Barbour - Language and National Identity in Europe

5/26/2018 Barbour - Language and National Identity in Europe

Language and National Identity in Europe;

Theoretical and Practical Problems1

Stephen Barbour

THE PROBLEMOF THE NAT ION

There can be no doubt that nations are highly significant at all levels of

modern social and political life. At an individual level, national identity is clearly

an important element in individuals sense of their own identity. At the level of

polities states generally describe themselves as nations, and their status as

nations is crucial to their legitimacy; power, force, even violence exercised in the

name of the nation is, for example, legal, exercised in the name of some other

unit it is usually illegal.2Levels of political organisation above the level of the

nationstate are viewed in terms of the nationstate, and are usually described as

international organisations rather than world organisations'. The United

Nations, for example, is not called the World Government', and it is not a world

government in any meaningful sense, its authority deriving solely from the fact

that nationstates have agreed to delegate certain functions to it. The European

Union remains clearly a union of nationstates, its authority deriving from the

national level. In contrast, within most nationstates provincial or other lower

level forms of government derive their authority from the national government,

and not vice versa.

In the late 20th century we can describe the nation as problematic in two

senses; firstly, the concept of the nation turns out to be very difficult to delimit

and define. Secondly, the nation as a phenomenon in the real world can itself be

seen as problematic; its very nature can cause conflicts; it can also be seen asunder threat from various developments, which, given its great significance,

causes concern to many. In other words, nations pose theoretical problems in the

social sciences, but also practical problems in everyday life.

If we now examine the complexities of the concept of the nation, we can see

that, like many concepts in the social sciences, it embraces a great diversity of

specimens, which are nevertheless recognised by people as having something in

common; when we visit other countries we usually recognise them as compa

From:Ho"mann, Charlotte. Language, Culture and Communication in Contemporary Europe.

Clevedon,UK: Multilingual Matters, 1996.


29rable to our own country in some sense or other. There is a copious literature on

the concept of the nation, written from a wide variety of standpoints; as a sample

I would perhaps single out the work of Eric Hobsbawm (e.g. Hobsbawm, 1990), in

which a Marxist perspective is clear, of Anthony D. Smith (e.g. Smith, 1991), more

liberal in tenor, of Benedict Anderson (e.g. Anderson, 1991), who places nationsin the perspective of cultural history, and of John Edwards (e.g. Edwards, 1985),

who makes particularly clear links between national identity and language. A

consensus emerges in this varied literature which runs quite counter to a great

deal of popular political rhetoric; it is that, far from being universal or

primordial, nations as we now know them are very much a phenomenon of the

nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and that they are most clearly bound up with

economic and social developments in Europe, or in Europe and the Americas,

the concept having then been exported by various means (particularly by

colonialism), and with varying degrees of success, to other parts of the world.3

If we take Anthony D. Smiths working definition of a nation as:

a named human population sharing an historic territory, common

myths and historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common

economy and common legal rights and duties for all members. (Smith,

1991:14)

We can easily see where the theoretical difficulties lie. It is a useful definition,

I certainly do not have a better one, but every cited characteristic of the nation is

highly debatable. In many, many, nations, for example, part of the population

cannot be labelled by the name which is given to the majority population; in a

good many there is some dispute over the historic territory; in very many there isa great variety of myths and historical memories, a huge variety in the public

culture, and frequently there are significant exclusions from the common legal

rights and duties. Increasingly the common economy of a nation actually

embraces other nations too, as indeed do also elements of the mass public

culture. It is of course very useful in all this to distinguish between nations and

states, and to make it clear that the nation or named human population may

share the state with other more or less comparable populations.

It seems to me that many people, both political scientists who discuss such

matters, and ordinary citizens of nations, have a notion of a prototypical nation

consisting of a culturally and racially homogeneous population, whose culturalhomogeneity is manifest by the use of a single, distinct language, and which

exclusively occupies an independent sovereign state. There are sufficient nations

in existence which fulfil these criteria to a sufficient extent for such a concept of

the nation to be apparently workable; there are nations like Britain, which have

always encompassed considerable cultural and linguistic diversity but which, at

first sight, occupy clearly defined and securely sovereign independent states, and


30there are nations like Poland with a shifting historically illdefined territory, but

with, at first sight, a high degree of linguistic and cultural cohesion.

The writers certainly do justice to the conceptual complexities of the

concept, but it continues to play a prominent part in their thinking for no other

reason than that it continues to be of paramount importance in the real world.However, I now wish to suggest, tentatively, with particular caution since I am not

a political scientist by training, that nations are facing such problems in the real

world, that the social scientists category of the nation can actually be placed in

doubt.

