Language and National Identity in Europe;

Theoretical and Practical Problems

1
Stephen Barbour
THE PROBLEM OF THE NATI ON
There can be no doubt that nations are highly signicant at all levels of
modern social and political life. At an individual level, national identity is clearly
an important element in individuals sense of their own identity. At the level of
polities states generally describe themselves as nations, and their status as
nations is crucial to their legitimacy; power, force, even violence exercised in the
name of the nation is, for example, legal, exercised in the name of some other
unit it is usually illegal.
2
Levels of political organisation above the level of the
nationstate are viewed in terms of the nationstate, and are usually described as
international organisations rather than world organisations'. The United
Nations, for example, is not called the World Government', and it is not a world
government in any meaningful sense, its authority deriving solely from the fact
that nationstates have agreed to delegate certain functions to it. The European
Union remains clearly a union of nationstates, its authority deriving from the
national level. In contrast, within most nationstates provincial or other lower
level forms of government derive their authority from the national government,
and not vice versa.
In the late 20th century we can describe the nation as problematic in two
senses; rstly, the concept of the nation turns out to be very difcult to delimit
and dene. Secondly, the nation as a phenomenon in the real world can itself be
seen as problematic; its very nature can cause conicts; it can also be seen as
under threat from various developments, which, given its great signicance,
causes concern to many. In other words, nations pose theoretical problems in the
social sciences, but also practical problems in everyday life.
If we now examine the complexities of the concept of the nation, we can see
that, like many concepts in the social sciences, it embraces a great diversity of
specimens, which are nevertheless recognised by people as having something in
common; when we visit other countries we usually recognise them as compa
From:
Ho"mann, Charlotte. Language, Culture and Communication in Contemporary Europe.
Clevedon,UK: Multilingual Matters, 1996.
29
rable to our own country in some sense or other. There is a copious literature on
the concept of the nation, written from a wide variety of standpoints; as a sample
I would perhaps single out the work of Eric Hobsbawm (e.g. Hobsbawm, 1990), in
which a Marxist perspective is clear, of Anthony D. Smith (e.g. Smith, 1991), more
liberal in tenor, of Benedict Anderson (e.g. Anderson, 1991), who places nations
in the perspective of cultural history, and of John Edwards (e.g. Edwards, 1985),
who makes particularly clear links between national identity and language. A
consensus emerges in this varied literature which runs quite counter to a great
deal of popular political rhetoric; it is that, far from being universal or
primordial, nations as we now know them are very much a phenomenon of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and that they are most clearly bound up with
economic and social developments in Europe, or in Europe and the Americas,
the concept having then been exported by various means (particularly by
colonialism), and with varying degrees of success, to other parts of the world.
3

If we take Anthony D. Smiths working denition of a nation as:
a named human population sharing an historic territory, common
myths and historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common
economy and common legal rights and duties for all members. (Smith,
1991:14)
We can easily see where the theoretical difculties lie. It is a useful denition,
I certainly do not have a better one, but every cited characteristic of the nation is
highly debatable. In many, many, nations, for example, part of the population
cannot be labelled by the name which is given to the majority population; in a
good many there is some dispute over the historic territory; in very many there is
a great variety of myths and historical memories, a huge variety in the public
culture, and frequently there are signicant exclusions from the common legal
rights and duties. Increasingly the common economy of a nation actually
embraces other nations too, as indeed do also elements of the mass public
culture. It is of course very useful in all this to distinguish between nations and
states, and to make it clear that the nation or named human population may
share the state with other more or less comparable populations.
It seems to me that many people, both political scientists who discuss such
matters, and ordinary citizens of nations, have a notion of a prototypical nation
consisting of a culturally and racially homogeneous population, whose cultural
homogeneity is manifest by the use of a single, distinct language, and which
exclusively occupies an independent sovereign state. There are sufcient nations
in existence which full these criteria to a sufcient extent for such a concept of
the nation to be apparently workable; there are nations like Britain, which have
always encompassed considerable cultural and linguistic diversity but which, at
rst sight, occupy clearly dened and securely sovereign independent states, and
30
there are nations like Poland with a shifting historically illdened territory, but
with, at rst sight, a high degree of linguistic and cultural cohesion.
The writers certainly do justice to the conceptual complexities of the
concept, but it continues to play a prominent part in their thinking for no other
reason than that it continues to be of paramount importance in the real world.
However, I now wish to suggest, tentatively, with particular caution since I am not
a political scientist by training, that nations are facing such problems in the real
world, that the social scientists category of the nation can actually be placed in
doubt.
