Language, culture and communication in contemporary Europe

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Page i Language, Culture and Communication in Contemporary Europe title: author: publisher: isbn10 | asin: print isbn13: ebook isbn13: language: subject publication date: lcc: ddc: subject:

Language, Culture, and Communication in Contemporary Europe Hoffmann, Charlotte Multilingual Matters 1853593605 9781853593604 9780585148465 English Language and culture--Europe, Europe--Languages-Political aspects, Nationalism--Europe, Translating and interpreting--Social aspects--Europe. 1996 P35.5.E85L36 1996eb 409/.4 Language and culture--Europe, Europe--Languages-Political aspects, Nationalism--Europe, Translating and interpreting--Social aspects--Europe.

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Multilingual Matters Ethnicity in Eastern Europe SUE WRIGHT (ed.) 'Francophonie' in the 1990s DENNIS AGER Intercultural Communication ROBERT YOUNG Language Attitudes in Sub-Saharan Africa E. ADEGBIJA Language, Education and Society in a Changing World TINA HICKEY and JENNY WILLIAMS (eds) Languages in Contact and Conflict SUE WRIGHT (ed.) Language Policies in English-Dominant Countries MICHAEL HERRIMAN and BARBARA BURNABY (eds) Mission Incomprehensible: The Linguistic Barrier to Effective Police Co-operation in Europe ROY D. INGLETON Multilingual Japan JOHN C. MAHER and KYOKO YASHIRO (eds) A Reader in French Sociolinguistics MALCOLM OFFORD (ed.) Please contact us for the latest book information: Multilingual Matters Ltd, Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon, Avon, England, BS21 7SJ.

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Language, Culture and Communication in Contemporary Europe Edited by Charlotte Hoffmann MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD Clevedon * Philadelphia * Adelaide

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1-85359-360-5 (hbk) Multilingual Matters Ltd UK: Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon, Avon BS21 7SJ. USA: 1900 Frost Road, Suite 101, Bristol, PA 19007, USA. Australia: P.O. Box 6025, 83 Gilles Street, Adelaide, SA 5000, Australia. Copyright © 1996 Charlotte Hoffmann and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed and bound in Great Britain by WBC Book Manufacturers Ltd.

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Page v Contents List of contributors

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Acknowledgments

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Introduction

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1 The Global Information Society and Europe's Linguistic and Cultural Heritage John Laver And Jan Roukens

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Language, Nationality and Identity 2 Language and National Identity in Europe: theoretical and practical problems 28 Stephen Barbour 3 Signs of Belonging: Languages, Nations and Culture in the Old and New Europe 47 Tony Crowley 4 Lowland Scots: Issues in Nationalism and Identity Kim Hardie

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Language Planning and Language Policies 5 Linguistic Purification, the French Nation-State and the Linguist Jaques Durand

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6 Language Planning at the Crossroads: the case of contemporary Spain Charlotte Hoffmann

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7 Centre-periphery Communication in Spain: the politics of language and the language of politics 111 Audrey Brassloff 8 Sense and Pense: an Alternative Language Policy for Europe Paul Gubbins

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Language, Culture and Translation 9 The Formulation of Translation Strategies for Cultural References 132 Jean-Pierre Mailhac 10 Translation as Cross-Cultural Communication Christina Schäffner

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List of contributors Stephen Barbour is Reader in Modern Languages at Middlesex University. He has worked in several areas of linguistics, from theoretical phonology to sociolinguistics, with recent work focussing on the role of language in national and ethnic identity. He specialises in the linguistics of German. Audrey Brassloff is part-time Senior Lecturer in the Department of Modern languages of Salford University. Her publications reflect a specialist interest in the contemporary history, society and politics of Spain, Portugal and Brazil, with particular reference to national issues, and the role and influence of the Catholic Church. Tony Crowley is Professor of English and works in the University of Manchester. His recent publications have been on the politics of discourse and a theoretical study of language in history. Jacques Durand is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Salford, where he was the first Director of its European Studies Research Institute. He has published on most aspects of general linguistics, but his research has been most prominent in machine translation and phonology. Paul Gubbins, a former journalist, teaches German at University College Salford. He is the author of an Esperanto textbook and a frequent contributor to Esperanto periodicals. Kim Hardie was born and educated in Belgium and is currently in the final stages of completing her PhD at the University of Edinburgh. Her topic of research is language and nationalism, especially the situation of the Scots language and its link with Scottish nationalism. Charlotte Hoffmann, the editor, teaches German and Linguistics at the University of Salford. Her publications cover several areas of individual and societal bilingualism, focusing in particular on aspects of multilingualism in Europe. Her most recent work centres around language planning and bilingual issues in Germany and Spain. John Laver is the holder of a personal Chair in Phonetics at the University of Edinburgh. He has published widely in phonetics, speech science and speech technology. He is presently Chairman of the Humanities Research Board of the British Academy, and he has served as adviser to many national and international organisations on matters relating to speech and information technology.

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Jean-Pierre Mailhac is lecturer in French and Linguistics at Salford University. His research interests lie in the areas of theoretical linguistics, French syntax, teaching French as a foreign language and translation studies. Jan Roukens works for the Commission of the European Community. He has been involved mainly with Research and Development programmes for information technology and applications. He is now at the DG XIII/E in Luxembourg working on strategy and infrastructure to support language and language diversity in the European Union, with special emphasis on the impact of technological development. Christina Schäffner is lecturer in German in the Department of Languages and European Studies, Aston University. Her research interests are political discourse, metaphors, intercultural communication and translation, with particular reference to German.

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Acknowledgements Editing this collection of articles has been a new and enriching experience, as it has brought me into contact with research some of which I would normally have considered to fall outside my immediate area of interest. The task has not been without its challenges and moments of drama, but it has at all times been facilitated by the encouragement I have received from colleagues, in particular Geoff Harris and Richard Towell. I am very grateful to them, and also to Gabriel Boronat for his technical contribution in the handling of the MSS and Heather Lally for her help with administrative tasks. My special thanks go to Paul Rowlett for his generous and cheerful assistance both at the beginning and during the proof-reading stages of the project. My deepest gratitude is for my husband, whose interest in, and unfailing support for, my work has proved invaluable, as always.

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Introduction Charlotte Hoffmann The term Europe allows many different definitions. In this volume it is taken to mean the area which includes the member states of the European Union. As such, it does not conjure up a picture of a region that displays a rich tapestry of languages. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to be impressed by Europe's diverse linguistic and cultural heritage, and by the many forms of communication found there today. This book aims at affording some insights into several aspects of this diversity. There is of course a close relationship between language, culture and communication, but it is possible to look at them from different perspectives, and to focus on one or two at a time without necessarily disregarding the others. While all contributions are concerned with language, their contents is viewed from widely differing angles, ranging from the very general to the more specific. In some, the relationship of culture with language features prominently, whereas in others its significance is implicitly acknowledged. Communication in its many technologically available forms is at the centre of one article, and the contributions on translation studies focus on one aspect of communication, namely, the question of how successful the transmission of culture-laden linguistic items can be. Whereas the first article, by John Laver and Jan Roukens, considers communication within the whole of the area, others discuss specific issues of language, culture and communication that relate to a particular state (e.g. France, Spain) to several states (as in the papers by Stephen Barbour and Tony Crowley), or to specific territories within nations (the Basque Country, Catalonia, Scotland, Galicia). The languages under discussion are English in Ireland and Britain, and also English as a global, international language, French, German and Spanish; among minority language Basque, Catalan, Galician and Scots are dealt with. Also included is Esperanto, a language that enjoys neither majority nor minority status; it serves as a lingua franca, but because it is not a natural language it is rarely included among the languages of Europe, and it has often been viewed with a certain amount of suspicion. Certain themes are common to a number of contributions. One is the role of language as a determining factor in expressing national belonging, group identity or separateness from another cultural group. Another is the relationship between language and politics, which becomes evident when politicians intervene in

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matters concerning language and in ensuing public debate about the desirability or outcomes of such measures. A third theme deals with communication across linguistic and cultural boundaries in multilingual Europe in a variety of media and forms, in a situation in which translation assumes particular importance. Although the contributions fall within these broad categories, there are no clear dividing lines because of the communality of themes. The articles are arranged in a way that reflects a narrowing of focus, ranging from societal to individual, and from multilingual to language-specific issues. Virtually all contributors are linguists (in both senses of the word) by training and profession. However, they all have different backgrounds and established interests. The book thus represents a multidisciplinary approach to common concerns. For instance, the second and third articles (by Barbour and Crowley respectively) deal with questions of national identity and individual belonging, and their theoretical explanations take in political and philosophical standpoints just as much as, respectively, sociolinguistic or literary ones. Kim Hardie's discussion of the relative importance of Scots language for Scottish national identity is, on the other hand, carried out within the more confined framework of a sociolinguistic project. Similarly, linguistic diversity in Spain, in my own contribution on how far language planning policies can go in promoting regional languages, is treated within the parameters of sociolinguistics, whereas similar issues are considered from a broader political and cultural perspective by Audrey Brassloff, who is more concerned with the concomitant tensions between the political centre and the regional autonomies. The contribution by John Laver and Jan Roukens is the lead-in article. It covers a broad range of issues dealing with language and communication in an age of rapidly-growing information technology. Whereas in the past human communication was profoundly affected by the invention, first, of writing systems and then printing, they consider the advent of computer-based data transmission and information technology to constitute a revolution that has had a more profound impact on human communication than anything preceding it. Without the traditional constraints of time and distance, individuals can now have instant and world-wide access to information in various forms, written, graphic and in sound. In this process the role of language is being transformed. We have seen English as the language used most widely in communication technologies and this, as the authors point out, poses a real challenge to Europe's linguistic diversity. It may well be that many Europeans would benefit if a single language were to be universally used, although such a decision would carry with it the risk of creating a two-tier society as those without knowledge of that language would

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be denied access to new forms of communication and information. Opting for one language only would also reduce the usability of other European languages to a considerable extent, thus threatening their stability and status. This would be going down a road that would lead to the undisputed supremacy of English. The authors therefore plead for action to be taken in order to protect Europe's linguistic diversity and 'cultural health'. The reader is given a vivid account of the range of human activities which are already affected by the new multi-media technologies, such as the entertainment, education and, particularly, information services used by the public at national and international level, and of the speed with which the new information society is evolving as cordless communication opens up new technologies and services. The new European Information Society will inevitably put forward a growing demand for translating (assisted by machine translation) and interpreting in the various European languages and, coupled with this, there will be a greater need for language learning and teaching. Laver and Roukens consider the latter as, socially and culturally, an important activity with direct economic and employment consequences. If Europe is to maintain its cultural and linguistic diversity, and at the same time enable all its citizens to benefit from the advantages of an information society context, all Europeans must become multilingual. Two of the three articles in the section 'Language, Nationality and Identity' (those by Barbour and Crowley) explore the link between language and national identity by looking at the work of philosophers and writers of the last two hundred years or so. Both track the emergence of nation states in Europe and the development of the concept of 'nation' as a monolingual and monocultural unit. Adopting a European perspective, Stephen Barbour examines the relevance of language in the definition of some European states and the circularity of linguistic nationalism; he then looks at the relationship between the status of European languages and the position of their speakers within the respective nations. Referring to the contemporary situation of minority languages, he argues that treating all languages alike, namely, in the way that national (majority) languages have been used in the past, i.e. insisting that they should be used in all spheres of human activity, may actually be counter-productive. It would be preferable to place high value on maintenance measures and to recognise that for many individuals it is perfectly possible to have multiple linguistic identities which include loyalty to the national language as well as to a minority language. Tony Crowley's starting point is almost the same as Stephen Barbour's, but he then examines the evolution of English cultural nationalism and how it was used for reactionary purposes when the imperial order was threatened (during

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the Boer War, World War I and the 1916 Irish Rebellion). In particular, three attributes of English cultural nationalism were emphasized to proclaim unity, coherence and continuity: religion, rural life and language. For most of the 19th century English was considered the catalyst in the symbiosis of cultural and political identity. Those who did not share established beliefs or linguistic conventions, for instance the inarticulate proletariat, did not 'belong', as they did not show the signs of belonging. Crowley's literary background comes to the fore in his exploration of how the link between language and nation has developed in Ireland. There, new ways of using the signs of belonging have emerged after the new nation decided to continue to use the language of the colonisers. The work of James Joyce Seamus Heany proves that the Irish have succeeded in adopting, and adapting, the language that was forced upon thembut that they use it differently. However, a close linkage between language and nationality is not supported by the authors he cites. In fact, Joyce's Finnegan's Wake is seen as a critique of such a connection, offering instead the idea that language does serve as a kind of melting pot of many influences. Barbour's conclusions are echoed in those of Crowley's when the latter reminds us that the histories of languages show that history has always been multicultural. The signs of our belonging thus demonstrate the truly mixed character of our past and our present. Kim Hardie, the youngest contributor, looks at the present-day situation of Scots and poses the question of whether it features as an important characteristic of Scottish national identity and is therefore a significant symbol of Scottishness in its political manifestation. She outlines the history of decline of Scots, which once was the most widely used language for administrative as well as literary purposes in Scotland, indicating which factors contributed to its demise. The article centres around a research project which tried to ascertain what role Scots plays within Scottish nationalism as manifested by supporters of the Scottish Nationalist Party. Her paper shows that the Scots language (as she calls it) has declined to such an extent that people in Scotland are uncertain about its status and whether to refer to it as a language or a set of dialects. Most Scottish people consider the core values, or characteristics, of Scottish identity to be the kirk, the law and educationlanguage does not figure at all (although it is probably of no little relevance that people north of the border do have their own recognised variety of spoken English). This would explain the scant attention paid to this language by the SNP. It should however be noted that, whereas actual use of Scots is limited, there does seem to be a certain amount of interest in the language, particularly within the context of a future political situation which would afford a greater degree of autonomy to Scotland.

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Issues relating to language planning are discussed in four contributions in this bookand a fifth, the article by Laver and Roukens, can also be considered under this heading, as it contains quite specific recommendations on the kind of measures should be considered by EU member states in order to participate fully in the European Information Society. Jacques Durand's article provides the link between the two sections, dealing with French language policies within the context of the preservation of national identity as expressed through language. Against the background of a long tradition of language planning and centralisation, he discusses the present legislative measures both in terms of their provisions and from the point of view of how they have been received. There seems to be widespread support for language policies that favour French at a time when the position of this language is perceived to be deterioratingand creating an atmosphere where attitudes become protectionist. The most interesting element in Durand's discussion of the Toubon Law lies in the switch of focus from the broader political and social angle to one which views the issues involved from the linguist's standpoint. The Toubon Law, Durand argues, insists on the continuity of the link between French language and nation over time, whereas in reality such an assumption is false, as until fairly recently the majority of French citizens were not native speakers of French but more likely to have one of France's many regional languages as their mother tongue. A similar situation holds true today among France's large number of immigrants. The fact that a government poll carried out recently showed that almost 100% of French citizens are attached to their 'native language' (taken to be French) suggests a bias behind the whole enterprise, aimed at the 'manufacturing of consent' on linguistic matters. The editor's own contribution, too, takes a critical look at language planning. Since Spain's transition to democracy over 20 years ago the autonomous regional governments of Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia have been involved in far-reaching language planning efforts promoting the respective local language, which have profoundly influenced people's lives in these regions, whether they are members of the autochthonous communities or immigrants from other parts of Spain. It is suggested that not all of the relevant planning policies make linguistic or social sense, and that by pursuing the aim of promoting the regional standard so as to use it as the region's sole official language, rather than aiming at widespread societal multilingualism, regional language planners have gone too far in their language recovery efforts in at least two of the three areas. A reassessment of policies should be undertaken, and goals should be lowered so that interference in the linguistic behaviour of Spanish society does not become an issue that divides the communities that the linguistic policies are meant to benefit. Spain's change from a highly centralised state to one with a

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quasi-federal political structure has brought in its wake a great surge of debate about how concepts such as nation and nationalism, self-determination, regional autonomy and national identity, both within certain regions and in Spain as a whole, are to be understood. Audrey Brassloff's article considers how terminological inexactitude has dogged political dialogue in Spain, and how it is necessary to apply pragmatic knowledge to the context of centre-periphery communication in order to reach meaningful interpretations. Thus, for instance, terms like patria and patriotism are likely to feature highly in the political discourse of the centre, as it always has throughout Spanish history in the expression of right-wing policies. Ethnic minority nationalism makes use of these terms, too, although it endows them with very different connotations. Whether the politics of language and the language of politics will one day find conciliation with each other remains uncertain, as too many issues still have to be solved in one of Europe's youngest democracies in this area and in others, as is shown by the problems arising. Paul Gubbins presents a position article which is something of a challenge to linguists. His argument in favour of an alternative language policy aimed at adopting Esperanto as the common language for European communication is radical: it would pose little threat to other European minority languages, it could assuage rivalries between Europe's 'big' languages and, most importantly in view of the fast-growing language requirements, it could save vast amounts of taxpayers' money for which so many worthier alternative uses could be found. It is perhaps curious that politicians and economists have never considered Esperanto as a serious candidate as a lingua francabut then, there has always been a remarkable lack of interest from these quarters in matters concerning language within an enlarged European Union. In the final section of this volume the focus of discussion is narrowed down to the consideration of individual languages. The growing need for translation and interpretation is amply demonstrated by Laver and Roukens. The last two papers deal with specific aspects of the translation process. It is undisputed that translation makes an essential contribution to communication across boundaries, and every translator is familiar with the challenges presented by facets of language which have specific cultural references in the source text that do not apply in the same way, or at all, in the target language. After giving some examples of culture-specific references which many English speakers (but not French ones) can be expected to be familiar with, Jean-Pierre Mailhac considers the options that the translator faces as s/he comes across them in the original text and has to render them in linguistically appropriate, as well as culturally meaningful, ways.

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Christina Schäffner, too, discusses text examples which are bound up with cultural considerations. Although they do not reach the same conclusions, both authors propose similar translation strategies which the translator can follow in the attempt to establish successful communication. In order to do this the translator not only needs to have a high level of linguistic competence coupled with good translation skills, but it is also necessary that s/he possesses cultural awareness, a knowledge of pragmatics and a sound general education to make him/her sensitive to the requirements of equivalence. This brings us back to John Laver and Jan Roukens's call that Europe's inhabitants should have equal access to information and information technology, and their suggestion that this can only be achieved by education for a truly multilingual Europe.

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The Global Information Society and Europe's Linguistic and Cultural Heritage John Laver and Jan Roukens Introduction Three successive revolutions have transformed the nature of human communication. In all three revolutions, the communicative use of language has undergone a change of function. The first revolution began with the invention of writing systems. In principle, this freed man from the ephemeral limitations of the spoken word. But writing and reading, and thereby access to codified knowledge, remained a privileged activity of scribes and the educated minority, and the experience of the common man remained limited to a face-to-face oral culture. Then the second revolution, with the invention of mechanised printing, made mass literacy possible. This Gutenberg revolution enabled mass education. It dramatically expanded the horizons of the ordinary citizen's community, and made democratic participation in the government of nation states effectively possible for the first time. One side-effect was to standardise the form of written language, and written text has dominated the structure of knowledge, communication and culture for five hundred years until the present day. We are now in the early stages of the third and most radical revolution of all, where computer-based information and communication technologies (ICTs) give the individual the power of instant world-wide access to information through a fluid and natural mix of written text, graphic images and sound. This information revolution is giving birth to the information society, in which the role of language itself is once again being transmuted, by the effects of screen-based multimedia communication networks like the Internet. In the nascent European Information Society, the use of language also faces a major challenge from another, related direction: the impact of the new technolo-

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gies on the linguistic diversity of Europe itself. The very facilitation of communication enabled by the information revolution brings with it a threat to this linguistic diversity. The easiest way to bring the benefits of these developments to the largest number of users of the information and communication technologies in the shortest time is to require them to use a single language. This carries with it a double danger. Not only would such a policy exclude European citizens without knowledge of that language from the use of the ICT systems, but the majority of European languages risk the same exclusion. By reducing the range of usability of these languages, their viability is threatened. And the viability of a language is inextricably linked to the health of the culture with which it is associated. The promise of the information revolution brings with it the risk that a two-tier society will emerge, made up of those that are able to use the information and communication technologies, and those that for reasons of language are prevented from doing so. The European Information Society is at a pivotal stage of development, with decisions of long-term impact often being shaped by actors outside Europe. Action is urgently needed to protect and enhance the interests of the citizens of the Union with respect to language-use, and to protect the linguistic diversity and cultural health of the European communities. The Objective The Conclusions at the European Council meeting at Corfu (24-25 June 1994), commenting on the report on the information society produced under the chairmanship of M. Bangemann 1, state that 'the importance of linguistic and cultural aspects of the information society was stressed by the European Council'.2 Some of the linguistic aspects of the language infrastructure for the information society in Europe were also discussed at length in the 1992 Danzin Report to Directorate-General XIII3. The ability to communicate worldwide without the constraints of time and distance is a new freedom, and all citizens of Europe should have access to the technology of electronic networks, and be trained in how to make the best use of them. However, while Europe is a multilingual society, only small numbers of individual speakers are multilingual. Until the citizens of Europe become more habitually multilingual, which can only be brought about on a long-term basis through language education, language technology can be designed to help. Thereafter, the combination of language learning and language technology will remain essential, with the information society being able to take advantage of both. While the major international languages will become even more important, increased support will thus be necessary for the other languages of Europe. A

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chief point of departure is the concept of information equity. This concept concerns the requirement of all citizens of all Member States of the European Union to have an equal opportunity to participate fully in the economic and social developments of the information revolution. All European citizens should have access to public information in the language(s) of their Member State. 4 No European culture should be excluded from the opportunity of full membership of the European Information Society because of the language of the citizens of that culture.5 It is the responsibility of the Member States to determine their language policies. Arrangements for adequate multilingual cross-border communication is an area where joint action by the Union and the Member States can be effective, under the principle of subsidiarity. This contribution describes the current state of the information society with respect to the linguistic diversity of Europe, and recommends measures to bring about a more multilingual information society within Europe. The specific objectives of the chapter are: to explore a policy framework within which to discuss issues concerning the European Information Society between the Union and the Member States, between the public and private sectors, and between institutions and citizens; and to discuss a series of actions which could be aimed at: ensuring full participation in a multilingual information society by all European citizens strengthening the existing and emerging language industry strengthening the scientific and technological base fostering international liaison and co-operation The detailed measures suggested below would enhance European cultures, and secure economic advantage and increased employment available through the scale and nature of the single European market. European companies must be enabled to exploit the economic benefits of language diversity. There can be no single information market without multilingual access and multilingual content. The present situation The information society is not a phenomenon waiting to appear in the distant future. The information society is already under way and gathering speed, developing before our eyes in factories, companies, offices and homes in every Member State of the Union and beyond. Both in Europe and globally, transformations in the way information is disseminated have resulted in a more open society, with an increasing flow of people, goods, documentation and data within and across frontiers.

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Many economic activities previously oriented to a local market are expanding their horizons to a more international outlook. Markets such as publishing, software and tourism are increasingly being addressed as international markets. International information networks, including satellite and cable television, are rapidly becoming established in Europe. International computer networks such as the Internet are gaining many new European users every month. Access to these markets and networks is currently only to a limited degree multilingual, however, with only a very small number of European languages typically being involved. There has been a lack of a political and technical response to this constraining situation, and it is timely and opportune that the Corfu Summit has identified the need for action at the level both of the Member States and of the Union. Challenges and issues The acceleration in the development of information networks is leading to an increase in internationally-oriented services. This in itself creates new challenges. But in addition to these new challenges, there remains the issue of dominance of the new information society by particular languagesan issue which has its roots in the social and technical history of the last hundred years. Because of the acceleration of technical progress in this area, it will be necessary to address this issue more vigorously and rapidly than in the past. There are also social, cultural, democratic and economic issues to take into account. Many of these issues are interrelated and overlapping. Some of the solutions to these issues can be found in terms of technology, some in terms of actions to promote awareness, through education and publicity. The social issue of how to provide equality of access to information can partly be solved technically. In developing the multilingual information infrastructure, increased priority should be placed on machine-assisted translation, which has not been very well investigated so far. Another key challenge is the development of robust natural language processing systems, as part of graphical user interfaces, for maximising ease and convenience of use by users of databases and transaction services. Technical systems of these sorts will help to solve cross-border administrative needs for electronic information interchange that will require multilingual capability for adequate efficiency. These include the administration of police and security matters, health records, interaction between national administrations, transport and tourism. They also include the multilingual functioning of the European Union and its institutions, involving not only their internal communications, but also their dialogue with the European citizen.

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A complementary approach to the social and cultural needs of establishing multilingual capabilities amongst European citizens lies in language teaching. The successful learning of several foreign languages should become a normal part of the curricula in schools, colleges and universities in every Member State. It will be desirable for policies on these multilingual aspects of education to be as consistent as feasible across the different Member States. The European Union provides a common forum for mutual discussion of these policies. A fundamental lesson yet to be fully learned is that Europe ignores the human dimensions of the information society at its peril. It is necessary to establish public perceptions of functional needs. Amongst the public, awareness of the multilingual situation of Europe needs to be promoted as a foundation for measures to improve the multilingual capabilities of individual citizens. Provision should also be made for persons with special needs to participate fully in the European Information Society. There is also an economic issue in the commercial sector, where there is an inadequate understanding of the substantial commercial opportunities that would follow successful development of a multilingual information society. Europe therefore needs to stimulate awareness of the crucial importance of the issue, and of the scale of the economic opportunity. This improved awareness will be reinforced by research into the socio-economic factors involved in the evolution of the multilingual information market. The socio-economics of language The longer-term commercial opportunities relating to the multilingual characteristics of both access to information systems and their content are very substantial. They have not yet been taken up fully in part because of the high levels of preliminary investment needed. The industries concerned with multilingual access are those that make input/output products, such as makers of computer keyboards, displays and printers and their associated software, and the documentprocessing, printing, translation and speech technology industries. The industries concerned with multilingual content are the publishing industry, newspapers and magazines, film, video, television and radio industries, together with the value-added aspects of the telecommunication industry, such as on-line database services. A conservative estimate of the content industries in Europe, including only those for which it is the principal revenue, indicates industries with a 1992 turnover of more than 130 billion ECU, employing over 1.5 million people. If the value of transforming monolingual content into multilingual versions were to realise even only 15% of the current European content market, it would create an annual market of more than 20 billion ECU turnover. Another way of envisaging

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the opportunity is to consider that while the cost of converting an information product to another language might be 5% of the original production cost, so that the cost of converting to, say, twelve new languages would be only 60% (or less for closely related languages), the increase in the size of the potential customer base would be disproportionately large. The cost of neglecting the opportunity is even larger, not just in lost revenue, but in lost economic independence and control. Multi-national teleservices, such as telebanking and telemarketing, and crossborder applications in areas such as administration, health care and transport, are just beginning to emerge. But the future economic and market prospects of introducing multilinguality into these services and applications are as impressive as they are for the media sector. People communicate directly not only over the telephone, but also by electronic mail and telefax, in meetings and increasingly in teleconferences and videoconferences. A larger proportion of the time is thus being spent in multilingual settings. At present, the main means of overcoming language barriers in such situations is by learning foreign languages, or by making use of interpreters. Real-time automatic translation also exists for linguistically less demanding electronic messaging such as in electronic data interchange. The need to provide access and services in a multilingual form is undeniably going to add cost to their production. However, the process of providing multilingual versions of services will boost employment of skilled personnel, and result in a greater amount of economic activity overall through expanded markets. Multilingual conversion of information products and services will be progressive. But the cumulative effect of multilingual adaptation will result in a net increase in European products and services overall. Different cultures are not merely duplicates of each other expressed in different languages, but have their own individual perspectives on what products and services will interest their local customer base. Foreign language learning is a socially and culturally very important activity with direct economic and employment consequences. Language engineering and the development of multi-media training programmes are essential for an economical approach to large-scale programmes of foreign language acquisition. Interfaces adapted to the language of the user are a crucial part of this. The full development of a multilingual communication infrastructure for the European Information Society will aid communication between companies and their clients, and between individuals. It will have a number of major economic and social consequences throughout Europe. It will expand the available market, and improve competitiveness and efficiency in scientific, economic and admin-

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istrative organisation. It will enhance social and cultural exchanges amongst individuals and peoples in Europe and the world, and enhance the quality of professional and private life, and protect and enhance the diversity of cultural resources. 6 The Multilingual Information Society Needs, problems, opportunities The linguistic heritage of Europe There are over 40 indigenous languages and major language variants spoken by the 380 million people of the European Union, mostly of Romance or Germanic origin, together with a smaller number of languages of Celtic, Finno-Ugric or Basque stock.7 A large minority of these are national languages, but the majority are lesser-used languages spoken by sufficient numbers to constitute a significant economic market for information services available in those languages. The multilingual situation of Europe is diverse but not excessive. In many other areas of the less developed world there is much greater linguistic diversity. Globally, estimates of the total number of different, mutually-unintelligible languages spoken in the world vary from 5,000 to 25,000, depending on the definition of what counts as a language. Languages are quasi-organic entities. They evolve, change and die like other more biological organisms. What is certain is that world-wide linguistic diversity is rapidly diminishing. Minority languages are dying in many parts of the world, chiefly under the influence of changing patterns of communication, economic or political pressures. The situation of lesser-used languages in Europe therefore needs special consideration by the European Union and the Member States. This is partly because commercial motivations for investment in these smaller markets are less than in the case of the larger languages. And it is also because the survival of smaller languages, with their associated cultures, depends on a complex of factors amongst which the relationship with larger, competitor languages is primary. More-used, or lesser-used, are qualifications in a context, however. The inter-nationalisation of trade, science, entertainment and information services is rapidly changing the context from national to European to global. Europe needs its achievements in all these and other domains to be known globally, and it needs to have access to such achievements from elsewhere. As languages are the main means for expressing achievements, a delicate modus vivendi is needed for all languages including those used outside the European Union.