It seems to me that, in the real world, what we clearly do have are nation

states, which can be relatively clearly demarcated since they are legally

recognised as such by other states, they have seats in the United Nations and so

on. But do we actually have nations? To look closely at Smiths definition, it

seems clear that very few nations have an entirely clear historic territory', in a

vast number there is significant disagreement about the legitimate extent of thenational territory. Even in Europe, where national territories have been

established for a relatively long period, there are many significant disputes: is

Northern Ireland British territory or not; is Northern East Prussia around

Kaliningrad (formerly Knigsberg) unambiguously Russian territory (there are

signs Russia may relinquish it, and it is separated from Russia by the territory of

a now independent Lithuania); is it unambiguously accepted that South Tyrol is

Italian territory, or is it in some sense Austrian; the disputes in the former Soviet

Union or the seemingly intractable disputes in former Yugoslavia present even

more strikingly contested cases. What about the numerous cases where a

territory does not form a nationstate, but where there is considerable

acceptance by the local majority population that it is a nation? Are Scotland and

Catalonia nations or not? The complexity of the concept of national territory is

compounded by cases like these where we might wish to say that Scotland, for

example, is simultaneously a nation in itself and part of a superordinate British

nation (there is widespread agreement in the literature that a nation does not

have to be independent; a desire for and clear potential for independence would

normally be considered sufficient).4

When we look at the cultural characteristics of nations, it seems to me that

we run into even more serious difficulties. The common myths and historical

memories which Smith refers to are indeed important, but often arose after the

establishment of the nation or the nationstate, and were hence not originally

constitutive; in contemporary Britain a highly significant unifying historical

memory is that of Britains role in the Second World War, which of course

followed the establishment of the modern nationstate by over 200 years.5Other


31historical myths, such as that of the descent, in a simple sense, of the modern

Germans from the Germani of Roman times, can actually be documented as

having been largely invented by modern nationalists (see Johnston, 1990).

Smiths notion of a mass, public culture encounters the problem that so many

cultural characteristics cross national boundaries (increasingly so in the modernworld), but that important cultural cleavages persist and grow within nations.

It is a commonplace of modern discourse that we live in a global economy;

in very many cases the operation of economic factors seems scarcely tied at all to

national boundaries, and economic cleavages within nations, for example in

Britain between the majority and the very poor who subsist on the margins of

economic activity, are often greater than those between citizens of different

nations. It is also a commonplace that the operations of multinational companies

are only marginally affected by local national conditions (see, for example, Cable,

1993).

These complexities, both in the social scientific concept of the nation, andin the real world phenomenon of the nation, make it tempting to posit states

and ethnic groups as primary concepts, with nations being imagined

communities', to use Benedict Andersons term (Anderson, 1983), arising in

popular imagination from the interplay between states and ethnic groups. Indeed

there is much discussion in the literature on the contrast between more

ethnicallybased and more statebased nationalisms (see particularly Smith,

1991).

To return now to what I suggested was the popular vision of the

prototypical nation as a homogeneous population exclusively occupying a well

defined territory, it seems to me that the gap between this vision and the reality

in most areas of the world is a potent source of conflict. Nationstates based

upon ethnically defined nations frequently contain in their territories other

indigenous ethnic groups who then regularly experience discrimination,

persecution, or even genocide. A fairly random example would be Romania, with

numerous indigenous minorities (see Lepschy, 1994:10), the largest being the

Hungarian group, which has at times been subject to considerable hostility from

the Romanian majority. Such ethnic tension is, of course, far from inevitable, but

it is made more likely by the clear labelling of minorities as not part of the

named group to whom the nation, as it were, belongs'. Many factors, not least the

internationalisation of the economy, make it difficult to maintain the ethnic

purity of a territory; for example, production is frequently concentrated in states

far removed from sources of surplus labour.

Even nations, like Britain, with a strong territorial element in national

identity, can experience tensions, since even in such nations, some groups, such

as the extreme right, may see national identity in exclusive ethnic terms.


32Areas where a former state had a high tolerance of ethnic diversity, but

which are now divided into ethnicallybased nationstates, can experience severe

crises. Perhaps the classic case of such a relatively tolerant ethnically diverse state

is the Ottoman Empire, which even allowed separate administrations, for some

purposes, for different ethnic or religious groups within the same territory (themillet system, see SetonWatson, 1977:1434). Some of its successor states, such

as Lebanon and Bosnia, are among the most problematic in the modern world,

with rival ethnic groups claiming the same territory as their property'.

Solutions to such problems are not going to be easily found, but I find it

tempting to see part of the problem in our unquestioning assumption, in

practical politics and also, to some extent, in political science, that nations are

inevitable. Some German writers such as Theodor Schieder have, given the

appalling history of modern German nationalism, been more prepared to suggest

a general retreat from the position that nations are an essential principle of

human organisation (see Schieder, 1992).