It seems to me that, in the real world, what we clearly do have are nation
states, which can be relatively clearly demarcated since they are legally
recognised as such by other states, they have seats in the United Nations and so
on. But do we actually have nations? To look closely at Smiths denition, it
seems clear that very few nations have an entirely clear historic territory', in a
vast number there is signicant disagreement about the legitimate extent of the
national territory. Even in Europe, where national territories have been
established for a relatively long period, there are many signicant disputes: is
Northern Ireland British territory or not; is Northern East Prussia around
Kaliningrad (formerly Knigsberg) unambiguously Russian territory (there are
signs Russia may relinquish it, and it is separated from Russia by the territory of
a now independent Lithuania); is it unambiguously accepted that South Tyrol is
Italian territory, or is it in some sense Austrian; the disputes in the former Soviet
Union or the seemingly intractable disputes in former Yugoslavia present even
more strikingly contested cases. What about the numerous cases where a
territory does not form a nationstate, but where there is considerable
acceptance by the local majority population that it is a nation? Are Scotland and
Catalonia nations or not? The complexity of the concept of national territory is
compounded by cases like these where we might wish to say that Scotland, for
example, is simultaneously a nation in itself and part of a superordinate British
nation (there is widespread agreement in the literature that a nation does not
have to be independent; a desire for and clear potential for independence would
normally be considered sufcient).
4

When we look at the cultural characteristics of nations, it seems to me that
we run into even more serious difculties. The common myths and historical
memories which Smith refers to are indeed important, but often arose after the
establishment of the nation or the nationstate, and were hence not originally
constitutive; in contemporary Britain a highly signicant unifying historical
memory is that of Britains role in the Second World War, which of course
followed the establishment of the modern nationstate by over 200 years.
5
Other
31
historical myths, such as that of the descent, in a simple sense, of the modern
Germans from the Germani of Roman times, can actually be documented as
having been largely invented by modern nationalists (see Johnston, 1990).
Smiths notion of a mass, public culture encounters the problem that so many
cultural characteristics cross national boundaries (increasingly so in the modern
world), but that important cultural cleavages persist and grow within nations.
It is a commonplace of modern discourse that we live in a global economy;
in very many cases the operation of economic factors seems scarcely tied at all to
national boundaries, and economic cleavages within nations, for example in
Britain between the majority and the very poor who subsist on the margins of
economic activity, are often greater than those between citizens of different
nations. It is also a commonplace that the operations of multinational companies
are only marginally affected by local national conditions (see, for example, Cable,
1993).
These complexities, both in the social scientic concept of the nation, and
in the real world phenomenon of the nation, make it tempting to posit states
and ethnic groups as primary concepts, with nations being imagined
communities', to use Benedict Andersons term (Anderson, 1983), arising in
popular imagination from the interplay between states and ethnic groups. Indeed
there is much discussion in the literature on the contrast between more
ethnicallybased and more statebased nationalisms (see particularly Smith,
1991).
To return now to what I suggested was the popular vision of the
prototypical nation as a homogeneous population exclusively occupying a well
dened territory, it seems to me that the gap between this vision and the reality
in most areas of the world is a potent source of conict. Nationstates based
upon ethnically dened nations frequently contain in their territories other
indigenous ethnic groups who then regularly experience discrimination,
persecution, or even genocide. A fairly random example would be Romania, with
numerous indigenous minorities (see Lepschy, 1994:10), the largest being the
Hungarian group, which has at times been subject to considerable hostility from
the Romanian majority. Such ethnic tension is, of course, far from inevitable, but
it is made more likely by the clear labelling of minorities as not part of the
named group to whom the nation, as it were, belongs'. Many factors, not least the
internationalisation of the economy, make it difcult to maintain the ethnic
purity of a territory; for example, production is frequently concentrated in states
far removed from sources of surplus labour.
Even nations, like Britain, with a strong territorial element in national
identity, can experience tensions, since even in such nations, some groups, such
as the extreme right, may see national identity in exclusive ethnic terms.
32
Areas where a former state had a high tolerance of ethnic diversity, but
which are now divided into ethnicallybased nationstates, can experience severe
crises. Perhaps the classic case of such a relatively tolerant ethnically diverse state
is the Ottoman Empire, which even allowed separate administrations, for some
purposes, for different ethnic or religious groups within the same territory (the
millet system, see SetonWatson, 1977:1434). Some of its successor states, such
as Lebanon and Bosnia, are among the most problematic in the modern world,
with rival ethnic groups claiming the same territory as their property'.
Solutions to such problems are not going to be easily found, but I nd it
tempting to see part of the problem in our unquestioning assumption, in
practical politics and also, to some extent, in political science, that nations are
inevitable. Some German writers such as Theodor Schieder have, given the
appalling history of modern German nationalism, been more prepared to suggest
a general retreat from the position that nations are an essential principle of
human organisation (see Schieder, 1992).
THE PROBLEM OF DI STI NCT LANGUAGES
The popular prototype of clearly distinct nations is, as we have seen, closely
intertwined with the notion of clearly distinct languages. There is a great deal in
the literature on nationalism on the nationlanguage relationship. A shared
language is widely seen as highly important in the shared public culture, and in
the functioning of the state and the economy. Equally the distinct language is
highly important in the demarcation of one nation from another. It arises both in
nation building within preexisting states, and in independence movements in
nations which lack their own sovereign states. An excellent example of the
former case is the modern French state, which has consciously imposed a single
language in order to unify a diverse population (see Judge, 1993). There are many
good examples of the latter case in Central and Eastern Europe where, in the
19th century, the existing states were seen as not representative of the people'.
