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1 Introduction
Since the 2000s, questions about how political communities manage linguistic pluralism and multilingualism have become a major concern across Europe, as globalisation brought new demands and conflicts arose to accommodate old and new linguistic disputes. In this sense, linguistic diversity not only constitutes a salient dimension of the new social and political order that shapes complex cultural diversity or ‘super-diversity’ (Vertovec 2007), but it also represents a main distinction of present-day European polities. Many countries confront complex linguistic situations that have emerged or have become more salient in recent years, and which have been intensified by the context of growing globalisation and large migratory fluctuations (Kraus 2012). Different types of linguistic conflict emerge from such situations, based on particular configurations and problems in each case, that are not possible to disentangle using a simple interpretative framework (Nelde 1998).
This book aims to contribute to a better understanding of such linguistic conflicts by adopting a perspective that considers language as a key component of citizenship rights. From this perspective, and also by considering the point of view of collective decision-making, we plan to scrutinise how linguistic conflicts emerge in different circumstances, involving not only identity disputes but also concerns about the instrumental use of language across multiple levels and purposes. In doing this, we identify what we will call ‘linguistic claims’: claims about the social use of particular languages in regulated linguistic environments. In other words, we identify demands made by citizens, individually or collectively, either directly or by their representatives, based on their perceived language rights and, secondarily, based on the legal rights that presumably support their claims, either country-based or European-wide.
This is not a book aimed at developing a normative analysis of linguistic policies, nor is it focused on the discussion about which values inspire linguistic policy-making and the types of confrontation emerging as a result of competing values and principles among the main actors involved in the policy area. To the contrary, here we aim to unravel the conditions involved in the processes that generate and articulate linguistic claims and how they lead to the emergence of linguistic political conflicts of both a different nature and a different intensity. Whether linguistic claims derive from the instrumental communication dimension, or whether they are more a result of expressive needs related to some symbolic and identity sensitivities, is no doubt important, and we take such reasons into account, but this is not the focus of our analysis.
The relevance of the instrumental and expressive dimensions is very important for understanding how linguistic policies are legitimised and how authoritative instruments are implemented, as many interesting contributions have illustrated (e.g. Woolard 2016). However, both dimensions are extremely entrenched in most linguistic conflicts, and to disentangle them is quite arduous, and it does not seem to be a reasonable research strategy for making sense of how linguistic conflicts come about, blow up and get resolved. In this sense, we assume that all languages serve as a medium of social integration and of the expression of collective identities, as well as being instrumental communication vehicles for making interpersonal interactions possible in multiple facets. In this sense, it follows that language acquisition and language use are related to citizens’ involvement in our societies and in their political communities. It is not a surprise that claims about language rights would emerge when there is more than a single language within a society, and particularly when they are territorially entrenched. Actually, in a context of overlapping linguistic communities in a territory – each of them including all citizens with functional abilities to communicate in a specific language – both dimensions are expected to be present to some extent.
We also argue that making language policy involves a regulatory endeavour in the sense that it is a key component of citizenship rights, in a double sense. First, linguistic rights largely enable the exercising of other citizenship rights due to the ubiquity of language in all dimensions of collective life. This has policy implications for different areas, which require the establishment and management of language rules, both formal and informal ones, particularly to articulate those cases in which multiple language communities coexist. Second, it is not an irrelevant fact that the regulatory governance of language rights can strongly contribute to facilitate the configuration of a shared sense of community, overcoming social cohesion problems that may emerge when it is not possible for all community members to speak the same language fluently. Whereas this may appear as a trivial issue in single-language societies, in multilingual ones it becomes a matter of utmost importance. Citizenship rules are required to respect and integrate linguistic rights to facilitate the governance of language usages and practices in any community. Yet citizenship is a multi-layered phenomenon (Kymlicka 1995; Yuval-Davis 1999) which clearly exceeds the physical limits of the nation-state and has relevant developments at the sub-national level, as it is the case of the European multilevel political community.
We emphasise such an analytical approach and thus avoid discussing normative approaches to linguistic arrangements. Also, the book avoids assessing the linguistic qualities of both existing provisions in particular territories and those requested by some of the actors involved in defending their linguistic claims. We concentrate on identifying and characterising linguistic claims, developing a specific method of analysis and discussing how they become key elements of political language conflicts when specific conditions occur. The research presented here, based on several sub-national cases in Spain, applies this methodological perspective. We identified several episodes of political linguistic tensions that occurred in four territories, each one with a different linguistic configuration, during the period 2005–2015, and we carefully documented the linguistic claims present in each episode. Some of these episodes resulted in important political conflicts, but not all of them. In our analysis, we also compared these episodes and discussed which contextual conditions were relevant for each case to produce particular effects on the policy process, including agenda-inclusion and politically related tensions.
This book is an explorative endeavour that aims to better understand the contours of policy change and policy continuity in the linguistic policy domains. It concentrates on examining Spain as a specific case of linguistic complexity within Europe, as well as the diverse multilingual configurations present in different parts of the country. As Sue Wright indicates in her book Language Policy and Language Planning, ‘Spain provides (…) extremely illuminating case studies which reveal much of the enactment of language rights is problematic’ (2004: 216). Consequently, analysing the Spanish case can be of relevance not only to understand the debates and needs of different actors and communities at the national level, but also to think of potential linguistic policies for an increasingly mobile European Union (EU) population. We plan to formulate more general, European-wide suggestions from this analysis, in particular for those cases where there is not a clear territorial separation related to the use of different languages. The book includes a chapter on EU language policy that supports this discussion and which allows readers to grasp the capabilities of EU policy language instruments for complex cases such as the Spanish one, while also providing an interpretative framework for other cases.
