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Social Cohesion and Linguistic Rights: National Minority Languages, Immigration Languages and State Languages
Kutlay Yagmur, Chair of Language and Minorities in the Faculty of Arts and Director of Babylon Research Centre, Centre for Studies of Multilingualism in the Multicultural Society, Tilburg University, The Netherlands
Guus Extra, Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Faculty of Arts and researcher at Babylon Research Centre, Tilburg University, The Netherlands
By reflecting upon the cases of regional and minority languages in the European context, we will present a discussion on issues of social cohesion, language rights, and teaching and learning of immigrant languages. Against the background of a discussion of multilingualism as social reality and a presentation of global and European perspectives on language rights, the following topics will be addressed:
- The « celebration of linguistic diversity » in Europe in terms of national EU languages, and regional & immigrant minority languages;
- Cross national perspectives on immigrant minority language teaching in EU nation-states;
- An inclusive approach for dealing with multilingualism at school in the European context, inspired by Australian experiences with the Victorian School of Languages in Australia.
There have always been speakers of immigrant minority languages in Europe, but these languages have only recently emerged as community languages spoken on a wide scale in North-Western Europe, due to intensified processes of migration and minorisation. Turkish and Arabic are good examples of so-called ‘non-European' languages that are spoken and learned by millions of inhabitants of the EU member states. Although immigrant minority languages are often conceived of and transmitted as core values by immigrant groups, they are much less protected than regional/indigenous (minority) languages by affirmative action and legal measures in e.g., education. In fact, the learning and certainly the teaching of immigrant languages are often seen by speakers of mainstream languages and by policy makers as obstacles to integration. At the European level, the guidelines and directives regarding immigrant minority languages are scant and outdated. By reflecting upon the latest developments in the European and primarily the Dutch context, a number of issues regarding language rights, linguistic diversity vs. social cohesion, and teaching and learning of immigrant languages will be discussed. Our findings from large scale Multilingual Cities Project in six multilingual European cities will support our discussion. |