The limits of the various peoples were then linguistically dened, at least that is
how it appeared. German speaking thinkers, such as Fichte and Herder, were
particularly prominent in the forging of the apparently unambiguous link
between a language and a nation (see Barbour, 1993 and Edwards, 1985: 2327).
Using a language to unify and demarcate a nation, linguistic nationalism',
requires that the language itself be unied, and demarcated from other
languages. A popular view, at least among speakers of majority standard
languages, is probably that languages are reasonable selfevident entities, but the
true state of affairs is, unsurprisingly, much more complex. Given that, before
modern times, all languages with more than a handful of speakers and with a
territory
33
which could not be crossed in less that a few hours were probably
extremely dialectally diverse, the unication of a language means the elevation
of one of its dialects to the status of a standard language, with a concomitant
reduction in the status and in the range of functions of the other dialects, in
itself a problematic process (see Fishman, 1989a, Haugen, 1976 and Kloss, 1967).
The demarcation of one language from another is particularly complex. There are
relatively simple cases in Europe; Hungarian, Albanian and Romanian are, for
example, clearly distinct from neighbouring languages, good instances of Klosss
Abstandsprachen (Kloss, 1967). Elsewhere we frequently nd that groups of
related dialects, dialect continua, have been divided into different languages in a
fashion which, viewed linguistically without reference to political or cultural
factors, is simply arbitrary. An excellent example is the Dutch German dialect
continuum, where the modern language border corresponds to no signicant
dialect isogloss at all, to no signicant linguistic difference which predated the
essentially political border. Languages demarcated on an essentially non
linguistic basis can then be used as a factor in the demarcation of ethnic groups
and nations. Cases of considerable circularity can arise; X nation can be dened
as the speakers of A language', but then we can discover that A language is
demarcated from B language by its use as the national language of X nation.
Linguistic boundaries used to determine ethnic and national boundaries
turn out to be of enormously diverse origin. There are modern linguistic
boundaries which correspond to ancient ethnolinguistic divisions. The
boundaries between Germanic and Romance languages and between Germanic
and Slavonic languages are good cases.
6
Many other modern divisions between
languages actually derive from longstanding political or religiouscultural
divisions, rather than obviously linguistic cleavages; this is the case in the
separation of Czech, Slovak and Polish, where some informants still claim a high
degree of mutual comprehensibility, particularly between Czech and Slovak
(Barbara TrnquistPlewa, personal communication).
7
Other modern language
borders may arise from simple geographical separation, leading perhaps to
different economic conditions and different lifestyles in the separate areas. This
is perhaps the most important factor separating Norwegian, Swedish and Danish
(although the languages are now separated by modern political borders), where
there is a complex pattern of mutual comprehensibility, usually quite high,
between the languages (see Vikr, 1993: 11925).
8

In practice in modern Europe the notion of individual languages is
frequently closely linked to the existence of corresponding individual nations. In
the history of the 19th and 20th centuries as populations have come to see
themselves as nations, so they have sought to present their language varieties not
only as languages distinct from all others, but also as single, unied languages.
34
In some cases the status of the variety or varieties in question as a single
language is problematic; the nation may actually use clearly related dialects, but
between some of these there may be, by any standards, poor mutual
comprehensibility. This is, for example, the case with many dialects of German,
and many of the dialects used in Italy.
9
Such situations have led to severe
problems, such as a great educational effort to persuade people who do not
understand a standard language that it is theirs', and an even greater educational
effort to give them adequate prociency in it. There are cases too where varieties
which a modern state wishes to present as mere dialects of an overarching
national language may have a long prior history of independent cultivation; such
was the case with Catalan in Francos Spain (see MarMolinero, 1990). Efforts to
present the national language as a single language are also hampered by the
existence of dialect continua covering the territory of a number of languages; in
such cases marginal dialects of the national language may present obvious
similarities to neighbouring languages. A clear case here is the closeness of Low
German dialects to Dutch, which has, interestingly, not often led to the claim that
they are Dutch dialects, but more often to the claim that Dutch is a German
dialect, a claim which most contemporary sociolinguists would regard as quite
unfounded (see Goossens, 1976).
The question of the distinctness of the national language has also often
been problematic. There are cases where the national language is clearly highly
similar to neighbouring varieties, and this can lead to an enterprise to make it
truly distinct. In perhaps the most extreme case, that of Norwegian, this led to the
creation of an entirely new standard variety which, unlike the established
emergent standard, was clearly distinct from Danish. Since this authentic
standard was unacceptable to many, particularly to sections of the urban lite (it
resembled some of the remoter rural dialects) its currency was geographically
and socially limited, and modern Norway has since had to grapple with two
standard varieties in which all children have to be given at least passive
competence, frequent local political conict about which standard shall have
primacy in the locality, and a national political effort to bring the two standards
closer to each other (see Vikr, 1993: 5155, 96101).
