Minority Language Promotion, Protection and Regulation

The Mask of Piety

C. Williams

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137000835
• eBook ISBN: 9781137000842
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Historical & Comparative Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This is an analysis of the promises and contradictions surrounding contemporary minority language policy. It draws on theoretical and real-world perspectives and interviews with key players within European institutions together with field work undertaken principally in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Basque Country, Catalonia and Canada.

1

The Mask of Piety

In this volume I offer an extended treatment of the official language strategies and minority language policies as a diagnostic indicator of the vitality and standing of selected international cases drawn from the European Union (EU) and Canada. The analysis is concerned with the relationship between the promotion, protection and regulation of official minority languages.¹ Perhaps ‘minoritized’ languages would be closer to the truth for that represents an historical process, whereas Catalan speakers today would object to my describing them as speaking a minority language when there are more Catalan speakers than Swedes, Danes or Norwegians. I argue that for the past 40 years or so several polities and sub-state regions have witnessed a sustained attempt to navigate selected languages into the mainstream of public policy, especially within the fields of statutory education, local government, the media and community affairs. Having gained an element of success, through promotion and planning, many of the language regimes under review have opted for an increase in the legislative underpinning which gives purchase to the rights and expectations of identifiable groups and citizens. This empowering legislation reflects a recognition that the state should construct a supportive framework within which target official languages can be used as a matter of choice in the provision of public services, in the courts of law and in the realm of public administration as a language of work as well as of service delivery. In the more promising cases, promotion and protection are mutually reinforcing aspects of the same broad approach to language recognition, revitalization and restitution.

I argue that language rights have evolved through struggle but in part such rights may be delayed or abrogated because of the immaturity of the jurisdictional competence in several cases. Fundamentally, I want to ask whether language is seen as an integral part of human rights, and, if it is so acknowledged as being fundamentally important, how well activated in practice can this recognition be. My major concern is what happens on the ground, so to speak, at the neighbourhood clinic or hospital bedside, in the local government office or in dealings with bureaucracies and formal public administration. If the legislative turn has produced a plethora of language acts in recent years, I want to investigate whether these acts have been turned into action and then to what extent the public avails itself of these new opportunities to choose the language of service and public interaction.

In seeking to navigate into the mainstream by viewing minority language issues as a public good, the debate has moved on from a preoccupation with group rights and survival politics to a concern with individual rights within an overarching framework organized around the relationship between the individual citizen and the state.² The Mask of Piety refers to the new strategic and regulatory contexts within which language policy and language planning for minority languages are operationalized. Such contexts and regulation often result in a contraction of support systems for minority languages, which are interpreted differently in minority and majority discourses. Thus the marginalization of minority networks within the context of new legislation and public administration is a major determinant of the success or failure of language strategy. Consequently, throughout the international cases surveyed I argue there is abundant evidence to suggest that minority language policy is not only different in many respects from other policy fields, such as housing or employment, but also that even when there is strong legislative or even constitutional support for the language in question, it does not necessarily follow that the state is fully committed to the upholding of the ties that bind its lingusitically differentiated citizens. Parallel reforms in regional development planning, metropolitan and local authority amalgamation, educational curriculum development and broadcasting can each have a deleterious – and at times unintended – effect on the capacity of the minority to maintain its ethnolingusitic vitality.