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Evolution of the information society The citizens of Europe have all experienced the beginnings of the revolution in the technical infrastructure. Information is now able to be communicated electronically in the form of spoken and written language and pictorial and computergenerated images, and the technology associated with the transmission of these multiple media is already familiar and accepted. It includes: radios; telephones and cellular telephones; tape-recorders, cassette recorders, video tape recorders and compact disks; broadcast, satellite and cable television; films; fax machines; word processors and personal computers; electronic mail; and the world of printed documents. Connection of PC's to international networks is expanding rapidly, but integration of PC networks with voice communication and multi-media television, though still in its infancy, is believed to be the main thrust towards the future transformation of the information society. To these everyday technologies have to be added the less familiar but very rapidly evolving new computer-based communication and media technologies. These include interactive CD's, video-conferencing, video-on-demand, and a wealth of specialised communication devices in cars, manufacturing plants, in military applications and in other demanding control and communication systems. Many of these systems became feasible due to the deployment of cordless communications. The growing picture of the European Information Society is thus one where multi-media technology is already beginning to reshape the worlds of entertainment, education and information services. 8 Even more important for the user than the technologies available are the services offered. It is in this domain that the options are limited only by imagination, although their development and operationalisation will depend directly on economic considerations and the demands of the users. It is also in this domain that the provision of services and the requirement for them in various languages will be most prominently expressed. Language diversity as a catalyst for socio-economic activity The process of conquering the barriers of linguistic diversity will itself create substantial numbers of jobs in the information access and content industries. Many potential markets in Europe are currently isolated by language. The results of opening them to companies which trade cross-border in information products will not only be of economic benefit, but will also bring the benefits of wider social interaction to the cultures of the Union. The need for language-learning, interpretation, translation and localization is a direct consequence of linguistic diversity. The potential growth of this area in

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the multilingual development of the European Information Society is very large, in that translation will be a necessary facet of every cross-lingual interaction between a user and an information source, or between two speakers of different languages not sharing a common language. The very large majority of all industrial products sold cross-border require a language-localized version. It is arguable that the most effective translation is achieved when the translation is made from a foreign language into the native language of the translator. Europe is well-placed to capture the lion's share of the developed world's translation market, having the largest concentration of multilingual markets for which such translation is destined. Language diversity as a barrier to business, administration, science and the consumer In business, it is essential to provide documentation in the language of the customer, as well as advertising and marketing the product in that language. Without this, trade and industry have a severe problem in expanding their market. Business communication with international customers and colleagues also has to be conducted in a language intelligible to them. In administration, public information needs to be communicated from the European Parliament and the Commission to the Member States and back in the relevant languages. Without this, international co-ordination is close to impossible. In science, a barrier to full access by European citizens is that English has become de facto the international language of science, and to make the scientific literature written in English available to non-English speaking readers requires high quality translation to be available. Equally, to make national scientific results available internationally, translation is necessary, either at source or after initial publication. Another barrier to multilingual access to science concerns society's need for integrating scientific advances through popularisation. This requires popular books and articles to be written or translated into the reader's language. The technical vocabulary of a given scientific, technical or commercial field must be translatable to reveal the correspondences between the concepts concerned, across the European languages. Otherwise science, technology and commerce themselves cannot be accurately communicated on an international basis. The individual consumer enjoys entertainment, leisure, education, and social interaction. In the field of entertainment, one potentially strong industry in a multilingual society is the industry for localising foreign-sourced films and television programmes into European languages by sub-titling or dubbing. Otherwise the linguistic diversity of the multilingual audience for these materials

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remains an obstacle. The potentially strong European audiovisual entertainment industry needs enabling stimulation, to take advantage of a very large home market. In leisure, tourists experience difficulty in accessing the riches of other cultures. In education, teaching materials are often not available in the language required. In social terms, linguistic difficulties impede communication with immigrant neighbours, and make their integration more difficult. From the perspective of consumers, the information society will be thought to be successful only if the applications are of good quality, relatively cheap, easy to use, with fast, simple access, and delivered in the language of the user. The use of the interfaces and applications will not be widely acceptable unless they require only minimum training. Scientific and technical progress European research in language technology is world-class, and has been well supported by national agencies and the major European programmes such as ESPRIT, Telematics, LRE, the Multilingual Action Plan and Eurotra. But its commercial exploitation is more fragmented than in USA or Japan. Successes in technology transfer from the laboratory to products have been achieved in language engineering largely by American companies, with European companies only recently beginning to enter the market with significant efforts. Technology transfer from these European programmes has so far had limited success in the area of language technology. In those language technology products that have been successful, monolinguality has been the norm, and these successes have not yet engendered many multilingual capabilities. A current area of urgent research is the development of a reliable natural language interface for spoken or written input for human/computer interaction. Services such as querying databases by natural language, and conducting transactions for telebanking or teleshopping, using automatic recognition of written or spoken keywords or digits, currently have useful but limited capabilities. Appropriate spoken and written output originating from computers is already a relatively well developed technology in speech and natural language processing, but the technology base for more effective machine understanding of spoken and written language input from the user is only now beginning to produce preliminary set of application tools. Progress in speech and natural language processing systems is accelerating fast. As quality improves, market forces will drive the development of many new monolingual applications, of unpredictable content. It is certain that applications and services, and their patterns of usage, will be diverse. It is equally likely that

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the development of multilingual applications and services will happen only slowly, unless the European Union and the Member States take enabling action. Towards a Linguistic Infrastructure The political will There are many instruments for protecting linguistic diversity in the European Information Society. Some of these are at the level of action able to be taken by the European Union. They include measures such as policy-setting on a European scale, regulation and liberalisation, research and development programmes, awareness programmes, and support for European institutions and agencies. In addressing the specifically multilingual requirements of the European Information Society, the function of the European Union and the Member States is to create the regulatory conditions within which the private sector can deploy its creative and commercial force. The specific role of the Union and the Member States is to back up this development by giving political impetus, creating a clear and stable regulatory framework, and by setting an example in areas that come under their aegis. 9 But one area remains necessarily a governmental domain of actionthat of providing the means of multilingual access to the information society. The language infrastructure in this respect is comparable to the needs of the physical infrastructure. Public investment in the development of the essential language resources to build the multilingual language infrastructure is needed pro bono publico. It is the role of the private sector to build and sell language products and technology. However, market forces alone will not persuade most companies to undertake the initial investment needed to tackle the development work necessary for multilingual versions of their products and technology. A 2-speed or 3-speed participation in the Information Society by European citizens, due to differences of language, has social, economic and eventually political consequences and should be prevented at all costs. Political initiatives are needed on the social front, respecting the principle of subsidiarity. The language policy of each Member State should preferably address the questions which flow from internal and external linguistic diversity. It would be helpful for full consistency across the Member States if these policies were to embody a characteristically European respect for the needs of the lesser-used languages of the Union. The political will to make these advances towards the European Information Society visibly exists, in the consensus between the Member States leading to the Presidency Conclusions at Corfu in June 1994. Regulation has become an essential

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component of competitiveness, even where it is a matter of regulating market forces rather than the activities of monopolies. A clear regulatory framework encourages the creation of initiatives and ensures market access and equality of opportunity for all, thus benefiting both European industry and consumers. It may be that a fundamental question such as the right of citizens of Europe to access public information in the language of their region could only be settled by regulatory action on the part of the Union, acting in concert with the Member States. This and similar matters should be investigated to establish the most effective and the most acceptable means. Language is internationally understood to be public property, but areas like specialist terminology give rise to potential questions of ownership which the Union needs to decide. Access to terminology-correspondences should be publicly available, to accelerate developments of cross-border multilingual interaction. Matters such as ethical and other Codes of Behaviour for participation by individuals and companies in the activities of the information networks are perhaps best treated as a topic for action by Member States, national organisations, professional and voluntary associations. One question that needs rapid resolution, however, is the applicability of the general legal framework to the electronic world of the networks, including such issues as libel and privacy, and the harmonisation of practice in different Member States. Suppliers In assessing the economic structure of the opportunity afforded to European industry by the developing a multilingual information society, it is helpful to distinguish between three general categories of suppliers relevant to language. One is what has come to be known as the language industries the group of industries or institutions whose primary business is the generation or transformation of language as such. The language industries include the translation and localisation industries, and the language engineering industry. Closely allied to these specific language industries is the language training and education sector, as the primary means of equipping consumers with multilingual ability. For convenience of reference, the term 'language industries' in this artticle will be taken to include this sector with the translation and localisation industries, and the language engineering industry. The second category is the value-added media and information industries the group of industries for which language as such is an added value to their product, whose primary nature lies elsewhere, for example in news, entertainment or information. Language is a necessary but not a sufficient aspect of these products. These value-added industries include the media, the publishing industry,

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providers of documentation services, information services providers, and the information technology and software industries. The third category is made up of providers of language resources the institutions which develop modular components (such as electronic lexicons) for the language industries in particular, and linguistic tools (such as conventional dictionaries) for language-users in general. An analogy with manufacturing industry for the providers of language resources are the companies which supply components to vehicle manufacturers. These three types of suppliers form the initial part of the chain of supply of language-based material to the consumers of their products, being responsible for the creation of source material, the development of monolingual and multilingual content, packaging, distribution, marketing and sales operations. A major commercial opportunity lies in expanding from a monolingual base to a multilingual capability. Adding effective multilingual capability to the products of the providers of news, entertainment and information to consumers in the emerging European Information Society will give tangible economic advantage to these industries, to extend their reach to a genuinely single European market. The language industries Language training Language education plays a key function in making the citizens of Europe more versatile in multilingual ability. It was already an assumption of the European LINGUA programme (now also SOCRATES and partly also in LEONARDO) that everyone should be able to speak foreign European languages, and this should be included in national policies on language learning. Effective language education and training should be a prime attribute of the educational systems of all Member States. It must be recognised, however, that there are no instant solutions to a problem as deep-seated as the linguistic barriers to the development of the information society. It is unrealistic to hope that a policy of enhanced language learning would by itself succeed in resolving the problem. Such a programme must be supplemented by the multilingual technological and other actions described throughout this chapter. It is also desirable, however, to evaluate the costbenefit of supplementing traditional methods of language teaching with such technological support. A combined strategy should target workable solutions for different aspects of the problem. An appropriate balance of means is needed to address a multi-fac-

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eted problem. Language learning will play its part; particular technologies need to be further developed; and technological solutions need to be devised that are cost-effective, and which are easily usable by real users to perform real tasks. The role of effective language technology in education needs to be highlighted. The rich network of teachers already experienced in the use of information technology needs to be exploited. A common technology platform for language learning needs to be created. Multi-media technology offers special value to the language learning process. Accessibility to and the efficiency of language learning facilities can be enhanced through the deployment of multi-media technologies at home, school and work. Awareness and appreciation of other European cultures can also be improved through the development of attractive multi-media programmes on appropriate topics. The interpretation, translation and localization industries a) The interpretation and translation industries Simultaneous interpreters currently play a highly skilled and very valuable role in high-level diplomatic, political, scientific and commercial spoken interaction. The need for simultaneous interpreting is certain to expand in the information society, especially in areas such as multilingual video-conferencing, and telecommunications applications requiring real-time interpreting for international multilingual conversations. Translators working on written text form one of the largest language industries. In 1988, it was estimated that in the European Community alone, some 100M pages of text were translated a year, corresponding to a workforce of 100,000 and a turnover of 10Bn ECU. Since then, there has been a steady increase in the volume of text translated. The emphasis in most professional translation companies is progressively on machine-assisted translation, where language resources such as on-line electronic dictionaries and other reference works can be directly accessed on the translator's workstation, together with facilities for storing and consulting frequently-translated sections of text. The text for translation is more and more often delivered and sent back to the customer via an electronic network, and computer literacy is becoming an essential skill for the practicing translator. Given the need for transmitting large quantities of information and the wish to preserve the diversity of languages, access by all citizens of the Union to user-friendly and effective translation tools for all European language-pairs will be indispensable. Existing translation tools do not provide adequate facilities for the lesser-used languages, as the development of such tools is typically too

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expensive for a single company to bear, given the low number of potential users. Covering the lesser-used languages is thus considered commercially unattractive, despite its social importance. Making such tools available at reasonable prices should be accepted as a commitment of a strategic European policy on a common language infrastructure. The documentation supporting imported goods needs to be printed in a language intelligible to the customer (not least to protect the supplier against legal liability claims). One major application of the translation industry is therefore concerned with translating documentation such as user manuals, guarantees and packaging for imported products into European languages for local sale. The advent of the European Information Society will inevitably create a very large extra demand for the services of professional translators, assisted by machine-based aids to translation. b) Illustration of the future translation industry The translation industry will need to become more professionalised, creating a voice for the industry and a body for overseeing the establishment and maintenance of professional standards, and certifying the quality of the practitioners in the field. The training of translators will need to include skills of computer-handling and network navigation. The translation industry perceives a serious gap between the skills of trainees emerging from traditional translation courses in universities and colleges and the high-technology world of the modern industry. The training of translators will need to be broadened. Few trainees currently receive training in professional domains (such as the law or a science) as well as in language skills. Knowledge of one or more specialist domains is a premium skill for the modern professional translator. Apart from literary translation, the translation industry is likely to become an on-line information service, offered through telecommunications companies and network operators. Translation services will be directly accessible through an icon on the screen of the user's terminal. The physical location of the customers and the suppliers of translation services will be irrelevant, and teleworking will rapidly become a widespread reality in this domain. c) The localisation industry Software sold in Europe is currently worth around 30 Bn ECU per year, and this is predicted to double in the next three years. A key sector of this large market is the localisation of software, adapting it to local requirements of legislation, marketing and language. Localisation of software goes beyond translation alone.

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It includes all preparation of software products for sale into foreign cultural environments. Localisation therefore includes the preparation of documentation at all levels; translation of all documentary aspects of the product; printing hard-copy documentation; designing, preparing, localising and printing packaging; kitting and warehousing; order taking and fulfilment; distribution and logistics. Many of these stages involve language-based activities, even where translation is not concerned. Translation/localisation costs for one language are estimated to vary around 3% of the cost of production of software. The cost of localising a product even into the national languages of Europe is currently very roughly 50% of the overall cost of product development, though the multiplication is not necessarily linear with increased numbers of languageversions. In the case of multi-media products, the proportion of production-costs devoted to localisation is yet higher than in ordinary software. On this basis, the long-term future scale of the localisation industry looks very promising. Another very important aspect of localisation concerns the use of language for labelling and documenting various types of products and services (e.g. food and drink products, medicines, tobacco products, consumer credit, packaged tours, etc.), to ensure the intelligibility of product-information for the consumer. Several European Directives and national regulations address this usage. The Directives and regulations vary considerably from case to case, while for many products and services no such requirements exist. The increasing use of electronic means to advertise, label, document or order products and services will inevitably have an impact on existing and future regulations. In addition, an increasing number of types of information products and services will become available across language frontiers, posing further requirements in this area. Language engineering The language engineering industry has made significant progress in the last ten years. It nevertheless remains an immature technology, which needs continuing research and development. A key constraint on the maturation of the language engineering industry is the scarcity of suitable language resources such as multilingual electronic lexicons as components. Language engineering exploits a number of technologies. These include speech technology, natural language processing and ergonomics. Speech technology comprises the sub-disciplines of speech signal processing, automatic speech recognition, spoken language understanding, speaker recognition, speech generation and text-to-speech synthesis, and speech technology assessment and evaluation. Speech technology has a symbiotic relationship with natural lan-

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guage processing, with which it shares the study of spoken language understanding. Natural language processing also includes language recognition, automatic text generation, dialogue management, syntactic, morphological and semantic analysis, machine-assisted translation, document indexing and retrieval, and techniques of assessment and evaluation. The ergonomic element of language engineering is concerned with effective and comfortable interface design for handling both spoken and written language. Language engineering builds on these technical foundations to develop applications involving the processing of spoken or written language. Examples include speech recognition systems for spoken utterances of continuous speech from a limited domain of vocabulary, such as in the dictation of radiology or pathology reports by doctors, and these are already being sold. Browsing systems for offering crude machine translations of scientific abstracts in on-line databases, for a user to consider the value of acquiring a more polished translation of the scientific article in question, have already been demonstrated. A tourist information enquiry system which can understand questions from a human user such as 'How do I get to the nearest library?', and which can give the answer in intelligible synthetic speech, together with a graphic indication of the route on a city-map, was successfully demonstrated three years ago in the United States by Victor Zue at MIT. The information highways will thus carry the text and sound of language in two directions between the human user and computers, with video and graphic images. The value-added media and information industries The media and publishing industries The media are taken here to mean the industries which create and disseminate entertainment, news and comment by means of broadcasting (radio and television), by production of films videos, CD-ROM and CD-I, and by publishing electronic and conventional newspapers, journals and magazines. Publishing is taken to cover the production of conventional and electronic books. The emergence of open systems, and the on-line provision of customer-selectable, interactive services, means that within the medium-term future a multitude of media services from different providers will be able to be delivered to the screen of any single user. 10 A negative element of this picture is that ownership of both the means of dissemination and the content of the products of the media industry in particular is currently concentrated in the hands of a small number of owners. A reinforcing

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characteristic of the current media industry is the large number of mergers and strategic alliances that are being forged between traditional media companies and new entrants from the telecommunications and software industries. Many of the resulting conglomerates are global in scale, and few of them are European. The constraints of this monopolistic situation are being examined by the Commission, in the context of its Green Paper on pluralism and media ownership. 11 These factors strengthen the need for stimulation of the European media industry, to begin to compete more effectively on the world stage. Development of a European multilingual capacity in the media industry would be a contribution to this growth. The European audiovisual industry (film, television, video and multi-media) has a good reputation and excellent potential. But both the audiovisual and the publishing industries need stimulation to exploit the full promise of a multilingual European market. The Commission's Green Paper on audiovisual strategy addresses some of these needs.12 An area of weakness, in a European perspective, is that of the provision of electronically-usable multilingual content. Europe is rich in its resources of content, especially in publishing, and its population is typically well-educated, and well able to take advantage of the availability of interesting information content. The annual production of book titles in Europe, including the then Member States, Austria, Finland and Sweden, averaged over the previous decade, was 272,254 volumes. In this period, the number of books produced annually in Europe per million inhabitants was well in excess of all other countries in the world, with Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Austria at the head of the league with over 1,000 books per million inhabitants (compared with 258 per million in USA and 333 per million in Japan). One of the single most important developments for the Union and the Member States for the multilingual information society will be extended networking of the libraries of Europe. Indeed, under the Libraries component of the Telematics Applications Programme, actions addressing the networking and automation of library resources will pave the way towards universally accessible library services. Documentation services In 1991, it was estimated that the time spent by white-collar European workers on handling text amounted to over 9 million man-years. 13 Language engineering tools can now support the following computer-based document processing facilities: textcreation and editing through word-processing; automatic checking for errors of spelling, grammar or style; thesaurus

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services; automatic indexing; automatic document retrieval; document browsing; automatic text generation; database query through natural language, a certain degree of natural language-based dialogue management; translation; and routine document generation and editing through speech input. Almost all of this capability is available only in a very small number of languages with large speaker populations. Given this range of monolingual capabilities, the way is open to the creation of a European network for telematic working within and to some extent between countries. If to these are added enhanced multilingual facilities, then the tasks of electronic document creation and management in a wide variety of functions will become the core-applications of the new information infrastructure. Teleworking and telepartnerships would be enabled which could play a part in the relocation of work and businesses to the disadvantaged areas of Europe (especially to the peripheral or rural areas), as the Commission's White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment suggests. 14 More general documentation services include the rapidly-growing field of electronic archiving services. As electronic information expands, this auxiliary service will become more and more relevant, together with the electronic indexing and retrieval tools that are needed for its management. Information service providers The telecommunications industry provides the principal means of gaining access to a rapidly-growing number of providers of spoken information services, through the telephone. It is not yet clear whether the chief means of accessing the text-based information services of the future will be by television or by personal computer, nor whether the personal computer will absorb the role of the telephone for mediating spoken communication. With the advent of user-friendly access tool for use with the Internet and similar networking services, many PC users are already able to access a wide range of integrated information services. While news programmes, films and other entertainment seem likely to remain the province of television, information services such as Yellow Pages, directory enquiries, teleshopping, telebanking, hotel reservations, tourist information and stock market information can already be delivered via personal computer screens linked to telephone lines, together with e-mail and video-phone facilities. Organisations such as EURESCOM will be important stimuli for accelerating the growth of information services delivered via telecommunications companies and network operators.

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The information technology industry There are four supply-side elements of the information technology industry: telecommunications and computer networks, basic services, applications and content. Telecommunications networks are the neural network of our society, and new information services provided by or through the progressively liberalised telecommunications companies and PTTs are proliferating. An essential element of the computer network provision for the European Information Society is that they should include high capacity, high-speed networks of affordable use, and many of these are already in existence or are in the planning stage. The need for capacity and speed is relevant to the language infrastructure question because of the high quality imagetransmission requirements of multi-media communication, with which linguistic interaction in the future European Information Society is inextricably linked. From a customer-oriented point of view, it is also necessary for the different networks to be sufficiently compatible to allow access through a common, simple user-interface. Basic services for general use for which the language element is an added value include electronic mail and file transfer as well as voice communication systems, and instances of these for public use are beginning to emerge. Multilingual applications need to be developed in part with support from the Commission's Research and Development programmes under the Fourth Framework Programme. Priority consideration should be given to multilingual aspects of the ten applications mentioned in the Bangemann Reportteleworking; distance learning; a network for universities and research centres; telematic services for SMEs; road traffic management; air traffic control; healthcare networks; electronic tendering; a trans-European public administration network; and city information highways. Language resource providers The planning and development of multilingual language resources for the language industries should include such modular items as large-scale spoken and written language corpora, electronic lexicons, electronic grammars, and other language resources, for many European languages, under agreed standards of structure, documentation and quality. The activities of the national lexical institutes and related institutions towards these infrastructure goals need to be accelerated to achieve results which will be of maximum use in the European language industry. In the value-added industry sector, it will be the publishing industry that will chiefly drive the development of large-scale lexical resources.

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In the field of speech technology, there is a need for databases to be used for the development and testing of speech processing systems. The research institutions specialising in speech technology should respond to the needs of industry by being able to develop appropriate speech databases to industrial specifications of purpose, quality, structure, price and delivery dates, in conformity with European standards. The provision of an infrastructure of language resources should also include the development of an extensive European distributed databank for multilingual, multi-sectoral terminology, and related standards. The problems of terminology compatibility and their impact on the information market in Europe are so great that they justify the establishment of a common infrastructure for terminology. At least fifty million specific concepts and terms exist today in some 200 different sectors of scientific, technical and commercial vocabulary. Illustration of a language industryproblems of terminology standardisation Terminology is an indispensable tool for information management. Transfer of technical information, whether in the form of a term, a graphic symbol, a formula or an alphanumeric code, depends on the effective management of terminology. A technician cannot repair an intricate electronic component with documentation that uses technical terms inappropriately. The preparation of high quality terminology is labour intensive and costly. In the chemistry field alone, there are some seven million different chemical substances, each designated by a unique term and/or a chemical formula. Subject specialists try to solve the problem of terminology consistency within a language, and of terminology compatibility between different languages, through terminology standardisation and international co-operation. Numerous sectorial institutions in the public domain such as the World Health Organisation, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Monetary Fund, and UNESCO, international organisations such as ISO and CEN, and many professional organisations oversee the development and standardisation of terminology in their own fields. Although these institutions are recognised, they lack an appropriate organisation and communication infrastructure to carry on their mandates of co-ordination and exchange of terminological work more widely. In the private sector, manufacturing companies are obliged to develop their own proprietary terminology, as compatibility for cross-company communication is practically non-existent. A common stock of these concepts, as sets of multilingual terminology-correspondences in a given sector, should be made available in agreed form in multiple

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EU languages. A European strategy is necessary for co-ordinating national and regional levels of terminological activity across all sectors of vocabulary, in the interest of the development of science and technology, medicine, law, administration, education, industry and trade. Because of the transnational and transregional use of terminologies, this strategy is only feasible if conducted on an international scale, ensuring compatibility by adherence to common standards. Users User-industries Beyond the language-related contribution of the language industries themselves, the value-added industries and the language resource providers lies the whole range of administration, business, trade and industry that will make use, in their cross-border interactions in the multilingual European Information Society, of language-related services for localisation and communication. Particularly relevant language-related services will therefore need to include multilingual interfaces and translation and documentation services as well as automated telecommunications services. Sectors which are key, in that they characteristically communicate at least partly on a cross-border basis on a European scale, rely on international markets, and have an evident use for such language-related services in their information systems, include at least the following: public administration financial services (banks, insurance, stockmarkets and stockbrokers) retail distribution legal services (including legal administration) military civil and emergency services (including customs and excise) transport (including goods and people, by road, rail, sea and air) vehicle manufacture (including cars, ships, trains and aerospace) medicine and health-care services leisure (including entertainment and tourism) security (including secure delivery and secure transmission) energy (including energy generation and distribution)

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Professional and personal users The users of information services fall into different types. The needs and characteristics of the professional user are very different from those of the personal user, even though this may be the same person in the office and at home. The professional user typically accesses dynamically up-dated business databases, communicates with colleagues locally, nationally and internationally by electronic mail, checks electronic bulletin boards originating in an overseas country, and may want to have business documents translated for sending to a customer who speaks a quite different language. The same person at home accesses multiple channels of cable or satellite television programmes, may want to negotiate transactions over the telephone with the automated telebanking service, make purchases from a teleshopping catalogue or play a video game with the children. The same person as a citizen may want to access regulatory information about social security benefits, apply for a driving licence, explore job vacancy notices or fill in a personal tax return. Training and education needs characterise both professional and personal types of user. To achieve maximum benefits from the opportunities offered by a multilingual information system, early training in skills of computer-handling and network navigation is desirable, at school and university. Self-help and tutorial systems built-in to computer applications, which are easy and natural to use, and available in the language of the user, are also desirable. In the USA, the average individual consumer now spends more time per day engaged with the media and publications (listening to the radio or music; watching television, video-cassettes, or films at the cinema; playing video-games; or reading books, newspapers, or magazines) than in any other activity, including working or sleeping. Most individual consumers now have access to a telephone at work or home, and many own a personal computer. It follows that the combined influence of the media, publishing and communications technology, exercised principally through language and images, is very extensive and very powerful. There is thus now a very wide range of technological channels of communication through which contact can be made with individual consumers. The commercial opportunities for products in the customer's language are correspondingly substantial. The European institutions as users The European Commission is a leading-edge user of multilingual language technology. The Commission translates a million pages a year through the work of 1,500 professional translators: some 300,000 pages a year are produced as the

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calls for tender published daily in nine European Union languages. The Commission is also the producer of a greater volume of routine office correspondence addressed to native speakers of other languages than almost any other organisation in the world. The European Commission is also the single largest user of machine translation in Europe, with its machine translation output growing from less than 40,000 pages in 1991 to 140,000 pages in 1994. A key European terminology resource is EURODICAUTOM, which now contains more than 600,000 entries in multiple languages, mapped on to some 2.8 million terms. The Commission's provision for in-house documentation processing, including machine-assisted translation, should be a leading example of a multilingual language technology policy. By setting an example in those areas that come under their aegis, as mentioned in the Presidency Conclusions, 15 the Commission and other European institutions could offer a role-model for other institutions, as well as a proving ground for new multilingual systems. EURODICAUTOM could be the nucleus for a distributed term bank for multiple European languages, available to users throughout Europe. Research Research is needed at both the applied and fundamental levels, into the technological and socio-linguistic aspects of the European languages. Language industry research and development Both applied and fundamental research is necessary in all the language industries. In language education, applications in automated language teaching must be developed, as must more fundamental work into the cognitive nature of language learning and effective techniques of language teaching. In translation, development of machine-assisted tools for professional and personal users of translation is a high priority. In language engineering, the present capabilities in automatic speech recognition and synthesis need to be consolidated, and incorporated in robust, usable, multilingual systems. In the development of modular language resources, the most urgent priority is the creation of multilingual electronic lexicons, large-scale speech and text databases for multiple languages, and large-scale multilingual terminology banks. Research on languages and language use Apart from the technological dimensions, there are more fundamental directions in which relevant basic knowledge is lacking. These include the facts about the sociolinguistic patterns of accent, dialect, style and usage. A key question is also the extent of multilingual ability and practice amongst speakers of the

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different European languages, and how these evolve over time. Only partial information about this exists. Research is also needed into the developmental patterns of language evolution, growth and decay, as an underpinning to the technical capabilities of language technology. It is also required, more generally, to reach a better understanding of what it meanslinguistically, socially and culturallyto be a citizen of Europe. The international dimension In political terms, the current impetus being given by the United States to the development of the National Information Infrastructure concept 16, together with the media response to this in terms of the 'Information Superhighway', will certainly be influential in shaping both expectations and reality, not only in the United States but much further afield as well. The networking of library resources plays a large part in the development of the US National Information Infrastructure, in recognition of the key role that libraries play, now and in the future, as repositories of information. Japan is the other obvious player in language technology on the world stage. It is noteworthy that a current emphasis in Japanese developments of their information infrastructure is similarly on the construction of very large documentary databases. A particularly salient risk to the future economic health of the European Information Society is that language products engineered in the United States and Japan will provide the large majority of usable interfaces to the electronic networks of Europe. If these interfaces operate solely in a small number of widely-used languages, the exclusion of the lesserused languages from full membership of the information society will seriously damage the long-term viability of their cultures. Other overseas countries where an information society is notably emerging are the other countries of the Pacific RimTaiwan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, China and Australia. The experience of Europe in constructing multilingual interfaces to communication networks and information services will represent a commercial asset which is exportable to other parts of the multilingual world such as these. Apart from the countries of the Pacific Rim, particular examples where a commercial opportunity will exist are those countries to which European languages have been taken as a language of emigration, such as North, Central and South America. Information products based on Spanish, Portuguese and French have a special opportunity here, though English-based products will face severe competition from the United States and Canada. French products will

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have to compete with those from the French-language engineering industry which is emerging in Canada. Eastern Europe is growing as a market of opportunity. However, it should be recognised that Eastern Europe is not only a potential commercial market, but also an area of responsibility. Better communication is the basis for better relations, not least for motives of improved European security. European self-interests similarly combine in commercial benefit and the need to have good relations with the countries of the Mediterranean basin. A significant advantage of improved communication with other countries is not only the direct reward of trade, but also the indirect benefit of maximising the interchange of science and technology that accompanies such interaction. Key issues are thus the consequences that the actions of the European Union and its Member States in the construction of the European Information Society will have on international relations, whether commercial or political, between industrial countries and industrializing countries, and between rich and poor. Notes 1 Bangemann, M. (ed.) Europe and the Global Information Society: Recommendations to the European Council, pp. 528 in CORDIS, Supplement 2, 15 July 1994. See also the Commission's reply to the Bangemann Report, Europe's Way to the Information Society: an Action Plan, (COM(94) 347). 2 See p. 31 of CORDIS, 15 July 1994. 3 Danzin, A. (1992) Towards a European Language Infrastructure, Report by the Strategic Planning Study Group for the Commission of the European Communities (DG XIII). 4 This first objective is set in the context of Article B of the Maastricht Treaty of Union (MTU 1992:8), which strengthens the 'protection of the rights and interests of the nationals of the Member States through the introduction of a citizenship of the Union'. 5 This second objective is framed in the perspective of Title IX: Culture, Article 128 (MTU 1992:48-9), commits the Community to contributing to 'the flowering of the cultures of the Member States, while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore' (Article 128.1), and to 'the conservation and safeguarding of cultural heritage of European significance' (Article 128.2). 6 Danzin 1992: 23. 7 Hearn P.M. and Button, D.F. (Eds.) (1994) Language Industries Atlas, Amsterdam: IOS Press for CEC, Brussels and Luxembourg. 8 Beilby, M., Golob, P., Golob, J. and Stevenson, N. (1993) Multi-mediaMyth and Reality, London.: S.G. Warburg. 9 The Presidency Conclusions from the European Council at Corfu state that 'the current unprecedented technological revolution in the area of information opens up vast possibilities for economic progress, employment and the quality of life, while simultaneously representing a major challenge. It is primarily up to the private sector

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to respond to this challenge, by evaluating what is at stake and taking the necessary initiatives, notably in the matter of financing'. 10 Beilby, M., Golob, P., Golob, J. and Stevenson, N. (1993) Multi-mediaMyth and Reality, London: S.G. Warburg. 11 Pluralism and Media Concentration in the Internal Market, Green Paper by the Commission of the European Communities, December 1992. 12 Strategy options to strengthen the European programme industry in the context of the audiovisual policy of the EU, Green Paper by the Commission of the European Communities, April 1994. 13 Etude approfondie sur les conséquences du développement des produits de l'ingénerie linguistique et sur leurs applications pour l'ensemble de l'economic et de l'intégration europénne, Paris: Siar-Bossard, March 1991. 14 Growth, Competitiveness, Employment: the Challenges and Ways Forward into the 21st Century, White Paper by the Commission of the European Communities,1994. 15 See p. 31 of CORDIS, 15 July 1994. 16 Clinton and Gore (1993). References Bangemann, M. (ed.) Europe and the Global Information Society: Recommendations to the European Council, pp. 5-28 in CORDIS, Supplement 2, 15 July 1994. Beilby, M., Golob, P., Golob, J. and Stevenson, N. (1993) Multi-mediaMyth and Reality, London: S.G. Warburg. Clinton, W.J. and Gore, A.G. Jr. (1993) Science in the National Interest, Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology, Washington DC. Danzin, A. (1992) Towards a European Language Infrastructure, Report by the Strategic Planning Study Group for the Commission of the European Communities (DG XIII). Etude approfondie sur les conséquences du développement des produits de l'ingénerie linguistique et sur leurs applications pour l'ensemble de l'économie et de l'intégration europénne, Siar-Bossard, Paris, March 1991. Europe's Way to the Information Society: an Action Plan, Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament, and to the Economic and Social Committee and Committee of Regions, COM(94) 347, Brussels. Growth, Competitiveness, Employment: the Challenges and Ways Forward into the 21st Century, White Paper by the Commission of the European Communities,1994. Pluralism and Media Concentration in the Internal Market, Green Paper by the Commission of the European Communities, December 1992. Strategy options to strengthen the European programme industry in the context of the audiovisual policy of the EU, Green Paper by the Commission of the European Communities, April 1994. Treaty on European Union (Maastricht), Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg (1992)

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Language and National Identity in Europe; Theoretical and Practical Problems 1 Stephen Barbour The Problem of the Nation There can be no doubt that nations are highly significant 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 nation-state are viewed in terms of the nation-state, 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 nation-states have agreed to delegate certain functions to it. The European Union remains clearly a union of nation-states, its authority deriving from the national level. In contrast, within most nation-states 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; firstly, the concept of the nation turns out to be very difficult to delimit and define. Secondly, the nation as a phenomenon in the real world can itself be seen as problematic; its very nature can cause conflicts; it can also be seen as under threat from various developments, which, given its great significance, 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-

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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. Smith's working definition 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 difficulties lie. It is a useful definition, 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 significant 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 sufficient nations in existence which fulfil these criteria to a sufficient 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 first sight, occupy clearly defined and securely sovereign independent states, and

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there are nations like Poland with a shifting historically ill-defined territory, but with, at first 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 Smith's definition, it seems clear that very few nations have an entirely clear 'historic territory', in a vast number there is significant 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 significant disputes: is Northern Ireland British territory or not; is Northern East Prussia around Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg) 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 nation-state, 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 sufficient). 4 When we look at the cultural characteristics of nations, it seems to me that we run into even more serious difficulties. The 'common myths and historical memories' which Smith refers to are indeed important, but often arose after the establishment of the nation or the nation-state, and were hence not originally constitutive; in contemporary Britain a highly significant unifying historical memory is that of Britain's role in the Second World War, which of course followed the establishment of the modern nation-state by over 200 years.5 Other

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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). Smith's 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 scientific 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 Anderson's 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 ethnically-based and more state-based 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-defined 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 conflict. Nation-states based upon ethnically defined 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 difficult 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.