This kind of conscious manipulation of a language represents, of course, the
familiar phenomenon of language planning. Language planning can often full a
utilitarian function; a language can be developed by the creation of new
vocabulary to allow speakers to discuss certain areas, say national politics, in their
native language where previously they might have needed to switch to a foreign
language in which they were less procient. This can clearly represent a gain,
even a fairly concrete economic gain, but there are also losses; they might lose
the ability to discuss politics with fairly close neighbours whose native
35
language is different, but with whom earlier generations shared a language of
wider communication. Where language planning is implemented largely for
nationalistic purposes, to change a national language to make it less like a rival,
there are clear losses: communication becomes more difcult across national
borders; people from outside of the area in question will be less motivated to
learn any of its languages if there are several different ones with small number of
speakers.
10
In practice, then, in modern Europe, the status of particular dialects
or groups of dialects as independent languages is frequently intimately bound up
with the status of their speakers as an independent or wouldbeindependent
nations. As such nations have proliferated in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, so there has been a proliferation of entities which are clearly viewed as
separate languages, where previously matters were hazier. In considering
differences between languages we nd again, as in the demarcation of nations,
not only theoretical problems but also severely practical considerations, affecting
peoples everyday lives.
THE PROBLEM OF NATI ONAL LANGUAGES
The intimate linkage in Europe between languages and nations has serious
consequences for what I label small languages. The term small languages is
deliberately nontechnical and vague, but nevertheless encompasses an important
phenomenon. It relates to any language whose speakers are compelled to use
another language for some signicant part of their normal activities. It includes
minority languages, but also many majority languages with relatively few
speakers. Minority languages (Scots Gaelic, Basque and North Frisian are clear
examples) are severely limited in their spheres of use, their speakers could not
function effectively in adult life if they knew no other language, and they are
used by a very clear minority in the states where they are spoken. In contrast,
many languages used by a majority in particular states or regions, many which
are national languages, are very clearly limited in their spheres of use; the
Scandinavian languages, for example, can scarcely be used outside of northern
Europe, and even within the states where they are national languages, are not
usually spoken to foreign visitors and are becoming rare in certain kinds of use,
for example to discuss advanced science and technology. If one looks only at
international diplomacy there is even an argument that all languages are small
compared to English, but major national and international language such as
French, Spanish or German have an extremely impressive range of spheres of
use compared to the vast majority of the languages of the planet. small
languages is a relative term, describing as it does relationships between speakers
of languages, and not permanent qualities of the language; hence Norwegian is a
major
36
language in relation to Sami (Lapp), but a small language in relation to English,
German, Russian, or even Swedish.
The existence of entities which are considered to be separate languages can
have serious consequences for small languages. It can reduce their
comprehensibility to speakers of other languages, and can impair the willingness
of outsiders to learn the languages in question. A good example is provided by
the current situation in the former Yugoslavia. For most of the twentieth century
the majority of Yugoslavs have used a single language labelled Serbo Croatian,
with few internal comprehension difculties
11
; some outsiders have been
prepared to learn this as a means of communicating throughout the country.
There has long been a tension between this relative linguistic homogeneity and
the ethnic, religious and cultural divisions within speakers of SerboCroatian.
The current severe ethnoreligious conicts in the SerboCroatianspeaking
area of former Yugoslavia could lead to a fragmentation of the language, with a
consolidation of the already separately codied Serbian and Croatian standard
varieties, and perhaps others. If such a division is amplied, it is likely that the
previously rather small number of vocabulary differences between Serbian and
Croatian could be considerably increased, reducing mutual comprehensibility,
and that outsiders wishing to communicate in the area could be disinclined to
invest the effort needed to acquire two or more languages with small numbers of
speakers. Incidentally, the most noticeable linguistic divisions in the traditional
dialect speech of the area do not correspond at all to the SerbianCroatian
divide (see Browne, 1993: 3826).
The status of varieties as national languages also poses educational
problems. Since a fairly high proportion of Europes population is monolingual,
much higher than in many other parts of the world, there is a widespread view
across the continent which sees monolingualism as the norm, bi or
multilingualism as a problem, quite regardless of the fact that a majority of the
worlds population probably has native or nearnative command of more than
one language. Partly because of this erroneous view of bilingualism as abnormal,
and partly because of the paramount role of the national language in many
national ideologies, it is common in Europe for primary education to be strictly
monolingual; it is felt that pupils can and should only tackle foreign languages
when the national standard language is rmly rooted, and also when any local
minority language or nonstandard dialect has been safely marginalised or even
eradicated. This ensures that foreign languages, which for many users of smaller
national languages may actually be essential languages of wider communication,
are not learnt until secondary school level, despite the wellestablished insight
that language learning changes in character and in many ways becomes more
difcult after puberty (Singleton, 1989: passim, particularly 80139). The
insistence, then, that the na
37
tional language be absolutely paramount in the national education system may
reduce the educational opportunities of the citizens.