The volume seeks to contribute to the understanding of how groups whose languages were eclipsed in nation-building have regained some political control and reintroduced the language of the group into education, local and national government, and the private and voluntary sectors. I argue that work on language policy needs to be embedded in analyses of historical context, political framework and social environment. I accept that in many cases I am dealing with top-down, elite-led management processes, but would argue that my approach to language policy derives from a real-world perspective as I have been heavily involved in the process of language planning in both European and Canadian contexts. In consequence, I acknowledge from the outset that this volume does not scrutinize directly several of the recent challenging avenues opened up by questions such as whether the new modes and modalities of language interaction in new electronic media platforms change the lingusitic landscape, change attitudes to language and nudge people to behave in different ways which are significant. Equally, I do not offer a complete account as to whether language planning is still a legitimate activity for groups seeking to revitalize their languages. Neither do I venture into the discussion of what counts as a language today in relation to contemporary Irish, Catalan, Basque or Welsh.³ The dissection of basic premises regarding what counts as language and communication today I leave to others. Rather, I have sought to adopt a contemporary comparative treatment which will allow me to track trends, suggest barriers and, above all, identify the dualistic approach of political authorities to the subject matter. For my basic premise is that government demonstrates inconsistency when it comes to official language policy. On the one hand it more clearly specifies what it wishes to achieve in society through consecutive declarations of official strategies, while simultaneously eroding or attacking the conditions of possibility by which such strategies are to be realized as social fact – a stance I describe as the Mask of Piety.

In order to explore the particulars of official language strategy we first need to sketch out the wider contextual changes which have overtaken the Western liberal state in recent decades, and I will do so in relation to the notion of the public domain and the decline of the welfare state. Both are intimately related and reflect not only domestic trends within individual states but also broader structural influences from the world system and global economic order.

Public policy as a domain of trust

Public policy and strategies occupy a central role within liberal democracies. Whether the focus is on education, health care, poverty or social justice, the aim of policy and the strategies adopted to implement such policy directives is undoubtedly the improvement of the condition of the individual and society. Consensus and controversy nearly always characterize the attempt to advance the discussion on the relationship between the individual and the state, especially when the state itself is ambiguous about the role it should play in maintaining or reforming the public realm.

In Northern Europe, particularly within the UK, conceptions of the ‘public’ can be traced to historical conceptions of equality before the law, the notion of common land and 17th century civic republicanism. The historian K. O. Morgan (2004) argues that

Its high noon came from non-Thatcherite ‘Victorian vales’, Gladstone’s vision of a ‘public conscience’, Joseph Chamberlain’s gospel of civic activism and the emerging ethos of detached expertise, stemming from the reformed civil service and extending into the voluntary sector. It reached its zenith after the Second World War. Attlee and Churchill embodied it, as did Macmillan and Callaghan. The public domain was far more than public ownership. It enshrined an ethic of service and altruism, a domain of trust. (Morgan, 2004, p. 7)

In the past three decades, there has been a sustained attack on the public realm, a conscious attempt to reduce the reach and significance of a model of good governance loosely described as the welfare state. Neo-liberal arguments in support of market forces, the insistence on public accountability, the role of regulation and of auditing, have all contributed to the development of a public culture which is being squeezed from above and below, from within and without. A general term for this process is ‘the hollowing out of the state’, where responsibility for key functions in social life may be transferred to agencies within society, often without the corresponding means and power to sustain previously high levels of support for the maintenance of, for example, those who are released back into the community having experienced sustained periods of ‘institutionalization’ as a result of mental illness, criminality, inability to cope or downright poverty. The implications of the broad process which advanced capitalism demands have been examined superbly by David Marquand, most specifically in his Decline of the Public (2004). The transition from a welfare state to a neo-liberal state has profound implications for democracy and equal opportunity for all. I would concur with one of Marquand’s central tenets that ‘a public domain protected from market-power is a pre-condition of democratic governance’ (Marquand, 2004, p. 132). The role of the state or the local state in nurturing fledgling reforms to the public sector is best evidenced historically within the UK since Victorian times and in the Spanish autonomous regions since the death of Franco. As a result of several forces, the protection formally offered to public services has been weakened and even reversed in the name of privatization, internal market competition and financial stringencies, not to say ‘disasters’, in several economies.⁴