THE PROBLEMOF DISTINCTLANGUA GES

The popular prototype of clearly distinct nations is, as we have seen, closely

intertwined with the notion of clearly distinct languages. There is a great deal in

the literature on nationalism on the nationlanguage relationship. A shared

language is widely seen as highly important in the shared public culture, and in

the functioning of the state and the economy. Equally the distinct language is

highly important in the demarcation of one nation from another. It arises both in

nation building within preexisting states, and in independence movements innations which lack their own sovereign states. An excellent example of the

former case is the modern French state, which has consciously imposed a single

language in order to unify a diverse population (see Judge, 1993). There are many

good examples of the latter case in Central and Eastern Europe where, in the

19th century, the existing states were seen as not representative of the people'.

The limits of the various peoples were then linguistically defined, at least that is

how it appeared. German speaking thinkers, such as Fichte and Herder, were

particularly prominent in the forging of the apparently unambiguous link

between a language and a nation (see Barbour, 1993 and Edwards, 1985: 2327).

Using a language to unify and demarcate a nation, linguistic nationalism',

requires that the language itself be unified, and demarcated from other

languages. A popular view, at least among speakers of majority standard

languages, is probably that languages are reasonable selfevident entities, but the

true state of affairs is, unsurprisingly, much more complex. Given that, before

modern times, all languages with more than a handful of speakers and with a

territory


33which could not be crossed in less that a few hours were probably

extremely dialectally diverse, the unification of a language means the elevation

of one of its dialects to the status of a standard language, with a concomitant

reduction in the status and in the range of functions of the other dialects, in

itself a problematic process (see Fishman, 1989a, Haugen, 1976 and Kloss, 1967).The demarcation of one language from another is particularly complex. There are

relatively simple cases in Europe; Hungarian, Albanian and Romanian are, for

example, clearly distinct from neighbouring languages, good instances of Klosss

Abstandsprachen (Kloss, 1967). Elsewhere we frequently find that groups of

related dialects, dialect continua, have been divided into different languages in a

fashion which, viewed linguistically without reference to political or cultural

factors, is simply arbitrary. An excellent example is the Dutch German dialect

continuum, where the modern language border corresponds to no significant

dialect isogloss at all, to no significant linguistic difference which predated the

essentially political border. Languages demarcated on an essentially nonlinguistic basis can then be used as a factor in the demarcation of ethnic groups

and nations. Cases of considerable circularity can arise; X nation can be defined

as the speakers of A language', but then we can discover that A language is

demarcated from B language by its use as the national language of X nation.

Linguistic boundaries used to determine ethnic and national boundaries

turn out to be of enormously diverse origin. There are modern linguistic

boundaries which correspond to ancient ethnolinguistic divisions. The

boundaries between Germanic and Romance languages and between Germanic

and Slavonic languages are good cases.6Many other modern divisions between

languages actually derive from longstanding political or religiouscultural

divisions, rather than obviously linguistic cleavages; this is the case in the

separation of Czech, Slovak and Polish, where some informants still claim a high

degree of mutual comprehensibility, particularly between Czech and Slovak

(Barbara TrnquistPlewa, personal communication).7 Other modern language

borders may arise from simple geographical separation, leading perhaps to

different economic conditions and different lifestyles in the separate areas. This

is perhaps the most important factor separating Norwegian, Swedish and Danish

(although the languages are now separated by modern political borders), where

there is a complex pattern of mutual comprehensibility, usually quite high,

between the languages (see Vikr, 1993: 11925).8

In practice in modern Europe the notion of individual languages is

frequently closely linked to the existence of corresponding individual nations. In

the history of the 19th and 20th centuries as populations have come to see

themselves as nations, so they have sought to present their language varieties not

only as languages distinct from all others, but also as single, unified languages.


34In some cases the status of the variety or varieties in question as a single

language is problematic; the nation may actually use clearly related dialects, but

between some of these there may be, by any standards, poor mutual

comprehensibility. This is, for example, the case with many dialects of German,

and many of the dialects used in Italy.9

Such situations have led to severeproblems, such as a great educational effort to persuade people who do not

understand a standard language that it is theirs', and an even greater educational

effort to give them adequate proficiency in it. There are cases too where varieties

which a modern state wishes to present as mere dialects of an overarching

national language may have a long prior history of independent cultivation; such

was the case with Catalan in Francos Spain (see MarMolinero, 1990). Efforts to

present the national language as a single language are also hampered by the

existence of dialect continua covering the territory of a number of languages; in

such cases marginal dialects of the national language may present obvious

similarities to neighbouring languages. A clear case here is the closeness of LowGerman dialects to Dutch, which has, interestingly, not often led to the claim that

they are Dutch dialects, but more often to the claim that Dutch is a German

dialect, a claim which most contemporary sociolinguists would regard as quite

unfounded (see Goossens, 1976).

The question of the distinctness of the national language has also often

been problematic. There are cases where the national language is clearly highly

similar to neighbouring varieties, and this can lead to an enterprise to make it

truly distinct. In perhaps the most extreme case, that of Norwegian, this led to the

creation of an entirely new standard variety which, unlike the established

emergent standard, was clearly distinct from Danish. Since this authentic

standard was unacceptable to many, particularly to sections of the urban lite (it

resembled some of the remoter rural dialects) its currency was geographically

and socially limited, and modern Norway has since had to grapple with two

standard varieties in which all children have to be given at least passive

competence, frequent local political conflict about which standard shall have

primacy in the locality, and a national political effort to bring the two standards

closer to each other (see Vikr, 1993: 5155, 96101).