The peculiar status accorded to national languages may also have economic
implications. Just as modern nations claim a monopoly on the loyalty of their
citizens, so they may attempt to insist on a monopoly use of the national language
by those citizens. This is however quite impractical for many people; the everyday
lives of countless people are naturally multilingual, indeed we could postulate
that people who really do experience only one language in their daily lives either
live in exceptionally isolated communities, or are nativespeakers of one of that
small number of languages used by very large numbers, which really do enjoy a
monopoly of communications in some geographical areas.
12
Nevertheless, for
many European populations, and in many areas settled over the last four to ve
hundred years by Europeans, it is true to say that many peoples experience is
generally monolingual; however the idea that some have in these areas that
monolingualism is normal, bi or multilingualism deviant and problematic, could
not be more mistaken. When we move outside of these Europeandominated
areas, bi and multilingualism clearly become the norm. We nd, for example,
state after state in Africa and Asia where one local language is used in the family
and in the life of the community, a more widespread local language in regional
trade, the language of former European colonists in administration and higher
education and in some international dealings, and English (where it is not the
colonial language of the area in question) in other international dealings. A
Zarean, for example, may use a local African language in dealings within a small
region; Lingala or Swahili in some interactions with other Zareans; Swahili in
dealings with East Africans; French in much administration and in higher
education and to communicate with other Frenchspeakers, who may be fellow
Africans, Europeans, Asians (from Vietnam, for example) or Americans (from
Canada, for example); and English to communicate with almost anyone else (see
Holmes, 1992: 2123). In contrast to such an African state, many European states
or areas of European settlement attempt to insist that the national language be
used in all spheres; there may be a requirement that all dealings with ofcials, or
all legal cases, be conducted in the national language, that all electrical goods
sold contain instructions in the national language, that all public signs be in the
national language. These requirements can have economic consequences in
terms of costs for translation and interpreting, or, in the case of signs, in
deterring foreign tourists. The insistence of almost all of the member states of the
European Union that their national languages be working languages of the
Union supports a translation effort of astronomical cost. In some of the states in
question some of the policies are openly admitted to be nationalist; in Qubec,
for example, the Charter of the French Language claims to be nothing other than
a measure to
38
defend the national language and hence the national identity (see Blanc, 1993).
13

Often, however, utilitarian arguments are invoked. It is claimed, for instance, that
European Union documentation has to be comprehensible to all potential users
of it. While this may well be true, it would not be valid if the population were
thoroughly uent in an international language, acquired at least from primary
school level. It is also often invalidated by the fact that governments frequently
only have this touching concern for comprehension on behalf of speakers of the
national languages. For example, there are more speakers of Turkish living in the
EU than of Danish, but no government insists that the documentation be
available to them in their rst language. The reason is that Turkish is not the
national language of any EU state, Turkish speakers forming immigrant
minorities in a number of countries, such as Germany, the Netherlands, Austria
and Britain, and an indigenous minority in Greece. It is possible, even, that the
average Danish speaker has higher competence in English than does the average
Turkishspeaker in the national language of the EU state where he or she resides,
and that Danes hence need documentation in their native language less urgently
than do Turkish immigrants in the EU. We see, then, that the granting of a
peculiar status to national languages has obvious practical results in everyday life.
The insistence by national governments on the monopoly of the national
language is imitated by many partisans of small minority languages in Europe.
They often seem to believe that, if any language is to survive at all it must, like a
national language, be used in all spheres of life. I shall argue that this view is not
only Eurocentric, but simply mistaken, and that it may also be counterproductive.
If we conne our concerns to Europe, and areas of major European
settlement elsewhere, we do indeed nd that languages which are not used in all
spheres of life do seem to be in decline, often even terminal decline. In case after
case, however, this turns out to result not just from the exclusion of those
languages from spheres associated with power, or from the apparatus of the state,
but from direct or indirect economic, political or military action against the
speakers of those languages. In nineteenthcentury Ireland thousands of mainly
Catholic peasants, a majority of whom were Irishspeakers, died of starvation, the
scale of the disaster being amplied at times by the economic policies of an
Englishspeaking Protestant government (see Ranelagh, 1994: 11028); in the
Americas and in Australia European settlers deported or massacred thousands of
speakers of indigenous languages, or unintentionally infected them with diseases
hitherto unknown in those continents (see, for example, Spicer, 1980: passim,
particularly 119); Francos Spain prohibited the use of minority languages (see
MarMolinero, 1990); Stalins Soviet Union subjected speakers of languages other
than Russian to varying degrees of disadvantage, even persecution and genocide
(see Ltzsch, 1992); and, most notoriously, Hitlers Germany massacred millions
of
39
Yiddishspeaking Jews and Romanispeaking Gipsies. What happened in all of
these cases, and many others could be cited, is that it either became physically
dangerous or economically extremely disadvantageous to speak the language
since it was a marker of a persecuted ethnic group, or the community for which
the language had a positive value was fatally weakened or destroyed. The
weakening and loss of minority languages in Europe and its areas of settlement
arises, then, not because the minority languages were not used in the state
apparatus, but because of the peculiar character of European nationalism which
has demanded monopoly or exclusive use of national languages, and which has
either deliberately or incidentally set out to destroy minority cultures and
languages.
