Abstract
The theme of minority languages includes the idea of functional asymmetry, often present in relationships between linguistic expressions, although such contact must be considered broadly by including “languages” as well as language variants at any level or, in a more common way, as “lects”. So, we first refer here to “languages”, being linguistic expressions that can be distinguished from that mass of lects as emergent and institutionally recognized forms.
This paper, after reminding the meanings of terms such as “minority”, “minoritized”, as well as language minoritization and, conversely, linguistic revitalization processes. Quantitative in demolinguistic terms or qualitative in terms of status, which characterizes the primary meaning of “minority language” is combined with the difficulties of the implementation in its favor of language planning measures. As a result, the minority language has become a complex object that remains fundamentally sociolinguistic, initially as well as on arrival, but which requires a multidisciplinary approach that is as coordinated as possible with those of law, political sciences, psycholinguistics and didactics.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
“Language contact and bilingualism will be considered here in the broadest sense, without qualification as to the degree of difference between the two languages. For the purposes of the present study, it is immaterial whether the two systems are “languages”, “dialects of the same language”, or “varieties of the same dialect”” (Weinreich 1953: 1).
- 2.
“It [the term “glottopolitics”] refers to the various approaches that a society make take with regard to actions on language, be it aware of the same or otherwise: also the language itself, when society legislates on the reciprocal statuses of French and minority languages, for example; speech, when it represses such use by this or that person; discourse, when schools use the production of such texts as material for examinations: Glottopolitics is needed in order to encompass all the facts of language where social activities take the form of politics.”, translated into English of: “Il [le terme “glottopolitique”] désigne les diverses approches qu’une société a de l’action sur le langage, qu’elle en soit ou non consciente: aussi bien la langue, quand la société légifère sur les statuts réciproques du français et des langues minoritaires par exemple; la parole, quand elle réprime tel emploi chez tel ou tel; le discours, quand l’école fait de la production de tel type de texte matière à examen: Glottopolitique est nécessaire pour englober tous les faits de langage où l’action de la société revêt la forme du politique” (Guespin and Marcellesi 1986: 5).
- 3.
“The term “minority” refers to situations in which either the language is spoken by persons who are not concentrated on a specific part of the territory of a State or it is spoken by a group of persons, which, though concentrated on part of the territory of the State, is numerically smaller than the population in this region which speaks the majority language of the State” (Council of Europe 1993: §18).
- 4.
“Both adjectives therefore refer to factual criteria and not to legal notions and in any case relate to the situation in a given State (for instance, a minority language in one State may be a majority language in another State)” (Council of Europe 1993: §18).
- 5.
“This Declaration also considers nomad peoples within their areas of migration and peoples established in geographically dispersed locations as language communities in their own historical territory” (http://www.culturalrights.net/descargas/drets_culturals389.pdf, viewed on 21/12/2018).
- 6.
Website for the Charter: https://www.coe.int/en/web/european-charter-regional-or-minority-languages (viewed on 30/11/2017); link to the text of the Charter: https://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list/-/conventions/treaty/148 (viewed on 30/11/2017).
- 7.
“Article 3 – Practical arrangements:
1 Each Contracting State shall specify in its instrument of ratification, acceptance or approval, each regional or minority language, or official language which is less widely used on the whole or part of its territory, to which the paragraphs chosen in accordance with Article 2, paragraph 2, shall apply”.
- 8.
“[A] national language which has the status of an official language of the State, either on the whole or on part of its territory […] because it is used by a group numerically smaller than the population using the other official language(s)” (Council of Europe 1993: §51).
- 9.
Except in the Åland Islands, where special territoriality rules apply, with Finnish as the only official language.
- 10.
http://www.idescat.cat/economia/inec?tc=3&id=da01 (viewed on 25/10/2016).
- 11.
The language of identity, according to terminology developed in recent years in Catalonia, is not necessarily the same as the first language (llengua inicial). It corresponds to a psycholinguistic concept, and is the language with which a person identifies culturally even if they are not necessarily the most fluent in that language; such a statement implies current and future attitudes of active loyalty on the part of a language speaker who describes a language in those terms.
- 12.
The criteria selected for such a ranking are as follows: the number of speakers, entropy, vehicularity, official langue, translation source language, translation target language, international literary prizes, Wikipedia articles, human development index, fertility rates, internet penetration rates (http://wikilf.culture.fr/barometre2012/) (viewed on 25/10/2016).
- 13.
Occitan has had to free itself of its exo- and endoperceptions as a “patois” or a poorly identified collection of patois, despite the prestige it had acquired particularly in the Middle Ages and in the nineteenth century. More recently, in a specific configuration as difficult as it is complex, Franco-Provençal also faces issues of identification and categorization with regard to the same glossonym of “patois” with which it is widely labelled.
- 14.