This kind of conscious manipulation of a language represents, of course, the

familiar phenomenon of language planning. Language planning can often fulfil a

utilitarian function; a language can be developed by the creation of new

vocabulary to allow speakers to discuss certain areas, say national politics, in their

native language where previously they might have needed to switch to a foreign

language in which they were less proficient. This can clearly represent a gain,

even a fairly concrete economic gain, but there are also losses; they might lose

the ability to discuss politics with fairly close neighbours whose native


35language is different, but with whom earlier generations shared a language of

wider communication. Where language planning is implemented largely for

nationalistic purposes, to change a national language to make it less like a rival,

there are clear losses: communication becomes more difficult across national

borders; people from outside of the area in question will be less motivated tolearn any of its languages if there are several different ones with small number of

speakers.10 In practice, then, in modern Europe, the status of particular dialects

or groups of dialects as independent languages is frequently intimately bound up

with the status of their speakers as an independent or wouldbeindependent

nations. As such nations have proliferated in the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries, so there has been a proliferation of entities which are clearly viewed as

separate languages, where previously matters were hazier. In considering

differences between languages we find again, as in the demarcation of nations,

not only theoretical problems but also severely practical considerations, affecting

peoples everyday lives.

THE PROBLEMOF NAT IONA L LANGUA GES

The intimate linkage in Europe between languages and nations has serious

consequences for what I label small languages. The term small languages is

deliberately nontechnical and vague, but nevertheless encompasses an important

phenomenon. It relates to any language whose speakers are compelled to use

another language for some significant part of their normal activities. It includes

minority languages, but also many majority languages with relatively few

speakers. Minority languages (Scots Gaelic, Basque and North Frisian are clearexamples) are severely limited in their spheres of use, their speakers could not

function effectively in adult life if they knew no other language, and they are

used by a very clear minority in the states where they are spoken. In contrast,

many languages used by a majority in particular states or regions, many which

are national languages, are very clearly limited in their spheres of use; the

Scandinavian languages, for example, can scarcely be used outside of northern

Europe, and even within the states where they are national languages, are not

usually spoken to foreign visitors and are becoming rare in certain kinds of use,

for example to discuss advanced science and technology. If one looks only at

international diplomacy there is even an argument that all languages are small

compared to English, but major national and international language such as

French, Spanish or German have an extremely impressive range of spheres of

use compared to the vast majority of the languages of the planet. small

languages is a relative term, describing as it does relationships between speakers

of languages, and not permanent qualities of the language; hence Norwegian is a

major


36language in relation to Sami (Lapp), but a small language in relation to English,

German, Russian, or even Swedish.

The existence of entities which are considered to be separate languages can

have serious consequences for small languages. It can reduce their

comprehensibility to speakers of other languages, and can impair the willingnessof outsiders to learn the languages in question. A good example is provided by

the current situation in the former Yugoslavia. For most of the twentieth century

the majority of Yugoslavs have used a single language labelled Serbo Croatian,

with few internal comprehension difficulties11; some outsiders have been

prepared to learn this as a means of communicating throughout the country.

There has long been a tension between this relative linguistic homogeneity and

the ethnic, religious and cultural divisions within speakers of SerboCroatian.

The current severe ethnoreligious conflicts in the SerboCroatianspeaking

area of former Yugoslavia could lead to a fragmentation of the language, with a

consolidation of the already separately codified Serbian and Croatian standardvarieties, and perhaps others. If such a division is amplified, it is likely that the

previously rather small number of vocabulary differences between Serbian and

Croatian could be considerably increased, reducing mutual comprehensibility,

and that outsiders wishing to communicate in the area could be disinclined to

invest the effort needed to acquire two or more languages with small numbers of

speakers. Incidentally, the most noticeable linguistic divisions in the traditional

dialect speech of the area do not correspond at all to the SerbianCroatian

divide (see Browne, 1993: 3826).

The status of varieties as national languages also poses educational

problems. Since a fairly high proportion of Europes population is monolingual,

much higher than in many other parts of the world, there is a widespread view

across the continent which sees monolingualism as the norm, bi or

multilingualism as a problem, quite regardless of the fact that a majority of the

worlds population probably has native or nearnative command of more than

one language. Partly because of this erroneous view of bilingualism as abnormal,

and partly because of the paramount role of the national language in many

national ideologies, it is common in Europe for primary education to be strictly

monolingual; it is felt that pupils can and should only tackle foreign languages

when the national standard language is firmly rooted, and also when any local

minority language or nonstandard dialect has been safely marginalised or even

eradicated. This ensures that foreign languages, which for many users of smaller

national languages may actually be essential languages of wider communication,

are not learnt until secondary school level, despite the wellestablished insight

that language learning changes in character and in many ways becomes more

difficult after puberty (Singleton, 1989: passim, particularly 80139). The

insistence, then, that the na


37tional language be absolutely paramount in the national education system may

reduce the educational opportunities of the citizens.

