In:Contested Languages: The hidden multilingualism of Europe
Edited by Marco Tamburelli and Mauro Tosco
[Studies in World Language Problems 8] 2021
► pp. 41–56
Chapter 3Democracy
A threat to language diversity?
Published online: 21 January 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/wlp.8.03tos
https://doi.org/10.1075/wlp.8.03tos
Abstract
This chapter argues that democracy has both theoretical and practical implications that negatively
affect the maintenance of language (and cultural) diversity. Attention is paid to the levelling effects of welfare
policies, which tend to depress the speakers’ interest in language preservation and transmission and which typically
negatively affect the quality of revitalisation programmes. The presentation discusses the practical and theoretical
problems posed by possible ways out such as a voluntary, self-imposed “boundary maintenance” policy (Fishman 1991) and “the creation of linguistic fortresses or ghettoes” (Laponce 1984) in order to protect a minority language. Further, it argues
that the democratic state – in itself just the last instalment of the nation-state – may have a special problem with
multilingualism, and that language diversity possibly fared better in past forms of government.
Article outline
- 1.The difficult life of the objects of the third kind
- 2.The unstoppable aggrandisement of government
- 3.Language and welfare
- 4.Neutering diversity
- 5.Language-preserving boundaries?
- 6.Conclusions
Notes References
References (25)
Austin, Peter. 2014. And they still speak Diyari: the life history of an endangered language. Ethnorêma 10: 1–17.
Certeau, Michel de, Dominique Julia, and Jacques Revel. 2002 [1975]. Une politique de la langue. La Révolution française et les patois: l’enquête Grégoire. Paris: Gallimard.
Church, Jeffrey and Ian King. 1993. Bilingualism and network externalities. Canadian Journal of Economics 26 (2): 337–345.
Fishman, Joshua A. 1988. Language spread and language policy for endangered languages. In Language spread and language policy: issues, implications, and case studies. Proceedings of the Georgetwon
University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics, ed. by Peter H. Lowenberg, 1–15. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
Grin, François. 1999. Market forces, language spread and linguistic diversity. In Language, a right and a resource: approaching linguistic human rights, ed. by Miklós Kontra, Robert Phillipson, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, and Tibor Várady, 169–186. Budapest: Central European University Press.
Grin, François and François Vaillancourt. 2000. On the financing of language policies and distributive justice. In Rights to language: equity, power, and education. Celebrating the 60th birthday of Tove
Skutmabb-Kangas, ed. by Robert Phillipson, 102–110. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Hülsmann, Jörg Guido. 1997. Political unification: a generalised progression theorem. Journal of Libertarian Studies 13 (1): 81–96.
Laitin, David D. 1977. Politics, language, and thought. The Somali experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Laponce, Jean A. 1984. Langue et territoire. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval (English translation: Languages and their territories
. Toronto: University of Toronto Press: 1987).
Mises, Ludwig von. 1996. Human action: a treatise on economics. San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes [original: New Haven, Conn.: 1949].
Nettle, Daniel and Suzanne Romaine. 2000. Vanishing voices: the extinction of the world’s languages. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rannut, Mart. 1999. The Common language problem. In Language, a right and a resource: Approaching linguistic human rights, ed. by Miklós Kontra, Robert Phillipson, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, and Tibor Várady: 99–114. Budapest: Central European University Press.
Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove. 1999. Linguistic diversity, human rights and the “free” market. In Language, a right and a resource: approaching linguistic human rights, ed. by Miklós Kontra, Robert Phillipson, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, and Tibor Várady, 187–222. Budapest: Central European University Press.
Tosco, Mauro. 2011a. The nation-state and language diversity. In Multilingualism. Language, power, and knowledge, ed. by Paolo Valore, 87–101. Pisa: Edistudio.
Tosco, Mauro. 2011b. On language, government, and the reduction of linguistic diversity. In “He bitaney lagge.” Studies on language and African linguistics in honour of Marcello Lamberti, ed. by Luca Busetto, Roberto Sottile, Livia Tonelli and Mauro Tosco, 211–230. Milano: Qu.A.S.A.R.
Tosco, Mauro. 2014. The tension between language diversity and state building in Africa. Incontri Linguistici 37: 169–180.
. 2015. Arabic, and a few good words about empires (but not all of them). In Language empires in comparative perspective, ed. by Christel Stolz, 17–39. Berlin: de Gruyter.
. 2016. Language diversity, development, and the state. In Lingua, politica, cultura: serta gratulatoria in honorem Renato Corsetti, ed. by Federico Gobbo, 40–46. New York: Mondial Books.