOE Research. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 67–96. Krūma, K. 2015, Country Report on Citizenship Law:Latvia. Revised and updated January 2015, EUDO Citizenship Observatory, Country Report, RSCAS/EUDO-CIT-CR 2015/6. Retrieved 2 August 2015 from http://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/34481/ EUDO_CIT_2015_06-Latvia.pdf?sequence=1. Krzyzanowski, M. 2010. The Discursive Construction of European Identities: A Multi-Level Approach to Discourse and Identity in the Transforming European Union. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Latvijas republikas Ārlietu ministrija. 2015 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia). ‘Basic facts about citizenship and language policy of Latvia and some sensitive history-related issues’. Retrieved 5 July 2015 from http://www.mfa.gov.lv/en/policy/ society-integration/citizenship-in-latvia/citizenship-policy-in-latvia/basic-facts-aboutcitizenship-and-language-policy-of-latvia-and-some-sensitive-history-related-issues. McNamara, T. 2009. ‘Language Tests and Social Policy: A Commentary’, in G. Hogan-Brun, C. Mar-Molinero and P. Stevenson (eds), Discourses on Language and Integration: Critical Perspectives on Language Testing Regimes in Europe. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 153–63. Milani, T. 2008. ‘Language Testing and Citizenship: A Language Ideological Debate in Sweden’, Language in Society 37: 27–59. Morris, H. 2003. ‘EU Enlargement and Latvian Citizenship Policy’, Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe 1: 1–38. ———. 2004. ‘President, Party and Nationality Policy in Latvia, 1991–1999’, Europe-Asia Studies 56(4): 543–69. Morris, M. 2011. ‘Culture, Language and Global Issues’, in M. Morris (ed.), Culture and Language: Multidisciplinary Case Studies. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, pp. 137–58. Nic Craith, M. 2006. Europe and the Politics of Language: Citizens, Migrants and Outsiders. Basingstoke, UK, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Nic Shuibhne, N. 2008. ‘EC Law and Minority Language Policy: Some Recent Developments’, in X. Arzoz (ed.), Respecting Linguistic Diversity in the European Union. Studies in World Language Problems 2. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 123–43. – 211 –

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O’Reilly, C. 2003. ‘When a Language Is “Just Symbolic”: Reconsidering the Significance of Language to the Politics of Identity’, in G. Hogan-Brun and S. Wolff (eds), Minority Languages in Europe: Frameworks, Status, Prospects. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 16–36. Ozolins, U. 2003. ‘The Impact of European Accession upon Language Policy in the Baltic States’, Language Policy 2(3): 217–38. Patten, A. and W. Kymlicka, ‘Introduction. Language Rights and Political Theory: Context, Issues, and Approaches’, in Alan Patten, Will Kymlicka (eds), Language Rights and Political Theory (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 1–51. Parti Québécois. 2012. Communiqué – ‘Le Parti Québécois veut faire du français la langue incontournable au Québec’. Retrieved 22 August 2012 from http://pq.org/actualite/ communiques/le_parti_quebecois_veut_faire_du_francais_la_langue_incontournable_ au_quebec Pavlenko, A. 2011. ‘Language Rights versus Speakers’ Rights: On the Applicability of Western Language Rights Approaches in Eastern European Contexts’, Language Policy 10(1): 37–58. Phillipson, R. 1992. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung. 2010. Pressemitteilung Nr. 272 Staatsministerin Böhmer zum Bericht zur Kindertagesbetreuung für unter 3-Jährige: ‘Migranteneltern sollten Chancen der Kinderbetreuung stärker nutzen!’; ‘Frühkindliche Bildung und früher Spracherwerb sind entscheidend für das Gelingen von Integration’, 21 July. Räthzel, N. 1997. Gegenbilder: Nationale Identitäten durch Konstruktion des Anderen. Opladen: Leske + Budrich: 134. Rožukalne, A. 2010. ‘The Construction of Ethnic Political Identity and the Mechanisms of Exclusion in the Latvian-language Media’, in M. Golubeva and R. Gould (eds), Shrinking Citizenship: Discursive Practices that Limit Democratic Participation in Latvian Politics. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, pp. 111–32. RTÉ. 2011. ‘British Queen expresses “deep sympathy”’. Retrieved 11 September 2015 from http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0517/301187-queen/. Schmid, C. 2008. ‘Ethnicity and Language Tensions in Latvia’, Language Policy 7: 3–19. Ušakovs, N. 2012a. ‘Референдум поможет ‘Единству’, а не негражданам’ [The referendum will help ‘unity’, but not non-citizens]. Retrieved 3 September 2012 from http://www.sas kanascentrs.lv/ru/prjamaja-rech/referendum-pomozhet-edinstvu-a-ne-negrazhdanam ———. 2012b. ‘Referendums palīdzēs tikai “Vienotībai”, nevis nepilsoņiem’ [The referendum will help ‘unity’, but will not help non-citizens]. Retrieved 3 September 2012 from http://www.saskanascentrs.lv/lv/mentions/referendums-palidzes-tikai-vienot ibai-nevis-nepilsoniem/ Walsh, J. 2012. ‘Language Policy and Language Governance: A Case-Study of Irish Language Legislation’, Language Policy 11(4): 323–41.