For example, in this respect, in the sixteenth century, Occitan literature contributed to the emergence of a noticeable awareness of that reality, particularly with the emblematic figure of the Gascon author Pey de Garros (1581–1583).
- 15.
For a more precise idea of the variety of concepts used to categorize minority languages in Europe, please refer to the CLME (Catégorisation des langues minoritaires en Europe) database, which may be accessed via the Maison des sciences de l’homme d’Aquitaine (MSHA) portal https://www.msha.fr, or directly by link https://www.msha.fr/baseclme (viewed on 30/10/2017).
- 16.
Typologie des langues minoritaires historiques en Europe research programme (Région Aquitaine – Direction de la Recherche / Maison des sciences de l’homme d’Aquitaine, 2015–2018).
References
Amado-Borthayre, L. (2012). La construction collective de l’action publique en faveur de la langue dans un cadre transfrontalier au Pays basque et en Catalogne. Thèse de doctorat en Sciences politiques. Bordeaux: Université de Bordeaux, Sciences Po Bordeaux. http://www.theses.fr/2012BOR40006. Viewed on 25 Oct 2016.
Aracil, L. V. (1965). Conflit linguistique et normalisation linguistique dans l’Europe nouvelle (pp. 10–12). Nancy: CEU; published in Catalan in Aracil, L. V. 1982. Papers de sociolingüística, 31–34. Barcelona: La Magrana.
Bavoux, C. (1997). Lecte. In M.-L. Moreau (Ed.), Sociolinguistique. Concepts de base. Sprimont: Mardaga.
Bourdieu, P. (1982). Ce que parler veut dire. L’économie des échanges linguistiques. Paris: Fayard.
Council of Europe. (1993). Explanatory report to the European charter for regional or minority languages, convention open for signature on 5 November 1992. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing. https://rm.coe.int/16800cb5e5. Viewed on 25 Nov 2017.
Fishman, J. (1991). Reversing language shift. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Guespin, L., & Marcellesi, J.-B. (1986). Pour la glottopolitique. Langages, 83, 5–34.
Haugen, E. (1987). Language planning. In U. Ammon, N. Dittmar, & K. J. Mattheier (Eds.), Sociolinguistics. An international handbook of the science of language and society [Soziolinguistik. Ein internationales Handbuch zur Wissenschaft von Sprache und Gesellschaft] (pp. 626–637). Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Léonard, J. L., & Djordjević Léonard, K. (2014). Un terrain vepse. Études finno-ougriennes, 46. http://efo.revues.org/4376. Viewed on 25 Oct 2016.
Marsh, D., & Rhodes, R. A. W. (1992). Policy communities and issue networks. Beyond typology. In D. Marsh & D. A. W. Rhodes (Eds.), Policy networks in British government (pp. 249–268). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Trimaille, C., & Matthey, M. (2013). Catégorisations. In J. Simonin & S. Wharton (Eds.), Sociolinguistique du contact. Dictionnaire des termes et concepts (pp. 95–122). Lyon: ENS Éditions.
Vallverdú, F. (1977). La normalització del català modern. Treballs de sociolingüística catalana, 1, 147–155.
Viaut, A. (1996). Normalisation linguistique et patrimoine. In A. Viaut (Ed.), Langues d’Aquitaine: dynamiques institutionnelles et patrimoine linguistique (pp. 41–70). Bordeaux: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme d’Aquitaine.
Viaut, A. (2002). Apport et réception française de la Charte européenne des langues régionales ou minoritaires: approche sociolinguistique. Revue d’études comparatives Est-Ouest, 33(1), 9–48. http://www.persee.fr/doc/receo_0338-0599_2002_num_33_1_3131. Viewed on 25 Oct 2016.
Viaut, A. (2005). La représentation du standard dans les langues minorées à travers ses fonctions intégrative et séparatrice. In Entgrenzungen für eine Soziologie der Kommunikation (Festschrift für Georg Kremnitz zum 60. Geburtstag) (pp. 88–103). Wien: Praesens.
Viaut, A. (2010). La notion de besoin linguistique et les langues minoritaires. In D. Darbon, R. Otayek, & P. Sadran (Eds.), Altérité et identité, itinéraires croisés. Mélanges offerts à Christian Coulon (pp. 401–416). Bruxelles: Bruylant.
Viaut, A. (2012). Marge linguistique territoriale et langues minoritaires. Lengas revue de sociolinguistique, 71, 9–28.
Weinreich, U. (1968 [1953]). Languages in contact: Findings and problems. The Hague/Paris: Mouton
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Viaut, A. (2019). Reflection on a Multidisciplinary Approach to “Minority Languages” as a Linguistic Object in Europe. In: Moskvitcheva, S., Viaut, A. (eds) Minority Languages from Western Europe and Russia. Language Policy, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24340-1_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24340-1_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-24339-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-24340-1
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)