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Areas where a former state had a high tolerance of ethnic diversity, but which are now divided into ethnically-based nation-states, 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 Seton-Watson, 1977:143-4). 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 find 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 Distinct 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 nation-language 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 pre-existing 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 defined, at least that is how it appeared. Germanspeaking 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: 23-27). Using a language to unify and demarcate a nation, 'linguistic nationalism', requires that the language itself be unified, and demarcated from other languages. A popular view, at least among speakers of majority standard languages, is probably that languages are reasonable self-evident 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

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which could not be crossed in less that a few hours were probably extremely dialectally diverse, the 'unification' 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 Kloss's Abstandsprachen (Kloss, 1967). Elsewhere we frequently find 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 DutchGerman dialect continuum, where the modern language border corresponds to no significant dialect isogloss at all, to no significant 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 defined 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 long-standing political or religious-cultural 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 Törnquist-Plewa, 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 Vikør, 1993: 119-25).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, unified languages.

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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 proficiency 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 Franco's Spain (see Mar-Molinero, 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 élite (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 conflict about which standard shall have primacy in the locality, and a national political effort to bring the two standards closer to each other (see Vikør, 1993: 51-55, 96-101). This kind of conscious manipulation of a language represents, of course, the familiar phenomenon of language planning. Language planning can often fulfil 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 proficient. 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

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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 difficult 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 would-beindependent 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 find again, as in the demarcation of nations, not only theoretical problems but also severely practical considerations, affecting people's everyday lives. The Problem of National 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 significant 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

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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 SerboCroatian, with few internal comprehension difficulties 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 Serbo-Croatian. The current severe ethno-religious conflicts in the Serbo-Croatian-speaking area of former Yugoslavia could lead to a fragmentation of the language, with a consolidation of the already separately codified Serbian and Croatian standard varieties, and perhaps others. If such a division is amplified, 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 Serbian-Croatian divide (see Browne, 1993: 382-6). The status of varieties as national languages also poses educational problems. Since a fairly high proportion of Europe's 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 world's population probably has native or near-native 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 firmly 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 well-established insight that language learning changes in character and in many ways becomes more difficult after puberty (Singleton, 1989: passim, particularly 80-139). The insistence, then, that the na-

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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 native-speakers 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 five hundred years by Europeans, it is true to say that many people's 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 European-dominated areas, bi- and multilingualism clearly become the norm. We find, 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 Zaïrean, for example, may use a local African language in dealings within a small region; Lingala or Swahili in some interactions with other Zaïreans; Swahili in dealings with East Africans; French in much administration and in higher education and to communicate with other French-speakers, 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: 21-23). 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 officials, 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 Québec, for example, the Charter of the French Language claims to be nothing other than a measure to

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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 fluent 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 first 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 Turkish-speaker 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 confine our concerns to Europe, and areas of major European settlement elsewhere, we do indeed find 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 nineteenth-century Ireland thousands of mainly Catholic peasants, a majority of whom were Irish-speakers, died of starvation, the scale of the disaster being amplified at times by the economic policies of an English-speaking Protestant government (see Ranelagh, 1994: 110-28); 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 1-19); Franco's Spain prohibited the use of minority languages (see Mar-Molinero, 1990); Stalin's Soviet Union subjected speakers of languages other than Russian to varying degrees of disadvantage, even persecution and genocide (see Lötzsch, 1992); and, most notoriously, Hitler's Germany massacred millions of

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Yiddish-speaking Jews and Romani-speaking 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 flourish if they are valued by the community in question, regardless of whether the language is used in all areas of the community's life. In India, for example, there is no weakening of a great many of the country's 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 official 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 first 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 Egyptian-influenced 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

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encounter stable diglossia, in which two (or more) varieties of the same language, or two (or more) languages, co-exist in equilibrium, each having a distinct role in the community's 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 first to be in a Frenchspeaking country, public signs usually being in that language.16 A visit to a bookshop, however, can create the impression of being in a German-speaking 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 significant 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 conflicts 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

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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: 41-64, 122-50). 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 profile of its speakers; it is now used by many of relatively secure socio-economic status who are absolutely fluent 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 Welsh-speaking staff to sufficient 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: 126-7). 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 first 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 significance as an essential element of Irish identity (see Ranelagh, 1994: 118-9). 17 In contrast to Irish, some of the most viable 'small' languages have very low official 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 German-Swiss 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 fluency 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 nation-states as have clear minority languages, their influences on the varieties of the national or standard language

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used by their speakers just as highly stigmatised. As they are less identifiably different from the 'major' language they may even be more vulnerable. While speakers of a clearly foreign language may have more difficulty learning the major language in adult life there is no difference in proficiency 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 fluent in standard English as Swiss-German speakers are in standard German. 19 In conclusion, it seems that the viability of 'small' languages depends overwhelmingly on their importance for a community's sense of its identity; whether or not they have official 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 significant. 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. Conclusions 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 flourish, 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 well-established nation-state (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 multi-faceted 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 stifled minority languages and dialects and restricted the linguis-

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tic experience of many, particularly of majority-language speakers, especially standard-language 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 Bjrnflaten (University of Oslo), Catherine Carmichael (Middlesex University), Robert B. Howell (University of Wisconsin), Anne Judge (University of Surrey), Clare MarMolinero (University of Southampton), Carlo Ruzza (University of Essex), Barbara Törnquist-Plewa (University of Lund), Peter Trudgill (University of Lausanne), and Lars Vikør (University of Oslo). I am also indebted to Greville Corbett and Margaret Rogers for advice on specific points. 2 For the moment I am not clearly distinguishing between the concepts 'nation' and 'nation-state'. I return to the distinction later. 3 But for a perspective which revalues the pre-modern 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 first papist (French and Spanish), then Napoleonic, then German tyranny, which is excellently chronicled in Linda Colley's recent book Britons (Colley, 1992). The contemporary right-wing 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 significance than linguistic or ethnic differences. The interplay of various factors is, of course, often so complex that it is difficult 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 difficult 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, 1979:115-37). 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 Italian-speaking areas, principally Italian-speaking Switzerland) should be given the label 'Italian'; is it all of them, does

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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 Serbo-Croatian 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 English-speaking 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, Québec almost certainly qualifies 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 German-speaking 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 codified 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 official 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.

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19 For complex socio-political reasons it seems that Swiss-German speakers may be less fluent in standard German than Welsh speakers are in standard English. References Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities. New York: Verso. Baker, C. (1985) Aspects of Bilingualism in Wales. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Barbour, S. (1993) 'Uns knüpft der Sprache heilig Band.' Reflections on the rôle of language in German nationalism, past and present. In J. Flood, P. Salmon, O. Sayce, and C.J. Wells (eds.) 'Das unsichtbare Band der Sprache'. Studies in German Language and Linguistic History in Memory of Leslie Seiffert (pp. 313-332). Stuttgart: Heinz. Blanc, M. (1993) French in Canada. In C. Sanders (ed.) French Today (pp. 239-56). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Browne, W. (1993) Serbo-Croat. In B. Comrie and G.G. Corbett (eds.) The Slavonic Languages (pp. 306-387). London: Routledge. Cable, V. (1994) The World's New Fissures. London: Demos. Colley, L. (1992) Britons. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Edwards, J. (1985) Language, Society and Identity. Oxford: Blackwell. Ferguson, C.A. (1972) Diglossia. In P.P. Giglioli (ed.) Language and Social Context (pp. 232-51). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Fishman, J.A. (1989a) Language and nationalism. Two integrative essays. In J.A. Fishman Language and Ethnicity in Minority Sociolinguistic Perspective (pp. 97-175, 269-367). Clevedon, Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters. Fishman, J.A. (1989b) Language spread and language policy for endangered languages. In J.A. Fishman Language and Ethnicity in Minority Sociolinguistic Perspective (pp. 389-402). Clevedon, Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters. Goossens, J. (1976) Was ist Deutsch - und wie verhält es sich zum Niederländischen? In J. Göschel, N. Nail, and G. van der Elst (eds.) Zur Theorie des Dialekts (pp. 256-82). Wiesbaden: Steiner. Haugen, E. (1976) Dialect, language, nation. In J. B. Pride, and J. Holmes (eds.)

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Mar-Molinero, C. (1990) Language policies in post-Franco Spain: conflict of central goals and local objectives? In R. Clark, N. Fairclough, R. Ivanic, N. McLeod, J. Thomas and P. Meara (eds.) Language and Power (pp. 52-63). London: Centre for Information on Language Teaching. Mitchell, T.F. (1985) Sociolinguistic and stylistic dimensions of the Educated Spoken Arabic of Egypt and the Levant. In J.D. Woods (ed.) Language Standards and their Codification: Process and Application (pp. 42-57). Exeter: University of Exeter. Newton, G. (1987) The German language in Luxembourg. In C.V.J. Russ and C. Volkmar (eds.) Sprache und Gesellschaft in deutschsprachigen Ländern (pp. 153-179). York: GoetheInstitut. Parekh, B. (1995) Ethnocentricity of the nationalist discourse. Nations and Nationalism, 1: 25-52. Price, G. (1984) The Languages of Britain. London: Arnold. Ranelagh, J. O'B. (1994) A Short History of Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Russ, C.V.J. (1987) Language and society in German Switzerland. Multilingualism, diglossia and variation. In C. Russ and C. Volkmar (eds.) Sprache und Gesellschaft in deutschsprachigen Ländern (pp. 94-121). York: Goethe-Institut. Schieder, T. (1992) Nationalismus und Nationalstaat. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. Seton-Watson, H. (1977) Nations and States. London: Methuen. Singleton, D. (1989) Language Acquisition: the Age Factor. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Smith, A.D. (1991) National Identity. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Spicer, E.H. (1982) The American Indians. Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press. Sutton, P. (1984) Languages in India. The Incorporated Linguist, 23: 75- 8. Vikør, L.S. (1993) The Nordic Languages. Oslo: Novus.

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Signs of Belonging: Languages, Nations and Cultures in the Old and New Europe Tony Crowley Language and the Nation The focus of this piece will be the particular relationships between language and political identity in modern European history as articulated by philosophers, literary artists, and political thinkers over the past two centuries. It will be argued that it is necessary to comprehend the significance of this relationship in order to understand in turn both the inherited traditions, and the future possibilities, of social and political identity. The central question with which an exploration of this set of problems can begin is this: 'what are the signs of belonging?' This apparently simple question is the starting point since, once analysed, it brings to the fore various difficult and complex questions which need to be considered. A start can be made in this analysis by posing an extended form of the question: 'what are the signs of belonging, and to what is it that we are supposed to belong?' One answer, which has been a common reflex in Europe since the late eighteenth century, is: 'the signs of belonging are those of our language, and that to which we belong to is the nation'. This response, frequently articulated in modern European history, has philosophical and political roots. The identification of language and nationality, whatever its origins, gained philosophical pre-eminence through the postKantian tradition. Kant set forth the principle in Perpetual Peace (1795), in which he argued that nature 'employs two means to separate peoples and to prevent them from mixing: differences of language and religion' (Kant 1957: 31). Yet even Kant's enormous philosophical influence could not guarantee the popularity of such a doctrine, particularly in the political realm. The answer as to why this idea gained such political significance lies in the war-torn state of Europe in the early nineteenth century; specifically it arises out of the victories of the Napoleonic forces in Europe, in particular those over the Prussians. In that context, there began to develop that extraordinary mixture of defensiveness and aggression which came to be known as cultural nationalism,

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in which the identification of language and nationality played such a significant part. To put the matter reductively, in the absence of an independent state, political thinkers cited linguistic individuality as the foundation which both justified, and made imperative, the sovereign nation. The exemplary text of this political movement was composed by one of Kant's followers, Fichte, in his Addresses to the German Nation (1808). It is a title which, in the manner of much cultural nationalism, articulates both confidence and despair in its positing of a necessary political fiction: 'the German Nation'. Fichte's central proposition was that there is an irreducible relationship between language and national sovereignty: 'it is beyond doubt that, wherever a separate language is found, there a separate nation exists, which has the right to take charge of its independent affairs and to govern itself' (Fichte 1968: 184). Language thus became the key to nationality, even serving, for Fichte, to distinguish 'the Germans and the other peoples of Teutonic descent'. The Germans, he argued, in a significant linkage of land and language, remained in the original dwelling places of the ancestral stock; whereas the latter emigrated to other places; the former retained and developed the original language of the ancestral stock, whereas the latter adopted a foreign language and gradually reshaped it in a way of their own (ibid: 47). The stress on language as the key to national identity was re-formulated slightly later by Humboldt, in a way which constitutes in effect the modern definition of the nation. He refers to 'national uniformity': From this uniformity, and that of the special stimulus peculiar to every language, the character of that language arises. Every language receives a specific individuality through that of the nation, and has on the latter a uniformly determining reverse effect. The national character is indeed sustained, strengthened, and even to some extent engendered by community of habit and action; but in fact it rests on a likeness of natural disposition, which is normally explained by community of descent (Humboldt 1988: 152). Here, despite the retention of the 'natural disposition', we see the shift away from the etymological root of 'nation' (nasci, to be born), to the modern sense, as defined in the Oxford English Dictionary, of 'a distinct race or people, characterised by common descent, language or history, usually organised as a separate political state and occupying a definite territory'. The emergence of this definition of the nation was to have profound political repercussions throughout nineteenth century Europe, and indeed beyond. The positing of the nation as essentially a mono-linguistic (read mono-cultural) unit, served to stimulate political movements to rebellion, usually to resistance against

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various forms of imperial tyranny. Indeed, the greater the tyranny, the more likely it was that resistance would begin on the cultural and intellectual levels. Empires, and indeed the historians of empire, have had a tendency seriously to underestimate the contribution of cultural resistance to independence struggles. For rebels fought, so to speak, with grenades in one hand and collections of folk-poetry in the other, rifles to the shoulder, dictionaries in the pocket. And grenades and rifles often proved to be the more easily defused threat in the context of increasing patterns of literacy. There began to be marked then a pattern of historical emergence: nations awakening from a long sleep, or, even more impressively, though it was sometimes difficult to tell the difference between the two, nations appearing where none had existed before. Nationalism in its political and military form when it was possible, and cultural nationalism more generally, set Europe ablaze: from Germany to Poland, from Hungary to Czekoslovakia, from Young Italy to Young Ireland. Collections of ancient songs and proverbs, books of folklore, wordbooks and dictionaries, aids to grammar and spelling; these were all used as tools. As one of the most influential linguists of the period observed, 'Nations and languages against dynasties and treaties', this is what has remodelled, and will remodel still more, the map of Europe' (Muller 1862: 12). English Cultural Nationalism: Moments of Crisis Cultural nationalism in Europe then had respectable origins in the struggles against imperial domination. Yet its political pedigree was not simply yoked to the circumstances of its origination. Instead, what is to be found in modern European history is the deployment of the vision of the mono-lingual, mono-cultural nation for reactionary purposes. English cultural nationalism, both past and present, will be taken here as an example of this process. For in the midst of the upheavals in Europe, founded amongst other things on the linguistic and cultural premisses cited above, there was one nation state which appeared to have a secure and settled identity. That was Britain, or, as the shorthand usually had it, England. In fact historical accounts often identify cultural nationalism as an important force in the formation of the English nation state, but they usually cite it as something which belongs in the Reformation period and the eighteenth century. What else, after all were the Book of Common Prayer and the Authorised Version of the Bible but part of an attempt to weave the triple net of language, nationality and religion? How else was the eighteenth century bourgeois public sphere, and that political fiction 'Britain', brought about and legitimated but by the same forces? Such accounts place English cultural nationalism as existing more or less on the same level as the confrontation with an absolutist monarchy: an unfortunate, albeit necessary, political episode which has now maturely been

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left behind. However, to accept such views is to risk the danger of two mistakes. First, it underestimates precisely how fragile was the cultural and political identity of England. And second, it does not give due credit to the forces which mobilised and organised English cultural nationalism. It is possible to demonstrate the significance of the construction of Englishness around the language by considering its role in the response to serious threats to imperial order. Early twentieth century Britain was torn apart by political and military crises similar in kind to those which had witnessed the first dissemination of the seeds of cultural nationalism on the European mainland. The imperial state was rocked militarily first in South Africa, and it was soon led to defend its interests in the first World War. More damaging psychologically, however, was the rebellion in what was then a part of the United Kingdom. For the Irish rebellion of 1916 and the war with Britain which followed, were to inflict upon the Empire the first blows from within; and they were to prove presages of enormous significance. There was a major military threat, and politically the situation was no better, as the state lurched from crisis to crisis, ranging from the extension of the franchise to women to the possibility of insurrection by a militant labour movement. What then was the appropriate response? Evidently, direct military and political adjustments had to be made. Yet there were other responses, and it is arguable that the most notable was the mobilisation of English cultural nationalism as a crucial ideological force. In the face of division, it proclaimed unity, coherence, and continuity. As it had throughout the nineteenth century in Europe, English cultural nationalism was to offer key answers to the questions of what the signs of belonging were, and, more importantly, what they signified. It will be illuminating to consider the rhetoric which was deployed to meet the historical crisis. This is Barker: there is nothing that comes so near to being the very authentic voice of England as the bells of her village churches, falling and swelling, pealing and dying, from the north to the south and the east to the westy. (Barker 1917: 9) Here the nation speaks in religious tones, and the authenticity of its voice is firmly set in its rural roots. This is the imagined rural community, which coincides with the nation, within earshot of a village church. A similar figuration is offered by the Tory Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, who wonders about the answer to the question: 'what I mean by England'? The sounds of England, the tinkle of the hammer on the anvil in the country smithy, the corncrake on a dewy morning, the sound of the scythe on the

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whetstone...These things strike down into the very depths of our nature, and touch chords that go back to the very beginning of time and the human race, but they are chords that with every year of our life sound a deeper note in our innermost being (Baldwin 1926: 7) These sounds, Baldwin claims, and the sounds which accompany them, have existed 'in England since England was a land', and will continue to exist 'in England long after the Empire has perished and every works in England has ceased to function.' The sounds of belonging are again the sounds of rural life, of a natural, pre-industrial culture which, it is confidently asserted, will outlast the temporary trappings of modernity. This is cultural nationalism in its romantic mode, and its basis in post-Kantian idealism with its stress on the interlinking of language and nationality is clear. In an article concerned with crucial political terms, Bradley and Bridges discussed '...the terms Briton, British, Britisher': In both Europe and Asia legislators are at this time anxiously in search of the factors that determine nationality, and among the determinants it would seem that language, which prescribes our categories and forms of thought, shapes our ideals, preserves our trade, and carries all our social relations and intercourse, had the most solid claims. (Bradley 1928: 11) In the same period Barker gives a definitive evaluation of the role of language in the formation of the nation: Just because a nation is a tradition of thought and sentiment, and thought and sentiment have deep congruities with speech, there is the closest of affinities between language and nation. Language is not mere words...You cannot enter the heart and know the heart of a nation unless you know its speech. Conversely, once you have learned that speech, you find that with it and by it you imbibe a deep and pervasive spiritual forcey. (Barker 1927: 13) This standard account of the symbiosis of cultural and political identity appears all-inclusive, since the nation is defined precisely as that group which shares a common language and thus a common culture. In this sense it is egalitarian since all those who belong are credited with having access to the cultural signs which form national identity. Yet the force of the assertions of cultural nationalism in the examples given above points to an unease and difficulty. For historical developments had begun to make it clear that the signs of belonging were not distributed equally. What new force had appeared to challenge the sacrosanct privileging of the national culture? What was it which was left out of this vision of a rural, religious and eternal nationhood embodied in language? The answers to those questions mark an important juncture in the

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discourse of cultural nationalism. For the new force was the industrial working class, and it was their language which was significantly judged to be beyond the pale. The best representation of the disruptive presence of the industrial proletariat, and the anxiety it caused for seamless, continuous definitions of the nation, centres precisely on accounts of their language. In a mode which is repeated endlessly in the Victorian 'strike novels', from North and South to Demos, working class speakers simply showed themselves to be without the signs of belonging. They might murmur, mumble, growl, roar, shout and cheer, but they did not belong, and their language demonstrated it. One social observer, Masterman, writing 'Of the Silence of Us', asserted: If the first thing to notice is our quantity, the second is our silencea silence that becomes the more weird and uncanny with the increasing immensity of our number...always noisy, we rarely speak; always resonant with the din of many-voiced existence, we never reach that level of ordered articulate utterance; never attain a language that the world beyond can heary. (Masterman 1902: 18) Working-class culture thus presented a challenge to the vision of a nation defined as all those who shared in the signs of belonging. The representations of proletarian inarticulacy were assertions that there were those who clearly belonged politically (they did after all have the vote), who did not have the signs of belonging. It was a point of rupture in the political rhetoric of cultural nationalism, for in that confrontation with internal difference all the inherited and easy definitions were significantly challenged. English cultural nationalism, with its linkage of the English language and nation, did not, however, disappear from the British political agenda, as can be seen in a later period of crisis. It resurfaced prominently in the nineteen-eighties as a response to the political and cultural crisis provoked by the emergence and consolidation of the new right. One critic for example argued that 'Britain had produced the world's most successful language which served as the medium for some of the greatest literature in the world'. Yet, it is lamented, a great many people today look in dismay at what is happening to that language. Looking at the way English is used in our popular newspapers, our radio and television programmes, even in our schools and theatres, they wonder what it is about our country and our society that our language has become so impoverished, so sloppy and so limitedthat we have arrived at such a dismal wasteland of banality, cliché and casual obscenity (The Prince of Wales 1989).

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In a manner which is reminiscent of that of Baldwin, the critic lauds 'the more eternal values and principles which run like a thread through the whole tapestry of human existence', and indicates that they are embodied in the English language, which is 'an enormously precious legacy to be handed on with care'. The critic is the Prince of Wales, and his comments were prompted by the publication of the New English Bible and the Alternative Service Book (modernised versions of the renaissance texts cited earlier). The Prince's response is again typical of cultural nationalism in its confidence and despair; its faith in an epic past, and its sense of hopelessness in the face of a disastrous present. For the signs of belonging are held to be under threat, which means that the political entity which they justify is in danger too. In such a context it is again clear that there is a gap between those who use the signs of belonging and those who belong but do not use those signs. Two examples can illustrate the dichotomy. First is that of a court case against a sixteen-year-old Scottish runaway. He could not be understood by the judge, and the court usher, a fellow Scot, had to interpret: The court Usher, a Highlander, formally sworn in as an official interpreter, explained that when the Greenock witness spoke of a man talking 'to uz', he only meant to himself, not to a host of witnesses (Kennedy 1990) The second example is the case of a British subject of Pakistani descent who also appeared in court. He spoke limited English and requested a Punjabi interpreter. The judge, outraged that the man, who had been resident in England for twenty three years, was in need of an interpreter, included as part of the sentence the stipulation that the man take English lessons. The judge asserted that 'a person who lives here has a duty to understand the language'(Cameron and Bourne 1988: 152). What we find in these examples is an assertion of the link between language and nation which is, though strident, increasingly uncertain. Against the political and cultural differences of class, region, and race, which are represented in these extracts, the cultural nationalist assertion of a monolingual, homogeneous nation has begun to come into question. Not only are the signs of belonging in question here, the conception of the nation state itself is under pressure. New ways of using the signs If the relationship between language and nationality was being undermined from within, it was under no less pressure from without. Earlier it was argued that cultural nationalism evolved as a philosophical and political doctrine in a period of crises, in which it became the motivating myth of nationalist independent movements. What happened, however, when a language which had been closely tied to a certain representation of a nation, in turn became the vehicle

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of imperialism? Would this disturb the cultural nationalist equation? Would the imperial nation and its language remain solidly united? And what if the subjugated nations did not follow the logic of cultural nationalism, but rather, instead of asserting their own language and culture, took on that of the coloniser? This brings us to a crucial point in our exploration of the signs of belonging, both in terms of understanding the old Europe, and in the formulation of the possibilities of a new Europe. It will be useful to start with a consideration of one particular case, a significant one, not least because of its contemporaneity: Ireland. In an essay entitled 'The Interesting Case of John Alphonsus Mulrennan', the leading Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, offers a commentary on the relationship of an Irish writer to the English language. His specific example is James Joyce. In the essay Heaney posits a concordance between the English language and Englishness which might well have been penned by the most ardent English nationalist. He writes of the vocabulary inherited from the past: These words which constitute a cultural resource are also sustained and carried on from generation to generation by the persistence of the English way of life, its sub-cultures, its modes of feeling...Words like 'ale', and 'manor' and 'sheepfold' and 'pew' and 'soldier' have a charge of infidelity and implication for an English person that is indigenous and uncontested and almost imperturbable. They are to a certain extent exclusive words. All of us whose language is English are familiar with them, but unless we are English by birth and nurture, I suspect that these words and words like them do not possess us and we do not possess them fully. (Heaney 1978: 35) This is a curious claim since Heaney's blindness precisely replicates that of the English cultural nationalist, in that they are both incapable of seeing the internal stratifications of both the language and nation. Here it is class difference which is beyond notice: 'ale', 'manor', and 'sheepfold' might not particularly be part of the cultural inheritance of the young Scot mentioned above. This myopia is repeated in Heaney's asssertion that history, which has woven the fabric of English life and landscape and language into a seamless garment, has rent the fabric of Irish life, has effected a breach between its past and its present, and an alienation between the speaker and his speech. (Heaney 1978:35) Again the nationalist mythification of the 'fabric of English life and landscape and language' as 'a seamless garment' is repeated unproblematically. Yet Heaney's own poetry belies this representation of the English language as cemented to Englishness. For one of the concerns of his work is to demonstrate how the Irish have adopted and adapted the language which was once forced

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upon them. In the significantly titled 'Traditions'(Heaney 1972: 31-2), for example, the poem opens with a brief linguistic history: Our guttural muse was bulled long ago by the alliterative tradition, her uvula grows vestigial. Here Gaelic has been mastered by the Anglo-Saxon, though the traces of the earlier language can still be found. It is not, however, only the marks of Gaelic which remain, for there are also the remnants of a former state of the English language: 'Elizabethan English'. we 'deem' or we 'allow' when we suppose and some cherished archaisms are correct Shakespearean The equation between the English language and the national culture, which is articulated in the essay, is undermined. For here are uses of the English language which are common to those who do not belong to the nation, and which could be construed as being more faithful to the nation's linguistic heritage. The third section of the poem completes the conceit: MacMorris, gallivanting round the Globe, whinged to courtier and groundling who had heard tell of us as going very bare of learning, as wild hares, as anatomies of death: 'What ish my nation?' And sensibly, though so much later, the wandering Bloom replied, 'Ireland,' said Bloom, 'I was born here. Ireland.' The references here of course are to one of the earliest stage Irishmen, MacMorris from Henry V, and to Leopold Bloom, the central character in Joyce's Ulysses. The dialogue in Henry V between Fluellen and MacMorris is interesting: Fluellen: Captain MacMorris, I think, look you, under your correction, there is not many of your nation.

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MacMorris: Of my nation? What ish my nation? Ish a villain, and a basterd, and a knave, and a rascal. What ish my nation? Who talks of my nation? (Shakespeare 1974: 949) Fluellen's words are clearly intended as an imputation of the disloyalty of the Irish. And MacMorris's reply indicates his unreliability by means of linguistic markers ('ish' and 'basterd'). This is important since it appears again to support the view of the cultural nationalist: only those who belong to the nation can use its signs properly. Its significance is all the more marked of course since this is presented in Shakespeare, one of the touchstones of the English national culture. Yet the poem is more complex than a simple representation of cultural nationalism, for it moves on from the early seventeenth century to a moment of crisis in the modern period. Bloom is the protagonist of Ulysses, Joyce's depiction of early twentieth century Ireland and its identity. And he represents a rejection of cultural nationalism. The response which Bloom makes in the poem is that which the character makes in the 'Cyclops' chapter of Ulysses in answer to a question posed by 'the citizen', a violent Irish nationalist: ' What is your nation if I may ask, says the citizen.Ireland, says, Bloom. I was born here. Ireland'(Joyce 1971: 330) Here is a definition of the nation which pre-dates the modern sense and returns to its etymological roots. Bloom says of himself: '...I belong to a race too...that is hated and persecuted 'Joyce 1971: 331). But nationality in this depiction rests on place of birth: Bloom is a jew who was born in Ireland, he is therefore Irish. This attack on the link between language and nationality appears to be compromised by Heaney's quotation in the essay of a central passage in Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It is the reflection of the young Irishman Stephen Dedalus on an argument which he has had with an English dean of studies at his University. The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. How different are the words home, Christ, ale, master, on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit. His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language. (Joyce 1960:189) The usual gloss on this quote is that it demonstrates the feelings of dispossession felt by the colonial subject when facing the master language. It certainly seems to be the case that Stephen is brought to a position in which he feels both that the English language does not belong to him, and that he does not belong to the group which has primary call upon it. Yet it is important not to accept the drift to cultural nationalism without question. There are a two observations to be

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made. First, it is necessary to pause for thought when the issue of linguistic and cultural dispossession is cited in relation to this passage. To put it crudely, Joyce was in the same position as the young Stephen in relation to the English language; how then is it that such a beautifully passage could be achieved by one who is dispossessed? And second, if the logic of cultural nationalism were followed through then Stephen, and Joyce, would have fled from English to Gaelic. Ireland had its own proponents of the link between language and nation; Donlevy, writing in 1742, had noted that the notion of 'Irishmen without Irish is an Incongruity, and a great Bull'(Donlevy 1742: 506), and the Gaelic revival took up that argument with gusto in the Ireland of Joyce's youth. Despite this, however, Joyce did not turn to Gaelic (though he did take a few lessons). Rather he took the (English) language which he had been given and he disregarded all proprietorial claims to it. He made it new, had it reflect the emergent forces which were starting to disrupt the language-nationality linkage, and cast aside all concerns about purity, origins and belonging. In Heaney's description: Joyce's great root was in an Irish city with its own demotic, English. His work took hold of the European rather than just the Irish heritage, and in the end it made the English language itself lie down in the rag-and-bone shop of its origins and influences...His achievement reminds me that English is by now not so much an imperial humiliation as a native weapon. (Heaney 1978: 37-8) Multiculturalism The argument which prompts Stephen's reflections on his relationship to the English language is one concerned with the proper use of signs and a sense of belonging. Stephen and the dean are having a philosophical discussion, in the midst of which the dean uses the word 'funnel': That? said Stephen. Is that called a funnel? Is it not a tundish? What is a tundish? That. The...the funnel. Is that called a tundish in Ireland? asked the dean. I never heard the word in my life. It is called a tundish in Lower Drumcondra, said Stephen laughing, where they speak the best English. A tundish, said the dean reflectively. That is a most interesting word. I must look that word up. Upon my word I must...(Joyce 1960: 188) In spite of Stephen's jocularity here he is made to feel 'a smart of dejection that the man to whom he was speaking was a countryman of Ben Jonson'; and he is

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reduced to silence three times in their exchange. However, although again this appears to be a confirmation of the power of the link between language and national identity, in fact it becomes more complex. Later, Stephen looks up the word 'tundish' and discovers that it is 'English and good old blunt English too' (Joyce 1960: 251). Yet Joyce's point is more subtle even than that. For the etymology of the word 'tundish' reveals an important lesson about the link between linguistic and national identity. Stephen is made to feel like an outsider, one who does not possess the almost organic link with the signs of belonging which is predicated of the dean. But the etymological roots of 'tundish' demonstrate it to be a word which is linked neither to Irishness (as the dean insinuates), nor to Englishness (as Stephen later protests). Etymologically, 'tundish' is a hybrid word formed from the combination of Old English 'tunne' and the adoption of the Latin 'discus'. It is not a word which will bear the weight of the purity of identity which cultural nationalism demands of it. It is rather a clue to the fictional status of that purity. And it demonstrates how even the apparently local can be international. Joyce's final work, Finnegans Wake, can be read as a critical meditation on the power of the posited relationship between language and national identity which has dominated modern European history for the past two hundred years. It is difficult, as a starting point, even to know in what language the text is composed. Is it, as some commentators maintain, written in fifty different languages? Or is the text written in the new languages which it specifies: 'basically English', 'desperanto', 'franca langua', 'pigeony linguish', 'Iro-European', 'lappish language', sanscreed', 'eryan', 'maundarin tongue', 'yappanoise tongue', 'lipponease longuewedge', 'slanguage', 'jinglish janglage', 'unglish'? Or perhaps in a combination of the language families mentioned: 'Hispano-Cathayan-Euxine, Castilian-Emeratic-Hebridian, Espanol-Cymric-Helleniky', 'Bas-queesh, Finnican, Hungulash, and Old Teangtaggle', or 'celttelleeyeutoslavzendlatinsoundscript'? One way of understanding the complexity of this text would be to say that it is not written in a language, nor is it written in (several) languages, but that it is written in language. Rather than the identification of languages and the groups which are tied to them, the fundamental point of cultural nationalism, Joyce offers a different account. It is one which opposes tales of eternally fixed identity, purity and origins: 'It is the same told of all. Many. Miscegenations on miscegenations' (Joyce 1975: 18). In this model the words of the 'mutter nation' (Joyce: 615) do not offer safe haven from aliens, outsiders, or foreigners, since borders are crossed incessantly and it is shown that nothing is predictable in the development of language or history: He does not know how his grandson's grandson's grandson's grandson will stammer up in Peruvian for in the ersebest idiom I have done it equals so

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shall I do. He dares not think why the grandmother of his grandmother's grandmother coughed Russky with such husky accent since in the mouthart of the slove look at me now means I was once otherwise. (Joyce: 252-3) Language for Joyce did not conform to the model of cultural nationalism in the sense that he did not see it as the bond which attaches a people to a national identity, a racial identity, nor even a piece of land. But language did serve as a model for culture in this representation since it demonstrated the intertextuality of all cultures: Our civilisation [Ireland] is a vast fabric, in which the most diverse elements are mingled, in which nordic aggressiveness and Roman law, the new bourgeois conventions and the remnant of a Syriac religion, are reconciled. In such a fabric it is useless to look for a thread that may have remained pure and virgin without having undergone the influence of a neighbouring thread. What race, or what language (if we accept the few whom a playful will seems to have preserved in ice, like the people of Iceland) can boast of being pure today? (Joyce 1959: 165-6) Conclusion Linguistic purity, like cultural purity, is a fiction which can only be sustained at the cost of unravelling a rich tapestry, of destroying complex and intricate patterns. The histories of language enable us most clearly to see how much our cultures owe each other, have borrowed from each other, have given each other, both within Europe and far beyond its borders. This is an important lesson for cultural and political thinkers of the left and right since they both evince the same mistake. The right damns multiculturalism in the name of a pure national culture which is usually posited as having existed in the past. The left hails multiculturalism as though it were a radical new invention. The news for both parties is that our history in fact always has been multicultural: the language shows it. The signs of our belonging demonstrate the eclectic, hybrid, miscegenated character of our historical past and present. This is a lesson to be taken forward with confidence in the processes of making new languages, new cultures, and new nations in the new Europe. References Baldwin, Stanley (1926) On England, London: Phillip Alan Barker, Ernest (1917) Mothers and Sons in War Time and Other Pieces, 2nd. ed. rev., London: Humphreys. (1927) National Character and the Factors in its Formation, London: Methuen.

