Linguistic Policy in the EU: Discourses of Inclusion/Exclusion

Máiréad Nic Craith, Professor of Irish Culture and Language and Director of the Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland

« You are not necessarily a European just because you happen to be born and live in a city marked on the political map of Europe. But you may be European even if you've never been to any of those cities. » (Zygmunt Bauman, Europe: an Unfinished Adventure, 2004)

Beginning with a brief exploration of changing definitions of Europe and European, this lecture examines contemporary discourses of inclusion/exclusion within EU linguistic policy. Theoretically, the concept of ‘Unity in Diversity' has underpinned EU strategy in recent decades, but an analysis of that approach indicates a serious lack of understanding of the notions of either ‘unity' or ‘diversity'. To date it seems that a collective EU identity is perceived simply as the sum of its diverse national and regional units and languages. The concept of ‘belonging to the EU' is not uniform and there are varying degrees of recognition for different languages.

The notion of territory strongly underpins current practice in the EU and national languages of nation-states territories are given official, working status. The European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages is explicit in its support of languages which are rooted in a particular territory.

Throughout there is a privileging of the indigenous which is in line with typologies of minorities proposed by many sociologists. This principle is reflected in the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and has underpinned many proposals from the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages. However, proponents for recognition of non-European languages argue that the principle of indigeneity as a criterion for recognition is highly dubious. At what point do migrants become indigenous and how does one justify different treatment for such groups?

The issue of citizenship is also crucial to this argument. Firstly there is the issue of a language requirement in citizenship tests. To what extent are migrants excluded from status of citizenship in EU countries because of a lack of knowledge of a ‘European' languages. The change in status may make the non-recognition of their languages increasingly untenable.

Some recent legislation has addressed the issue of immigrant languages in Europe and the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights signed in Barcelona in 1996 gave some attention to this issue. Reference should also be made to Recommendation 1383 on Linguistic Diversification, which was adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in September 1998. An inclusive perspective was also adopted in the UNESCO's Universal Declaration of Cultural Diversity (2002) which makes no distinction between regional and immigrant languages.