The peculiar status accorded to national languages may also have economic

implications. Just as modern nations claim a monopoly on the loyalty of their

citizens, so they may attempt to insist on a monopoly use of the national languageby those citizens. This is however quite impractical for many people; the everyday

lives of countless people are naturally multilingual, indeed we could postulate

that people who really do experience only one language in their daily lives either

live in exceptionally isolated communities, or are nativespeakers of one of that

small number of languages used by very large numbers, which really do enjoy a

monopoly of communications in some geographical areas.12 Nevertheless, for

many European populations, and in many areas settled over the last four to five

hundred years by Europeans, it is true to say that many peoples experience is

generally monolingual; however the idea that some have in these areas that

monolingualism is normal, bi or multilingualism deviant and problematic, couldnot be more mistaken. When we move outside of these Europeandominated

areas, bi and multilingualism clearly become the norm. We find, for example,

state after state in Africa and Asia where one local language is used in the family

and in the life of the community, a more widespread local language in regional

trade, the language of former European colonists in administration and higher

education and in some international dealings, and English (where it is not the

colonial language of the area in question) in other international dealings. A

Zarean, for example, may use a local African language in dealings within a small

region; Lingala or Swahili in some interactions with other Zareans; Swahili in

dealings with East Africans; French in much administration and in higher

education and to communicate with other Frenchspeakers, who may be fellow

Africans, Europeans, Asians (from Vietnam, for example) or Americans (from

Canada, for example); and English to communicate with almost anyone else (see

Holmes, 1992: 2123). In contrast to such an African state, many European states

or areas of European settlement attempt to insist that the national language be

used in all spheres; there may be a requirement that all dealings with officials, or

all legal cases, be conducted in the national language, that all electrical goods

sold contain instructions in the national language, that all public signs be in the

national language. These requirements can have economic consequences in

terms of costs for translation and interpreting, or, in the case of signs, in

deterring foreign tourists. The insistence of almost all of the member states of the

European Union that their national languages be working languages of the

Union supports a translation effort of astronomical cost. In some of the states in

question some of the policies are openly admitted to be nationalist; in Qubec,

for example, the Charter of the French Language claims to be nothing other than

a measure to


38defend the national language and hence the national identity (see Blanc, 1993).13

Often, however, utilitarian arguments are invoked. It is claimed, for instance, that

European Union documentation has to be comprehensible to all potential users

of it. While this may well be true, it would not be valid if the population were

thoroughly fluent in an international language, acquired at least from primaryschool level. It is also often invalidated by the fact that governments frequently

only have this touching concern for comprehension on behalf of speakers of the

national languages. For example, there are more speakers of Turkish living in the

EU than of Danish, but no government insists that the documentation be

available to them in their first language. The reason is that Turkish is not the

national language of any EU state, Turkish speakers forming immigrant

minorities in a number of countries, such as Germany, the Netherlands, Austria

and Britain, and an indigenous minority in Greece. It is possible, even, that the

average Danish speaker has higher competence in English than does the average

Turkishspeaker in the national language of the EU state where he or she resides,and that Danes hence need documentation in their native language less urgently

than do Turkish immigrants in the EU. We see, then, that the granting of a

peculiar status to national languages has obvious practical results in everyday life.

The insistence by national governments on the monopoly of the national

language is imitated by many partisans of small minority languages in Europe.

They often seem to believe that, if any language is to survive at all it must, like a

national language, be used in all spheres of life. I shall argue that this view is not

only Eurocentric, but simply mistaken, and that it may also be counterproductive.

If we confine our concerns to Europe, and areas of major European

settlement elsewhere, we do indeed find that languages which are not used in all

spheres of life do seem to be in decline, often even terminal decline. In case after

case, however, this turns out to result not just from the exclusion of those

languages from spheres associated with power, or from the apparatus of the state,

but from direct or indirect economic, political or military action against the

speakers of those languages. In nineteenthcentury Ireland thousands of mainly

Catholic peasants, a majority of whom were Irishspeakers, died of starvation, the

scale of the disaster being amplified at times by the economic policies of an

Englishspeaking Protestant government (see Ranelagh, 1994: 11028); in the

Americas and in Australia European settlers deported or massacred thousands of

speakers of indigenous languages, or unintentionally infected them with diseases

hitherto unknown in those continents (see, for example, Spicer, 1980: passim,

particularly 119); Francos Spain prohibited the use of minority languages (see

MarMolinero, 1990); Stalins Soviet Union subjected speakers of languages other

than Russian to varying degrees of disadvantage, even persecution and genocide

(see Ltzsch, 1992); and, most notoriously, Hitlers Germany massacred millions

of


39Yiddishspeaking Jews and Romanispeaking Gipsies. What happened in all of

these cases, and many others could be cited, is that it either became physically

dangerous or economically extremely disadvantageous to speak the language

since it was a marker of a persecuted ethnic group, or the community for which

the language had a positive value was fatally weakened or destroyed. Theweakening and loss of minority languages in Europe and its areas of settlement

arises, then, not because the minority languages were not used in the state

apparatus, but because of the peculiar character of European nationalism which

has demanded monopoly or exclusive use of national languages, and which has

either deliberately or incidentally set out to destroy minority cultures and

languages.