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INDEX

Bern (canton), 93, 97–101, 103–4, 106–9, 111, 113–17 Biel-Bienne, 99, 104–5, 108, 111 bilingualism, 10–11, 25, 49, 65, 90, 102, 105–6, 108–9, 111, 123, 134n7, 149, 151, 180, 188, 190, 194, 206 bilingual cantons, 79, 81, 93, 98–99, 102, 104, 106–9, 111, 115, 116–17 bilingual education, 10, 49, 65, 104, 109– 10, 130, 131, 141–42, 144–45, 148–49, 153, 180 Bilingual Education Act of 1968, 144, 149 Bologna Process, 50, 52, 54 British Columbia, 121, 124–26, 132, 134n5, 134n8, 179, 182 Brussels region, 62, 65, 67, 69–70, 71n2, 71n7, 71n11, 72n12

A

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Aboriginal, Aboriginals, 119–21, 123–24, 133–34, 136, 198, 200 rights, 119, 121, 123–24, 132 Allardt, Erik, 47–49 Anglophones, 199 Appenzell, 88 Arctic Council, 127, 134 Ascoli, Isaiah Graziadio, 28 Asian Americans, 144–46 assimilation, 44, 45, 68, 104, 116, 122, 141, 149–52, 154, 161, 165, 167, 170–71, 179, 181, 192–94, 195n2 assimilationalism, 10 see also framing Austrian Low Countries, 61–62, 69 authenticity, 24, 50, 52, 116 autochthonous languages, 7, 9, 41, 84, 85, 87, 89, 105 see also Aboriginal

C Canada, 7, 9–11, 81–82, 85, 89, 97, 108, 116, 119–25, 127–33, 133n1, 134n5, 134n12, 134n13, 155, 177–85, 188, 189–94, 195n1, 198, 200–203, 205 demographic decline, 177, 181, 185 host society, 177, 189 Indian Act, 123 Inuit, 9, 119, 121–25, 127–33, 134n10, 134n12, 134n14, 135n15 Inuktitut, 129–31, 134n13, 135n15, 135n16 residential schooling, 120, 123 settler relations, 121, 125, 133, 134n4 settlement services, 190 see also Aboriginals, Francophones, Canadian Arctic, 9, 121, 126–29, 131–32, 134n12, 134n13 Canton, 9, 74, 77–79, 81– 85, 87–89, 93, 97–117, 158, 165–68, 170, 203 citizenship, 11, 39, 46, 53, 158, 160, 168, 171, 182, 188, 200–201, 203–5, 207–8

B Baltic States, 43, 201, 202, 203, Barcelona, 8, 39, 49, 56 Belgium, 8, 9, 39, 44, 47, 50, 61–72, 81–82, 85, 97, 184 bilingualism, 65 Catholic Church, 64, 66 communities, 39, 47, 65, 69, 70 constitutional revisions, 65 Kingdom of, 61–66, 69–70 Islam, 70 regions, 65 and Treaty of London (1839), 62 and Treaty of Vienna (1815), 61 unilingualism, 65 University of Ghent (‘flemishization’ of), 63, 67 Vlaams Belang, 67 Berger, Thomas, 129–30, 132 – 213 –