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Bradley, H. (1928) The Collected Papers of Henry Bradley: With a Memoir by Robert Bridges, Oxford: Clarendon. Cameron, D and J.Bourne (1988) 'No Common Ground: Kingman, Grammar and the Nation', Language and Education, Vol.2, iii, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Donlevy, A. (1742) The Catechism: or, Christian Doctrine by Way of Question and Answer, Paris. Fichte, J.G. (1968) Addresses to the German Nation [1808], ed. George Armstrong Kelly, New York: Harper. Heaney, Seamus (1972) Wintering Out, Faber: London. (1978) 'The Interesting case of John Alphonsus Mulrennan', Planet, 41. Humboldt, W. von (1988) On Language: The Diversity of Human Language Structure and its Influence on the Mental Development of Mankind [1836], trans. P.Heath, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Joyce, James (1959) The Critical Writings of James Joyce, ed. E.Mason and R.Ellmann, London: Faber. (1960) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man [1916], Harmondsworth: Penguin. (1971) Ulysses [1922], Harmondsworth: Penguin. (1975) Finnegans Wake [1939], Harmondsworth: Penguin. Kant, I. (1957) Perpetual Peace [1795] New York: Liberal Arts Press. Kennedy, Maev (1990) 'Court Usher Puts Accent on Translation', The Guardian, 22nd February. Masterman, C.F.G. (1902) From the Abyss. Of its Inhabits by One of Them, London: Johnson. Müller, Max (1862) Lectures on the Science of Language Delivered at the Royal Institute of Great Britain in 1861, 2nd edition, London: Green. Shakespeare, William (1974) The Riverside Shakespeare, Boston: Houghton Miflin. The Prince of Wales (1989) 'Thomas Cranmer Schools Prize Speech', The Daily Telegraph, December 20th.

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Lowland Scots: Issues in Nationalism and Identity Kim Hardie Introduction Scotland is a nation north of England which forms part of the United Kingdom and is governed from London. Historically, Scotland was an independent nation until the Union of English and Scottish Parliaments in 1707. Scotland has a population of about 5 million (1991), and consists of two major regions: the Lowlands (consisting of a Central Belt, the Borders and Grampian) and the Highlands and Islands. Officially, only one language is spoken in ScotlandEnglish, but in fact there are three languages in use. The use of these three languages varies according to region, i.e. in the Highlands and Islands region the prevalent languages are Gaelic, a Celtic language akin to Irish Gaelic, Welsh and Breton, and English, whereas in the Lowlands English and the Scots 1 language are spoken. It is on the Scots language that we will now focus our attention. Scots developed alongside English out of the Northern variety of Old English. From 1100 onward the two languages went their own way, each being influenced by various sources. The Scots language was subsequently influenced by French, Latin, Flemish-Dutch, Gaelic and Norse. For Scots this development continued well into the 17th century, by when it was firmly established as a language in its own right, distinct from English. Scots was the language of administration, legal documents, of Scottish parliamentary records, and of the court. It was used extensively in literature and spoken by all layers of society. Ironically, it was in this same century that the decline of Scots began. From then on Scots started to lose status among its speakers, especially among its speakers in the middle classes who began to perceive Scots as a vulgar dialect of English used only by the uneducated peasantry of Scotland. It was this attitude which brought Scots to its current statusthat of a set of dialects no longer regarded as constituting a language in its own right. The main historical events which brought Scots as a language to its knees took place over several centuries. First of all, there was the translation of the Bible into

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English, but not into Scots, in 1561. Furthermore, John Knox (the most influential clergyman of the century in Scotland) deemed it better to adopt English for his sermons. As a result Scots lost its spiritual prestige. From then onward most sermons were conducted in English. The second blow to the Scots language came in 1603 with the Union of the Crowns. King James VI of Scotland also became James I, King of England, and the royal court moved from Scotland to London. The king was followed by the upper middle classes, who sought to imitate their peers in England in manners, dress and speech. As a consequence, Scots lost its social prestige and with it its literary tradition. Until 1603 the king had himself been known to write quite a few books and poetry in Scots. Upon moving South to England it was found that his works needed translation in order to be universally understood. The conception of writing in Scots gradually lost prestige and eventually also lost an audience, as it became more and more respectable to write in English instead of Scots. In 1707 the third blow was struck to Scots with the Union of Parliaments. The Scottish Parliament was dissolved and all political power became centralised in London, firmly establishing English as the one and only official (written) language of the United Kingdom. Scots lost its political prestige as all matters related to the politics of Scotland were now handled in England where the medium of communication was English, not Scots. The Union of Parliaments did, however, preserve the identity of the Scottish Court, Scottish Education and the Kirk, but that did not mean much for the Scots language, since there was no Scots Bible and since in 1872 the Education Act was reinforced in Scotland, which stated the promotion of the use of Standard English and the eradication of Scots. This was the final blow to Scots. It would seem, then, that the Scottish people did not find their language to be vital to their national identity, seeing that they were quite willing (some would say 'eager') to give up on Scots. However, there was reaction to this negative attitude towards Scots. While the culture of England in general, and its speech and writing in particular, held an ever firmer hold on the élite, there were still a great number of other Scots who thought Scottish culture was not all that bad, and in fact ascribed to it an important role alongside its English neighbour in the overall British culture. As the 18th century progressed, however, there was a heightening of contact between the two countries and along with it the mocking increased as well. It was supposed by the English in general that the Scots were the ones who had to do the adaptation to English culture (including speech). To even think of the reverse would be lunacy. Yet, running throughout the 18th century with its obsession to anglicise there arose the parallel cultural phenomenon of pride in Scots and the vigorous

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continuation of its tradition as both a medium for literature and speech. The motivation behind this was diverse and often surprising, taking notions of national and religious identity; reaction against artificial gentility; the desire to prove that with a sprinkling of Scots a poet need not desert propriety; academic promotion of the Scottish past as a source of pride in Scottishness at a time when that identity was under threat; and the simple conclusion that, in Scots, Scottish people could communicate more effectively and writers write more relevantly of the Scottish experience. (Kay 1988:93-94) The reaction against Anglicisation was mostly literary, and mostly ineffective. It seemed that the language was not that vital to the Scottish middle classes. It was a language only used by the working classes, whereas the middle classes only spoke Englishalbeit with a distinct Scottish accent. One could argue that the essence of Scottish national identity never comprised 'language' as such. And when it became important to state what the national identity of Scotland was at the beginning of the Union, the middle classes referred to the Scottish institutions which were/are so distinct from their English/Welsh counterparts: Education, Law and the Kirk. All this eventually led to Scots being what it is today: a set of dialects that developed from that one time national language. There is some disagreement among academics concerning the current existence of Scots. Everyone seems to agree that it is a set of dialects now, but the question remains: dialects of what? This is the uncertain position of Scots today; a position which we shall now discuss in slightly more detail, before progressing further with the issue of nationalism and identity. What is Scots? What follows is an example of what is often labelled 'Scots language' taken from literature. It is an excerpt of the literature written in the North-East of Scotland in the North-East dialect of Scots. This example was taken from Kay (1988: 164). The North-East was chosen here to avoid confusion when trying to give an example of Scots. As was mentioned before, there is some disagreement among academics as to what is Scots and what is not. This argument usually concentrates on the urban dialects such as Glaswegian which to some is a new form of Scots dialect, but to others is not Scots at all, but merely a dialect of Scottish English. To continue this discussion in this contribution would change the scope of it and provide enough material for another article on that particular topic. The rural North-East Scots dialect is therefore a 'safe' bet to present as an example of Scots.

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Heely, heely, Tam, ye glaikit stirkye hinna on the hin shelvin' o' the cairt. Fat hae ye been haiverin' at, min? That cauf saick'll be tint owre the back door afore we win a mile fae hame, See't yer belly-ban' be ticht aneuch noo. Woo, lassie! man, ye been makin' a hantle mair adee aboot blaiking that graith o' yours, an' kaimin the mear's tail, nor balancin' yer cairt, an' gettin' the things packit in till't. (Alexander, 1871) However, it seems that the kind of speech variety this extract represents has a somewhat strange status in that it often elicits a varied mix of reactions, ranging from 'uncouth dialect, guttural English, slang, corrupt English, dialect of English, a debased form of English' as one would hear from people on the street, or read in the letters pages of Scottish newspapers to 'perfect Scots, pure Scots, Braid Scots' from mostly scholars or advocates of Scots. Below are two quotations: one gives a straightforward dictionary answer to the 'what is Scots?' question, the other shows one linguist's problem in handling Scots in a book on the languages of Britain: 'the Scots language, the speech of Lowland Scotland, which became distinct from Northern English in the 15th century and was the official language of the Kingdom of Scotland until 1707,...and now surviving as a series of dialects and in a modified literary form,...also called Braid Scots.' (Grant & Murison, 1986) 'In planning and writing this book, I have changed my mind four times, and, in the end, I devote a separate chapter to Scots not because I necessarily accept it as a 'language' rather than a dialect but because it has proved to be more convenient to handle it thus rather than include some treatment of it in the chapter on English'. (Price 1984: 186) These citations illustrate some of the attitudes prevalent among the general public and scholars concerning Scots language. As was mentioned in the introduction, there is considerable discussion among academics concerning the status of Scots today, especially the matter of where contemporary Scottish urban dialects fit in with the labels 'Scots' and 'Scottish English'. However, I shall not deal with this matter any further here for reasons mentioned above. The best way to illustrate how the interaction between English and Scots works today in the Lowlands of Scotland is by representing it in the form of a continuum. The idea of the continuum was first proposed by Aitken (1990: 74). He supplemented this idea with the notion of style-switching:

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Many Scots speakers also operate the Scots and English bases as different registers, using one or the other under different social circumstances. Some such speakers can switch quite cleanly from one to the otherthese people have been called dialect-switchers. Others again either cannot or do not choose to control their styles in this way, but they do shift styles in a less predictable and more fluctuating waythese people we may call style-drifters. The actual practice of such speakers is governed by the expectation that the higher social status of particular speakers or the greater formality of style of any speaker is normally accompanied by a shift towards the English pole of the system [i.e. continuum]. (Aitken, 1979: 85) Standard

Scottish < (1)|(2)|(3)|(4)> Scots

English Figure 1 shows a representation of this idea of the continuum put forward by Aitken. Figure 1 Continuum An example will make it clearer. Assume that a doctor in a rural village in the Lowlands of Scotland normally speaks Standard Scottish English (2) (i.e. he speaks Standard English with a Scottish accent). When he meets a Scots-speaking farmer who lives in the village, the doctor will shift his way of speaking closer to that of the farmer, i.e. moving from (1) Standard Scottish English more towards (4) Scots. Similarly, the farmer will move away from (4) and closer towards (3) to accommodate the doctor's speech. The degree to which both the doctor and the farmer will accommodate depends on the doctor's knowledge of Scots and on the farmer's knowledge of Standard Scottish English. This knowledge may vary from person to person. The situation, as we saw above, is somewhat nebulous as far as the status of Scots is concerned. This situation has, however, improved recently because the European Union's Bureau of Lesser Used Languages of Europe has accepted Scots as a language in its own right (Mini-guide to the Lesser Used Languages of the ECC255 1993: 61). This was done mainly by the ardent supporters the Scots language has in Scotland, meaning the director of the Scots Language Resource Centre in Perth, Mr Stuart McHardy, who contacted the Bureau of Lesser Used Languages of Europe. Other people who helped in this way were the people of the Scots Language Society.

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What seems odd is that the Scots language hardly received any support at all from any of Scotland's political partiesleast of all from the Scottish National Party (SNP). The word 'odd' is used for the simple reason that language, especially in the cases of minority status languages, is often used as a vehicle for the promotion of nationalist causes by the nationalist parties. Well-known examples are Québec, Wales, Catalonia and Flanders. What is the situation regarding the relationship between the SNP and the languages of Scotland (and Scots in particular)? It is this question that will be dealt with in the next section. What is the Influence of Nationalism on the Perception of Scots? Since the romantic age of the 18th century Language and Nationalism have invariably been linked together. One of the first to promote this view was the German philosopher Herder. He pointed out that the loss of a nation's language was the loss of the soul of that nation (Edwards, 1989: 24). Many present day examples can be listed to illustrate this tie between nationalism/patriotism and language: Québec, Belgium, Norway, Catalonia, Wales, etc. What about Scotland? Scotland's major nationalist party does not use the issue of language in Scotland as a vehicle for the promotion of nationalism in Scotlandwhy? Is there no link at all between the languages of Scotland and nationalism? Figure 2 below illustrates how the SNP is concerned with economics and politics and how these two interact in the SNP's policy, but there is no mention of culture and language.

Figure 2 Scottish Nationalism. An earlier investigation of this question was carried out in 1992 and consisted of a pilot study among the Scottish expatriate community in Brussels as part of an undergraduate dissertation (Hardie 1992). The pilot study involved interviewing 20 people and consisted of, among other things, questions on the informants' views concerning the constitutional question in Scotland, and questions on their attitudes towards Scots language.

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No correlation was found between the choice of political parties the informants would vote for and their attitudes towards Scots. However, some correlation was found between the three groupings of people according to their views concerning the constitutional question on the one hand (1) People in favour of Independence for Scotland; (2)People in favour of Devolution for Scotland; and (3)People in favour of the Union between England and Scotland as it is) and on the other their attitudes towards Scots. The results found of this study are summarised in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3 Relationship between Scottish nationalism and Scots. This small pilot study seems to indicate that there is a link between language and nationalism. The table shows that there seems to be a difference in the opinions of nationalists and unionists concerning language. The differences between the two groups of Nationalists and Unionists is quite striking. The linguistic awareness that both groups shared concerning the languages of Scotland in general gave a positive mark for the Nationalists and a negative one for the Unionists. This means that the Nationalists knew the history of the languages of Scotland, and in particular of the Scots language; they were fully aware of the situation of Gaelic and how many people still spoke it today; they knew about the different organisations who were campaigning for Scots and Gaelic, etc. Most of the Unionists knew hardly anything about these matters. This led to the level of confusion about Scots being fairly high among the Unionists: they had trouble identifying what was meant by 'the Scots language', and when they were given an example (like the one presented above) they would exclaim such value judgements as 'oh, you mean slang', or ' oh, Glaswegian'. The Nationalists on the other hand had a very low level of confusion about what Scots was, although they would state they did not know how to classify Glaswegian or any other urban dialect. The surprise came in the last box in Figure 3, i.e. the eventual knowledge of the Scots language. The informants were presented with a Scots word and expression list at the end of the questionnaire. They were asked to give translations into English and state how often they themselves used those words. The words/expressions ranged from those used even in Scottish English to very rare words used nowadays only in literature. The results can be noticed on the

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grid: the Nationalists did rather badly, whereas the Unionists were surprised to find that they knew, and sometimes even used, most of the words. The discrepancy is mostly between the fact that the Nationalists are quite knowledgeable about the background and history of the Scots language but do not speak it or know it, whereas the Unionists know the language but have no knowledge of its background. 0,0,0,0This pilot study would suggest then that there is clearly a link between opinions on the constitutional question in Scotland and attitudes towards the Scots language. So now we come back to our initial question: why does the SNP not use language as a vehicle for the promotion of nationalism in Scotland? Could it be, then, that the answer lies in the perception of self-identity of the Scottish people? Maybe the Scottish people as a whole do not consider language to be vital to their nation's identity. Maybe the SNP are aware of this and hence do not use language in their promotional campaigns. What is the Role of the Scots Language in Scottish Identity? The concept of a national identity entails having a sense of being distinct from others and being able to show pride in what is both distinctive and admirable in one's native culture without any feelings of shame. Every nation or ethnic group will stress these distinctive features to further emphasise a separate identity. These features are what Smolicz (1981: 104) calls 'core values', which he identifies as: one of the most fundamental components of a group's culture. They generally represent its very heartland and act as identifying values which are symbolic of the group and its membership. Rejection of core values carries with it the threat of exclusion from the group. (Smolicz 1981: 104) The question here is: what are the core values that make up the Scottish identity and is language one of them? Or is language not one of the core values, and is hence of little value to the SNP as a vote-winner? According to Smith (1987:26-27) the following holds true for Scottish Identity: Among the Scots, language long ago ceased to play a differentiating and unifying role, once Lallans [Scots] had become the language of the Lowlands. Instead, Institutions like the Presbyterian Kirk, the Scottish legal system and the Scottish system of education, have formed the social bulwark for a continuing Scots sense of ethnic identity, in which these distinctive elements of 'culture' augment and also embody the collective memories of independent Statehood in previous centuries.

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In other words, Smith does not believe that language is one of the core values of Scottish identity. It once was, but has been replaced by the institutions of Kirk, Law and Education which have remained so distinctively Scottish within the Union with England. It seems that maybe because of the change in the social status of Scots the value of Scots as an integral part of Scottish identity has disappeared, being replaced with other values which remained more stable throughout the years of change between 1561 and 1872. Attitudes towards Scots and the Constitutional Question in Scotland A survey has been conducted as part of the research work presently underway. The survey consisted of interviewing about 100 Edinburgh residents by means of a questionnaire and tape, and was used to find out about Edinburgh residents's attitudes towards Scots, what they identified as being Scots, and whether there were any patterns in their answers according to the way they perceived the constitutional question in Scotland. OThe questionnaire consisted of three parts. The first part involved listening to the tape which contained four voices, each one representing a variety of Scots. The second part was made up of multiple-choice questions on the constitutional question in Scotland and about what was seen as being vital to Scottish identity. The last section concerned 17 statements about accent, Gaelic and Scots. A subset of these statements are shown below: C10: Scots needs to be used in daily life in schools, on television, in newspapers and in shops. C13: Scots language should become an optional subject in school like French. C14: A standard scots should be developed (equivalent to standard English) for use in schools, local authorities, on television and in newspapers. C15: The Scots tongue should be better represented in schools and in the media C16: There should be government support for the Scots language C17: The political parties [in Scotland] should talk more about their ideas concerning Scots. The informants were asked to agree or disagree with the statements given in all three parts of the questionnaire on a 5point Likert Scale. Background information was then asked concerning sex, age, education, etc. to determine the social factors which might play a relevant role in the survey.

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Page 70 The informants were split into three groups according to their political convictions concerning the constitutional question in Scotland: 1) in favour of Independence for Scotland; 2) in favour of Devolution for Scotland; 3) in favour of the Union between England and Scotland as it exists now. Each group comprised between 30 and 33 people. Preliminary results of the survey show the following results in percentages on the above statements for all 95 people: Table 1 Preliminary results to statements C10, C13-C17. C10 C13 C14 C15 C16 C17

Str.Disagr 3 8 9 3 6 3

Disagree 13 24 36 12 21 7

Neutral 21 19 30 23 29 17

Agree 46 34 21 53 36 43

Str.Agree 17 15 4 9 8 30

As these preliminary results demonstrate, there is quite a positive attitude among the informants towards the Scots language. The only matter which seems to elicit negative reactions is the question of standardising Scots (C14), a process deemed essential to a Language Planning procedure, if ever one is to take place. More active support from political parties in Scotland and from Government is also advocated by the informants. If we take a closer look at the main point under investigation, i.e. the break-down of these results according to the informants' convictions about the constitutional question in Scotland, we see a pattern emerging. In Figure 4 (C17: Political parties [in Scotland] should talk more about their ideas concerning Scots), we see that the distribution of the answers is more or less even among the three groups, although the Independence group seems to be more certain of their opinion as opposed to the Unionists and Devolutionists. But the other figures show that this is definitively not a general pattern. Figure 5 (C10: Scots needs to be used in daily life in schools, on television, in newspapers and in shops) shows the overall tendency to agreement, but this agreement comes mainly from the Independent and Devolutionist groups. The answers from the Unionists are more spread out, although the majority of the Unionists does agree to the statement. Statement C14 gave a negative reaction from the whole group, as we can see from Table 1 presented above. When we take a more detailed look at Figure 6,

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we find that this negative reaction mainly stems from the Devolutionist and Unionist groups. Most of the Independence group remained neutral or tended to agree with the statement. One statement which received a general favourable answer from the informants was C16. However, a closer look at Figure 7 illustrates how here the majority of those answers came from the Devolutionist and Independence groups, showing how the majority of the Unionist group disagreed or preferred to remain neutral. It has to be remembered that these are preliminary results. More work is being done on these numbers, and further statistics will be used to find out more about the relationship between the attitudes towards Scots and the constitutional question in Scotland.

Figure 4 C17: Political parties should talk more about their ideas on Scots.

Figure 5 'C10:Scots needs to be used in daily life in schools, on television, ...'

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Figure 6 'C14: A standard Scots should be developed for use in schools, etc.'

Figure 7 'C16:There should be government support for the Scots language'. Conclusions More and more it seems to have become obvious that the Scots language is not essential to Scottish Identity. Whether or not that is the explanation for the SNP not using the language to promote its cause remains as yet unclear. There is, however, a fairly positive attitude towards preserving Scots, although there is not much proof so far that this would also lead to practical support in favour of the language. The fact that the majority of the informants were not in favour of standardising Scots seems to make this matter rather doubtful. However, many peopleespecially nationalistsstill remain hopeful of re-establishing Scots to its former status, and most see this happening in an independent Scotland. How this way of thinking fits in with the fact that the Scottish National Party does very little to support the language is not clear. The main questions that still need clarification are: Do Nationalists view the linguistic situation in Scotland differently from non-nationalists?

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The answer is probably yes, but what is important is how they view it. Does the 'nationalism' aspect have an influence on the way people rate a dialect as 'Scottish English' or as 'Scots'? It probably does, but how will it fit in with the fact that most of the informants reacted negatively towards the suggestion of standardising Scots? Will nationalism eventually bring an end to the nebulous definition of Scots? Does language have a role to play in the formation of Scottish identity, If so: what is its role? If not: why not? The answer to the main question is probably 'no'. The reason might well be that it is not exactly clear as to what Scots is, and before that problem is solved nothing else can realistically be undertaken to promote the use of Scots and to bring it back to its former glory as a national language. Hopefully these ideas and questions will become clearer when more research on this matter has been undertaken. Notes 1 This term is somewhat disputed by certain scholars who prefer to reserve the word 'Scots' for the mediaeval languagei.e. the literary language. They do not deem it to be appropriate for the modern spoken language used in the Lowlands today. 2 There are various ways of describing Standard Scottish English. The fact is that it varies from one individual to another. In general we can assume that Standard Scottish English is Standard English spoken with a Scottish accent. However, some speakers of Standard Scottish English include some typically 'Scots' vocabulary (e.g.: outwith, wee, etc.) and 'grammatical features' (e.g. I'm waiting on him writing, my car needs washed, etc.). For more information on Standard Scottish English I refer the reader to Miller (1993) and McArthur (1979). References Aitken, A.J. (1979) Scottish Speech: a historical view with special reference to the Standard English of Scotland. In Aitken, A.J. and MacArthur, T. (eds). Languages of Scotland. 85-119. Edinburgh: Chambers. Aitken, A.J. 1990. The Good Old Scots Tongue: Does Scots have an identity? In Haugen, E., McClure, J.D. & Thomson, D.S. (eds). Minority Languages Today. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press: 72-91. Alexander, W. 1871. Johnny Gibb of Gushetneuk. Aberdeen: Walker & Smith. Edwards, J.1989. Language, Society and Identity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Grant, W. and Murison, D. (eds). 1986. The Compact Scottish National Dictionary. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. Hardie, K. 1992-1993. Expatriate Attitudes on the relationships between Scottish Nationalism and Lowland Scots: a pilot study. Unpublished dissertation. Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels. Belgium.

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(1995). Scots Language and Education: an overview. In R. Wakeley (ed.) Language Teaching and Learning in Higher EducationIssues and perspectives. (135-142) London:CILT Kay, B. 1988. Scots: the mither tongue. Grafton Books. Glasgow. McArthur, T. 1979. The Status of English in and furth of Scotland. In, Aitken, A.J. & McARthur, T. (eds). Languages of Scotland. Chambers. Edinburgh :50-67. Miller, J. 1993. The Grammar of Scottish English. In, Milroy, J & Milroy, L.(eds). Real English: the grammar of English Dialects in the British Isles Longman. London: 99-139. Mini-Guide to the Lesser Used Languages of the EC. 1993. The European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages. Brussels. Price, G. 1985. The Languages of Britain. London: Edward Arnold. Smith, A.D. 1987. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Smolicz, J.J. 1981. Language as a core value of culture. In, Baetens Beardsmore, H. (ed.) Elements of Bilingual Theory. Brussels: study series of the 'Tijdschrift van de Vrije Universiteit Brussel' no 6: 104-125.