That the need for a language to be used in all spheres in order to survive is

both a Eurocentric and a mistaken view is demonstrated to be false time and

again by experience in other areas of the world. There are of course many cases

of obliteration of cultures and languages in Asia and Africa, but there are manycases which demonstrate that a language, and other cultural characteristics, will

continue to flourish if they are valued by the community in question, regardless

of whether the language is used in all areas of the communitys life. In India, for

example, there is no weakening of a great many of the countrys languages,

despite centuries of use of Sanskrit as a religious language for Hindus, of Arabic

as a religious language for Moslems, of Persian as a literary language by Mogul

rulers, of Persian and then Urdu as administrative languages by those rulers, of

English as a language of administration and education under British rule and in

the modern independent Indian state, and of Hindi in independent India as the

official national language (see Sutton, 1984).14The difference between India and

much of Europe is that the kind of nationalism which demands cultural and

linguistic homogeneity has not taken root there. In Asia and Africa there are even

cases which at first sight appear to approximate to the European model, but

which on closer examination are different. Many Arab states appear, for instance,

to accord Arabic a more or less monopolistic position, but this is deceptive; what

is called the Arabic language is highly diverse, and usually encompasses, in each

region, two or even three rather distinct, not necessarily mutually

comprehensible varieties, which are used in different spheres: Classical Arabic in

Islam, and for communication with Arabic speakers from distant areas or with

Moslem speakers of other languages (for whom it may be a language of religion

and traditional learning), a range of regional Arabic varieties (Moroccan, Iraqi,

etc.) which may be only poorly comprehensible to other Arabic speakers, and

Egyptian, or an Egyptianinfluenced variety, which is used in the mass media,

and which is acquiring some of the characteristics of an Arabic lingua franca (see

Mitchell, 1985, Ferguson, 1972). In other words, in much of Asia and Africa we


40encounter stable diglossia, in which two (or more) varieties of the same language,

or two (or more) languages, coexist in equilibrium, each having a distinct role in

the communitys life.

As Fishman has often noted (for example in Fishman, 1989b), the best

guarantee of the survival of a minority language may be its place in a stablediglossic relationship with a language of wider use. If members of the community

in question place a high value on the maintenance of the minority language as an

element of group identity, but have easy facility in another language or variety for

their wider communication needs, then the minority language may be secure. Not

only do Asia and Africa provide many examples of the strong survival in such

situations of languages with relatively few speakers, there are even good

European cases. Luxembourgish, for example, shows no signs of being

threatened in its existence, despite its small number of speakers, and despite an

almost universal command of German, and very widespread competence in

French, among its adult speakers.15The reason Luxembourgish survives is that itis absolutely secure in family and community life, and is a symbol of group

identity. Its use is however clearly limited to certain spheres. It is a commonplace

that visitors to Luxembourg may imagine themselves at first to be in a French

speaking country, public signs usually being in that language.16 A visit to a

bookshop, however, can create the impression of being in a Germanspeaking

country, since books in that language clearly predominate. It is interesting that

although French is more visible in public, the population clearly uses much more

German in private reading; in bookshops books in French are mainly originals,

while translations from other languages are generally into German. Books in

Luxembourgish are mainly restricted to Luxembourg literature (there is a

thriving, though of course small, output in the language) and books for children.

Listening to conversations between Luxembourgers leaves no doubt that the

everyday spoken language is Luxembourgishconversations on everyday matters

are almost exclusively in that language. What is particulary significant about the

Luxembourg case is that the local language, despite its small number of speakers,

seems not at all threatened in its existence; the fact that its use is limited to

certain spheres of life does not seem to pose any kind of threat (for detail on the

linguistic situation in Luxembourg see Newton, 1987).