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Index duality, 179–80, 182, 188, 190–91 Dutch (language), 50, 62–65, 67–69, 71n1, 71n5, 71n10, 110

Civil Rights Act of 1964, 143, 145 class, 8, 29, 31–33, 35n1, 50, 68–69, 100, 144–45, 154 cleavages, 73, 76, 78–80, 88–89 crosscutting, 73, 76, 78, 89 common sense, 27, 29, 189, 193 community, 5–7, 11, 20–21, 23–24, 30–31, 40, 46–47, 68–69, 71n7, 71n12, 80, 86, 133, 140, 144, 147, 160, 172, 178, 181, 185, 187–188, 190–93, 202, 207 -building, 6, 69, 80, 185 linguistic, 40, 46, 48, 51–53, 69, 77–78, 86, 172, 180, 190–92, 207 imagined, 5, 193, 195 organizations, 10–11, 191–93 political, 6, 21, 31, 70, 140, 188–89 speech, 6, 46 see also language community

E English (language), 7–8, 10, 17, 23, 25, 30–35, 39–40, 46, 52, 54, 68, 85, 87, 120–21, 123–24, 126–28, 130–31, 133n2, 134n7, 135n15, 140–45, 147–54, 179–81, 188, 191, 194, 199–202, 205 English-only strategy, 10, 54, 56, 151 Esperanto (language), 28 Estonia, 40, 51, 205 ethnicization, 78 ethnicity, 3–5, 31, 55, 70, 81, 86, 155, 186 Europe, 5, 8, 11, 23, 38–45, 47–55, 55n2, 62, 66, 80, 90, 99, 108, 115, 127, 146, 150, 159–63, 169, 171–73, 200, 208, 209n2 European Economic Area (EEA), 87, 98 European Union, 8, 19, 24, 49–51, 53, 55n6, 162, 199, 202–4, 208 Europeanization, 39, 41, 50, 52

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D decolonization, 121, 127, 129, 133 democracy, 42, 44–46, 62, 76–78, 142, 163–64 demos, 24 dialect, dialects, 5, 28, 42, 48, 62–64, 66–68, 71n6, 75–76, 83, 101, 104, 110–11, 116, 128, 134n3, 158–59, 164, 171, 173, 207 Flanders, 62–64, 66–68 Swiss German, 75–76, 83, 101, 110–11, 116, 158–59, 164, 171, 173, 207 Wallonia, 63, 66–68, 71n7 see also vernacular difference, differences, 2, 4, 6, 11, 21–23, 28, 34, 67, 70, 71n5, 76, 78, 80, 86, 94, 97–98, 107, 108–9, 113, 121, 124, 154, 169, 172, 186, 207 cultural, 4, 6, 28, 78, 86, 121, 124, 169, 172 ethnic, 21, 70, 76, 78, 124 mental, 86 linguistic, 76, 78, 80, 98, 107, 113, 124, 207 diglossia, 41, 45, 49–50, 63–64, 67, 110 discourse, 4, 6, 9, 42, 50, 53, 67, 77, 80, 94–96, 100, 108, 112–14, 116, 119–21, 123–24, 132–33, 147, 154, 162, 171, 178, 181–84, 186, 188, 193, 206–7, 208–9 identity, 80, 94–96, 108, 114, 116, 178, 182–84, 186, 188, 193 of ‘overforeignization’, 80, 162 discrimination, 47, 80, 86, 142–45, 149, 153–55, 160, 167 see also racism diversity, 8, 10–11, 23–24, 28, 33, 35n6, 43–44, 46, 48–55, 73, 80, 84, 90n1, 120, 125, 139–41, 147–48, 158, 160–61, 164, 170, 172–73, 182, 186, 208–9 attitudes towards, 186 ethnocultural, 120, 140–41 linguistic, 8, 10–11, 43–44, 46, 48–54, 73, 80, 90n1, 125, 140–41, 147–48, 161, 173, 208 Doctrine of Discovery, 122, 134n6