That the need for a language to be used in all spheres in order to survive is
both a Eurocentric and a mistaken view is demonstrated to be false time and
again by experience in other areas of the world. There are of course many cases
of obliteration of cultures and languages in Asia and Africa, but there are many
cases which demonstrate that a language, and other cultural characteristics, will
continue to ourish if they are valued by the community in question, regardless
of whether the language is used in all areas of the communitys life. In India, for
example, there is no weakening of a great many of the countrys languages,
despite centuries of use of Sanskrit as a religious language for Hindus, of Arabic
as a religious language for Moslems, of Persian as a literary language by Mogul
rulers, of Persian and then Urdu as administrative languages by those rulers, of
English as a language of administration and education under British rule and in
the modern independent Indian state, and of Hindi in independent India as the
ofcial national language (see Sutton, 1984).
14
The difference between India and
much of Europe is that the kind of nationalism which demands cultural and
linguistic homogeneity has not taken root there. In Asia and Africa there are even
cases which at rst sight appear to approximate to the European model, but
which on closer examination are different. Many Arab states appear, for instance,
to accord Arabic a more or less monopolistic position, but this is deceptive; what
is called the Arabic language is highly diverse, and usually encompasses, in each
region, two or even three rather distinct, not necessarily mutually
comprehensible varieties, which are used in different spheres: Classical Arabic in
Islam, and for communication with Arabic speakers from distant areas or with
Moslem speakers of other languages (for whom it may be a language of religion
and traditional learning), a range of regional Arabic varieties (Moroccan, Iraqi,
etc.) which may be only poorly comprehensible to other Arabic speakers, and
Egyptian, or an Egyptianinuenced variety, which is used in the mass media,
and which is acquiring some of the characteristics of an Arabic lingua franca (see
Mitchell, 1985, Ferguson, 1972). In other words, in much of Asia and Africa we
40
encounter stable diglossia, in which two (or more) varieties of the same language,
or two (or more) languages, coexist in equilibrium, each having a distinct role in
the communitys life.
As Fishman has often noted (for example in Fishman, 1989b), the best
guarantee of the survival of a minority language may be its place in a stable
diglossic relationship with a language of wider use. If members of the community
in question place a high value on the maintenance of the minority language as an
element of group identity, but have easy facility in another language or variety for
their wider communication needs, then the minority language may be secure. Not
only do Asia and Africa provide many examples of the strong survival in such
situations of languages with relatively few speakers, there are even good
European cases. Luxembourgish, for example, shows no signs of being
threatened in its existence, despite its small number of speakers, and despite an
almost universal command of German, and very widespread competence in
French, among its adult speakers.
15
The reason Luxembourgish survives is that it
is absolutely secure in family and community life, and is a symbol of group
identity. Its use is however clearly limited to certain spheres. It is a commonplace
that visitors to Luxembourg may imagine themselves at rst to be in a French
speaking country, public signs usually being in that language.
16
A visit to a
bookshop, however, can create the impression of being in a Germanspeaking
country, since books in that language clearly predominate. It is interesting that
although French is more visible in public, the population clearly uses much more
German in private reading; in bookshops books in French are mainly originals,
while translations from other languages are generally into German. Books in
Luxembourgish are mainly restricted to Luxembourg literature (there is a
thriving, though of course small, output in the language) and books for children.
Listening to conversations between Luxembourgers leaves no doubt that the
everyday spoken language is Luxembourgishconversations on everyday matters
are almost exclusively in that language. What is particulary signicant about the
Luxembourg case is that the local language, despite its small number of speakers,
seems not at all threatened in its existence; the fact that its use is limited to
certain spheres of life does not seem to pose any kind of threat (for detail on the
linguistic situation in Luxembourg see Newton, 1987).