The Luxembourg situation conflicts starkly with the perception of many

proponents of minority languages, who suppose that their language will die

unless it, in effect, becomes a national language, used in all spheres. I want to

make it absolutely clear at this point that I fully support the preservation of

languages; I believe the loss of a language represents a loss of a unique facet of

experience, an irreparable impoverishment. What I am questioning, however, is

the belief that in order to survive a language must achieve a status comparable


41to that of a national language, with use in absolutely as many spheres of life as

possible. A good case is Welsh, where in recent decades there has been great

progress in establishing Welsh as a language of the media and of education (see

Baker, 1985: 4164, 12250). The loss of the language does seem currently to have

stabilized, but I would argue that this is due to a strengthening of itscontribution to group identity, and to the changing social profile of its speakers;

it is now used by many of relatively secure socioeconomic status who are

absolutely fluent in English and therefore can afford the luxury (so to speak) of

using Welsh for certain purposes without the fear that lack of facility in standard

English will hamper their economic prospects. While the expansion of Welsh

into many national spheres may possibly have improved its position, there is

little unambiguous evidence for this. The national use of Welsh has, on the other

hand, some clear disadvantages: it is expensive, and it is divisive, in that it

alienates those Welsh people who do not speak the language. These

disadvantages might be worth tolerating if the policy were a feasible one, but it issimply not fully workable. Local authorities have, for example, not been able to

recruit Welshspeaking staff to sufficient levels, and teaching is not available in

the language at all levels; in many academic disciplines there is little or no tuition

available in Welsh at university level, for instance. More seriously, this failure of

the policy can produce a general sense of failure in protagonists of the language,

and could even weaken its use in the everyday interpersonal sphere if people

assume a fatalistic attitude in view of the failures at national level (see Price, 1984:

1267). Conversely, successes at national level will not necessarily prevent

language loss, if the language is not strongly valued at everyday community level.

Irish has been the first national language of the Republic of Ireland and its

predecessor the Irish Free State, and it has been compulsory in schools and for

civil service appointments since the founding of the Free State in 1926, but this

has not stemmed its decline since it had already previously lost its significance as

an essential element of Irish identity (see Ranelagh, 1994: 1189).17

In contrast to Irish, some of the most viable small languages have very low

official status, simply being labelled as dialects of a major language. A good case

is Swiss German, considered to be merely German dialects by many, but

absolutely secure in most spheres of GermanSwiss life (see Russ, 1987). It could

of course be argued that languages or dialects clearly related to the major

language are in a stronger position since it is easier for their speakers to learn the

major language; there might be less pressure for their eradication since they are

less likely to interfere with fluency in the major language.18 There seems in fact

to be little evidence for this argument; varieties with dialect status have been

just as resolutely opposed in centralised nationstates as have clear minority

languages, their influences on the varieties of the national or standard language


42used by their speakers just as highly stigmatised. As they are less identifiably

different from the major language they may even be more vulnerable. While

speakers of a clearly foreign language may have more difficulty learning the

major language in adult life there is no difference in proficiency traceable to

distance between varieties if the major language is learnt from childhood; nativespeakers of Welsh who have learnt English from childhood seem to be just as

fluent in standard English as SwissGerman speakers are in standard German.

19 In conclusion, it seems that the viability of small languages depends

overwhelmingly on their importance for a communitys sense of its identity;

whether or not they have official status, whether or not they are used in every

possible sphere of life, how remote they are from a rival major language or major

variety, whether or not they have the status of independent languages or whether

they are considered dialects of a major languageall of these considerations are

much less significant.

It seems to me that the functions of language as a medium ofcommunication, in the narrow sense, is often confused with its function in

maintaining or creating group identity. There is often a poor acceptance in

Europe that a language which is used only in certain spheres may be perfectly

viable, may run no risk of dying out, if it has an important function in group

identity.

CONCLUSIONS

Human beings often have complex, multiple identitieslocal, regional,

familial, religious, ethnic; the dominant nationalist ideology dictates that onekind of identity, national identity (often closely linked to language) be paramount.

I hope to have shown that this can have strongly negative consequences. Just as

an escape from the primacy of national identity can allow other identities to

flourish, so an escape from the tyranny of the uniform national standard

language can strengthen threatened dialects and small languages.

However, just as there is no future in (say) Slovenia trying to emulate all the

characteristics of a large wellestablished nationstate (with a nuclear force de

frappe perhaps), so is the attempt to promote the use of every language in every

sphere of life unlikely to succeed, and may contribute little to the survival of

small languages.

In parallel to their complex, multiple identities individuals also display

complex and multifaceted language use; we command different registers and

dialects, different languages. The modern European insistence that we must have

a paramount loyalty to one national language, parallel to our political loyalty to

the nation, has stifled minority languages and dialects and restricted the linguis


43tic experience of many, particularly of majoritylanguage speakers, especially

standardlanguage speakers. I would plead for a recognition that complex

multiple linguistic identities are a reality for many people, and pose no kind of

threat or problem; they are an often untapped source of interest, excitement and

diversity in our potential experience of the world.

