The Mask of Piety and the Faltering Polity

Abstract

One dominant theme of this volume has been the relationship between protection, promotion and regulation. Another has been the manner in which official language strategies and frameworks have been managed in the delicate transition process either from a post-welfare State to a neo-liberal State as in the UK and Ireland or from an authoritarian State to a more liberal State as in Spain. I have argued that there is a tendency for the public rhetoric regarding the promotion of official languages to be hidden behind a Mask of Piety. The everyday reality is quite different from the strategies, rights and programmes trumpeted by officialdom. In part this divergence reflects a lack of commitment to the full implementation of policy and in part it reflects a broader structural approach wherein selected hegemonic forces have been simultaneously hollowing out the state and the conceptions of citizenship. This has been done in such a manner that governments give the impression that by transferring ownership of the processes of sociocultural reproduction they have increased the level of community control and accountability over language, public service delivery systems and educational matters. However, no amount of increased sponsorship, partnership development and greater recognition of the lived diversity of multicultural pluralism can hide the fact that, for the most part, the target groups under discussion feel that they are facing increasing threats to their survival, integrity and treatment as coequal official language speakers.