The Luxembourg situation conicts starkly with the perception of many
proponents of minority languages, who suppose that their language will die
unless it, in effect, becomes a national language, used in all spheres. I want to
make it absolutely clear at this point that I fully support the preservation of
languages; I believe the loss of a language represents a loss of a unique facet of
experience, an irreparable impoverishment. What I am questioning, however, is
the belief that in order to survive a language must achieve a status comparable

41
to that of a national language, with use in absolutely as many spheres of life as
possible. A good case is Welsh, where in recent decades there has been great
progress in establishing Welsh as a language of the media and of education (see
Baker, 1985: 4164, 12250). The loss of the language does seem currently to have
stabilized, but I would argue that this is due to a strengthening of its
contribution to group identity, and to the changing social prole of its speakers;
it is now used by many of relatively secure socioeconomic status who are
absolutely uent in English and therefore can afford the luxury (so to speak) of
using Welsh for certain purposes without the fear that lack of facility in standard
English will hamper their economic prospects. While the expansion of Welsh
into many national spheres may possibly have improved its position, there is
little unambiguous evidence for this. The national use of Welsh has, on the other
hand, some clear disadvantages: it is expensive, and it is divisive, in that it
alienates those Welsh people who do not speak the language. These
disadvantages might be worth tolerating if the policy were a feasible one, but it is
simply not fully workable. Local authorities have, for example, not been able to
recruit Welshspeaking staff to sufcient levels, and teaching is not available in
the language at all levels; in many academic disciplines there is little or no tuition
available in Welsh at university level, for instance. More seriously, this failure of
the policy can produce a general sense of failure in protagonists of the language,
and could even weaken its use in the everyday interpersonal sphere if people
assume a fatalistic attitude in view of the failures at national level (see Price, 1984:
1267). Conversely, successes at national level will not necessarily prevent
language loss, if the language is not strongly valued at everyday community level.
Irish has been the rst national language of the Republic of Ireland and its
predecessor the Irish Free State, and it has been compulsory in schools and for
civil service appointments since the founding of the Free State in 1926, but this
has not stemmed its decline since it had already previously lost its signicance as
an essential element of Irish identity (see Ranelagh, 1994: 1189).
17

In contrast to Irish, some of the most viable small languages have very low
ofcial status, simply being labelled as dialects of a major language. A good case
is Swiss German, considered to be merely German dialects by many, but
absolutely secure in most spheres of GermanSwiss life (see Russ, 1987). It could
of course be argued that languages or dialects clearly related to the major
language are in a stronger position since it is easier for their speakers to learn the
major language; there might be less pressure for their eradication since they are
less likely to interfere with uency in the major language.18 There seems in fact
to be little evidence for this argument; varieties with dialect status have been
just as resolutely opposed in centralised nationstates as have clear minority
languages, their inuences on the varieties of the national or standard language

42
used by their speakers just as highly stigmatised. As they are less identiably
different from the major language they may even be more vulnerable. While
speakers of a clearly foreign language may have more difculty learning the
major language in adult life there is no difference in prociency traceable to
distance between varieties if the major language is learnt from childhood; native
speakers of Welsh who have learnt English from childhood seem to be just as
uent in standard English as SwissGerman speakers are in standard German.
19 In conclusion, it seems that the viability of small languages depends
overwhelmingly on their importance for a communitys sense of its identity;
whether or not they have ofcial status, whether or not they are used in every
possible sphere of life, how remote they are from a rival major language or major
variety, whether or not they have the status of independent languages or whether
they are considered dialects of a major languageall of these considerations are
much less signicant.
It seems to me that the functions of language as a medium of
communication, in the narrow sense, is often confused with its function in
maintaining or creating group identity. There is often a poor acceptance in
Europe that a language which is used only in certain spheres may be perfectly
viable, may run no risk of dying out, if it has an important function in group
identity.
CONCLUSI ONS
Human beings often have complex, multiple identitieslocal, regional,
familial, religious, ethnic; the dominant nationalist ideology dictates that one
kind of identity, national identity (often closely linked to language) be paramount.
I hope to have shown that this can have strongly negative consequences. Just as
an escape from the primacy of national identity can allow other identities to
ourish, so an escape from the tyranny of the uniform national standard
language can strengthen threatened dialects and small languages.
However, just as there is no future in (say) Slovenia trying to emulate all the
characteristics of a large wellestablished nationstate (with a nuclear force de
frappe perhaps), so is the attempt to promote the use of every language in every
sphere of life unlikely to succeed, and may contribute little to the survival of
small languages.
In parallel to their complex, multiple identities individuals also display
complex and multifaceted language use; we command different registers and
dialects, different languages. The modern European insistence that we must have
a paramount loyalty to one national language, parallel to our political loyalty to
the nation, has stied minority languages and dialects and restricted the linguis

43
tic experience of many, particularly of majoritylanguage speakers, especially
standardlanguage speakers. I would plead for a recognition that complex
multiple linguistic identities are a reality for many people, and pose no kind of
threat or problem; they are an often untapped source of interest, excitement and
diversity in our potential experience of the world.