Marquand argues that

The restless search for profit that drives capitalist economies (and gives them their amazing dynamism) is as fundamental to the market domain of the 21st century as it was 150 years ago; if the market imperialism it generates is allowed to annex one part of the public domain, it becomes more and more difficult to resist further annexations. Yet, as the radicals of 19th Britain understood, a public domain protected from market-power is a pre-condition of democratic governance. As Tawney pointed out, citizenship rights are, by definition, equal and market rewards, by definition, unequal. Unless the public domain of citizenship rights is ring-fenced from the market domination of buyers and sellers, the primordial democratic promise of equal citizenship will be negated. (Marquand, 2004, p. 132)

Within increasingly plural societies the notion of equal citizenship is rendered more difficult in respect of access to education, employment, freedom from discrimination and poverty. For minority language speakers in a pluralistic, majoritarian society this can have a double effect such that any interpretation of the current efficacy of official language strategies and their implementation would be enriched by a consideration of the macro-level impact of the reconfigured state, cross-cutting ideological undercurrents, the variable effects of a paradigm shift to multilingualism and the dynamic relationship between language promotion, protection and regulation.

As part of the reconfigured state, the emergence of localization, subsidiarity and devolved government has resulted in a decentralization of decision-making from central government to a more local level of ‘civil society’ and ‘representative government’. This has allowed minority language policy to be refashioned, less as a response to one or more interest group’s demands, and more as a public good, part of the mainstream of social and political decision-making. The potential for ‘depoliticizing’ often acrimonious language issues and reconceptualizing bilingual or multilingual programmes as an integral element of a public sector delivery system seems beguiling. However, this transition is not without its problems, for inherent in the treatment of minority languages as a public good is a great deal of reluctance as a result of both strong ideological resistance and the strictures of ‘neo-liberalism’ which places a strong emphasis on market forces, competition and citizen choice. Neo-liberal arguments aver that central and local government departments, which used to bear a large part of the cost of minority language education, popular culture, representation in the media etc., should transfer some of the resource allocation and generation responsibility back to the community and civil society. In consequence, several of the gains made in the past generation in relation to minority language service, television, communication and the media, for example, are being undermined or threatened by more cost-effective arguments calling for the removal of ‘artificial subsidies’ and the reduction of majoritarian support for minority interests in plural societies.

However, for their part, official language renewal and regeneration projects also run a great risk that they take the continued support from the central exchequer as a given, for they have come to believe their own hype and propaganda – that they are indeed now part of the mainstream of public life – and would like to convince themselves that their programmes, projects and policies are inherently secure within the reformed structures of governance. Consequently, they are obliged to play the game of responsible government and so they place too much emphasis on the policy and legal framework and too little attention to the social and communitarian networking trends which breathe life into any language group. Revitalization and regeneration are fine rallying calls, but are demanding of both public support and investment if they are to succeed; and if they do succeed, the public tends to think that such success would have happened in any case, as part of the warp and weave of social progress.

To guard against complacency and to manage expectations we need to take heed of developments in other fields. Thus, I would argue that there are significant lessons to be learned for language revitalization from the manner in which urban and regional regeneration has been tackled in the past generation. New spaces, old truths and problematic applications apply equally well to regional and urban planning as they do to language policy and planning – in fact more so, as they involve the physical reconstruction of the economy and landscape.

Across Europe several industrial and heavy manufacturing regions have been in steep decline. Policies designed to ameliorate the worst effects of deindustrialization and mass unemployment in regions such as Limburg, East Germany, South Wales and the Basque Country have been focused on job creation, infrastructure development, attracting capital investment and the like. The more successful policies have rebuilt the economic base of some of these lagging regions; the least successful have merely delayed the inevitable by attracting short-term investment through public grant subsidy. Once the subsidy and economic incentives run dry, the industry relocates from the north of Spain to Poland, or from South Wales to the Czech Republic, and in a global economy European investment and jobs are increasingly being transferred to cheap labour market economies such as Vietnam, Bangladesh and Thailand.⁵