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Linguistic Purification, the French Nation-State and the Linguist Jacques Durand 1 Aujourd'hui, les menaces qui pèsent sur l'intégrité de notre langue sont d'une autre nature. Elles proviennent essentiellement de l'extérieur de nos frontières, tout en prenant appui sur, non pas l'indifférence, mais tout au moins l'indolence de la plupart de nos compatriotes quant à la préservation de la langue francaise contre les dégradations dues à l'usage abusif de termes étrangers (M. Francisque Perrut, Député, 1994: 5).2 Today the dangers which threaten the integrity of our language are of a different nature. They come essentially from outside our borders, and are helped, not by indifference, but by the apathy of most our compatriots regarding the preservation of the French language against the degradations caused by the unbridled use of foreign terms (my translation, JD). Purification: A Misnomer? The term 'purification' has recently been appliedalong with 'ethnic'to the systematic destruction of peoples of different cultural backgrounds, political creeds or religious beliefs from their repressors. At the time of writing, the most salient example of such purification is probably the case of the ex-Yugoslavia. Unfortunately, this tragic example is by no means isolated and this century has had its share of 'ethnic purification' in that sense. However, languages can also be the subject of the same type of systematic repression or destruction. It may appear that linguistic repression is quite innocuous by comparison with the physical destruction of entire communities but this is to forget that it is usually part and parcel of a process of subjugation and victimisation. Thus, in the destruction of Yiddish-speaking Jews and Romani-speaking Gipsies in Hitler's Germany, the 'language' designations may well seem secondary were it not for the fact that linguistic unity was an integral part of the building of Nazi Germany, for instance in the trend of 'Muttersprache und Geistebildung':3 The mother tongue paves the way on a which a people (Volk) becomes conscious of itself, expands the community based on ties of blood and

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life-soil into a historically effective communion of thought and action, and crowns it, through the creation of permanent values benefiting all the living and future members of the Volk. The original reads as follows: Die Muttersprache bahnt den Weg, auf dem ein Volk sich seiner selbst bewußt wird, die in den Bindungen des Blutes und des Lebensbodens angelegte Gemeinsamkeit zur geschichtlich wirksamen Gemeinschaft des Denkens und Handelns ausbaut und durch das Schaffen bleibender, allen lebenden und künftigen Volksgliedern zu gute kommender Werte krönt. (Weisberger 1943: 83) Many examples of linguistic repression in Europe and throughout the world could be citedCatalan having to go underground during the Franco régime, the treatment of non-Russian languages during the Stalinist era (see Barbour, this volume)and even if not all have involved genocides they have often led to the ultimate disappearance of languages from the face of the earth. However, my purpose here will not be to catalogue examples of linguistic repression throughout the world but rather to examine the most recent attempt at linguistic legislation in Francethe so-called 'loi Toubon' (1994)after the name of the 'Ministre de la culture et de la francophonie' who was responsible for the bill in question. This law, technically known as the 'Loi no 94-665 du 4 août 1994 relative à l'emploi de la langue française' (published in the Journal Officiel of 5 August 1994) reasserts the centrality of French within the public sphere and has important consequences for the status of other languages in France. At first sight, placing, as I have done, recent, democratic legislation imposing the use of French in France within the context of brutal repression is somewhat misguided. Indeed, I would not want to press the equation too far and there are elements of the Toubon Law which seem to me to be part of a legitimate democratic debate in the context of the European Union (EU). Nevertheless, the theme of purification is by no means absent from the attempt to 'protect' the French language against the invasion of foreign (mainly English) elements and the degradations they allegedly cause. The quote placed at the beginning of this chaptera statement that figures in the first few paragraphs of the official National Assembly report which preceded the promulgation of the Toubon Lawis only one of many similar assertions which can be found in official documents published at the time of the debate around the loi Toubon. In my opinion, as can indeed be detected from some of the above remarks, much of the official rhetoric in support of the 'loi Toubon' and the 'projets de loi' which preceded it is highly questionable. But to understand the point of view

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adopted here, it is necessary to situate any attempt at linguistic legislation in France within a long tradition of planning and centralisation. Aspects of this history are well known to specialists of France but in a book devoted to 'Language, Culture and Communication in Europe', it seems important to sketch some of the relevant background in the next section before presenting the Toubon Law in context and finally taking a critical stance as a linguist. I can only hope that the reader willing to follow me in the early parts of this chapter will be receptive to some of the polemical conclusions I draw. From Villers-Cotterêt to the Toubon Law That France has had a centralized language policy for centuries is a well-known fact. Indeed, French has long been a prime example of what is called a standard language. In recent years Haugen's (1966) useful model of standardisation has been insightfully applied to French (Lodge, 1991, 1993) and this will form the backdrop of part of my contribution. In the wake of Haugen's work, a distinction can be made between the social and the linguistic aspects of standardisation. At the social level, one would distinguish the selection of a variety as a norm (the dialect of the Ile-deFrance in the case of French) from its acceptance, that is its diffusion throughout society and its becoming accepted by the community as a wholea process which can take many centuries. At the linguistic level, one can distinguish the elaboration offunction characterising a standard from the process of codification. In an 'advanced' society, a variety has to fulfil a wide range of functions to be accepted as the standard: it has to be used for writing and speaking, for administration, education, technology, in many styles and registers. To allow this elaboration and diversification of functions, the society has to develop various linguistic tools: traditionally, a writing system; nowadays, wordprocessing and user-oriented software, for instance. But the selection and elaboration of a vernacular do not prevent variations in usage. As the process of standardisation requires variation to be suppressed or at least severely regimented, codification will take place in the form of grammatical and lexical normalisation. This is achieved, for instance, through the creation of bodies such as the Académie Française entrusted with the setting and maintenance of a standard language. We should, however, be careful to bear in mind that the spread of a standard language is in the end the result of a variety of factorsnot all of a piece. Nor should we be misled by the connotations of a certain type of vocabulary (e.g. the term 'selection'). At certain points in time, a variety may be imposed by force, for instance, through the setting up of a foreign administration following conquest. At other points, the standard will spread through economic, social and ideologi-

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cal factors without the need for repressive measures. For instance, in the south of France, even after the crusades against the Albigenses, Occitan was widely used beside Latin as an administrative language in the thirteenth and fourteenth century. Between the fifteenth century and the sixteenth century, a major change took place. Not only was Latin progressively ousted from administrative documents but Occitan was also displaced. There is evidence that the political turmoil brought about by the Hundred Years War led the French kings, suspicious of their vassals in the south, to send their own men as consuls and administrators. The Toulouse parliament (law court) was therefore already functioning in French in 1444approximately a hundred years before the Ordonnances de Villers-Cotterêts briefly considered below (Dupuy, 1972: 150, Lodge, 1985, 1993: 125 et passim). At the same time, it is quite obvious that a sizeable part of the ruling élite in the south of France embraced the language of the French kingsa move which gave it access to powerful social, cultural and economic networks. While linguistic legislation was already in place in the fifteenth century (see Judge, 1993: 35), it is customary to trace the birth of language planning in France to the 'Ordonnances de Villers-Cotterêts' (1539). These were a series of edicts during François I's reign which aimed at reforming the administration of justice. According to Article 111 of the 'Ordonnances', all vernaculars but French (and Latin was still the main target here) were to be excluded from official documents such as court proceedings, deeds and judgements which must be set down in the 'langage maternel françois et non aultrement'. Even if the selection of the Ile-deFrance dialect and its special status were not new in 1539, there is little doubt that the Edicts of Villers-Cotterêts were of great importance, administratively as well as symbolically, in the history of French. According to Rickard (1974: 88), in little more than ten years French was universally used in written documents, 'even in areas where the French king had as yet no jurisdiction, such as Béarn, Savoy and Comtat Venaissinused, moreover, in ecclesiastical as well as civil administration and archives.' The 'Ordonnances de Villers-Cotterêts' marked only the beginning of a long process of homogenisation. The precise norm to be chosen still had to be settled and it had to widen its range of uses beyond legal written documents (elaboration of function); it had to be codified and to become fully accepted by all strata of the population. By the end of the sixteenth century, the norm was clearly Paris-based, it functioned at many different levels (in everyday life, plays, administration, church sermons), but it still allowed fluidity in usage. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were to be the age of codification. The creation of the Académie Française in 1635 was again a major landmark in the process of standardisation:

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La principale fonction de l'Académie sera de travailler avec tout le soin et toute la diligence possible à donner des règles certaines à notre langue et à la rendre pure, éloquente et capable de traiter les Arts et les Sciences (Statut et règlements de l'Académie, 1635). But the task of regimenting the language was not the sole preserve of the Académie and was widely embraced by the learned strata of French society. This period which extended to the French Revolution (1789) saw the unparalleled development of what has been referred to as the 'ideology of the standard' (Milroy & Milroy, 1985): the idea that the perfect state of a language is one of uniformity and invariance; the conviction that the only really valid form of a language is the written one; and the belief that the standard variety is inherently superior to all other varieties, all figured prominently in the writings of the cultural élites of the time. Diderot (1751) was only one of many writers to believe that the French language was the language of reason and thought: 'nous disons les choses en français comme l'esprit est forcé de les considérer en quelque langue qu'on écrive' and 'Le français est fait pour instruire, éclairer et convaincre; le grec, le latin, l'italien, l'anglais, pour persuader, émouvoir et tromper; parlez grec, latin, italien au peuple; mais parlez français au sage'. 4 It is however easy to be misled by the process of codification into the belief that French was the language of the whole nation as we conceive it today. When the Revolution broke out, France was still a heterogeneous, multi-lingual federation of provinces proud of their local laws and customs. Linguistic uniformity simply did not exist. On the basis of the survey organised by the Abbé Grégoire (an influential deputy of the National Assembly), it is estimated that out of a population of 26 million some 6 million could not understand French at all, the same number were more or less unable to sustain a conversation in French, and that only 3 million of the remaining 14 million spoke the language correctly (see, e.g. Walter 1989: 17). Whereas the French monarchy had tolerated local languages, the French republic needed to assert unity in the face of what was perceived as the 'divide and rule' policy of the Ancien Régime. A general equation began to be made between the French language, the nation-state, freedom and enlightenment. On the other hand, the 'patois' were seen as equatable with the provinces, the king, anti-revolutionary 'reaction' and obscurantism. The title of Abbé Grégoire's report is revealing: Sur la Ia nécessité et les moyens d'anéantir les patois et d'universaliser l'usage de la langue française (1794). If further proof was needed, Barrère's famous outburst should give some idea of the feeling of the revolutionaries towards other languages than French: Le fédéralisme et la superstition parlent bas-breton, l'émigration et la haine de la république parlent allemand, la contre-révolution parle italien et le

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fanatisme parle basque. Cassons ces instruments de dommage et d'erreur ... Citoyens la langue d'un peuple libre doit être une et la même pour tous, (Lodge, 1991: 107-108) So from the French Revolution onwards the imposition of French was high on the agenda of the nation-statea trend which is found in other European countries (see Barbour, this volume, Crowley, this volume). Yet, in the late 19th century large portions of the French population, particularly but not only in the south, still used other languages than French in everyday life (Breton, Catalan, Occitan, etc.the so-called 'patois'). Among many factors, it took free, universal and secular education starting with Jules Ferry (1881-86), military conscription, two major wars in the twentieth century, the setting-up of a large civil service, the huge increase in travelling and telecommunications, to generalise French at the expense of the regional languages. It is fair to say that the spread of French was not generally achieved through violence in this period. In the same way as many modern immigrants will not speak their native language to their children for fear of retarding their education, many parents would consciously abandon regional languages for French. At the same time, a battle against the use of regional languages did take place. One of the most perverse forms of this fight was the custom of the 'token of shame' or 'symbol' in the schools from 1860 onwards. The token of shame had many names throughout France but it refers to an objecta bar, a stick, a brickwhich was given to a child caught using 'patois' and which he would in turn pass on to other children not speaking French through first denouncing them to the teacher. The pupil caught in possession of the 'token of shame' at the end of the day was severely punished. 5 To such practices must be added the fact that from a legal point of view, regional languages have had no status during this period. For instance, as far as the teaching of Occitan is concerned, one has to wait for the 'loi Deixonne' in 1959 for a first inclusion of this language in the 'baccalauréat' syllabusbut only as an extra-subject counting solely for the award of a distinction. It was only in 1969 that Occitan became a language on a par with other languages within the 'baccalauréat' marking system. At the same time, the pre-eminence of French within France kept being reasserted by the creation of institutions such as the 'Haut Comité de défense et d'expansion de la langue française' (under de Gaulle in 1966) which over time became the 'Haut Comité de la langue française' (1973) with three commissions aimed at maintaining the quality of the French language, at ensuring its cultural influence abroad and at reinforcing cooperation with other francophone countries. Nor must we forget that the French government has not hesitated to pass laws to reinforce the decrees of its official commissions. The most relevant from our

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point of view is the 'loi Bas-Lauriol' which was promulgated in December 1975. This law clearly asserts the offical use of French in France. There are three areas in which French was to be compulsory: in trade and advertising, in work contracts, and in information given to consumers. Moreover, it established that approved French terminology was to be used in all state documentation and in education. Firms not complying with this legislation were to be fined. Much of this was intended to protect consumers and workers (who also had the right to be informed in their native languages). While this law was limited by Common Market legislation, it was passed without much public notice in comparison with the Toubon Law. Yet, it is fair to say that in many cases the Toubon Law merely reiterates what is in the 'loi BasLauriol'. One can therefore wonder why the Toubon Law aroused such passion in the public? The Toubon Law in context The loi Toubon was promulgated on 4 August 1994 on the basis of a 'projet de loi' first introduced in 1993. It is made up of 24 articles. The first article reads as follows: Art. ler.Langue de la République en vertu de la Constitution, la langue française est un élément fondamental de la personnalité et du patrimoine de la France. Elle est la langue de l'enseignement, du travail, des échanges et des services publics. Elle est le lien privilégié des Etats constituant la communauté de la francophonie. This first article deserves some specific comments. While the initial clause reminds us that the Constitution of the 5th Republic includes the affirmation that 'The language of the Republic is the French language', it is important to remember that this clause was in fact only added to the 1958 Constitution on 25 June 1992. The second clause is, as it were, a summary of the whole law since the purpose of the other 23 articles is to clarify the assertion that French is the language of education, work, trade and public services. The final clause is a reminder that the discussion is not merely a national one, since French is described as the privileged link between the states which make up the community of French-speaking countries. A detailed presentation of the whole 'loi Toubon' would be impossible here, all the more so as many articles are long, very specific and contain special dispensations (e.g. the status of languages within airports). I will limit myself to

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a few examples here and refer the reader to Appendix I for some excerpts from the Journal Officiel. Article 2 makes French compulsory in the advertising, description and directions of use of products; it also demands that bills and receipts be couched in French. Article 7 requires that publications, journals and papers which benefit from public funds must at the very least include a summary in French if they have to be written in a foreign language. Article 8 specifies that contracts must be in French, but a translation in the native language of the employee can be demanded by the latter. In case of legal disagreement between employer and employee, the translation is intended to be authoritative. The whole law is followed by four sections: sanctions, impositions, creation of associations, various. While a critical stance is adopted here vis-à-vis the 'loi Toubon', a simplistic position should be avoided. Some of the measures put forward are perfectly sensible in a society which prides itself on its democratic traditions. For instance, Article 8 mentioned above is clearly intended to protect employees in allowing a translation to over-ride a French text: 'En cas de discordance entre les deux textes, seul le texte rédigé dans la langue du salarié étranger peut être invoqué contre ce dernier'. But to discuss the Toubon Law item by item would end up by obscuring matters, all the more so as the final version of this law was amputated of some of its most contentious clauses. What is more important within the context of this book is to explore the situation within which the Toubon Law was passed and to begin to assess what was at stake in the legal reaffirmation of the role of French in France. The status of French as a major world-language and especially as the language of diplomacy has clearly been in decline throughout the twentieth century. The economic, military and cultural power of the United States combined with a widespread use of English throughout the former British empire have led to a situation where English has become the koine of the modern world. Even within the EU, the presence of Britain and of countries with a strong anglophile tradition such as Denmark have weakened the role of French as a working language. France is not the superpower it was in previous centuries. Nevertheless, France still occupies an important position in military and political terms. It is a permanent member of the Security Council of the United Nations. It is a nuclear power ready to challenge the world to remain in the nuclear race. It is at the hub of the community of French-speaking countries which at one time or another formed part of its old colonial empire (recall clause 3 of Article 1). The defence and promotion of French is therefore part and parcel of a wider strategy to maintain France in an influential position at an international level.

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It is no accident if the decline of French outside France has been linked to a decline of French within France, and in both cases with English as the main culprit. The most celebrated cry of alarm this century was Etiemble's (1973) Parlez-vous franglais? which bemoaned the way English was corrupting the French language and who explicitly attributed part of the problem to the colonising mentality of the US. Many official documents published in connection with the loi Toubon have been at pains to stress that this law was not devised to oust English as such but had wider linguistic implications such as favouring the knowledge of other languages of the EU. This is partially true. However, how can one explain the interventionist policy in the area of terminology which has taken place since the 1960s? Which language, if not English, has been the object of all this terminology work? How come that the long report by M. Francisque Perrut to the National Assembly already quoted contains statements such as the following (section I.A.1 'Jargonner c'est moderne', p . 9) Aujourd'hui, si l'on en croit les magazines à la mode, le cadre moderne, jeune et dynamique, va de 'challenge' (défi) en meeting (réunion), 'dispatchant' (répartissant) ses rendez-vous dans un emploi du temps 'surbooké' (surchargé), entre un concert 'live' (en public) et un 'happening' (création) théâtral... Qui veut-on 'bluffer' (impressionner)?... La facilité, l'indifférence, mais aussi bien souvent, le souci de 'paraitre' dans le coup ont fait le lit de l'abâtardissement croissant de notre langue, par le biais d'une réaction complexe où se mêle snobisme, pseudo-culture et crainte de s'avouer dépassé parce qu'incapable de jongler avec des mots étrangers. Why are all the examples of foreign contamination given here borrowed from English? When one looks carefully at the debates surrounding the loi Toubon it is quite clear that the active defence of French, indeed its purification, is part of the background justification of this law. French in many official documents is presented as 'under threat', 'diseased' and biological analogies figure prominently in the discourse of the promoters of the Toubon Law (often echoing Etiemble's work). Some of the implications of these claims will be further examined below but it is interesting to note that the 'Conseil Constitutionnel' censured a number of clauses and in particular the second paragraph of Article 2 which was very explicit in forbidding the use of foreign terms whenever there exist equivalent terms in approved terminology lists: Le recours à tout terme étranger ou à toute expression étrangère est prohibé lorsqu'il existe une expression ou un terme français de même sens approuvé

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dans les conditions prévues par les dispositions réglementaires relatives à l'enrichissement de la langue française. Why the Toubon Law provoked much more public disquiet than the BasLauriol Law when the two laws are so similara query raised at the end of the previous sectionis a complex question to answer. In the light of what has been said above, it might be worth making the following points. First of all, the progressive worsening of French as an international language has induced a growing 'protectionist' attitude towards the language. It is, for example, no accident that the late eighties and early nineties witnessed a huge debate around a possible reform of French spelling. This sharply divided French society and finally resulted in only a few minor changesi.e. a statu quo ante bellum (see Arrivé, 1993). Secondly, the Toubon Law was discussed in a context of re-evaluation of the role of nations within the EU leading to a cliff-hanging vote in France concerning the Maastricht treaty. During the Maastricht campaign, many prominent French politicians did present the EU as a threat to national integrity. Thirdly, immigration has been seen as a major social problem by many French people over the last two decades, easily detectable in the huge support given to the French nationalist politician Le Pen in all recent elections. Plans to send immigrants back to their homelands may well not be unconnected to the idea of cleansing a language of foreign elements. Of course, not everybody will agree with this partial assessment and many politicians would repudiate the ideas expressed here as a misrepresentation of the nature and purpose of the Toubon Law. It is however my contention that further examination of this law from a more linguistic standpoint shows why it has proved so problematic. The Linguist and the Law How can or should a linguist (in the sense of a specialist in general linguistics) react to debates such as the ones surrounding the Toubon Law? As there are a variety of approaches to language, there isn't a single answer to this question. If one assumes in the wake of Chomsky that linguistics aims at characterising the language faculty that humans share and which underlies their ability to produce and understand an indefinite number of utterances, the linguist cannot by definition be prescriptive. Therefore, the linguist may well want to shun debates about language regulations which are so value-ridden. On the other hand, it can be objected that since languages function in society, the whole debate is part of the data of a comprehensive sociolinguistic account of the use of language. Moreover, some linguists will even stress that language planning is a perfectly valid sub-area of applied linguistics and that the linguist should get involved. My feeling is that debates such as the one discussed here are inevitably socio-po-

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litical. Linguists, as actors in the social arena, are like any other citizens and not necessarily more 'objective' or 'dispassionate' than they are. Many of the points made here are therefore inevitably political in nature. However, it seems to me that the knowledge of language and languages one gains as a linguist almost compels one to intervene in the face of the often misleading argumentation which has been used to justify the Toubon Law. Like any law, the Toubon Law in its final form gives little indication of the grounds on which it was published and the justification it received from its advocates. Some examples have already been quoted but one of the most striking features of the official documents defending this law is the insistence on the continuity of the French language and the French nation over time. For instance, the very beginning of M. Francisque Perrut's report to the National Assembly (see note 2) asserts that since Louis XI (1423-1483), France has always been attentive to the fate of her language, 'the precious vehicle of her culture and identity'. Having summoned Louis XI, he then adds: Près d'un demi-millénaire après que François 1er eut signé, en 1539, l'ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts, qui faisait de la langue française l'unique langue judiciaire du royaume, deux siècles après que la Convention répondant aux mêmes exigences d'unification nationale, eut voté la loi du 2 thermidor an II qui exigeait l'emploi de la langue française pour tous les actes publics, la Ve République a, à son tour, en 1992, constaté la nécessité de réaffirmer dans son texte fondateur que 'la langue de la République est le français'. (Doc. no 1158, 25 April 1994: 5) But as our brief historical recapitulation has shown, the French language has not always been co-extensive with the French nation. Indeed, the French nation in its twentieth century sense simply did not exist under Louis XI. While I have tried to distance myself from a vision of the imposition of French as a series of 'coups de force', we saw that the regional languages, which we are now told are an important element of French cultural heritage, were the primary target of legislation from the Revolution onwards. In so far as they pose no real threat now, the nation-state can be liberal in its approach. In other words, the continuity of the French language and nation is a fiction that does not resist even a superficial examination of either the history of French or that of France. 6 In fact, the identification of the French language with the French nation is all the more pernicious as French is not the native language of many immigrants who have become French nationals. Of particular significance in this context is the commissioning by the Ministère de la Culture et de la Francophonie of a poll on the defence of the French language. The SOFRES was asked to conduct a poll on this theme, which it did on 4 and 5 March 1994 by consulting a sample of 1000

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individuals described as 'representative of the French population of 18 and over'. On 8 March 1994 there was a press release by the Ministère in question (see Appendix 2). From it, we learn that 97% of French are attached to their language and proud of its international dimension; that only 9% consider that the defence of the French language is not an important objective, and that 65%, believe that a strong political will can lead to an efficient policy of resistance; that the French people massively (between 81% and 93%) support the contents of the 'projet de loi' and so on. In a word, we are told, what the French people want is a 'living language', 'a language which remains the language of the nation (la Cité), which is part of everyday life in France and whose use it is legitimate to impose'. It is clear that the use of the possessive determiner 'leur' in the first result of the poll is not accidental: 'Les Français sont attachés à leur langue (97%)', Appendix II, point 1). Even more interestingly, the SOFRES reported the same result as 'Les Français expriment un fort attachement à leur langue maternelle'. But, the question put to the people consulted had nothing to do with 'their mother tongue' but referred simply to the French language: 'Diriez-vous que vous êtes très attaché, plutôt attaché, plutôt pas attaché ou pas du tout attaché à la langue française?' On close inspection, the whole poll turns out to be quite biased. For instance, it may be true that 81% to 93% of French people (i.e. the informants) are in favour of the 'projet de loi' but the ministerial report forgets to mention that 46% had never heard of the bill in question and it is doubtful that the 53% who had heard of it knew its precise content (NB 1% gave no answer). Elsewhere informants were asked what, according to them, threatens the French language most (Q8 Selon vous, qu'est-ce qui menace le plus la langue française?). One does not need to be a specialist in 'philosophical semantics' to understand that such questions presuppose that the French language is under threat and create in the minds of the informants unable to challenge them the conviction that an active programme of defence of the French language must be set up. So, the use of questionnaires, at first sight a democratic initiative, is no more than a further example of what has occasionally been called the 'manufacture' or the 'engineering' of consent (Chomsky, 1986: xxvii). While, as a linguist, I do understand that attitudes to language carry social values which arguably should be observed and not judged, it is nevertheless clear that the 'ideology of the standard', which is so prevalent in France, is profoundly inimical to what one knows about languages. 7 There is no evidence that in its present state, the French language is any more threatened than in the past. A glance at any French etymological dictionary will show that the French vocabulary, whether learned or colloquial, is a huge amalgam of words from many

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different origins. Nor is there any evidence known to me allowing us to validate assertions such as the following one by Mitterrand (1984) who, echoing Diderot (1751), says: A propos de la langue française, il est difficile d'ajouter, après tant d'éloges tant de fois répétées sur sa rigueur, sa clarté, son élégance, ses nuances, la richesse de ses temps et ses modes, la délicatesse de ses sonorités, la logique de son ordonnancement' (cited in Yaguello, 1988: 122-123). In fact, languages are not biological objects out there, as the 19th century evolutionists would have us believe (see Durand, 1990, 1993). Indeed, it is not even clear that the concept 'language' is central to linguistic theory conceived as a branch of psychology. To quote Chomsky at length: Many would agree with Michael Dummett, incidentally a leading Frege scholar, that you and I not only share a public language, but that languageEnglishexists 'independently of any particular speakers'; each of us has only a 'partial, and partially erroneous grasp of the language.' This idea is completely foreign to the empirical study of language. Nor has anyone ever indicated what sense it might have; how do we decide, for example, whether the word 'disinterested' in the language I partially know is pronounced as in Boston or in Oxford, or whether it means uninterested, as almost all speakers believe (ignorantly, we are told) or unbiased, as certain authority figures insist? For the empirical study of language, the questions are meaningless. What are called 'languages' or 'dialects' in ordinary usage are complex amalgams determined by colors on maps, oceans, political institutions, and so on, with obscure normative-teleological aspects. And there is no theoretical construct to replace them, or explanatory gap that such a construct might fill if it were devised. It is true that Peter and Mary may talk alike, while neither talks like Deng Xiaoping. Similarly, they may look alike and live near one another, though neither looks like or lives near Deng. From these facts, we do not conclude that there are common shapes that people share, or that the world is divided into objective areas, even as idealizations; or languages and communities to which these languages belong. (1993: 18-19) Once one moves away from the idea that languages are well-defined entities located in the world like plants or organisms, the whole Toubon debate appears in a different light altogether.

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Concluding Remarks In this essay I have attempted to discuss aspects of the Toubon Law from a social and linguistic perspective. Other worthwhile discussions of this law are available which either complement or depart from the point of view adopted here. 8 Many non-linguists and presumably a number of linguists will remain unconvinced by the points made earlier. If so, one of the reasons underlined in Crowley (this volume) may be that, politically, right and left often share similar beliefs concerning cultural and linguistic questions. Some will point out that from a sociolinguistic point of view it is a fact that French people believe in a standard language which must be protected and that this should be recorded as part of the French cultural and linguistic tradition and not judged. But it seems to me that the duty of a linguist is to point out that the arguments which are at the core of the 'ideology of the standard' in its French instantiation have little to do with 'linguistic facts' and much to do with social, political and economic questions.9 Indeed, in many respects the linguist is like the biologist or zoologist confronted with a discourse about 'human races' and their degree of 'purity' which s/he knows has no foundation in biological facts (Gould 1981). Such beliefs may be part of citizens' beliefs or national identity but that is no reason for simply recording them without demur. Appendix I Excerpts from the 'Loi no 94-665 du 4 août 1994 relative à l'emploi de la langue française', Journal Officiel de la République Française, 5 août 1994'. Note that the mention 'declared not in conformity with the Constitution' which appears in some of the entries below are quoted verbatim from the Journal Officiel. They replace clauses which were not approved by the Conseil Constitutionnel and had to be withdrawn from the original bill. Art. ler.Langue de la République en vertu de la Constitution, la langue française est un élément fondamental de la personnalité et du patrimoine de la France. Elle est la langue de l'enseignement, du travail, des échanges et des services publics. Elle est le lien privilégié des Etats constituant la communauté de la francophonie. Art. 2.Dans la désignation, l'offre, la présentation, le mode d'emploi ou d'utilisation, la description de l'étendue et des conditions de garantie d'un bien,

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d'un produit ou d'un service, ainsi que dans les factures et quittances, l'emploi de la langue française est obligatoire. [Dispositions déclarées non conformes à la Constitution par décision du Conseil constitutionnel no 94-345 DC du 29 juillet 1994]. Les mêmes dispositions s'appliquent à toute publicité écrite, parlée ou audiovisuelle. Les dispositions du présent article ne sont pas applicables à la dénomination des produits typiques et spécialités d'appellation étrangère connus du large public. La législation sur les marques ne fait pas obstacle à l'application des premier et troisième alinéas du présent article aux mentions et messages enregistrés avec la marque. Art. 3.Toute inscription ou annonce apposée ou faite sur la voie publique, dans un lieu ouvert au public ou dans un moyen de transport en commun et destinée à l'information du public doit être formulée en langue française [Dispositions déclarées non conformes à la Constitution par décision du Conseil constitutionnel no 94-345 DC du 29 juillet 1994]... Art. 6.Tout participant à une manifestation, un colloque ou un congrès organisé en France par des personnes physiques ou morales de nationalité française a le droit de s'exprimer en français. Les documents distribuées aux participants avant et pendant la réunion pour en présenter le programme doivent étre rédigés en français et peuvent comporter des traductions en une ou plusieurs langues ... Art. 20-1. L'emploi du français est obligatoire dans l'ensemble des émissions et des messages publicitaires des organismes et services de radiodiffusion sonore ou télévisuelle, quel que soit leur mode de diffusion ou de distribution, à l'exception des oeuvres cinématographiques et audiovisuelles en version originale... Appendix II Ministère de la Culture et de la Francophonie (Le 8 mars 1994) Communique Les résultats du sondage réalisé par la SOFRES sur l'attitude des Français à l'égard de la politique française confirment les analyses et les positions défendues par le Ministre de la Culture et de la Francophonie.

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1/ Les Français sont attachés à leur Langue (97%) et fiers de sa diffusion internationale (70%). 2/ Ils ne sont que 9% à considérer que l'objectif de défense de la langue française n'est pas important; 65% pensent qu'une volonté politique forte de résister peut être efficace. Ils légitiment ainsi clairement une politique forte de la langue française. 3/ Ils approuvent massivement (de 81% à 93%) le contenu du projet de loi, qui vise à imposer l'utilisation du français, éventuellement à côté d'autres langues, pour l'information du consommateur, du salarié et du citoyen et en rien, comme le disent les commentateurs superficiels, à empêcher d'employer dans le langage courant des mots anglais comme 'week-end'. 4/ Ils préfèrent nettement (78%) le plurilinguisme en Europe au tout anglais. 5/ Comme le Ministère, mais à l'inverse de beaucoup de commentateurs, les Français, qui ont une attitude très responsable, ne confondent pas politique de la langue française, défense de la langue française et 'chasse' aux mots étrangers, ce qui n'est dans aucun cas l'intention du Gouvernement n'en déplaise à certains. Ils peuvent à la fois approuver en majorité l'utilisation de mots étrangers, la trouver utile et agréable, et souhaiter massivement que l'on impose néanmoins l'usage du français dans certaines situations. 6/ En un mot, les Français veulent une langue vivante une langue qui s'enrichit d'emprunts étrangers une langue qui se frotte à d'autres langues européennes, en évitant la domination de l'anglais une langue qui reste la langue de la vie de la Cité, utilisée en France dans la vie de tous les jours et dont il est légitime d'imposer l'usage. Notes 1 A first version of this contribution was delivered at the international conference 'Beyond boundaries: Citizens, Cultures and Languages' to mark the launch of the European Studies Research Institute of the University of Salford (10-12 November 1994) . I owe a special debt of gratitude to the following friends: Inès Brulard, Geoff Harris, Charlotte Hoffmann, Anne Judge, John Keiger, Anthony Lodge. They have all provided invaluable help in different ways (documentation, feedback, encouragement). Needless to add, they are not responsible for any of the ideas presented here. 2 'Document no 1158 de l'Assemblée Nationale. Rapport fait au nom de la commission des affaires culturelles, familiales et sociales sur le projet de loi, adopté par le sénat, relatif à l'emploi de la langue française (no 1130) par M. Francisque Perrut, Député, 25 avril 1994, 96 pages.'

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3 This quotation is given in Lepschy (1994: 7). Note that Weisgerber's book from which this passage is taken was first published in 1939. 4 Quoted in Chomsky (1965: 7). Rivarol's De l'universalite de la langue française (1784) is a prime example of the belief that French is the language of reason. 5 See Lodge (1993: 218), Walter (1995: 133). For an account of this practice in 19th century Languedoc, where the 'token of shame' was called senhal, see Fabre & Lacroix (1973: 396). 6 The same point could be made with respect to the national territory: cf. Alliès (1980). 7 See Durand and Wilson (1991), in the wake of many other linguists in this and previous centuries. In the case of modern French, Martinet's essays Les chances du français, Les puristes contre la langue, and Peut-on dire d'une langue qu'elle est belle (all reprinted in Martinet, 1969) remain excellent statements of the linguist's position. 8 See inter alia Brulard (forthcoming) and Judge (1994). For worthwhile discussions of language planning in France, see Judge (1993) and Offord (1993). 9 Parker (1995) offers an penetrating account of the defence of French as part of a broader marketing strategy on the part of the French government. References Alliès, P. (1980) L'invention du territoire. Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble. Arrivé, M. (1993) Réformer l'orthographe? Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Barbour, S. (this volume) Language and national identity in Europe: theoretical and practical problems. Brulard, I. (forthcoming) Linguistic policies. In S. Perry (ed) Aspects of Contemporary France. London: Routledge. Chomsky, N. (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. (1986) Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use. New York: Praeger. Chomsky, N. (1993) Language and Thought. Wakefield, Rhode Island and London: Moyer Bell. Crowley, T. (this volume) Signs of belonging: Languages, nations and cultures in the old and the new Europe. Diderot, D. (1751) Lettres sur les sourds et muets. Page references are to Jean Assézat (ed) (1875) Oeuvres complètes de Diderot, Vol. 1. Paris: Garnier Frères. Dupuy, A. (1972) Petite encyclopédie occitane. Auch: Th. Bouquet. Durand, J. (1990) Language: Is it all in the mind? Inaugural Professorial lecture. Department of Modern Languages. Salford: University of Salford. Durand, J. and Wilson, A. (1991) Prescriptiveness and the teacher of English. Working Papers in Language and Learning, no 1. Department of Modern Languages. Salford: University of Salford. Durand, J. (1993) Sociolinguistic variation and the linguist. In C. Sanders (1993) French Today. Language in its social context (pp. 257-281) . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Etiemble, R. (1973) Parlez-vous franglais? Paris: Gallimard. Fabre, D. and Lacroix, J. (1973) La vie quotidienne des paysans du Languedoc au XIXe siècle. Paris: Hachette. Gould, S.J. (1981) The Mismeasure of Man. New York: W.W. Norton.