F federalism, 73, 76, 78, 164 federation, 21, 70, 154, 179, 181, 193 Fichte, Gottlieb, 21–22, 27, 29, 31–32, 35n7 Fishman, Joshua, 5, 49 Flanders (Community and Region), 8, 62–70 Flemish (language), 8, 62–64, 66–68, 71n10, 72n13 framing, 10–11, 45, 79, 94, 147, 148, 205–6 assimilationist frame, 147 framing strategy, 147, 205 immigrant frame, 148 pluralist frame, 143, 150 France, 38, 42, 52, 61–63, 67, 70–71, 71n7, 81, 97, 116, 122, 178–79, 183–84, 209 Francophones, 8, 10, 75, 98, 100, 103–4, 106–11, 113–15, 179–85, 187, 189–90, 194, 195n4 see also French speakers, French-speaking community, Romands French (language), 8, 31, 38, 42–43, 50–52, 62–70, 71n1, 71n3, 71n7, 71n10, 71n11, 71–72n12, 72n13, 74–76, 78–79, 82–83, 85–87, 93, 95–102, 104–12, 114–16, 117n, 119–20, 123–24, 131–32, 133n2, 134n7, 135n15, 166, 177–82, 185–88, 190–94, 195n2, 199–201, 205 French speakers, 76, 97–98, 100, 102, 107–9, 112, 114, 116 French-speaking communities, 64, 67, 70, 71n7, 71n12, 79, 87, 98, 102, 108, 166 Fribourg, 11, 79, 81, 87, 89, 93, 98–109, 113, 115, 117, 173, 199

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Index ideology, 2, 6, 8, 26, 27, 76, 114, 122, 159, 161, 173, 189–90, 194, 201, 209 see also language ideology immigrant, immigrants, 7, 10–11, 17, 32, 34, 39–40, 47, 54, 66, 75, 85, 89, 119, 139–41, 145–48, 150–55, 159–73, 177–78, 181–82, 185–94, 199– 200, 203–5 languages, 7, 34, 85, 151, 173 immigration, 8, 10, 17, 32, 35n3, 39, 54, 87, 139–43, 145, 146–47, 150–51, 154, 158–59, 161–73, 177–78, 181–82, 185, 188–89, 191, 193–94, 204, 207, 209n8 policy, 158, 161–65, 167, 172, 181, 194 see also citizenship integration, 10–11, 40, 42, 44–45, 50–51, 73, 76, 95, 106, 155, 159, 160–61, 166–73, 173n1, 174n10, 177–78, 182, 188, 189–94, 199, 203–4, 207 models, 188, 189, 191–93 interculturalism, 191 Inuit, 9, 119, 121–25, 127–33, 134n10, 134n12, 134n14, 135n15 Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), 127, 134n10 Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), 134n12 Inuktitut, 129–31, 134n13, 135n15, 135n16 Ireland, 199–202, 204 Irish (language), 201–3, 209n5 Italian (language), 27–29, 40, 74–77, 82, 85–87, 97–98, 105, 166

G German (language, incl. Swiss German), 6, 21, 40, 43, 54, 62–63, 65, 67, 70, 71n1, 71n6, 71n8, 74–79, 82–83, 86–88, 93, 95, 97–102, 104–16, 117n, 158–59, 164, 166, 171, 199, 209 German speakers, 95, 97–102, 105–14, 116 see also German-speaking communities ‘Germanization’, 87, 103, 106–8, 166 Germany (incl. West Germany), 6, 21, 40, 52, 54, 55n7, 71n6, 71n8, 112–13, 158, 162, 171, 201, 204 German-speaking communities, 65, 67–68, 70, 75–76, 79, 87–88, 98, 102, 104, 106, 108, 115, 164, 166 globalization, 1, 19, 23, 25 grammar, 28–33 Gramsci, Antonio, 7, 19, 26–35 Grisons, 74, 81, 83, 98

H Habermas, Jürgen, 24, 34, 36n11, 44, 45 hegemony, 26–27, 35, 43, 52, 120 Helsinki, 8, 39, 54, 55 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 21–22, 24, 27, 29, 32, 46, 47 homogeneity, 29, 40, 44, 68, 75, 89, 103–4, 159, 170, 173 linguistic, 40, 89, 103, 170, 173 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 24, 36n9, 46–47, 55