NOTES

1 This contribution arises to a considerable extent from discussions and correspondence with

contributors to a volume of papers, entitled Language and National Identity in Europe, which I am

currently editing. I am much indebted to these scholars, whose input has been invaluable. They are:

Jan Ivar Bjrnflaten (University of Oslo), Catherine Carmichael (Middlesex University), Robert B. Howell

(University of Wisconsin), Anne Judge (University of Surrey), Clare Mar Molinero (University of

Southampton), Carlo Ruzza (University of Essex), Barbara TrnquistPlewa (University of Lund), Peter

Trudgill (University of Lausanne), and Lars Vikr (University of Oslo). I am also indebted to Greville

Corbett and Margaret Rogers for advice on specific points.

2For the moment I am not clearly distinguishing between the concepts nation and nationstate'. I

return to the distinction later.

3But for a perspective which revalues the premodern roots of modern nations see Parekh (1985).

4 For a view which separates states from nations rather more clearly than most, see again Parekh

(1985).

5It does nevertheless fall into a historical pattern of Britain standing up to first papist (French and

Spanish), then Napoleonic, then German tyranny, which is excellently chronicled in Linda Colleys

recent book Britons (Colley, 1992). The contemporary rightwing Eurosceptic vision that this

resistance should be continued by obstructing integration within the European Union or even by

withdrawal, belongs perhaps to the realms of pure fantasy.

6Interestingly, however, until modern times the German terms for speakers of the languages, Welsche

Romance speakers', Deutsche Germanic speakers', and Wenden slavonic speakers', referred in each

case to speakers of what would today be described as groups of related languages rather than single

languages.

7 It must be remembered that, in many parts of the world, religious differences still have a much

greater significance than linguistic or ethnic differences. The interplay of various factors is, of course,

often so complex that it is difficult to determine whether the difference between two groups of people

is primarily linguistic, or religious, or ethnic, or national.

8It actually, in practice, turns out to be very difficult to use the criterion of mutual comprehensibilityin linguistic research; whether or not individuals understand each other is heavily dependent on

previous experiences and a willingness to understand, and it relates only in part to observable

differences and similarities in their speech (see Karam, 1979:11537).

9 There is a continuing lack of clarity among scholars of Italian as to how many of the Romance

dialects used in Italy (and in other Italianspeaking areas, principally Italianspeaking Switzerland)

should be given the label Italian'; is it all of them, does


44it exclude Friulian, or both Friulian and Sardinian, or does it only include the standard language and

Tuscan dialects, or only the standard language (see Lepschy, 1994:9)?

10 For example a single, Scandinavian language used in Norway, Sweden and Denmark would have

over twice the number of speakers that the largest single language Swedish has, would present no

serious comprehension problems to its users (it would be much less internally diverse than German,

for example), and might retard the process by which English is increasingly used within Scandinavia,

in certain technical and academic spheres, and in communication with virtually all non

Scandinavians.

11SerboCroatian is certainly not the only language of Yugoslavia; there are considerable numbers of

speakers of the related languages Slovene and Macedonian (the latter often considered by Bulgarians

to be a Bulgarian dialect), as well as of Albanian, Hungarian, German, and others (see Browne,

1993:306).

12Does any language, with the possible exception of English in parts of Englishspeaking countries

(say in ethnically homogeneous parts of England), really occupy such a monopoly position any more?

Even visitors to China report an intense desire to learn English for social and economic reasons on

the part of speakers of Mandarin Chinese, the human language with the largest number of native

speakers.

13Although it is not fully politically independent, Qubec almost certainly qualifies for the status of a

nation.

14I am grateful to S.I. Ali for a wealth of information on language use past and present in South Asia.

15 Germanspeaking linguists tend to classify Luxembourgish as a dialect of German, but this is

essentially a terminological question, and irrelevant to the present discussion. It has its own distinct

and codified written form and is only readily comprehensible to German speakers from areas near the

border who know a local Moselle Franconian dialect. There is a view in Luxembourg that the language

is threatened, because it is absorbing loans from German. The decreasing use of a language, and the

borrowing of vocabulary by one language from another are entirely different questions which are,

however, often popularly confused. I do not propose to address the problem of loan vocabulary here,

but to concentrate on the reduction in the number of speakers of a language. In my view the

borrowing of vocabulary from other languages does not constitute a threat to the existence of a

language, provided it does not happen so rapidly that communication between generations is

impaired, and provided it is not accompanied by such a convergence towards the grammatical

structure of the lending language that speakers can be said, in a real sense, to have switched their

language use and to have adopted the dominant language.

16There is now a growing number of signs in Luxembourgish, but they still constitute a minority and

seem often to be exhortative, not essential. A common one, for example, urges citizens to keep their

city clean.

17 Its decline may have currently been retarded or even halted for reasons parallel to the current

slowing of the decline of Welsh and not closely connected with its official status.

18When a variety is clearly related to another major variety its status as a dialect of the major variety is

generally, by and large, a social and political matter; linguistic factors such as mutual intelligibility are

much less important, and intelligibility is in any case partly a function of social and political attitudes.


4519 For complex sociopolitical reasons it seems that SwissGerman speakers may be less fluent in

standard German than Welsh speakers are in standard English.

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Barbour - Language and National Identity in Europe