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Haugen, E. (1966) Dialect, language, nation. American Anthropologist 68,922-935. Reprinted in J.B. Pride and J. Holmes (eds) (1972) Sociolinguistics (pp. 97-111). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Judge, A. (1993) French: a planned language?, in C. Sanders (ed)(1993) French Today. Language in its social context (pp. 7-26), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Judge, A. (1994) La planification linguistique française: traditions et impact de la Communauté européenne. Revue internationale d'éducation (Sèvres) 3, 33-46. Lepschy, G. (1994) How many languages does Europe need? In M.M. Parry et al. (eds) The Changing Voices of Europe (pp. 5-33). Cardiff: The University of Wales Press and the Modern Humanities Research Association. Lodge, R.A. (1991) Authority, prescriptivism and the French standard language. Journal of French Language Studies 1(1), 93-111. Lodge, R. A. (1993) French: From Dialect to Standard. London: Routledge. Martinet, A. (1969) Le français sans fard. Paris: PUF. Milroy, J. and Milroy, L. (1985) Authority in Language: Investigating Language Prescription and Standardisation. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Offord, M. (1994) Protecting the French language. In M.M. Parry et al. (eds) The Changing Voices of Europe (pp. 7594). Cardiff: The University of Wales Press and the Modern Humanities Research Association. Parker, G. (1995) Marketing French: the politics of language and language policy. Inaugural Professorial Lecture, 1 November 1995, Middlesex University. Rickard, P. (1974) A History of the French Language. London: Hutchinson. Sanders, C. (ed) (1993) French Today. Language in its social context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walter, H. (1989) Des mots sans culottes. Paris: Robert Laffont. Weisberger, J. (1943) Die volkhaften Kräfte der Muttersprache. Frankfurt: Diesterweg (first edition, 1939). Yaguello, M. (1988) Catalogue des idées reçues sur la langue. Paris: Seuil.

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Language Planning at the Crossroads: the Case of Contemporary Spain Charlotte Hoffmann Introduction Among all the states of Europe Spain, these days, provides a particularly fascinating example of language planning in action. Fascinating is the speed with which language policies have been formulated and set in motion, the extent to which they have begun to affect many spheres of public life in many parts of the Iberian Peninsula, and fascinating, too, are the results which are beginning to become apparent. It is also a process which is, for many Spaniards, controversial. For linguists, the public debate in Spain on linguistic issues which has been, and still is, going on, is both dramatic and illuminating. The way in which Spain's history has been presented to the outside world and during most of her past to her own population as wellhas seldom gone beyond trying to create the false image of a united monolingual Nation-State; regional languages were acknowledged to exist but not given much prominence. However, in Catalonia, and to a lesser extent in Galicia and the Basque Country, a growing interest in sociolinguistic concerns began to emerge in the 1960s and was continued in the 1970s, that is, in the years of Spain's transition to democracy; this interest went beyond the more traditional literary and philological studies of these languages that there had been before. The recent preoccupation with matters concerning language contact, linguistic conflict and bilingual education in the three regions is not surprising as, of course, regional languages were barely tolerated during much of Franco's long rule (and indeed for much of the time in this and previous centuries as well). They could not be used as official languages in their areas, nor did they receive any kind of State support, so that by the end of the Franco era real concern was felt regarding their continued survival. The literature is full of accounts of the ruthless and systematic suppression of the native languages of Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galiciain this they shared the fate of many other minorities in several other parts of Europe.

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Effective as totalitarian measures were in decimating the number of native speakers of these languages, the functions for which those who still spoke them could use them, and in manipulating popular attitudes towards them, they had one other very powerful effect: to fuel many people's determination to fight for their survival. More often than not Catalan, Galician and Basque became symbols of resistance to the authoritarian, centralist policies of the Madrid government. So it is not surprising that when democracy was established the fight against language shift became a priority for the new autonomous communities (or self-governing regions). Language planning in modern Spain involves a large number of variables historical, political, economic, social, cultural and linguisticas well as several languages and linguistic varieties whose linguistic status is less well-defined. In the three areas to be examined here language planning is being carried out within a clearly defined legal framework and put in place by committed regional governments which support positive language policies in many different ways. Some 15 years after these language policies were first formulated there is still widespread popular support for language recovery and many of the measures that have been taken to ensure it. However, there are also those who feel uneasy with some of the more radical aspects of language policies and the wider effects they are having on the lives of those who are affected by them. Language planning cannot be considered in isolation. It is closely bound up with the general socio-economic and cultural development of a region, and ultimately it derives its impetus from political decisions. Spain's experiment with a quasi-federal, pluricultural democracy has not been an easy one. It has been fraught with problems, such as the difficulties encountered in the attempts to solve the problems raised by Basque separatism and ETA terrorism. Also, and more relevantly for this discussion, on one hand, a worry in the minds of some people, mainly outside outside Catalonia, about the dangers inherent in the perceived potential rise in Catalan nationalist aspirations, and on the other the possibility of a centralist military backlash. The situation in which the regional languages have found themselves has been a reflection of the more general political problems affecting the country. In the days of the old Franco regime opposition to the suppression of Catalan, Galician and Basque was a strong unifying force. In the post-Franco era, some argued, the threat to non-Castilian languages had not yet been removed: 'The freedom that the present rather fragile democracy has brought could turn out to be even more harmful to the minority languages of Spain than oppressive dictatorship', Wardhaugh wrote (1987: 120). The perceived threat to the minority languages is still felt today, and it is used to emphasize the need to promote regional language policies designed as part of

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the overall political strategies of the autonomous governments. This kind of sentiment probably underlies the very nature of any minority versus majority language relationship'. What is interesting in the case of Spain is that the perceived threat to one's language is often of a different kind from what it was in the past, as it affects a new set of people in an unprecedented kind of way. My aim is to look at the goals of language planning in the three autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia, and to examine the results which the application of a particular planning model have brought about. As will be seen, there have been significant successes: Catalan is fast becoming the language of the Principality of Catalonia, and in the Basque Country the decline of the Basque language seems to have been arrested. But in their pursuit of 'linguistic normalisation' (which is the term for language recovery used in the Spanish contexts) language planners may risk becoming guilty of the same kind of excesses as were committed by centralist language planners of the past who were concerned with ensuring the hegemony of Castilian Spanish to the detriment of the other linguistic varieties. In other words, in some respects language planners appear to be starting to repeat the very same injustices they originally set out to redress; that is to say, the results of the attempts to change the linguistic behaviour of certain communities seem to be, to some extent, counterproductive, for reasons that I shall examine. It is my contention that language planners in at least two of the three areas under discussion will need to reassess their policies and lower their objectives so as to ensure the continued support of majority public opinion and to prevent the issue from becoming one that divides and harms their societies. This may involve embracing a more permanent state of societal bilingualism in Catalonia and a slower pace of promotion of the Galician language in Galicia. Background The approval of Spain's new democratic Constitution in 1978 marks the formal transition of the country from a highly centralised state to a quasi-federal one marked by cultural and linguistic pluralism. The Spanish State is organised into 17 Autonomous Communities (Comunidades Autónomasand the extent of their autonomy compares very favourably in many respects with the degree of self-government found among the countries following the fully federal model). Decentralisation has made it possible for regional diversity to become developed and institutionalised through legislation passed by the autonomous governments.

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When Spain adopted in 1978 the model of democratic State that Spaniards called el estado de las autonomías (i.e. a decentralised model based on regional self-government), the justification for this model was that some of the autonomous regions undoubtedly had a historical claim to their own separate identity. They were called the comunidades históricas, and there were only three of them to start with: Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia. The most distinctive mark on which these claims were founded was the existence of their own language in the respective territories. It was felt that the other regions (with the exception of Andalusia, as it turned out) also could have a claim to autonomy, but a less convincing one than the comunidades históricas. This feeling was written into the Spanish Constitution by allowing for two different degrees of autonomy, which we can call full autonomy and partial autonomy. This is an important fact that was to become very influential later in the minds of Spaniards. It is significant that the Statutes of Autonomy were approved in a chronological order that reflected the strength of the respective claims in a way which parallelled the convictions of the Spanish people regarding the status of their languages: Catalonia's Statute was passed first, then the Basque Statute, both in 1979, followed almost immediately by Galicia's in 1980. 1 The preceding forty years of Franco's dictatorship (1936-1975) had seen the promotion of one national language, Castilian Spanish, and one national identity, una sola Hispanidad. Whereas pride in and identification with the patria chica, one's regional, local place of origin and/or residence was considered part of every Spaniard's personality and could be glorified in folkloristic ways, all other forms of ethnic or national otherness expressed in different languages were seen as politically suspect. Not surprisingly, the other languages of Spain became associated with political dissent and thus suppressed. It must not be forgotten that during Spain's long post-Civil War period, which was characterised by acute economic poverty and cultural underdevelopment (it was called un páramo cultural or 'cultural wilderness', in a famous phrase used by the well-known writer José Luis Abellán), Basque, Galician and, to a lesser degree, Catalan were often seen as the languages of the uneducated rural populations. In each of the three regions there were also other, very powerful economic and social forces at work, of the kind usually associated with language shift: migration, industrialisation, urbanisation, conscription into military service (organised on a national basis), wide access to education and the media all contributed towards rapid castilianisation. Towards the end of the Franco era repression against the regional languages eased up and a modest amount of public use of Basque and Catalan could be encountered. But a massive shift away from Catalan and Basque had been set into motion as a result of the languages not having been used for a variety of functions or in the media, and also because of negative public

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attitudes towards them. In Galicia the sociolinguistic situation was rather different. Galician continued to be used as an oral form of communication among the rural population but became heavily stigmatized, and Castilian was generally required as the language for social advancement; it had always been the language of written communication. Galician was very much in a diglossic relationship with Castilian. Language has never been the same kind of issue in Galicia as in the other two regions; this fact caused Wardhaugh to refer to the Galicians as 'one of the more dormant linguistic minorities in Europe today' (1987: 127). The three regions share a few features, such as their geographical situation on the fringe of the country, their history of suppression and neglect, their desire to maintain their cultural distinctiveness, their commitment to language promotion. But otherwise there are more differences than similarities. Whereas Catalonia and the Basque Country have long been two of Spain's most powerful economic areas, Galicia has traditionally been one of the poorest. Catalonia and the Basque country attracted in the past vast numbers of migrants from other parts of Spain, while Galicia saw millions of her people migrate to other parts of Spain or abroad. With regard to demographic considerations, too, there are marked differences. Most of Galicia's 3 million inhabitants are of Galician descent; Galician is said to be understood by most of them, and over three quarters are apparently able to speak it. In Catalonia, too, a very large number of the population, some 90%, are said to understand Catalan, and over two thirds of Catalonia's six and a half million inhabitants can use Catalan, both in its written and its oral form. In terms of sociolinguistic distribution of its speakers, only Catalan can be said to have always been supported by an articulate middle class which conferred positive values to the language, ensured a certain amount of familiarity with literacy in Catalan, even at times of suppression, and then provided Catalan speakers who could fill influential positions in the new autonomous community. But there is a very large immigrant element in Catalan society which in some cities, including Barcelona, makes up for more than half of the local population, forming a sizeable minority which is beginning to resist some of the language policies designed to make all Catalonia Catalan-speaking. All in all, native speakers of Spanish and habitual users of this language within the family are in the majority in Catalonia (52%) (Strubell i Trueta, 1982). In the Basque Country there is also a large immigrant element. Some 30% of inhabitants are assumed to be of nonBasque origin but most of them are not recent immigrants. Basque is very much the language of a minority of Euskadi's 2.2 million inhabitants. It is understood by less than half and spoken, at the most,

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by a quarter of the population (probably much less) (Yrizar, 1981; Salvador, 1987: 62 ff.). To sum up this brief discussion of linguistic diversity in Spain, one can say that approximately 25% of the population have a non-Castilian first language (there are other, minor languages in Spain, apart from the three main ones I have mentioned so far), and about 40% of Spain's inhabitants now live in an official bilingual area (Willis, 1992). Bilingual territory constitutes 18% of Spain (Salvador, 1987: 129, 134-5). The country is, therefore, clearly multilingual. Normally one would use the terms 'minority language' and 'linguistic minority' in the context of language planning in a multilingual state. But this terminology is not used in the Spanish literature on the subject, presumably because it can be interpreted in different ways: vis-à-vis the monolingual Castilians in all Spain, speakers of Galician or Catalan are a minority, but in the territory where their language is spoken they are not. In an interpretation that emphasises the subordinate status of minority in relation to supranational Castilian, the term 'minorised' has been used (Strubell i Trueta, 1993). In relation to language recovery, it usefully suggests that only by rejecting its minorised status will the language in question ultimately be able to survive and prove to be fighting on equal terms in the competition for users. Language Planning after 1978 The driving forces behind language planning in Spain were twofold: (i) On the political side there was the desire for political and cultural self-determination which was particularly strong in Catalonia. By making Catalan the official language of Catalonia, the only one to be used by the Catalan administration, the aim of achieving the greatest possible independence from Madrid would be easier to realise. This aim was helped by the generally accepted view that there exists a very close link between language and national identity. This idea was upheld by many writers on the subject, politicians as well as linguists, and it was used in the linguistic campaigns, with slogans such as 'el català, cosa de tots' ('Catalan is everybody's business'). It has had a very powerful influence in Catalan public life. However, the notion of linking language with national identity is not without its problems, as it begs the question of who decides what precise identity people in a given area are supposed to have. Is it a matter of self-ascription, or identification by others? Does there have to be convergence of these two? (ii) The other strong reason for language planning was to ensure the survival of the languages, a concern shared by many who otherwise were less

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interested in politics. Not only had Catalan, Basque and Galician given way to Castilian in many public and private domains, so that transition from one generation to the next was no longer assured, but the languages themselves had become castilianized in various ways through extensive lexical borrowing and grammatical interference, for instance. Formulating language policies was, of course, primarily a matter for the politicians. But there has been a very strong input from sociolinguists, first and foremost Catalan ones, many of whom had looked carefully at language planning carried out in other parts of the world, notably Wales and Canada. The dissemination of ideas and information has been very helpful to many an interested outsider, even though invariably it has been, ideologically, a somewhat one-sided process. Thus, the aim of all linguistic policies has been the promotion of regional languages by declaring them the official language of the autonomous region, together with Castilian Spanish. In effect, this has meant a general recognition of widespread societal bilingualism, although the aim in Catalonia was really to accept equal use of the two languages as a transitional position, with a view to achieving a mainly Catalan-speaking Catalonia which would use Catalonia's own language for most public functions whilst keeping the use of Castilian to a minimum. Language planning in Spain embraces, therefore, both status and corpus planning. As regards status planning, many of the measures taken have been designed to promote the use of the regional languages in a variety of public spheres, with special emphasis given to education. As far as corpus planning is concerned, the policies followed have led to the setting up of bodies entrusted with the codification and elaboration of the languages so as to equip them adequately for their use as official languages. The Language Planning Model The term, or rather programmatic title, under which language planning policies have been designed and carried out in all three regions is linguistic normalisation. It was first coined by Catalan sociolinguists and later officially adopted by the Generalitat (or Catalan Regional Government) for its programme of linguistic policies. The Basques and Galicians modelled their policies, including the legal framework within which they were set, closely on the Catalan scheme. The term allows the two important, interlinking aspects of planning, language development and elaboration of function (as part of status planning), to be included under the concept of norm, namely: 1) the codification of the

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language, i.e. formulation of linguistic norms; and 2) the social extension of these norms for wider, everyday use. In other words, the promotion of regional languages consisted of making the linguistic tools available and providing for the normal use of Catalan, Basque and Galician in all functional domains, that is, in all situations. As a consequence, the status of the languages would be enhanced and in that sense considered more normal. There is a further interpretation of the term normalisation, one that has been advanced particularly by the Catalans. It provides a link with the past, with periods in history when Catalan was the recognised language of Catalonia, up to the beginning of the 18th century and then again for a brief but significant period in the 1930s. The declared aim is to recover the language and restore it to its rightful place, which has historical justification. However, given that the socioeconomic and demographic conditions today are quite different from what they were at the time of the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1936), the promotion of regional languages is likely to seem less attractive if it is carried out under the banner of restoration of a situation that existed in the past, since the composition of present-day Catalan society, as well as the depth and richness of contemporary cultural life in Catalonia, are very different from what they were sixty years ago. Generally speaking, however, linguistic normalisation can be viewed as a success in all three regions, especially with regard to language development and the production of linguistic tools, as well as the setting up of education programmes. In all three autonomies different models of immersion programmes exist within the region, with a growing number of children attending classes where the medium of instruction is not Castilian Spanish. The vehicle for higher education, particularly in university courses in the humanities, is now increasingly the region's own language, as far as both Catalonia and the Basque Country are concerned. Local and regional government business, as well as most legal and administrative matters, are transacted in Catalan and can be carried out in both the local language and Spanish in the Basque region and also, to a lesser extent, in Galicia. In terms of status planning, normalisation can be said to be more controversial, as it involves many different and competing pressures. This is a point I will come back to later. The legal framework for language planning in the three regions was established, firstly, by the new Spanish Constitution of 1978 which paved the way for the autonomous communities to determine their own cultural policies; and, secondly, in the Statutes of Autonomy, passed by each autonomous government, which lay down the status of the languages to be used and guarantees to the autonomy's citizens the right to use them. Accordingly, Catalan, Basque and Galician are the respective autonomy's 'own language' (which allows it to be

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promoted above all other languages), and they are awarded co-official status with Castilian. Within a short space of time, between November 1982 and June 1983, Laws of Linguistic Normalisation were passed in all three autonomies, detailing the aims and provisions of the governments' language policies. Again, the similarity between the three laws is quite striking. They aim at promoting the region's own language in all spheres of public life (in local and regional administration, the law, media and education), and they set out the means by which these aims are to be realised. Linguistic Normalisation in Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia Catalonia's Law of Linguistic Normalisation (of April 1983) is the most explicit of the three normalisation laws. It spells out the aim of exclusive use of Catalan, rather than provide for bilingualism (Hoffmann, 1988, 1991). In education, for instance, the implied assumption is that bilingualism is to be considered a transitory stage until all education and public life can be carried out through the medium of Catalan. The sociolinguistic preconditions were reasonably favourable for such aims. The Catalan language had been standardised at the beginning of the century, it had already started to be used in education and, most importantly, it had a large number of users among the influential members of the middle classes who were enthusiastic about promoting it. An interesting demonstration of the generally accepted assertion that language planning is intertwined with social and political variables is provided by a study undertaken by the Austrian linguist Karl Ille. He examines the notion that there may well be a relationship between political and linguistic behaviour. His claim is based on the election results from 1977 to 1986 (Ille, 1988). He was able to point to a close correlation between support for nationalist parties, both on the political right and the left, on the one hand, and fluency coupled with frequency of use on the other. In other words, Catalans expressed their identity and their wishes for their country through both language and voting patterns. Only when one takes into account the large number of immigrants of non-Catalan background and examines their attitudes towards the Generalitat's language policies does it become obvious that not all of Catalonia's inhabitants are equally enthusiastic about galloping catalanisation. But this does not mean that attitudes are totally negative, as witnessed by Kathryn Woolard's extensive studies (e.g. 1989 and 1990).

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In the Basque Country linguistic normalisation has had to proceed at a much slower pace. Basque only became standardised by the late 1960s, and differences of agreement on norms still remain. The standard form that has been decided upon is called euskera batúa (or vasco normalizado). It appears to be based on educated Guipuzkoa Basque, but it is not always accepted by those who speak other varietiesfor example, speakers of Bizkaia Basque, for whom it is almost a new language (Badia, 1987). Increasing the number of Basque speakers, and thus of possible teachers of the language, is not easy as Basque is such a difficult language to learn and, in contrast to Galician and Catalan, there is no degree of mutual intelligibility with Castilian. Whereas individual efforts are geared towards promoting Basque, giving it a higher profile and enabling more people to have access to it (in primary, secondary and adult education programmes), the overall goal is to achieve bilingualism and to foster more positive attitudes towards Basque both on the part of those who already speak it, and those who could be possible learners of the language. The link between language and identity is much weaker in the Basque country, although there is a strong commitment to a Basque cultural and ethnic identity and a belief in territorial integrity. Basque identity seems to be based primarily on descent and self-identification. In terms of political behaviour, Ille (1988) shows that, whereas support for Basque nationalist parties has, in general, grown over the years, they have always received proportionally more support from non-Basque speakers than from Basque-speaking voters. He concludes that Basque identity goes far beyond linguistic identity. One might comment that linguistic normalisation has always featured less prominently on the agenda of political parties in the Basque Country than in Catalonia. The reasons for this are related to the Basque socio-political context and the history of euskera. The absence of a traditionally Basque-speaking middle class may also be considered relevant. Geographical, socioeconomic and political factors account for the fact that the majority of the Basque Country remained a rural society for many centuries. The Basque language was spoken mainly in rural areas. But it is one of the clearest signs that things are changing in favour of euskera is that, in an otherwise still quite precarious situation marked by language decline, there now seems to be a growing number of middle-class speakers of Basque, as well as many parents who take an interest in their children's education in Basque, which makes the regional distribution of speakers of the language less patchy. It is true that the overall number of Basque speakers has not grown as result of linguistic normalisation, but the number of those who now possess reading and writing skills in the language has increased, whereas in the past most users only had oral competence. And the linguistic behaviour of Basque speakers has changed: they now use their own language in more diverse social contexts than ever before.

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This, and the language promotion efforts made by many different institutions, has contributed to an improvement in the perceived social status of Basque. Several of the trends just outlined are discernible, too, in Galicia. However, as has been mentioned before, the linguistic history of, and the present sociolinguistic situation in, that part of Spain are really quite different from those of the other regions, so that comparisons are not very useful. Indeed, the application of the same model of linguistic normalisation may prove to have been something of a costly academic exercise with only limited success. The diglossic relationship of Galician to Castilian has persisted for a long time, Galician being the popular, widespread vehicle for oral communication. In the past Castilian was the language used in and by the administration, schools, the media, military service and most other walks of public life; it also was the only medium for written communication. Galician had little association with the arts and the intelligentsia, and no history of having been the language of official public use. There were one or two brief periods when there was some literary output in Galician, but on the whole this language did not have a strong and influential literary tradition to look back on. 2 When the programme of linguistic normalisation in Galicia was set into motion the first task was to find an acceptable standard variety. There was no obvious candidate to chose from among the various Galician dialects. Codification and development of the language were complicated by the existence of two main language 'camps', one, the 'reintegrationists', favouring a closer alignment with Portuguese, and the other, the 'independists', arguing for an independent development of Galician, that is, independent from both Castilian and from Portugueseto which unquestionably it is closely related. Today the 'independists' seem to be in the more influential positions, for instance in the Real Academia Galega and the Instituto da Lingua Galega, where the official decisions on matters of language are made.3 The Instituto published their linguistic norms covering orthography and morphology even before the Law of Linguistic Normalisation was passed, and immediately these were opposed by the other camp, which proposed a different set of norms, claiming that the new rules conceded too much to Castilian and made Galician into a kind of scholars' language, rather than one that could be easily taught in schools. The upshot of these disputes is that Galician now seems to have, not one agreed system of orthographic rules, but three systemswhich apparently are not always kept separate (Willis, 1992). Disagreements of this sort do little to persuade those who already speak a dialect variety of Galician to accept the officially-promoted version as the prestigious norm.

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Continued language use is dependent on a number of usually interrelated factorslocality, social background and age of speakers being among the most important. In the case of Galician there is a notable absence of positive correlation between these factors and language use: on the contrary, Galician is most commonly spoken among the older, lowerclass rural population. It is true that there are very high rates of Galician-Castilian bilingualism, which is facilitated by the high degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages. However, this bilingualism tends to be asymmetrical, i.e. diglossic. It is not balanced bilingualism acquired in early childhood, as Castilian Spanish tends to be learnt only through education and contact with the media, whereas Galician is usually the first language acquired. In addition, most speakers, when they use Galician throughout their lives, do so merely for oral interaction. Therefore, since traditionally Galician speakers, as just pointed out, are found mainly among the older and rural population, language policies promoting Galician have to be targeted at young urban middle-class speakersthe very groups who, as a result of migration, upward social mobility and increased exposure to education and the media, contribute towards language decline. The government's provisions for language promotion have, of course, been designed for the whole population. However, urban and rural Galicians are affected by them in different ways, and it does not seem clear that galicianisation will be guaranteed. Nor does it seem totally justified to talk about normalisation in terms of the interpretation offered earlier, that is, restoration of a previously-existing situation. On the positive side a number of achievements can be listed: a norm has been found and is being disseminated at a fast rate through the media, the educational system and actions by local and regional authorities, with the goodwill and cooperation of most of Galicia's inhabitants. Also, in terms of changing attitudes, linguistic normalisation has been successful as is shown by a series of surveys into language proficiency and attitudes reported by Monteagudo and Santamarina (1993). But what about success in the sense of restoring Galician to a position where it is normal to use it in all situations? Such a 'normal situation' never did exist. So, although Galician language planners talk about linguistic normalisation, this does not seem a realistic proposition. However, it is probably true to say that there were times in Galicia's history when Galician was less socially stigmatized and seen more positively as a symbol of Galician identity. It is this, the demonstration of cultural and linguistic distinctiveness, which is considered important today. Castilian always played an important role as the standard and prestige variety, just as Galicia's dialects fulfilled their role in everyday communication

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and regional identity. Linguistic normalisation has now brought the urban population (who have always been Castilianspeaking) into contact with a language which is being promoted vigorously by their government and has been endowed with positive attributes, e.g. embodying Galicianness. Gallego normalizado (that is, Galician standardised on the basis of the norma urbana culta or educated standard urban Galician) is rather easy to learn for Spanish speakers because of its many similarities with Castilian and, I suspect, also because for many it is a matter of acquiring it passively since there is no need to use it actively unless one wants to be employed in the region's administration or education system. It also seems to be the case that most children who learn Galician in school and study part of their school curriculum through the medium of Galician do not end up being habitual users of the language. This may lead one to think that middle-class support for Galician has primarily a political motivation, the need to maintain (and be seen to maintain) one's cultural heritage upon which political autonomy is founded. The Downside of Linguistic Normalisation: a Reversal of Roles? And what about those who have always spoken Galician? On one hand the traditional strength Galician has always enjoyed in the countryside is being eroded as a result of changed lifestyles, migration, etc. But whether those who are affected by this kind of language loss, or replacement, actually mind has not been the subject of any inquiry that I know of. On the other hand, these speakers now find that their dialect variety risks becoming a liability as it does not conform to the standard that is being promoted, which represents a superposed variety. Having to accept, and acquire, literacy in this new form may well be perceived as an alienating element. Culturally, it is probably hard for them to recognise gallego normalizado as part of their heritage. Yet not accepting it bears some risk, too. Social mobility and migration (both into urban areas and through urban sprawl into the countryside) bring with them increased contact with Castilian Spanish as well as with the new Standard Galician. Which variety should one acquire? One thing seems sure: constant contact with these two varieties will remind rural speakers that they use neither of them welland this 'not speaking well' is an old, well-known complex they have had to live with for generations. So now the situation is even more difficult than before for them. As John Green so poignantly comments, it is a repetition of the old situation of 'conflict diglossia'. Again, it is the middle-classes who determine language policy (the new emerging galicianised one), but this time there may be more antagonism caused, although this is far from being what the language planners intended. Green writes:

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'In particular, the chances of conflict are increased if rural speakers feel they are placed in double linguistic jeopardy or denied access, by redefined educational priorities, to the effective instruction in Castilian that would still offer a passport to social mobility' (Green, 1994: 165). Language planning in democratic Spain has been a major pillar of the autonomies' political and cultural programme. In all three autonomous communities examined here it has resulted in qualitative improvements of the languages concerned. An impressive number of dictionaries, grammars, orthographical guidelines and terminological guides have been produced, and learned bodies have been set up, entrusted with the development and dissemination of the newly elevated languages. However, the challenge of winning over all potential users of these languages has not been won yet. From the point of reversing language shift one is also left with a degree of optimism, however uneven. In Fishman's comprehensive treatment of reversing language shift, Catalonia's efforts of restoring Catalan are counted among the success stories. Fishman highlights the increased acceptance of the use of Catalan among Catalan speakers, even in 'mixed company', and he points towards the growing number of speakers who today use Catalan when previously they would have used Castilian, e.g. teachers, politicians, TV and radio announcers. He no longer sees Catalan to be diminishing in uses and users: 'Indeed, there is good reason to conclude that it [Catalan] is moving ahead on both fronts and in both of the target groups that it must keep in mind'. (Fishman, 1991: 323). On the other hand, Fishman still counts Basque among the threatened languages. Despite all the efforts that have been made, the difficulties deriving from the small number of mother-tongue speakers, the lack of perceived importance for expressing Basque identity through language, the problems surrounding an overall acceptable standard form, and the fact that it is often not transmitted from parents to their children as a language of the homeall these are powerful obstacles standing in the way of reversing language shift in the Basque Country and of increasing the number of its speakers. Partial success has been achieved in that the process of language decline has been slowed down, those who previously only had oral competence in the language may now have full competence in it, and the language seems to have gained in prestige as public administration and education have embraced bilingualism, while in some areas of public life Basque has become fully established. It is obviously early days for an assessment of other, perhaps more permanent, changes in patterns of linguistic behaviour in Spain as a whole. For the time being, it seems to be clear that the eagerness of the above-mentioned autonomies to promote their own languages has led to the adoption of a particular model of

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language planning, the Catalan one, and this has meant that the orientation and formulation of language policies in Galicia and (to a lesser extent) in the Basque Country have also been overshadowed by the Catalan experience. This 'copycat factor' has begun to have undesirable effects, even if pursuing such policies in the first place may have been historically justified and politically opportune. But it is becoming evident that linguistic action has not always been matched by sociolinguistic good sense or sensibility. This has created problems in Galicia, as we have seen, and also in Catalonia itself. 4 The push for catalanisation came from, and was supported by, the Catalan élite who, of course, stood to gain most. It appears that among the Catalan lower classes the Catalan language has also been supported because it offers a means of upward social mobility and provides something of a 'feel-good factor'after all, Catalan is supposed to be the language of all Catalans. But by this very claim those who live in Catalonia but do not see themselves as Catalans, nor aspire to become Catalans, can feel patronized, even minorized. Non-Catalans constitute a sizeable new minority in Catalonia, and this section of its population is likely to continue to increase disproportionately to the total number of inhabitants. Fishman seems to assume that the problem of non-Catalan speakers may be solved with time, as he suggests that 'before the ultimate goal can be attained, a new 'reverse diglossia' will have to be at least transitionally attained, with Catalan H and Spanish L' (1991: 313). I doubt whether this is a likely scenario, at any rate for as long as Catalonia remains a constituent part of Spain. Castilian Spanish is, after all, the national language, it is widely used everywhere and it remains prominent throughout Catalonia itself. Catalans need to understand and speak Spanish, whereas most nonCatalan Spaniards (excepting only some, not all, of those living in Catalonia) do not need to know Catalan. Jacob Mey (1989), writing from a sociopolitical position about language politics, is a good deal more critical than Fishman. For him language planning is a form of social control, as it aims to manipulate people's language use. Within this framework he argues that normalisation (which he describes as linguistic upgrading) has been a process whereby the norm has been decided, as he says, 'top-down'. Implementation of language policies is carried out by 'culture workers', who too often ignore individual language users. Thus, pointing towards the discrepancy between the ways the Catalan government likes to represent Catalonia as being Catalan, and the way all those who do not speak Catalan but live in Catalonia see themselves, he describes the situation in terms of 'conflict diglossia', with Catalan playing the High and Castilian the Low roles. He concludes his article by warning that language planners in Catalonia are running the risk of reproducing and cementing the very structures they were supposed to do away with, namely the oppression of social or ethnic minorities by the

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dominant majority. By promoting one language for all and claiming that Catalan is the language of all Catalans, they are doing the same as Franco did when he came to power and promoted Castilian. Even though this formulation may be considered to be somewhat exaggerated, I think that it does contain a good deal of truth. It certainly provides the critics of language planning with ammunition. In Galicia, too, a similar reversal of roles has been observed, although there the task at hand in language planning is a different one. The Castilian-speaking middle-class speakers must be won round to the new Galician standard, and so must the traditional lower-class dialect speakers. In other words, Galician must be turned into a vehicle of social advancement, and to achieve this end linguistic behaviour and the linguistic situation have to be changed by artificial means. But why should such manoeuvres be successful if there is no real communicative need to change one's linguistic behaviour in the first place? One can also say, viewing the issue from a different perspective, that it is difficult to see how language change initiated from above can be more successful than change emerging naturally from below. Conclusion It seems to me that language planning in Spain has reached a point where its goals, as well as its policies, need to be reconsidered. How far should language maintenance measures be pursued? What kind of language promotion can count on wide popular support? What should the priorities be? Would the promotion of widespread, and institutionalised, bilingualism (with equal emphasis on both languages) not lead to a more acceptable form of convivencia (or coexistence)? Is it not worth paying the price of an increased risk of long-term language shift, for the sake of true linguistic pluralism? Spain's experience with democracy and decentralisation, which in practice has meant implementing its own formula for maintaining a system of checks and balances in political power, and experimenting with an original model for institutional diversity (in the form of a new version of federalism), has been relatively brief. It seems that, whereas the principle of pluralism, including linguistic pluralism, has been accepted nationally, the ways this principle has been implemented (for example, with regard to cultural policies) show that real linguistic pluralism, which implies an acceptance of linguistic diversity, has not been fully taken on board. The present-day situation in Spain shows clearly that the language planning measures to be taken need to be kept under review, in the light of the effects they are having now and are likely to have in the future, and their goals should be adjusted so as to meet different local requirements.