Similarly, great industrial cities such as Liverpool, Glasgow, Bilbao and Dusseldorf have had to reinvent themselves. All such regeneration programmes tend to have a preoccupation with the physical and land-use base to their actions. Yet tackling population decline and urban squalor through physical acts of reconstruction does not necessarily succeed over the long term unless the social process of reinvention is tackled simultaneously. Thus, reconfiguration is not just a physical makeover. It requires a change of mentality, of spirit, and is as much involved with school restructuring, skills development and spirit of place as it is with job creation, motorway access routes and research and development (R & D). Were one to depend only on the effects of the demolition of post-war housing estates or the tearing down of 19th century industrial villages within metropolitan cores, then the problems would not disappear. As Marx and Engels remarked many years ago, such actions simply relocate the problems elsewhere as the system juggles with the fortunes of the poor. One cannot, of course, reduce the city to a single system, or track the response in toto to planned developments, but successful regeneration – as in Barcelona’s Poblenou district, devoted to culture, innovation and the creative industries at Can Ricart – is a happy conjunction of cultural and physical regeneration.⁶

Language regeneration is subject to the same discipline. It requires far more than the infrastructural framework of legislation and official policy support in order to succeed. It also requires creative and sustained promotional work to allow the language to breathe, to experiment, to attract new speakers from increasingly diverse backgrounds and motivations. The core message is that the conventional routine promotional work of language transmission should not be sacrificed on the altar of increased legislation and regulation. As with urban regeneration, the physical framework is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of success. It also requires social action to animate the system and this is best realized as a release of collective energy from within the language group itself, rather than the fulfilment of top-down language planning programmes.

Decentralization and governance

A further trend is the move from direct government to a more partnership-based system of governance, where co-management rather than a command-and-control form of responsible politics is practised. This newer type of behaviour has characterized Welsh and Scottish politics of late and has a more chequered history in Catalonia and the Basque Country. Government and governance are both ways of governing society, yet while government relates to the forms associated with liberal representative democracy (i.e. the traditional state), governance involves a much wider set of actors, including elected politicians and public officials, but also various non-elected interest and pressure groups. The main thrust of the argument of governance theorists is that, as society becomes more complex and differentiated, the traditional method of governing from above – government – becomes more difficult. This leads to governance (understood as steering rather than directing) which, it is claimed, supplements or, at times, even replaces government. Governance is allegedly more bottom-up than top-down and largely involves a partnership between government and non-governmental elements of civil society. Within this same ‘bottom-up’ perspective and implicit in the arguments promoting governance is the notion of transformation: modes of governing go from formal government to a wider system of governance (Loughlin and Williams, 2007).

Within European democracies a great deal has been made of the rise of the enabling state which seeks to empower certain groups and sections of society and draw them in to the decision-making process. This recognition of the importance of networks and mutual trust to make advanced democracies work may be a corollary of the decline of public engagement with political parties. Thus, empowerment may not only be a matter of engaging hitherto disadvantaged groups, it may be a way of harnessing the myriad talents within society while simultaneously buttressing the legitimacy of the existing political order. Not surprisingly then, governance has promised a great deal, both to the aspiring actors and to the established institutions in need of some revitalization and fresh approaches to the common problems of the day. Among the more important problems are how to stimulate public engagement with, and buy-in of, the state’s many policy programmes.

The transformation of the nation-state may also lead to the weakening of the hegemony of national state languages, thereby giving minority languages a new legitimacy, if not necessarily an automatic boost to their actual use within civil society. We are conscious that new opportunities have arisen for selected linguistic minorities both within devolved legislatures such as in Wales, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The Mask of Piety
• 2. Managing Official Language Legislative Regimes
• 3 Legislative Frameworks and Comparative Language Acts
• 4 The Embedded Nature of Language Legislation
• 5 Policy Implications and Recommendations
• 6 Official Language Strategies in Comparative Perspective
• 7 The Logic of Best-Practice Language Strategy
• 8 Official Language Commissioners
• 9 The Mask of Piety and the Faltering Polity
• Notes
• References
• Index