J Joseph, John E., 4, 18, 23 justice, 25, 30, 51, 145, 179, 202, 209n5

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I K

identification, identifications identity, 1–11, 15, 17–26, 29, 31–32, 35, 35n1, 38–48, 50–53, 55, 59, 61, 66, 69–70, 73–74, 79–80, 84–89, 93–97, 99– 102, 104, 108–17, 120–29, 131–33, 137, 139–40, 153, 172, 200 collective, 1–5, 7–9, 11, 17, 26, 31–32, 42, 48, 50, 74, 84–89, 93–97, 116, 140, 161, 170, 208 ethnic, 4–5, 18, 70, 85, 97, 153 individual, 1–2, 95, 116 linguistic, 24, 38–41, 44, 46, 50, 52, 86, 104, 113, 125, 152, 177–78, 190 markers, 5, 7, 11, 42, 124, 172, 183, 187, 193 national, 5, 10, 31, 43, 66, 70, 73–74, 80, 84–85, 88–89, 96, 116, 129, 139–40, 143, 164, 172, 183, 204 postmodern, 5 pyramids, 9, 99–101, 115 identity politics, 1, 6–11, 17, 31, 41, 48, 51, 61, 73, 84, 88–89, 95–96, 139–41, 143, 148, 150, 159, 172–73, 177, 188–89, 191, 193, 198, 200, 207

Kingdom of the Netherlands, 61–62 Kristeva, Julia, 54

L language, languages, 1–11, 17–35, 35n4, 35n5, 35n6, 35n7, 36n8, 36n10, 38–57, 55n2, 55n6, 61–70, 71n1, 71n3, 71n5, 71n6, 71n8, 73–77, 79–89, 93, 95–114, 116, 119–33, 134n3, 134n7, 134n8, 134n13, 134n14, 134–35n15, 135n16, 139–45, 147–55, 158–61, 164–73, 177–84, 186–92, 194, 198–208, 209n2, 209n5, 209n6, 209n autochthonous, 9, 40–41, 84–85, 87, 89, 105 border, 93, 99, 103, 105, 107, 116 clichés, 86 death, 87, 152 education, 9, 127, 142, 149

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Index expressive dimension of, 8, 20, 24, 31, 46, 198 freedom of, 74, 77 group, 6, 8–11, 25, 49, 52–53, 73, 75–76, 84–88, 97, 99–103, 106–7, 134n7, 134n10, 166, 173, 189 ideology, 6, 8, 161 immigrant, 7, 85, 151, 165, 167, 173 indigenous, 9, 119–28, 130, 132 instrumental dimension of, 26, 46 law, 65, 74, 77, 81–82, 84, 98, 101, 104–5, 130, 133, 134n4, 134n14, 150, 168–70, 180, 191, 201, 204 mother tongue, 19, 25, 32–33, 35n4, 40, 42, 47, 63, 111, 151, 180, 186, 187 national, 5, 8, 28–29, 35n4, 39–41, 43, 52, 74, 80–82, 84–85, 164, 170–71, 173, 199, 203 native, 19, 33, 35n4, 143, 149, 165, 166, 170–71, 199, 205 official, 7, 11, 64–65, 68, 71n6, 75, 80, 82–83, 98, 101, 104–5, 124, 130, 141, 148, 158, 168, 180, 182, 190, 194, 201, 206, 209n5 perceptions of, 6, 82, 103, 108–9, 111, 116, 151, 198 prestige, 31, 62, 80, 82–83, 108, 184 pride, 112–16, 187–89 representations of, 77, 102–3, 112, 134n4, 134n12, 164, 188, 190 skills, 108–9, 130, 149, 164, 167, 168, 170–72 status, 7, 11, 40, 43, 49–51, 53, 64, 74, 80, 82–83, 85, 98, 101–2, 104, 108, 134n3, 191, 199, 202, 206 language politics, 4, 7–9, 11, 17, 19, 22–24, 39, 41, 43, 54, 74–77, 79–82, 84–86, 88–89, 120–21, 122, 125–26, 128–29, 132, 139–40, 147–48, 166, 198, 200, 208 bottom-up, 42–43, 121, 129, 133 language management, 6, 161 linguistic access policies, 142–43 linguistic assimilation, 44–45, 149, 151, 154, 161, 165–67 language ideology, 6, 8, 159, 161, 173 language practices, 6, 127–28, 161, 200 language protection, 77, 130–31, 135n16, 191 language revitalization, 125, 128–29, 131–33 ‘linguicism’, 201–2, standardization, 28, 41–43, 131, 134n14 top-down, 42–43, 123, 125, 129, 133 Latino, Latinos, 10, 139, 141, 144–46, 148, 150, 152–55 Latvia, 11, 199, 201, 203–7, 209n2 Latvian (language), 11, 199, 201, 204–7 law, laws, 17, 32, 34, 35n3, 65, 74, 77, 81–82, 98, 101, 105, 119–21, 123, 130–31, 133, 134n4, 134n14, 143–44, 146, 148–50, 158, 160, 167–70, 180, 191–92, 200–201, 203