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Notes 1 There was public debate on the linguistic and other merits of the claim of Andalusia to either full or less than full autonomous status, and eventually this region (which does not have its own separate language but is nevertheless both linguistically and culturally clearly different from Castile and the rest of Spain) achieved full autonomy in 1981. 2 For most people in Spain, the only known writer in Galician is Rosalia de Castro, a woman poet of the 19th century, even if they are aware that several better known authors who, just as Rosalía de Castro, wrote mainly in Castilian Spanish, from Alfonso the Wise in the 13th century to Lorca in the 20th, wrote also some poetry in Galician. 3 The third possibility, normalisation of castilianised Galician, mentioned by Gregorio Salvador (1987: 57), apparently did not get much of a look in, in competition with the other two positions. 4 It should not be forgotten that the debate about linguistic normalisation has been going in all parts of Spain, as both those directly affected by it and those who are although they may not see themselves as suchjust onlookers have taken an active, and frequently passionate, part in this debate. References Badía i Margarit, A.M. (1987) El dificil diálogo de las lenguas. Saber leer No. 7, agosto-septiembre 1987. Fishman, J. (1991) Reversing Language Shift. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Green, J.N. (1994) Language status and political aspirations: the case of northern Spain. In M.M. Parry et al. (eds) The Changing Voices of Europe ( 155-172). Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Hoffmann, C (1988) Linguistic normalisation in Catalonia: Catalan for the Catalans or Catalan for Catalonia? In J.N. Jørgensen et al. (eds) Biligualism in Society and School (33-44). Copenhagen Studies in Bilingualism Vol 5. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Hoffmann, C (1991) An Introduction to Bilingualism. London: Longman. Ille, K (1988) Sprachkonflikt im heutigen Spanien: Catalunya, Galicia, Euskadi und Val d'Aran im Vergleich. Grazer Linguistische Studien Vol 29, Spring 1988, 23-34. Mey, J. (1989) 'Saying it don't make it do': the 'Una Grande Libré of language politics. Multilingua 8-4, 333-355. Monteagudo, H. and Santamarina, A. (1993) Galician and Castilian in contact: historical, social and linguistic aspects. In R. Posner & J.N. Green (eds) Trends in Romance Linguistics and Philology (117-208). Vol 5 Bilingualism and Linguistic Conflict in Romance. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Salvador, S. (1987) Lengua española y lenguas de España, Madrid: Ariel. Strubell i Trueta, M. (1982) Llengua i Població a Catalunya. Barcelona: Ediciones de la Magrana. Strubell i Trueta, M. (1993) Catalan: Castilian. In R. Posner and J.N. Green (eds) Trends in Romance Linguistics and Philology (175-207). Vol 5 Bilingualism and Linguistic Conflict. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Wardhaugh, R. (1987) Languages in Competition,. Oxford: Blackwell. Willis, C. (1992) Castilian's Hispanic rivals Vida Hispánica 5,5-11.

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Woolard, K. (1989) Double Talk: Bilingualism and the Politics of Ethnicity in Catalonia. Stanford University Press. Woolard, K. and Gahng, T-J (1990) Changing language policies and attitudes in autonomous Catalonia Language in Society 193, 311-330. de Yrizar, P. (1981) Contribución a la dialectología de la lengua vasca, 2 vols. San Sebastián: Caja de Ahorros Provincial de Guipúzcoa.

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Centre-periphery Communication in Spain: The politics of language and the language of politics Audrey Brassloff Introduction Terminological inexactitude (not in the Churchillian sense) has dogged political language and political debate in the centre-periphery context ever since Spain acquired a new Constitution in 1978 guaranteeing national unity but at the same time promising decentralisation. Is it possible to tease out the exact difference between nation/nationality/region/autonomous community? What is understood by 'self-determination', what by 'independence', what by 'the differential factor' and what by 'regional solidarity'? It would appear that these are all things to all men, depending critically on whether the standpoint is that of a unitary-stater looking at the periphery, or of Catalan or Basque nationalists addressing the central government or their own constituency, or that of another part of Spain. Who defines 'nationalism'? How many Spanish languages are there? In what circumstances do Spaniards need interpreters to communicate with one another? Finally and above all, in the light of these issues, 'What is Spain?' Enter pragmatics into this Tower of Babel, for evidently any utterance is both itself and its circumstances. Language as an instrument of communication can be considered merely as a code which carries all the information which one wants to impart: the addresser encodes the message which is then decoded by the addressee. But as pragmatics reminds us, one has to be able to read between the lines: language is ambiguous and in any case is conditioned by extra-verbal factors. That language is situational had been realised, of course, even before linguists popularised the concept of pragmatics. After all, that 'to know a language is to know a civilisation' has always been part of the vademecum of good translators of not only political but literary and other texts.

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The following well-known (deliciously sexist) anecdote, attributed to Voltaire, demonstrates fairly clearly that words do not always have the meaning ascribed to them in the language code: When a diplomat says 'yes' he means 'perhaps'; when he says 'perhaps' he means 'no'; and when he says 'no' he is no diplomat. When a lady says 'no' she means 'perhaps'; when she says 'perhaps' she means 'yes' and when she says 'yes' she's no lady. Two other simple examples, this time in the Spanish context: it is claimed that when the statesman Romanones said 'never', he really meant 'not until tomorrow', 1 and expressions such as 'We always have the country's interest at heart' have or may not have the same meaning, when they are spoken by the Spanish Prime Minister or the Presidents of the Catalan or Basque (nationalist) regional governments.2 Pragmatics draws attention to that extra element we need to understand a message fully: we have the addresser, the addressee(s), the message and now the particular circumstance, the environment, the situation in which the information is imparted, the extra-verbal or physical and cultural circumstances which surround the information, and the actors participating in the giving and receiving of that information. It involves the precise situation which brings about the utterance, and the societal, cultural, and historical, even political and economic backgrounds of both addresser and addressee(s) who may be one or several, or many: the one directly addressed and the one(s) for whom the message is also intended. The intention which moves the addresser to give a certain message has also to be made known.3 The Meaning of 'Nation' In applying pragmatics more precisely to the context of centre-periphery communication and relations in Spain, one must look first at the political language of the democratic Constitution of 1978, drawn up to replace the undemocratic 'Fundamental Laws' of General Franco who died in 1975. Spain's new Magna Carta was drafted by parliamentarians representing views right across the political spectrum in a 'climate of political consensus', one of the buzz-terms of the time. Horse-trading, which was a major feature of the constituent period, led the constitutional fathers to reach for ambiguities and sometimes semantic nonsense in their formulations. The 1978 Constitution recognises the fact that Spain is pluri-national, pluricultural and pluri-lingual. During the constitutional debates, much verbal dexterity was wielded in seeking out the appropriate terminology for the whole and the parts, that is to say the country and the constituent regions. The Preamble makes reference to the 'Spanish nation' and to the 'peoples' (plural) of Spain, while Article 2 speaks of the 'indissoluble unity of the Spanish

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nation, the common and indivisible homeland (patria) of all Spaniards' but also immediately goes on to recognise and guarantee 'the right to autonomy of the nationalities and regions of which it is composed and solidarity amongst them all'. The interpretation of 'Spanish nation' was never in doubt at the time: it meant Spain as 'nation-state', and the word patria was added because of right-wing pressure, 4 including that of the Armed Forces, for whom the unity of Spain was sacrosanct. The designation 'nationalities' which appears only once in the constitutional texthad begun its existence as a term agreed by the anti-Franco opposition group Coordinación Democrática, set up in the last months of the dictatorship. It was conjured up to satisfy the demands of restive Catalans and Basques, whose cultural identity had been harshly repressed during General Franco's regime, by indicating that there was not just one nationalitySpanishin Spain but others as well. Catalans regarded Catalonia as their nation, and still do, and Basques regarded the Basque Country, Euskadi, as their nation, and still do. A Catalan's state is Spain, his nation is Catalonia; similarly for the Basques. Most other Spaniards did not experience this tension and many could not understand it. They would have been quite happy to continue to speak of 'regions', a much more bland and neutral term, whereas of course the Catalans and Basques would not. But since in the Constitution it is Spain that is considered to be the 'nation', that was not a word that could be used for the individual parts, or regions, so the Constitution gave birth to a compromise'nationalities'a term which had no precedent in Spanish constitutional law. In fact the inclusion of 'nationalities' aroused the most controversial debate of the whole constituent period. The rather unwieldy sentence which incorporates the term, cast as it was to meet political necessity, to content both Spanish nationalists and periphery nationalists, staggers to its end in the following semantically-challenged formulation: 'The Constitution is based on the indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation, the common and indivisible patria of all Spaniards; it recognises and guarantees the right to autonomy of the nationalities and regions of which it is composed, and solidarity amongst them all'.5 A distinction is made between nationalities (communities with a strong local identity) and regions (the rest). Thereafter, it was safer to use more anodyne terms such as 'peoples' and 'territories' and, increasingly the generic term 'autonomous communities' (sometimes abbreviated to 'autonomies') to refer to the parts making up the whole, 'the territorial entities which result from the application of the principle of autonomy of nationalities and regions'.6 'Communities' is another imprecise term but, when

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combined with the adjective 'autonomous', is in line with the concept expressed in Article 2 whereby the Constitution recognises and guarantees the right of nationalities and regions to self-government. Many of today's problems stem from the fact that the decentralisation process has been an unsatisfactory mix between certain communities which can claim genuine historical, political and cultural identities and others, like the Madrid autonomy sprawling out from the Spanish capital, that lack any such attributes. Furthermore, one has to bear in mind that the 'autonomy question' was not resolved at one fell swoop with the promulgation of the 1978 Constitution. The constitutional fathers left certain issues open, which meant that their future depended on the particular balance of political forces at a given time. The situation following the 1993 general elections provides a good example. A socialist government, headed by Felipe González, was returned to power but without an absolute majority. It sought backing from the moderate nationalist parties, primarily in Catalonia, and for two years the seventeen deputies of Convergència I Unió (CiU), the ruling Catalan coalition headed by the astute, not to say canny, Jordi Pujol, ensured what he called the 'governability' of the State by supportingand influencingthe legislation of the central government. It was not a formal pact between the two political forces but what the Prime Minister called 'a permanent dialogue' with the Catalan nationalists on each question as it arose. So important at this time was Pujol's backing that in some quartes he was jocularly referred to as 'Spain's Co-Prime Minister', and CiU came to be likened to that uplifting article of lingerie recently introduced into Spain called the Wonderbra, the only one 'which controls, centres and supports' the socialist government. 7 However, CiU unhooked the political Wonderbra in September 1995, with dire fallout for Felipe González's administration. Patria and 'Patriotism' and the Hi-jacking of National Symbols 'Patria' and 'patriotism' are words that are often hi-jacked for political purposes. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century the Armed Forces in Spain have had a tendency to rush out and save the patriamostly from other Spaniards. Right-wing elements everywhere are prone to wrap themselves in the national flag, zealous Spanish patriots being no exception: until recently the use of 'patria' and 'patriotism' in Spain was the almost exclusive preserveone could say patrimonyof the centralist Right. (It would certainly be interesting to study the Spanish Civil War from the point of view of the use of the term 'patriot') It is also worth remembering that the motto of the Spanish Civil Guard, which was infamous as forming part of Franco's repressive dictatorial machine, is 'Everything for the patria'.8

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Right-wing circles in Spain, often through the daily paper ABC, have not hesitated to exploit the words of the King of Spain and his role as head of the Armed Forces, so as to make believe that the unity of Spain, the patria, is in danger. On one occasion, 9 ABC published a photograph on its front cover of King Juan Carlos in full uniform as CaptainGeneral of the Armed Forces; on the cover itself and in the editorial it quoted one of the King's speechesdelivered in an entirely different contextwhich he had ended with the invocation 'Spain! Spain!' The background to this particular attempt at manipulation was complex: for the first time ever a pluri-lingual debate was being held in the Senate; there was an orchestrated right-wing offensive which saw the Catalan government's Linguistic Normalisation Law to promote the teaching of Catalanand thus redress the balance of forty years' repression of the languageas 'persecution of Castilian'; there was also the deal, referred to above, whereby the (Christian Democratic conservative) Catalan ruling coalition was keeping the (socialist) central government afloat. But ethnic minority nationalists have their patria too. During the transition to democracy, people in the Basque Country used the term 'Abertzale'meaning 'patriot' in euskera, the Basque languagewhich was a way of putting clear blue water between their patriotism and that of Spanish patriotism ('españolismo').10 Definition varies according to the speaker, on the basis of 'I am a patriot, you are a nationalist, he is a chauvinist', and one man's nationalismor patriotismcan find another man's nationalism or patriotism offensive. The leader of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), Xabier Arzalluz, became well-known for passionate nationalistic outbursts when celebrating the Aberri Aguna, Basque National Day, or when addressing the party faithful. Thus it was that in the regional election campaign of October 1994, he spoke disparagingly of a (Spanish) 'nationalism which attacks our nationalism' and which 'tries to discredit the PNV when it speaks of historical rights'.11 He also claimed that if some young people had turned to terrorism it was because Spanish nationalism imposed itself by force of arms, demanding 'that we cease to profess that Euskadi is our only patria because there is another, common, patria, and they say this to us out of a nationalism which is much more extreme than ours'.12 Arzalluz became adept at scandalising Spanish public opinion because of the apparent ambivalence of his relations with the terrorist world of the Basque ultra-nationalist organisation, ETA,13 but he later attempted to make it clear that he was neither for the violence of ETA nor for what he called the enforced unity of the (centre-right) Popular Party (PP) based in Madrid.14 ETA, meanwhile, called their own murderers and thugs Basque patriots, at the same time as they reviled as fascists ordinary people wearing a blue ribbon to demonstrate their solidarity with hostages taken by that terrorist organisation.

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Jordi Pujol, the CiU leader, has tended to use onecalm and measuredstyle for negotiations with the central government and towards the other autonomous communities, while reserving another, more nationalistic, language for home consumption, both personally and through the media he controlsthe daily paper Avui, TV3, and Catalunya Ràdio. He is not averse to identifying himself with Catalan patriotism when it appears that he, or his language policies, or his conjunctural pacts with the central government, come under fire. In all cases, he distinguishes between the Catalan 'nation' (despite the fact that, in the Constitution, the term refers to a 'whole' of which Catalonia is a part). Instead of 'Spain' or 'Spanish' he speaks of the 'state' both as noun and adjective, which gives rise to semantic and philological incongruencies: thus Spain becomes 'the Spanish state', the Spanish football team becomes the 'state' football team, the National Police becomes the 'state Police'. He has developed the habit of talking as if Catalonia were not part of Spain: in July 1994, he said on TV3, 'Spain will have to address the question of what it wants to do with Catalonia'; 15 he will say that Catalonia as a sovereign body 'makes pacts', 'contributes' and 'helps' Spain, whereas it would not occur to Andalusians or Valencians or Galicians to make similar claims, because they are Spain. Who Speaks Spanish? This question is linked with the previous issues. The Preamble to the 1978 Constitution proclaims the will of the Spanish Nation to 'protect all Spaniards and peoples of Spain in the exercise of human rights, of their cultures and traditions, and of their languages and institutions'. Like Article 2, on Spain and its territorial division, Article 3 on the country's languages is clumsy, had to be clumsy in order to be all things to all people. It states that 'Castilian is the official language of the State. All Spaniards have the duty to know it and the right to use it. The other Spanish languages shall also be official in the respective autonomous communities in accordance with their Statutes. The wealth of the different language variations of Spain is a cultural heritage which shall be the object of respect and protection'. 'Respect and protection' are spelled out in the seventeen communities' Statutes of Autonomy, each tailor-made. In this way, Castilian is obligatory for everyone, and Castilian plus Catalan are the co-official languages of Catalonia (and also of the Balearic Islands), Castilian plus Galician the co-official languages of Galicia, Castilian plus Basque the coofficial languages of the Basque Country, and Valencian the co-official language of Valencia. Castilian is the official language of Navarre, Basque having official language status in that community's

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Basque-speaking areas. 'Bable', the dialect of Asturias, and the various dialects in use in Aragón, enjoy formal protection but are not co-official with Castilian. As to the co-officiality of languages, the Constitution and the Statutes are clear. One does not, however, need the skills of a constitutional lawyer, never mind those of a putative diplomat, to suss out underlying problems: the texts do not state that citizens have the duty to know Catalan, or Basque, or Galician, or Valencian, merely that these languages are co-official with Castilian. At the time the Constitution was drawn up, one of the Catalan deputies argued not only that the languages of the autonomous communities were official, but that 'all those resident in such territories have the duty to know and the right to use those languages'. In short he was defending absolute bilingualism. 16 Even though he did not obtain exactly what the Catalans wanted, the eventual formulation was infinitely better than what some right-wing sectors had pressed for, in which Spanish was synonymous with Castilian and seemed to exclude the other languages of Spain. Not that the 'Spanish languages' polemic has gone away. More than fifteen years after the promulgation of the Constitution, ABC in its editorial of 29 September 1994, fulminated that 'We might recall that Spanishimproperly called Castilian in the Constitution, in one of those concessions to nationalisms which were as inordinate as naiveis the official language of the State'. A Politico-linguistic Step Towards Making the Senate a Genuine Chamber of Regional Representation. During the last week of September 1994, Spaniards were able to see and hear Spain's plurality in action on television. It was yet another opportunity for centrifugalists and centripetalists alike to examine their umbilical cords. Cords pluralbecause geography and history have determined that the inhabitants of Hispania are not all attached with the same degree of cultural and affective intensity to the same place. For the first time ever, there was a debate in the Senate in which speeches were delivered in languages other than Spanish or, to be constitutionally correct, in languages other than Castilian. In Spain's bi-cameral Parliament, the Senate is held to be the forum for representing the interests of country's seventeen regions. In fact this is only partially true, and the debate on the state of the State of the Autonomies was significant in that it foreshadowed a move to make the Senate a second Chamber truly entrenching at the centre the powers of Spain's regional assemblies. Between 26-28 September 1994, all the heads of the autonomiesbar onetook advantage of the occasion to present the situation obtaining in their communities, using

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either Castilian or the respective co-official language. (The Basque president boycotted the meeting on the grounds that the Senate debate would be a pantomime, a dialogue of the deaf; in fact his absence was more likely due to a desire to whip up in the Basque Country an increased number of nationalist votes for his party in the regional elections which were to be held shortly afterwards.) Most of the presidents spoke in Castilian but those of Galicia, Catalonia, Navarre, Valencia and Mallorca spoke each in his own language. It was argued in right-wing circles that it was absurd to gather together some sixteen or seventeen Castilian-speaking Spaniards from all over the country and hear some of them speak in their mother tongue, with interpreters to convey their message in Castilian. 17 But it could also be argued that, although the session was a symbolic, almost theatrical gesture, with the presidents contributing set-pieces rather than the cut-and-thrust of debate, it was an opportunity for Spaniards all over the country to be conscious that there were languages within Spain other than Castilian, and to dispel ignorance and mistrust, prejudice even. Thus language can here be seen as the gateway to political awareness. The variety of languages used in the Senate debate might have remained at a purely formal level, had it not been for the content of the interventions and the fact that there was a huge TV audience following it. Until recently such recognition of linguistic plurality would have been inconceivable. Even as late as 1982, a Catalan senator sent a telegram in Catalan to the then Spanish Prime Minister, Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, lamenting that he had not been permitted to address the Senate in Catalan. The Prime Minister's Cabinet Secretary sent a reply to the senator, stating that if he wanted an answer he would have to write in Castilian.18 Interpreting 'Autonomy', 'Self-Determination', 'the Differential Factor', 'solidarity' and 'Loyalty to the Constitution' The seventeen communities enjoy a high, though varying, degree of autonomy. However, the meaning of 'autonomy' is blurred at the edges and depends, like that of patriotism, on who is speaking, who is being addressed and when and in what circumstance, whetherfor exampleit is defined by those who simply 'think Spain', or by regional nationalists for home consumption while negotiating with the central government and keeping half an eye on the other autonomous communities. The pragmatic resourcefulness involved in all this centre-periphery and periphery-periphery manoeuvring calls to mind the legendary medieval Viennese preacher Abraham à Sancta Clara, who obtained a promise from the nobility that they would donate a large amount of money for

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the poor if he could make them laugh and cry at the same time. So he arranged the nobles in two rows one in front of him, and one behind. He attached a donkey's tail to the back of his vestments and, while he reduced the nobles in front of him to tears with his account of the privations suffered by the poor, the nobles behind him were convulsed with laughter at the sight of the donkey's tail being waved about. This story may also demonstrate that, just as not all medieval nobles were sophisticated, not all modern political audiences are necessarily sophisticated either. The reading of 'autonomy' also depends on which political party is involved, for the divides between groups evidence ideological as well as nationalist plurality. Juan José Lucas, President of Castile-León, the conservative president of a non-nationalist region and member of the centre-right Popular Party (PP) replied, when asked if the term 'autonomy' had the same meaning for him as for Pujol of Catalonia or Arzalluz of the Basque Country, 'Sometimes I doubt it ... In theory they would have to be speaking of the same thing, because the principle of legitimacy on which it is based is the same, the Constitution'. He went on to say that 'what one cannot do is make a different reading of the Constitution' 19 a sentence which by implication called into question Catalan demands for an interpretation that was more favourable (to Catalonia). 'Autonomy' is frequently synonymous with a higher or lower ceiling of self-government, and for some it means mere decentralisation, while for others it an expression of their separate identity. But every so often the demand for 'selfdetermination' surfaces in the centre-periphery tug-of-terminology when the political conjuncture appears ripe. The word often arises at times when moderate nationalists, who are aware of the existence of small but vociferous nonviolent independence parties in their communities, do not want to be outflanked. It may also arise at other important political junctures: for example, on 12 December 1989, exactly ten years after the Catalans had obtained their Statute of Autonomy, and as negotiations with the central government seemed to have ground to a halt, the Catalan Parliament passed a motion affirming that 'the Catalan people do not renounce the right to national self-determination'. It was a tactic to start pressing for more autonomy, more competencies in different fields of government administration. One has also to remember the timing, what was happening in Europe: the break-up of the Eastern bloc and the appearance of nationalist fissures and nationalist self-determination/independence aspirations. On the day after the Catalan motion, the main moderate Basque nationalist party followed suit. The Armed Forceswhose duty it is, according to the Constitution, to defend 'the territorial integrity of Spain'reacted with swift

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hostility. King Juan Carlos also, in his Christmas message, underlined the importance of national unity but a few days later reminded the militaryin an implicit reference to the 'self-determination' episodeof their need to maintain discipline. The central government rejected outright the idea of self-determination, the meaning of which in any case was far from clear. For some extremists it meant complete separation from the rest of Spain. For others it was a semantic nicety, since, they said, Catalonia and the Basque Country had 'determined themselves' when they voted for their statutes of autonomy in 1979. For Jordi Pujol it meant 'Catalonia's right to increase her self-government' and he added, 'We do not ask for independence but autonomy', involving a more generous interpretation of the Catalan Statute and of the Constitution. 20 The concept of 'loyalty' hung in the air over the September 1994 pluri-lingual debate in the Senate. Most of the speakers referred to it, and by some it was linked to the idea of 'solidarity' between communities, which involves a transfer of real resources. Generally speaking in Spain, it is the poorer regions that demand solidarity although, as one of their presidents pointed out, it is easier to show solidarity with other people's money than with one's own. Also hanging in the air was the shared consciousness of all those present of what might be considered the anti-solidarity political deal between the central government and the moderate Catalan nationalist coalition, CiU. Both the President of Galicia and the President of Castile-León accused the central administration of acting according to its own and Catalonia's immediate interests: a clear allusion to privileges which they considered the Catalan nationalists were receiving at the expense of other communities.21 Just a few days before, in the heat of the Basque regional election battle, Xabier Arzalluz had said: 'We Basque nationalists are not loyal to the Constitution because it is not ours',22 and the Prime Minister, Felipe González, referred indirectly to these controversial words when speaking during the famous Senate debate. He stated that the political will to proceed further in the State of the Autonomies, 'has to be based on the principle of constitutional loyalty'.23 He appeared to be appealing to autonomous community presidents not to open a Pandora's box by altering the Constitution, since it might not be possible to re-create the climate of consensus which had pervaded the political air in the immediate post-Franco period. Gonzalez's appeal to the principle of 'constitutional loyalty' included acceptance by all of a Spain at one and the same time plural and single.24 For Pujol of Catalonia the Senate debate was an ideal platform for pressing the claim that Catalonia was set apart from the rest of Spain by a 'differential

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factor' (hecho diferencial), which meant, when decoded, that Catalonia's ceiling of self-government should be higher than that of the rest of the communities. He spoke of Catalan loyalty to the autonomy model laid down in the Constitution, but 'fitting the differential factor into the body of the State', he said, was difficult and there had been a tendency to water down the differences. (This watering-down has come to be known as 'coffee for everyone' in the way devolution was offered to all the regions of Spain, instead of 'champagne for the favoured few'.) Pujol asked for greater courage in reading the Constitution so that the differential factor should be recognised and translated into political reality: 'We ask for self-government above all because we believe it is necesary for us in order to continue to be Catalans... In Spain there is the culture which has a Castilian matrix, usually called Spanish culture. Then there are other cultures, connected to the different languages of Spain and one of them is Catalan.' When he said 'we have constitutional loyalty but also 'we Catalans demand constitutional loyalty' it was a repetition of the demand for others to see that Catalonia was different. 25 Manuel Fraga of Galicia, however, voiced the concern of other communities as well as his own when he affirmed that there could not be first and second class autonomies.26 The President of Andalusia stated that the differential factor was so elemental and obvious that if one did not recognise it one could not understand autonomy, but the right to be different was not a right to what was inequitable.27 The fact of the matter is that Catalonia and the Basque country had been first past the post in 1979 in gaining a Statute of Autonomy, on the grounds that they were different from the others, that they had a distinct history, language and culture, that they were 'historical' nationalities. The rest of the autonomous communities followed suit but most of them had to go much more slowly, and by a more circuitous route, as they did not have the same claim to distinctiveness. One of the greatest problem still facing Spain in the context of its 'nationalities and regions' is that the Catalan and Basque nationalities hares do not want the tortoise regions to catch up with them in the autonomy stakes. So it is unlikely that they will abandon insistence on their historical, political and cultural differential factor. On the other hand, the rest of the communities will continue to resist any regional-nationalist claim which seems to discriminate against their own economy and their own status, and which in fact makes some Communities 'more equal than others'. Given the Centre-Periphery Struggle, what is 'Spain'? General Franco's Fundamental Laws defined Spain with blinding opacity as 'a unit of destiny in what is universal'. Some have called it a nation of nations, others a pluri-national State. It is a subject to which historians, philosophers,

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politicians, and even humourists constantly return. Towards the end of September 1994, the daily paper El País published a cartoon by 'Máximo' that included the question 'What is Spain?', to which he gave the answer, attributed to one of Spain's most esteemed intellectuals, Pedro Lain Entralgo, 'The fact that the question is asked at all is an indication that one does not know what it means'. 28 Lain Entralgo himself replied to Máximo's question after a few weeks in a longish article29 in El País, and returned to it again some months later in similar terms.30 One of the pivotal points he made was that the question must be tackled with goodwill on all sides, and goodwill, clearly, could not be imposed. Where there were two cultures existing side by side in a particular community, they should be recognised and fostered as enriching each other. But unless this goodwill existed, he feared that future generations of Catalans and Basques would reject the Castilian language and culture. He ended his first article by stating that unless such fears were shared by those in power at the centre and in the autonomous communities, and unless they acted accordingly, then perhaps in a hundred years' time people would answer the question 'What is Spain?' with the words 'I can only say what Spain was like and what it could have been and what it did not become'. In the context of centre-periphery communication and relations in Spain, the politics of language and the language of politics still raise issues that will not easily be resolved. Notes 1 José Luis Gutiérrez, 'González y ''la cuestión catalana''', in Diario 16, 18.9.94. 2 Victor Gómez Pin, 'La dignidad de España', in El País, 18.11.94. 3 See Antonio Quilis, 'La pragmática lingüística' [book review], in Saber Leer, No. 77, Madrid, August-September 1994, 3. 4 Bonifacio de la Cuadra & Soledad Gallego-Diaz, Del consenso al desencanto, Editorial Saltés, Madrid, 1981: 45. 5 The Basques accepted the term 'nationalities' but abstained when it came to the vote on the whole Constitution since they argued that time-honoured Basque rights (fueros vascos) had not been respected. 6 Ramón Martin Mateo, Manual de derecho autonómico, Publicaciones Abella, Madrid, 1986, 71. 7 Cambio 16,16.1.95. 8 Luis Roldán, the former head of the Civil Guard, was arrested in 1995 for fraud on a massive scale, giving rise to the observation that he had taken their motto literally, or rather had taken 'Everything from the patria'. See Gregorio Morán, 'Frente al patriotismo, siempre' in La Vanguardia, 24.9.94. 9 ABC, 27.9.94. 10 Gregorio Morán, 'Frente al patriotismo, siempre', in La Vanguardia, 24.9.94. 11 El País, 17.10.94. 12 La Vanguardia, 17.10.94. 13 Acronym meaning 'Basque Homeland and Freedom'.

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14 El País, 15.5.95. 15 El Pais, 22.7.94. 16 Bonifacio de la Cuadra & Soledad Gallego Diaz, Del consenso al desencanto, Editorial Saltés, Madrid: 104-5. 17 Manuel Fraga, the Galician president, gave his speech in Galician, which he himself immediately translated into Castilian. 18 See José Marti Gómez & Josep Ramoneda, 'Carta a Joan Rigol', in La Vanguardia, 30 September 1994. 19 La Vanguardia, 25.9.94. 20 Interviewed in La Vanguardia, 7.1.90. 21 La Vanguardia, 28.9.94. 22 Diario 16, 26.9.94. Similar words had been used in the PNV manifesto published earlier in the year to mark the Aberri Eguna (Basque National Day). 23 El Mundo, 27.9.94. 24 ABC, 27.9.94, and the El País editorial of the same date. 25 Diario 16, 28.9.94. 26 ABC, 28.9.94. 27 ABC, 27.9.94. 28 El Pais, 26.9.94. 29 Pedro Lain Entralgo, '¿Qué es España?', in El País, 17.10.94. 30 Pedro Laín Entralgo, 'La vertebración de las lenguas de España', in El País, 5.6.95. See also Fernando Garcia de Cortázar & José Manuel González Vesga, 'Cien años discutiendo ¿Qué es España?', in Cambio 16, 3.10.94.