NOTES
1
This contribution arises to a considerable extent from discussions and correspondence with
contributors to a volume of papers, entitled Language and National Identity in Europe, which I am
currently editing. I am much indebted to these scholars, whose input has been invaluable. They are:
Jan Ivar Bjrnaten (University of Oslo), Catherine Carmichael (Middlesex University), Robert B. Howell
(University of Wisconsin), Anne Judge (University of Surrey), Clare Mar Molinero (University of
Southampton), Carlo Ruzza (University of Essex), Barbara TrnquistPlewa (University of Lund), Peter
Trudgill (University of Lausanne), and Lars Vikr (University of Oslo). I am also indebted to Greville
Corbett and Margaret Rogers for advice on specic points.
2
For the moment I am not clearly distinguishing between the concepts nation and nationstate'. I
return to the distinction later.
3
But for a perspective which revalues the premodern roots of modern nations see Parekh (1985).
4
For a view which separates states from nations rather more clearly than most, see again Parekh
(1985).
5
It does nevertheless fall into a historical pattern of Britain standing up to rst papist (French and
Spanish), then Napoleonic, then German tyranny, which is excellently chronicled in Linda Colleys
recent book Britons (Colley, 1992). The contemporary rightwing Eurosceptic vision that this
resistance should be continued by obstructing integration within the European Union or even by
withdrawal, belongs perhaps to the realms of pure fantasy.
6
Interestingly, however, until modern times the German terms for speakers of the languages, Welsche
Romance speakers', Deutsche Germanic speakers', and Wenden slavonic speakers', referred in each
case to speakers of what would today be described as groups of related languages rather than single
languages.
7
It must be remembered that, in many parts of the world, religious differences still have a much
greater signicance than linguistic or ethnic differences. The interplay of various factors is, of course,
often so complex that it is difcult to determine whether the difference between two groups of people
is primarily linguistic, or religious, or ethnic, or national.
8
It actually, in practice, turns out to be very difcult to use the criterion of mutual comprehensibility
in linguistic research; whether or not individuals understand each other is heavily dependent on
previous experiences and a willingness to understand, and it relates only in part to observable
differences and similarities in their speech (see Karam, 1979:11537).
9
There is a continuing lack of clarity among scholars of Italian as to how many of the Romance
dialects used in Italy (and in other Italianspeaking areas, principally Italianspeaking Switzerland)
should be given the label Italian'; is it all of them, does
44
it exclude Friulian, or both Friulian and Sardinian, or does it only include the standard language and
Tuscan dialects, or only the standard language (see Lepschy, 1994:9)?
10
For example a single, Scandinavian language used in Norway, Sweden and Denmark would have
over twice the number of speakers that the largest single language Swedish has, would present no
serious comprehension problems to its users (it would be much less internally diverse than German,
for example), and might retard the process by which English is increasingly used within Scandinavia,
in certain technical and academic spheres, and in communication with virtually all non
Scandinavians.
11
SerboCroatian is certainly not the only language of Yugoslavia; there are considerable numbers of
speakers of the related languages Slovene and Macedonian (the latter often considered by Bulgarians
to be a Bulgarian dialect), as well as of Albanian, Hungarian, German, and others (see Browne,
1993:306).
12
Does any language, with the possible exception of English in parts of Englishspeaking countries
(say in ethnically homogeneous parts of England), really occupy such a monopoly position any more?
Even visitors to China report an intense desire to learn English for social and economic reasons on
the part of speakers of Mandarin Chinese, the human language with the largest number of native
speakers.
13
Although it is not fully politically independent, Qubec almost certainly qualies for the status of a
nation.
14
I am grateful to S.I. Ali for a wealth of information on language use past and present in South Asia.
15
Germanspeaking linguists tend to classify Luxembourgish as a dialect of German, but this is
essentially a terminological question, and irrelevant to the present discussion. It has its own distinct
and codied written form and is only readily comprehensible to German speakers from areas near the
border who know a local Moselle Franconian dialect. There is a view in Luxembourg that the language
is threatened, because it is absorbing loans from German. The decreasing use of a language, and the
borrowing of vocabulary by one language from another are entirely different questions which are,
however, often popularly confused. I do not propose to address the problem of loan vocabulary here,
but to concentrate on the reduction in the number of speakers of a language. In my view the
borrowing of vocabulary from other languages does not constitute a threat to the existence of a
language, provided it does not happen so rapidly that communication between generations is
impaired, and provided it is not accompanied by such a convergence towards the grammatical
structure of the lending language that speakers can be said, in a real sense, to have switched their
language use and to have adopted the dominant language.
16
There is now a growing number of signs in Luxembourgish, but they still constitute a minority and
seem often to be exhortative, not essential. A common one, for example, urges citizens to keep their
city clean.
17
Its decline may have currently been retarded or even halted for reasons parallel to the current
slowing of the decline of Welsh and not closely connected with its ofcial status.
18
When a variety is clearly related to another major variety its status as a dialect of the major variety is
generally, by and large, a social and political matter; linguistic factors such as mutual intelligibility are
much less important, and intelligibility is in any case partly a function of social and political attitudes.


45
19
For complex sociopolitical reasons it seems that SwissGerman speakers may be less uent in
standard German than Welsh speakers are in standard English.
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