We first present an analytic approach to the study of political linguistic conflicts, in Chapter 2, based on the identification of linguistic claims as the basic component that triggers the appearance of such potential conflicts. We assume that contacts between different language groups create turbulence in the processes of communication within societies and political communities that might develop into political conflicts, although not necessarily in all cases. The existence of linguistic claims is a necessary component for the emergence of such conflicts, and we want to understand how these claims are formed, strengthened and introduced into the political arena. No doubt, understanding the determinants of political linguistic conflicts fully would require much more comparative and analytical work, which is beyond the purpose of this book. Overall, exploring and assessing linguistic conflicts today requires considering the multiple levels – sub-national, national and supranational – at which these can be challenged, devised and enacted by a variety of state and non-state actors.
As we perform the analysis of political linguistic conflicts in recent decades in this Spanish case study, we need to include some contextual information about the current linguistic diversity in Spain and about the linguistic policies implemented in the country by different levels of government since Spain’s return to democracy in the 1970s. Chapter 3 is devoted to this purpose: to assess whether and how current Spanish politics has managed to accommodate the various linguistic communities, which in some cases overlap with the formal limits of the sub-national units – i.e. the autonomous communities (regional governments) – whereas in others they do not overlap at all. More specifically, we identify some of the main political dilemmas regarding linguistic policies in Spain, this being a rather complex and subtle policy area in which multiple layers of national identity, social conflict and value formation converge.
This chapter provides a brief overview of language policies in Spain, which is basically in its post-democratisation phase. We show how, after the repressive policies implemented during Franco’s dictatorship (1939–1975), when Castilian was enforced as the only national language, the use of regional languages expanded beyond home and family circles, and regional governments in bilingual regions introduced linguistic policies to protect and promote those regional languages. Additionally, this chapter sets the formal, institutional context established in the 1978 Spanish Constitution and the Statutes of Autonomy. Spain comprises 17 autonomous communities. Six of these communities currently have two official languages: their own regional language – Basque, Catalan or Galician – and Castilian. These include the Basque Country and Navarre, Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and the Valencian Community, and, finally, Galicia. Taken as a whole, about 40% of the Spanish population lives in territories with their own language and law-making competencies in this policy area. Thus, we describe the Spanish multilingual context as a hierarchical structure made up of a monolingual centre and a bilingual periphery of regions with their ‘own language’ that co-exists with Castilian, while also highlighting that linguistic policies as formulated by the regions remain a highly contested subject.
The fourth chapter first introduces the research methodology used for the study and then discusses how it has guided our data collection and analysis. To capture Spain’s linguistic diversity, while at the same time keeping our research within manageable boundaries, our book focuses on four autonomous communities, which include Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, the Basque Country and Galicia. We explore three areas that have traditionally constituted the main targets of linguistic normalisation policies: education, the media and public spaces. Within these areas, we then identified situations or episodes of rising claims concerning linguistic policies over the last decade. The conflicts included in the cases refer to proposed and attempted changes to the existing linguistic model, which involve, among other features, a redefinition of the status of co-official languages in the institutional domain. Based on our collection and analysis of current literature, newspapers, periodicals and other media, we examine the following dimensions in each of the cases under study: the scope, the actors involved in the conflicts, the addressees (i.e. the people the claimants want to reach) and the channel and political levels involved.
Thus, we find that the field of education involves a complex array of demands and claims and an intense degree of legal proceedings and social mobilisation. Education can be depicted as a major area of conflict, and a particularly sensitive subject in the Spanish periphery, where competing positions in favour of or against the promotion of Castilian and the co-official language as languages of instruction are articulated by a wide range of actors, arguments and channels. Next, we present and discuss conflicts generated by attempts to promote changes in the linguistic model of audio-visual media and public space signalisation, either by regional governments or by societal actors.
The fifth chapter introduces a comparative analysis that assesses similarities and differences between the cases examined. It also discusses which conditions are relevant for triggering political conflicts and, in some particular cases, escalating them. We find that even if non-education claims have high social visibility – in terms of language use in public audio-visual media, public spaces (stores, traffic and street signalisation) and in media (television) – in practice, when compared to the challenges in the field of education, claims are less capable of producing linguistic political conflicts. Our comparative analysis provides a discussion of the complex dynamics caused by the multi-layered structure of citizenship, considering the political and social differences across territories as well.
In the sixth chapter, we focus mainly on the development of a new framework of citizen rights at the European level and at the European scale. We show that the European institutions hold, or have held, a dual role in relation to linguistic minorities, and how social and political actors exploit the European level to claim linguistic rights. We include this chapter to clarify the roles of both the EU and the Council of Europe (CoE) in framing the political opportunity structure of Spanish claimants on linguistic issues. In the absence of a well-defined national policy framework on linguistic rights in Spain, the European-level policy introduces a significant reference for the linguistic conflicts emerging in Spanish bilingual territories. We undertake this analysis from a quasi-longitudinal perspective, by comparing the normative role of the EU in 2002/2004 with that in 2015/2016, and include a reflection on the extent to which the EU contributes, or has contributed, as a referee for linguistic conflicts, or as a policy-maker on linguistic issues in its own right.
The concluding chapter lays out a synthesis and re-examination of the main argument and presents an assessment of how democratic Spain has managed to deal with this range of linguistic conflicts across policy areas and across sub-national units, although not without significant political conflict. Regulation of the diversity of languages spoken in Spain beyond their native territories is still pending for the whole country. Based both on the empirical insig...