immigration, 17, 32, 35n3, 146, 158, 167– 70, 191 linguistic, 65, 77, 81–82, 98, 101, 150, 168, 180, 191–92 protectionist, 180, 191–92 school, 98, 105, 120, 123, 131, 135n16, 149, 158, 180, 192, 201 liberalism, 19, 25–26, 36n8, 36n9, 190 liberty, 104–5, 115, 165 Locke, John, 19–22, 26, 28, 30, 33, 35n7, 36n8

M majority, majorities, 11, 28, 38–41, 45, 47–48, 52–54, 62–65, 67–69, 72n12, 75, 79, 82–83, 86–89, 93, 95–99, 102, 106, 108–9, 112, 115, 120, 135n15, 150–51, 153, 155, 159, 171, 180–81, 185, 188, 190–91, 194, 201, 205 group, 96 Manzoni, Alessandro, 28 migration, 10, 11, 199–200 languages, 10 policy, 10 minority, minorities, 8–11, 24–25, 34, 39–41, 43–44, 45–49, 51–54, 55n7, 71n11, 73–75, 77–83, 93, 95–99, 101–2, 104–8, 112, 116, 120, 132, 134n15, 139, 141, 143, 145–50, 173, 177–78, 180, 182–83, 185–94, 195n1, 198, 201, 204–5, 208 Francophone communities, 177–78, 181– 82, 191, groups, 9, 34, 39–40, 47–49, 52, 96, 146– 47, 205 indigenous, 10 language minority, 48, 96, 105, 145, 147, 149–50 linguistic, 8–9, 46–47, 49, 51–52, 73–75, 77–78, 82, 97, 106, 177, 193 minority language, 44–45, 54, 74, 80–83, 132, 134n15, 149, 173, 208 minority/majority relations, 112, 120 national, 55, 102, 104 self-categorization, 47 mobilization, 40–41, 43, 47–49, 119–20, 123, 127, 139, 144–45, 147, 163, 180 modernization, 40, 42 monolingualism, 53, 84, 88, 114, 151, 164, 201 multiculturalism, 84, 119, 123–24, 172, 190–91 multilingualism, 8, 10, 39, 51–55, 93, 108, 112, 120, 142, 152, 164, 172–73

N nation, 2–3, 5–6, 8–9, 21–22, 24, 33, 35n4, 38– 41, 43–45, 50–53, 62, 66–70, 79–82, 84–86, 97, 112, 114, 122, 124–27, 132, 134n6, 134n8, 139–42, 155, 161, 164, 173, 183–85, 193 -building, 5 – 216 –

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Index national cohesion, 76–77, 80, 84, 88, 164 -state, 5–6, 8–9, 24, 35n4, 38–41, 43–45, 50–53, 68, 80–82, 84–85, 127, 161, 164 nationalism, 6, 8–9, 22, 26, 38, 42–43, 45, 52, 54, 55n2, 55n4, 68, 80 ethnic, 6, 22 Flemish, 8 language, 8–9, 38, 42, 80 methodological, 38, 45 ‘new medievalism’, 39 Nunavik, 121, 126, 129, 131–33, 134n13, 134– 35n15, 135n16 Nunavut, 121, 126, 129–33, 134n14, 135n16

S Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, 30 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 27 Scotland, 202 Switzerland, 7, 9, 10, 73–89, 93–94, 97–101, 104–105, 110, 112–13, 158–59, 161–66, 169–73, 184, 200, 203, 205, 207 Christian Democratic People’s Party (CVP), 158, 169 Conference of Cantonal Education Authorities, 167 consociational democracy, 76–77 consociationalism, 76–77 Courses in Native Language and Culture, 165, 170 ‘exceptionalism’, 80 Federal Constitution, 77, 81, 90n2, 98 Federal Consultative Commission for the Foreigners’ Problem, 167 Federal Council, 76–77, 82 Federal Statute of the Abode and Settlement of Foreigners, 167 linguistic peace, 10, 76–77, 86, 163, 166, 173 municipal councilors, 93, 99–100, 115–16 mythology, 83, 94, 97 National Action, 162, 167 ‘overforeignization’, 80, 162–66 radical right, 87 Röstigraben, 79, 86–87, 98 school system, 28, 78, 130, 145, 166–67, 191 segmental autonomy, 77, 89 separatist tendencies, 81 Swiss Democrats (SD), 87, 171 Swiss Liberal Party (FDP), 85 Swiss Social-Democratic Party (SP), 168 Swiss People’s Party (SVP), 76, 158, 163, 169, 172, 209n8 Swiss Republican Movement, 162 Vigilance, 162

P particularism, 9, 69, 73 linguistic, 9, 73 plurilingualism, 73, 84, 88–89 see also multilingualism, quadrilingualism Principalty of Liège, 61, 69 proportionality, 77, 105 principle of, 77, 105 public sphere, 1, 6, 24, 34, 44–45, 55n4, 131, 141, 165, 204

Q quadrilingualism, 10, 89 Québec, 10–11, 85, 98, 113, 119–20, 128–29, 131–32, 134n13, 177–78, 180–85, 188–89, 191–94, 199–201, 209n1, 209n3

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R racism, 17, 32, 120 racial profiling, 17, 32 racialized hierarchy, 120 recognition, 6, 8–9, 11, 24–25, 33–34, 36n10, 39–41, 44–53, 82, 96, 120–21, 126, 132–33, 142, 153, 160, 199 religion, 2–3, 5–7, 31, 41–42, 68, 183–84, 209–10 rights 1, 9, 25, 51, 53, 55n7, 82, 89, 104, 119–27, 131–33, 135, 142–45, 149–50, 160, 167, 170, 180, 191–92, 194, 198, 200–202, 204–5, 208–9, 209n2 discourse, 9, 120–21, 123–24, 132–33 human, 119, 198, 200, 204, 208, 209n2 indigenous, 121, 123–24, 132 linguistic, 53, 82, 198 Romands, 97–102, 110–12, 114–15 Romansh (language), 74–75, 82–83, 85, 96–98, 105, 205 Romanticism, 19, 21, 26, 28, 36n9, 68 Rumantsch Grischun (language), 75 Russia, 127, 205 Russian (language), 11, 43, 199, 201, 204–7

T Taylor, Charles, 6, 20, 22, 24–25, 33–34, 36n10, 47 terra nullius, 122, 134n6 territoriality, 40, 74–75, 77, 89, 103–7, 115, 165–66 linguistic, 74 principle of, 74–75, 77, 89, 104–6 Ticino, 74, 85, 87, 166 translation, 27, 30, 34, 35n5, 117, 195, 203 treaty, treaties, 51, 61–62, 121–22, 165, 178, 202, 209n6

U UNESCO, 120, 125, 128, 131, 134n3, 134n13 – 217 –

Language and Identity Politics : A Cross-Atlantic Perspective, edited by Christina Späti, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2015.

Index vernacular, 5, 35n4, 41–43, 48–49, 62–63, 71n3, 110 see also dialect, languages ‘voluntary nation’, 80, 84 see also Willensnation

unilingualism, 65, 106 United States of America, 127, 139–42, 144–48, 150–55, 170, 198, 203, 205 Arizona Senate Bill 1070, 17 Immigration Reform Act of 1965, 145–46 Lau v Nichols (U.S. Supreme Court case), 1974, 145 vision of peoplehood, 141–42 Voting Rights Act, 144–45, 150

W Wales, 202 Wallonia, 8, 63, 65–70, 71n7 Weimar Constitution, 201 Willensnation, 97 see also ‘voluntary nation’ Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 22, 47, Wright, Sue, 19, 23, 25–26, 34, 74

V

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Valais, 93, 98–103, 105–9, 114–15, 199

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