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Sense and Pence: an Alternative Language Policy for Europe Paul P. Gubbins Statistics, particularly in the hands of non-statisticians, should always be taken cum grano salis, and those pertaining to the European Union are no exception. Indeed, the 1993 report from the UK Erasmus Student Grants Council contains just that caveat: 'This abstract of data is based on large databases which are extensive and complex.... The figures should be used with caution and in context.' Nevertheless, the statistics in the report make interesting reading. The Erasmus and Lingua programmes, set up in 1987 and 1989 respectively, involved in 1992/93 a total of 87,000 students, from both European Union and European Free Trade Association countries, at a cost of 68.38 million ecus (an equivalent of £53 millions assuming 1.29 ecus per pound as at November 1, 1994); in 1993/94 the cost had risen to 73.98 million ecus (£57.35 millions) and 118,000 students were involved. This represents a subsidy per student of 786 ecus (£609) in 1992/93 and, substantial drop, of 627 ecus (£486) in 1993/94. The achievements of Erasmus and Lingua, which in 1995 came under the auspices of a new EU education programme known as Socrates, have been impressive. Lingua, for instance, expanded by 28% between 1991/92 and 1992/93, partly as a result of the inclusion in the scheme for the first time of EFTA countries. There is, moreover, no doubt that participants in Erasmus and Lingua returned to their countries of origin with a broader outlook, a more communautaire spirit and, particularly in the case of Lingua (designed for language teachers and for students with more than 50% of their course devoted to foreign language study), with enhanced communication skills in a tongue or tongues not their own. So far so good. But are the ideals of the European Union actually being met, and is the taxpayer getting value for money? In a European Commission leaflet, published in September 1993, the rationale of Erasmus was set out thus: 'The ultimate aim of Erasmus is to enable 10% of the eight million students in higher education in the Community to spend at least part of one academic year studying in another EC country.' So, too, the rationale of Lingua as stated in a 1988 press release: 'Conscious of the rich diversity of European linguistic and cultural traditions, the Commission has taken the view that all the official languages of

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the Community should be widely spoken.' However, if the figure of eight million higher education students in the European Union is accepted, it is clear that the Commission falls far short of achieving its desired 10% participation rate. Indeed, the 118,000 students who took part in Erasmus and Lingua in 1993/94 represent less than 1.5% of the European student body. It could therefore be argued that, while a tiny minority of European students does very well from Erasmus and Lingua, the programmes have in fact failedand are failingthe vast majority of young people. In fact, to achieve the 10% desideratum, funding would have to rise from the current 73.98 million ecus (£57.35 millions) to 493.19 million ecus (£382.32 millions). .. and even then 90% of higher education students would still remain outside the programmes, to say nothing of the rest of European youth not involved in post-18 education. Furthermore, the hope expressed at the launch of Linguathat all official Community languages be more widely spokenhas remained obstinately distant. A report in Lingua News 9, of Spring 1994, disclosed that 33% of participants chose the UK, 22% France, 10% Germany, 8% Italy and 7% Spain. The remaining 20% chose countries such as Greece, the Netherlands or Denmark for which sweeteners of up to 75% of project costs were available. Similar figures are revealed by the European Commission (1993) for Erasmus: 32% of participants chose the UK, 27% France, 18% Germany, 10% Spain, 5% Italy, 4% the Netherlands, 3% each for Belgium and Greece, 2% Ireland, and 1% each for Denmark, Luxembourg and Portugal (the total of 107% is a result of rounding-up). What price language diversity? What price the richness of cultural and linguistic traditions to which the Commission referred at the Lingua launch? It is all very well for the new Socrates programme, of which Lingua will be a part, to expand its brief to include not only all official languages but also Irish and Letzeburgesch, and to stressLingua News 10 that 'priority will be given to projects and activities relating to the teaching of languages of the European Union which are least widely used and taught' (p. 3): the reality is that the 1.5% Lingua and Erasmus Euro-élite has rejected the pious hopes of the Commission and has opted in substantial measure for English, with French and German somewhat behind. If, therefore, the language policy of the European Union is an expensive, élitist, but benevolent sham, failing in its express desire to protect and promote so-called minority linguistic and other traditions, then so too is the charade of maintaining in the EU eleven official languages. Here again, costs are enormous, and the results of dubious benefit. The European Union is coy about revealing expenditure on translation and interpreting but certain figures have been put forward by independent writers and researchers. Boston (1994), writing in the Guardian,

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claimed it cost £532 million to service the collective needs of Euro-MPs: approximately a million pounds per MEP of which one third was devoted to translation requirements. Baratta and Clauss (1991: 146) stated that in 1989 the European Community made use of 2,500 translators and 570 permanent interpreters, plus another 2,500 interpreters on temporary contracts. Moreover, in that year, the Community spent on language services 1,400,000,000 ecus (£1,085 million). Rollick (1991), writing in The European, estimated that each word used in the European Union costs 23 pence and that 3,150,000 words are translated each day (a total daily cost of £724,500). If it is borne in mind that these figures, the latest available, date from 1989 and 1991, then the present costs are likely to be higher; and the accession of Finland and Sweden to the European Union will inflate those figures yet again. Moreover, despite the estimated billion pounds spent on language services in the European Union, it is questionable whether the taxpayer is receiving value for money. It is easy to trundle out gaffes produced by the computerised translation system Systran: British miners were compensated with 50 books ('cinquante livres'), while farmers lived to screw the common agricultural policy ('Les agriculteurs vis-à-vis de la politique agricole commune'); more seriously, however, translation errors have resulted in misapplication of EU regulations. In 1990, according to a news article in the Daily Telegraph of February 8, it was discovered that because of a mistranslation trout farms in the UK fell outside legislation covering commercial fish farming. Significantly, Greece and Denmark, which translated their rules from the erroneous English version, also contravened the regulations. Other translation issues are indicated by Piron (1994a: 120): he draws attention to different legalistic interpretations applicable, for instance, to the English, French and Spanish translations of the same clause of article 33 of the United Nations charter. Additionally, Piron (1994b: 51) sets the costs of translation against moral and social values: '600 francs suisses (2400FF) suffisent à nourrir pendant un mois 70 enfants abandonnés recueillis dans un orphelinat au Vietnam. C'est le coût de 1200 mots traduits dans les instances européennes de Bruxelles: deux pages à simple interligne'. There is, however, a further insidious aspect to the EU's language policy: its inequality. It is all very well for Lingua to attempt to accommodate Irish and Letzeburgesch, but what, for instance, of Welsh, Frisian, Occitan or Catalan? And, concerning the latter, is it not unjusttaking the figures of Crystal (1987)that Occitan, with 9.5-12 million speakers, and Catalan, with 5-7 million, should be excluded from official EU languages, when Danish, with 5-5.25 million speakers, and Finnish, with 4.5-5 million, are included simply because they are national languages of EU member states? Erasmus (1995) has estimatedalthough this

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seems highthat there are 50 million citizens of the EU using on a daily basis a language other than an official EU tongue. Certainly it can be argued that speakers of Catalan or Occitan could and should turn to their appropriate national languages to participate in EU affairs, but this smacks of discrimination, of linguistic dictatorship: many of those speakers may prefer to use Catalan or Occitan as a first language and yet are denied that choice. Piron (1994b) distinguishes between three types of international communication: the bureaucratic, the fascist and the democratic. To Piron, the EU and organisations such as the United Nations exemplify the bureaucratic approach: they consume vast human and material resourcespaper, time, moneyfor pitiful results. The fascist approach favours one language at the expense of others: this has already been noted in the popularity of the UKand, by extension, Englishin the destinations of Erasmus and Lingua students. Such linguistic hegemony places the members of that language group in a privileged, favoured and powerful position, so much so that not only minority languages, cultures and traditions feel themselves threatened but also those of nations previously enjoying this linguistic monopoly. A case in point, indicated in The Guardian of November 2, 1994, is the fury of the French film industry over the so-called 'cultural imperialism' of Hollywood which has taken 80% of the EU film market. For Piron, both the bureaucratic and the fascist approaches to international communication represent an unequal, unjust and unfeeling solution far removed from human dignity and worth. The answer, according to Piron, lies in the democratic approach exemplified by the planned international language Esperanto. Not that the democratic way is entirely smooth, as Piron (1994b: 172) acknowledges (my translation from the Esperanto): 'Like everything democratic, it has its faults, its imperfections. However, it is the fairest, the most efficient and, both from a social and psychological point of view, the most satisfactory system.' Esperanto is a curious phenomenon. In Britain, as elsewhere, it is something of a linguistic outcast; its users perceived, as often as not, and particularly by modern language specialists, as linguistic lepers. No wonder: research conducted in Brazil, and quoted in Schulz (1986: 75), indicates that Esperanto can be acquired some six times more rapidly than a so-called natural language; learning outcomes achieved in 400 hours of tuition for a natural language were reached in just 60 hours with Esperanto. Modern linguists, mistakenly, fear for their jobs: why else should a senior member of the Association for Language Learning (ALL), when asked at the 1994 London Language Show to accept Esperanto into the fold, quite literally smile sweetly and rapidly move away?

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,0,0,0Esperanto, however, will not move away, despite the wild claims made about it: for instance, that it has no history, and no original literature; that nobody speaks it, as the language has died out. Its detractors overlook the fact that on November 16, 1993, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), meeting in Paris, accepted a resolution in favour of Esperanto and which confirmed earlier, similarly positive declarations of 1985 and 1954. More significantly, some two months earlier, on September 10, 1993, in Santiago de Compostela, the writers' association PEN International accepted Esperanto as a fully-fledged literary language. These are qualitiesits ease of learning, its richness as a literary language and its neutrality, with the implication that no one nation and its language be especially favouredwhich speak eloquently for Esperanto's adoption as a common second language (not, incidentally, as a replacement for existing national languages). These are qualities which, at long last, have prompted the European Union to take the first tentative steps towards redefinition of its chaotic, expensive and undemocratic language policy. On September 29, 1993, the then President of the European Parliament, Egon Klepsch, launched a one-day conference in Brussels entitled: 'The Communication and Language Problem in the European Community: To what extent could a planned language contribute to its solution?' The conference, organised by the Hanns Seidel Foundation established by the German political party Christlich-Soziale Union (CSU), debated the issues and listened to presentations on three planned languages: Glosa, based on Lancelot Hogben's Interglossa published in 1943 and subsequently revised; Interlingua, of 1909, which emerged from other planned projects such as Idiom Neutral and Latino sino flexione; and Esperanto, published in 1887. All credit to the conference organisers for attempting an impartial look at planned languages. Glosa and Interlingua, however, are probably non-starters; in the UK Glosa has two known advocates, with claims of up to 300 people learning the language, and Interlingua a handful more. Additionally, there is little to show for either language apart from introductory course material and the occasional newsletter or translation. By contrast, Esperanto has around 1000 paid-up members in the UK and, judging by the composition of local Esperanto groups, possibly quadruple that number who are not members of the national association. Esperanto supports a range of generalist and specialist periodicals, substantial original and translated literature, networks of interest groups such as railwaymen, journalists, scouts and philatelists, and organises national and international conferences, courses and seminars.

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The result of the Brussels conference was to propose a working group to look in detail at the language problems of the EU and to ask the European Parliament to mandate the Commission to establish such a group. This was in September 1993: since then there has been silence on the part of the EU (although the Erasmus working-group, not to be confused with the EU Erasmus student mobility programme, referred to above is anxious that the Esperanto initiative should not be lost: it has embarked on an ambitious programme to persuade the EU to establish pilot language programmes in EU countries and to establish at least one chair of Esperanto at a university in each member state). Yet, despite the official silence, the conference indicates a degree of concern in the European Union about language issues and demonstrates the readiness of at least some individuals to consider an innovative, indeed radical, solution. That radical solution could well be Esperantoas cost-effective as it is humanitarian and democratic. Adoption of Esperanto as a common, second language for Europe would substantially reduce the current 111 language permutations which contribute to the billion pound annual price-tag for EU translation and interpreting. More significantly, it would enable not just the élite of Europe to converse, as at present, in that pervasive lingua franca 'broken English'-as the Prince of Wales once described it (quoted in The Guardian, May 9, 1990), but would open the way to genuine dialogue between peoples of different language backgrounds, something largely impossible with present practice. There is also evidence of Esperanto's qualities as a stimulus to subsequent foreign (and native) language learning. Symoens (1992) suggests that Esperanto's regular construction makes it a suitable 'apprentice-language' which could be taught with profit to schoolchildren before they embark on one of the more traditional, and difficult, national languages. Clearly, there are obstacles in the way of any solution to Europe's communication problems which involves Esperanto. Apart from the prejudice of politicians, anxious not to be seen to undermine national interest, there are financial and logistical considerations, particularly in the training of teachers to introduce the language into the various institutions of the EU and into schools. However, for a total cost of £195,000, less than half a percent of annual Erasmus and Lingua expenditure and approximately 0.02% of the EU translation and interpreting budget, it would be possible to introduce a pilot scheme into 5 schools in each of the EU states. The figure assumes 90 hours tuition, taken over 30 weeks for half a day, at the current supply teacher rate of £55 per half day (£1650). To this is added £500 for materials and travel. Multiply this by five for the schools involved, and add the cost of 90 hours tuition for the five teachers (assuming £25 per hour). The national cost is therefore £13,000, which across 15 EU countries amounts to £195,000.

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The first year would involve training of modern language teachers in Esperanto who, in the second year, would teach this international language to their pupils. At the end of the pilot the pupils from the participating schools from across the EU would be brought together and the communicative abilities assessed. Costs in the second year, while depending on the numbers of pupils involved, would probably be comparable with those in the first year. However, in the context of the EU budget, the sums are paltry. And indeed, were Esperanto to be adopted as the EU's lingua franca, the eventual savingson translation and interpretingwould far outweigh the pump-priming investment. Preliminary studies, assuming a successful outcome, would need to be followed by a much longer transition period to establish Esperanto in the institutions of the EU. For this, Piron (1992: 13) proposes a time-scale of 15 years. He anticipates an initial seven year phase for Esperanto to be taught to Eurocrats and for the language to be encouraged in schools. The ensuing eight year phase would see Esperanto used by EU bodies in a passive function: Eurocrats could express themselves in their own language but interpreting would be conducted solely in Esperanto. Similarly with documents: they could be presented in any official EU language but translation would be solely into the international language. At the end of the 15-year period Piron would then expect Esperanto to be used actively throughout EU institutions. There are implications, too, for universities. Although Pirlot (1992) estimates that Esperanto is currently taught for instance at 23 universities in China, the language, with certain exceptions, is not well represented at higher education establishments in the EU. If Esperanto is under consideration as a solution to Europe's increasingly expensive and ineffectual Babelto say nothing of Esperanto's possible role as an 'apprentice-language' or of its literary and cultural significancethen it is essential that it be regarded as a legitimate area of academic study. There are signs that this is happening: the University of Amsterdam has accepted the need, in principle, for a chair in Social Interlinguistics, with emphasis on Esperanto, and is currently investigating funding. The European Unionnot for the first time in its existenceis at a crossroads. Either it continues to throw vast sums of taxpayers' money at a problem which, with each new language block that joins the EU, will grow ever larger and more intractable, or it finds the courage to look beyond its current psychological boundaries and move towards the commonsense, democratic and cost-effective alternative that is provided in the international language Esperanto. Perhaps, however, as an early Esperanto speaker wrote in 1890 to the language's creator, Ludoviko Lazarus Zamenhof (1929: 63): 'La mondo ne estas ankoraû matura por nia afero' ('The world is not yet mature enough to embrace

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our ideal.') Mature or not, it is doubtful whether future Europeans will thank the present generation if it fails to respond to the challenge and potential of Esperanto. References Baratta, M. and Clauss J.U. (1991) Internationale Organisationen. Frankfurt: Fischer. Boston, R. (1994) The Guardian June 7. Crystal, D. (1987) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge: CUP. Erasmus, H. (1995) Laborplano por la Eûropa Esperanto-Unio 1995-2000 (Action plan for the European Esperanto Union 1995-2000). Eúropa Esperantisto, 13/1995. European Commission (1993) Youth exchanges in the European Community. Document CC-77-93-829-EN-C. European Commission (1988) Spokesman's Service. Document COM(88)841 P-151 Dec.21. Pirlot, G. (1992) Esperanto en universitatoj kaj superaj institutoj (Esperanto in Universities and Institutes of Higher Education). Ostende: the author. Piron, C. (1992) Communication Linguistique. Paris: SAT-Amikaro. (1994a) Le défi des langues: Du gâchis au bons sens. Paris: Harmattan. (1994b) Dankvortoj de Claude Piron. Esperanto 10/1994. Rollick, R. (1991) The European 20 December. Schulz, R. (1986) Was nun Esperanto betrifft ... Gerlingen: Bleicher. Symoens, E. (1992) Al nova internacia lingvopolitiko: La propedeûtika valoro de Esperanto (Towards a new policy on language: The propaedeutic value of Esperanto). Rotterdam: UEA. UK Erasmus Student Grants Council (1993) Erasmus and Lingua Action II: Statistics Abstract 1991 to 1993. UK Lingua Unit (1994) Lingua News London: Central Bureau. Zamenhof L,L. (1929) Originala Verkaro (Original Collected Works). Leipzig: Hirt.

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The Formulation of Translation Strategies for Cultural References Jean-Pierre Mailhac Introduction To ensure that effective communication takes place, translation must not only be capable of bridging the gap between languages but also between cultures. So, to take an example, the innumerable mentions of typically British cultural entities in a novel like Sue Townsend's The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾ should, in principle, be transparent to a French person reading its French translation. Ideally, references to a Kevin Keegan scrapbook, bonfires, spotted dick and custard, Malcolm Muggeridge, a V sign, Yorkshire puddings, Bennites, Big Ears, BUPA, Blackpool, Land of Hope and Glory, Woodbines, Ovaltine, Radio 4, playing conkers, etc. should be clear to the French readership, both in terms of their denotations and connotations. However, it is plain that achieving such transparency represents a daunting task and the nature of the strategies available to the translator is by no means obvious. In an article in which he examines procedures and strategies for the translation of cultural references (CRs), Ivir reaches the following conclusion, which emphasizes, as does the rest of the article, the fact that attempts to generalise are not realistic when it comes to solving problems posed by CRs: [...] no uniform treatment of unmatched elements of culture in translation is possible which would be valid for all such elements and for all communicative situations. No blanket decision is possible for a particular text type or an individual text either. Finally, no unique solution exists for a given cultural element that could be utilized by the translator each time that it appears. Instead the translator chooses from among the possible procedures by considering the nature of the cultural term to be translated (its semantic content and linguistic expression in the source language and its contrastive relationship to the possible correspondents in the target language) and the nature of the communicative process in which it appears (the function of that term in the particular act of communication). He is guided in his choice

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by a consideration of the status of that cultural element in the source culture and of the status of its linguistic expression in the source and the target language and in the source and the target text. (1987: 45) Adopting a somewhat different approach, Newmark (1988) tackles the problem starting from a typology of cultural references based on referent types: ecology (animals, plants ...), material culture (food, clothes, housing, etc.), social culture, etc. and sums up his position as follows: [...] the most appropriate solution depends not so much on the collocations or the linguistic or situational context (though these have their place) as on the readership (of whom the three typesexpert, educated generalist, and uninformedwill usually require three different translations) and on the setting. (p. 102) The concept of 'setting' refers to the publication context (periodical, newspaper, textbook, etc.; p. 15). Contrary to Ivir, Newmark puts forward strategies which, although not presented as absolute rules, are nevertheless meant to correspond to significant tendencies. Here are two examples: Cultural components tend to be transferred intact in expressive texts; transferred and explained with culturally neutral terms in informative texts; replaced by cultural equivalents in vocative texts. (p. 47) Clothes as cultural terms may be sufficiently explained for TL general readers if the generic noun or classifier is added: e.g., 'shintigin trousers' or 'basque skirt', or again, if the particular is of no interest, the generic word can simply replace it. (p. 87) This contribution aims to explore the question of strategies for the translation of CRs in the light of these two differing positions in an attempt to improve the formulation of the problem. Examples will be taken from a literary text (Sue Townsend's The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾ and its French translation (by B.Gartenberg), since such texts tend to impose the greatest number of constraints. We shall try to clarify the nature of the procedures and parameters involved and the role of the latter in strategies. This will lead us to outline criteria to assess the translation of CRs. Faced with the task of translating cultural references, the translator will have a number of tools (procedures) available; to select the appropriate one, (s)he will need to take into account various parameters. So we must first consider procedures and parameters before strategies can be dealt with. Given that the key features of the CR constitute parameters, there is no need to discuss the concept of CR in any detail at this stage. Suffice it to say that by CR we mean any reference

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to a cultural entity which, due to its distance from the target culture, is characterized by a sufficient degree of opacity for the target reader to constitute a problem. In other words, transparent cultural references will be ignored. Procedures It is important from the outset to make a clear distinction between two types of procedures: those which apply to the text as a whole, and those which are used for individual CRs. This distinction is often ignored or blurred in the literature. Thus, Hervey and Higgins (1992: 28), after defining cultural transposition as 'a cover-term for the various degrees of departure from literal translation that one may resort to in the process of transferring the contents of a ST [= source text] into the context of a target culture', declare: 'The various degrees of cultural transposition can be visualised as points along a scale between the extremes of exoticism and cultural transplantation'. This is followed by a linear diagram with five points namely (from left to right) exoticism, cultural borrowing, calque, communicative translation and cultural transplantation. Such a presentation is unfortunate, since it may create the impression that exoticism and cultural transplantation are on the same plane as the other three, when in fact they represent text procedures while the others are CR procedures. (a) Text Procedures Although labels differ, text procedures are normally reduced to the two alternatives referred to by Hervey and Higgins: cultural transplantation, which as they rightly point out (p. 30), can be more akin to adaptation than true translation, since it represents a systematic attempt to convert the source culture setting into a target culture one; and exoticism, which will plunge the target reader into the source culture. The following quotation from Mounin provides a typical illustration of the way this dichotomy may be presented: Ou bien, 'franciser' le texte, en décidant de le transmettre au lecteur comme si c'était un texte écrit directement en français, par un Français, pour des Français: ce qui peut impliquer de 'décolorer' toutes les étrangetés de la langue étrangère, du siècle différent, de la civilisation lointaine (les transporter, les moduler, en chercher des équivalences, ou des adaptations). Ou bien 'dépayser' le lecteur français, décidant de lui faire lire le texte sans qu'il puisse oublier un seul instant qu'il est devant une autre langue, un autre siècle, une autre civilisation que les nôtres. L'un et l'autre de ces deux partis pris fondamentaux peuvent être également légitimes, selon le cas. Le seul crime littéraire c'est, dans la même oeuvre, de passer (sans raisons dictées par l'original) de l'un à l'autre. (1963: 57)

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Yet, in reality, the translator faces not two, but three options: cultural transplantation; exoticism with minimum presence of the translator; exoticism with maximum presence of the translator. Thus, a reference to the newspaper The Morning Star in a text which converts all source CRs into target CRs, would come out as 'L'Humanité'; on the other hand, if it is decided that exoticism should be maintained with a minimum presence of the translator, the equivalent could be 'le Morning Star'; whereas with maximum presence of the translator, more information could be provided, making possible a translation such as 'le Morning Star, journal communiste britannique'. The difference between the two exoticism options can be characterized more precisely in terms of the pragmatic constraints at play. It is a truism to say that any communication situation involves given and new information. The speaker will necessarily make a hypothesis concerning the nature of the information which is assumed to be shared with the hearer and this will condition the amount of explicit information supplied. This is linked to Grice's maxim of quantity which states that, ideally, the speaker's contribution should be as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange and no more. If the communication takes place within a work of fiction, say between two characters, things differ to the extent that, normally, the reader is not really in a fly-on-the-wall position, since, in principle, this could make some of the dialogue totally opaque in the absence of any concession for his or her 'presence'. Usually, the author will provide the reader with enough information, one way or the other, to understand the content of the utterances. So, in effect, what we have is a communication situation (between two characters) within another communication situation (between the author and the reader) which conditions the first one, and each one involves a hypothesis about shared knowledge. By the time the text is translated, a third one, now involving the translator and the target reader, is superimposed, thus adding a third level of assumptions about shared knowledge. Inevitably, a substantial part of the shared knowledge is made up of cultural information. The two text procedures involving exoticism differ in that one (minimum presence of the translator) constantly strives to offer no more information than could be reasonably given to the source reader (cf.'le Morning Star'). In other words, to all intents and purposes, the target reader is treated like a source reader; the target text must read like a source text; the pragmatic space within which the translator operates is comparable to what would be allowed by shared information assumed for the source reader. Whereas with the second (maximum pres-

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ence of the translator) the translator overtly adds information which is clearly for the benefit of the target reader (cf. 'le Morning Star, journal communiste britannique') and the pragmatic space within which the translator then operates is what is allowed by shared information assumed for the target reader. It must be pointed out that 'presence' is not synonymous with 'visibility', for, with both options, the translator remains invisible. The only time the presence of the translator is betrayed is when (s)he resorts to footnotes. Also, should the translator violate the pragmatic coherence by venturing outside the space imposed by a minimum presence, this would immediately change the perceived semiotic value of the referent. For instance, if Adrian Mole started explaining in the French translation of the text what a Yorkshire pudding was, this would instantly lead the target reader to the conclusion that a Yorkshire pudding was sufficiently rare as an entity to justify the need for an explanation. It goes without saying that the distinction between the two types of exoticism text procedures is crucial to any strategy concerning CRs and one can see how, in this respect, our position differs from Ivir's when he claims: 'No blanket decision is possible for a particular text type or an individual text either.' (1987: 45), or again 'when planning his translation strategy, the translator does not make a one-time decision on how he will treat unmatched elements of culture'. (p. 37) Taken literally, Grice's maxim quoted earlier precludes the existence of redundant information in ideal communication circumstances. Nevertheless, in actual language use, one can find examples of acceptable redundancy. For instance, in the following sentence, for a drink can be regarded as a superfluous piece of information: Perhaps he has asked her to go to the pubfor a drink and take her mind off her troubles (p. 47). Interestingly, this kind of redundancy can give a little more room for manoeuvre to the translator working within the extremely tight constraints of the minimum presence option. Even if for a drink had not been present in the original, the translator could have used the same translation as the one she arrived at (II lui a peut-être demandé d'aller prendre un verre au pub pour se changer les idées, p. 74) to make absolutely sure that the reference to the pub was transparent. This would not have violated the pragmatic coherence of the situation or changed the perceived semiotic value of the referent in the source culture. The rendering of We walked to Sainsbury's (p. 36) provides a good illustration of how the space allowed by normal redundancy can be used to good effect: On a étéfaire des courses chez Sainsbury (p. 55); the opacity of Sainsbury's is dispelled in a simple and elegant manner by faire des courses, a piece of information which could have been present, albeit redundantly, in the source text. For a target reader familiar with what Sainsbury's is, the information would be as superfluous as the

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explicit use of the term shopping for a source reader. In the event, it offers a vital clue to the average target reader. (b) CR procedures Drawing up a list of CR procedures available to the translator which is of practical use is not as simple as it may seem and any attempt to classify the procedures resorted to in a given corpus soon reveals the shortcomings of typologies. Yet, the need for an inventory of the tools to operate with is self-evident. In their chapter dealing with cultural issues, Hervey and Higgins (1992) combine in the first part two text procedures (exoticism and cultural transplantation) with three CR procedures (cultural borrowing, calque, communicative translation), which creates the problem mentioned earlier. The second part is devoted to 'two related translation techniques necessitated by the transfer from one cultural mode of expression to another: compromise and compensation' (p. 28). This is again conceptually unsatisfactory since compromise, unlike compensation, is not a CR procedure and in fact, although it is initially introduced as a technique, the definition provided shows that the term is used very loosely; indeed the way in which it is later contrasted with compensation indicates that it is not, after all, a technique: Compromise in translation means reconciling oneself to the fact that, while one would like to do full justice to the 'richness' of the ST, one's final TT [ = target text] inevitably suffers from various translation losses. (p. 34) It is when faced with apparently inevitable, yet unacceptable, compromises that translators may feel the need to resort to techniques referred to as compensation that is, techniques of making up for the loss of important ST features through replicating ST effects approximatively in the TT by means other than those used in the ST. (p. 35) Besides, their analysis of compensation also lends itself to criticism on the grounds that virtually none of their examples are CRs. Instead, they curiously illustrate this procedure with a whole range of problems pertaining to other dimensions such as morpho-syntax (narrative tenses, tu), style (alliterations), lexical polysemy (combler, approfondir), the neutralisation of lexical oppositions (fire: feu, incendie), puns, etc. Newmark's presentation (1988) in the chapter on translation and culture is not satisfactory either, in spite of its merits. He puts forward the following list of twelve procedures: transference; cultural equivalent; neutralisation (i.e. functional or descriptive equivalent); literal translation; label; naturalisation; compo-

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nential analysis; deletion; couplet; accepted standard translation; paraphrase, gloss, notes, etc.; classifier (p. 104). As it is defined, the concept of 'naturalisation' blurs the distinction between translation procedure, on one hand, and the diachronic process of morphological integration, on the other: 'This procedure succeeds transference and adapts the SL word first to the normal pronunciation, then to the normal morphology (word-forms) of the TL, e.g. Edimbourg, humeur, redingote, thatchérisme.' (p. 83) 1 While one can imagine a translator deciding to adapt the morphology of a word like thatcherism in a situation in which no standard equivalent exists, it is obvious that the transition from riding coat to redingote occurs on a radically different time-scale and under very different conditions. It could also be argued that any form of loan word integration should qualify as naturalisation including through-translation (i.e. calque; skyscraper: gratte-ciel) lexical creation (a procedure which does not figure in the list for CRs), etc. In practice, all the CRs likely to be in Newmark's category of naturalised equivalents would correspond to cultural borrowings. Consequently, it seems best to dispense with naturalisation as a type of procedure. Finer distinctions can lead to repetitions or substantial overlaps and thereby become counterproductive in operational terms. Thus the labels 'neutralisation', 'functional equivalent' and 'componential analysis' are used to refer to the same procedure, namely a definition. A typical example is baccalauréat translated as French secondary school leaving exam (p. 83). This is given to illustrate a 'functional equivalent', which 'neutralises the SL word' by providing a culture-free equivalent and is characterized as a 'cultural componential analysis' (id.), because it splits up 'a lexical unit into its sense components' (p. 90); given that it describes the referent, it represents a 'descriptive equivalent' too. Indeed, Newmark's further comments on the use of componential analysis as applied to cultural words confirm how inextricably linked the three notions are: 'normally you should include at least one descriptive and one functional component' (p. 119). So the example provided on the next page (gîtes: rural lodgings in France let to tourists) is again an instance of all three. In the circumstances, it is clear that the blanket term 'definition' would be preferable as an alternative to these three notions. One could also include the notion of 'classifier' ('a generic or general or superordinate term sometimes supplied by the translator to qualify a specific term (e.g. 'the city of Brno')', p. 282), on the grounds that it represents a minimal form of definition. Glosses are either, again, definitions accompanying another term or forms of compensation. Although compensation is identified as one of the procedures generally available to the translator (p. 90), it is not mentioned in relation to CRs,

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when in fact it is obviously relevant and could correspond, at least partly, not only to glosses but also to paraphrases. Footnotes have a very special status in the sense that they do represent a last resort when everything else has failed and the translator feels obliged to break the illusion of his/her absence. For this reason, it is preferable to treat the footnote as a procedure in its own right and isolate it from others. The notion of 'accepted standard translation' is on a different plane from all the others, since it does not refer to the form of the equivalent but to its status in terms of target language usage. This means that any item in this category will automatically have to be associated with one of the other listed procedures to specify its form (e.g. 'International institutional terms usually have recognised translations which are in fact through-translations', p. 101). The concept of 'translation label' is defined as follows: This is a provisional translation, usually of a new institutional term, which should be made in inverted commas, which can later be discreetly withdrawn. It could be done through literal translation, thus: 'heritage language', Erbschaftssprache, langue d'héritage. (p. 90) Some clarification would be required here concerning what should be used as an equivalent for the source term once the label has been 'discreetly withdrawn'. In the absence of such information this procedure, which can overlap with others anyway, is not fully operational. As for the notion of 'deletion', it does not seem to apply to CRs as such ('Deletion (of redundant stretches of language in non-authoritative texts, especially metaphors and intensifiers)'; p. 103), in which case it should be replaced with the deliberate omission of the CR itself, a procedure which is certainly not uncommon. And finally, the term 'couplet' (p. 103), which elsewhere is associated with 'triplets, quadruplets' (p. 91), is perhaps not the most felicitous one to refer to the combination of varying numbers of procedures. Ivir's classification (1987) consists of seven procedures, namely borrowing, defining the elements of culture, literal translation, substitution, lexical creation, omission and addition. It offers detailed comments on the advantages and disadvantages of each procedure and its greater simplicity makes it more adequate operationally. One could however suggest three modifications. First, the concept of 'addition', which, as the name suggests, consists in adding informationto a cultural borrowing, a literal translation, etc.will often be indistinguishable from a combination of procedures, so the two notions overlap. Secondly, foot-

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notes, for the reason given earlier, should be treated as a separate type of procedure and not as a mere variation of the definition procedure, which is what Ivir does (p. 39). Thirdly, compensation does not figure on the list and should therefore be added. In effect, this would allow to deal with 'additions' which do not constitute combinations of other procedures (see below). The amended list will then include a total of nine main procedures. The examples, which are taken from the translation of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, are all within the constraints of exoticism with minimum presence of the translator. (1) Cultural borrowing cherry brandy (p. 11; p. 12) punk (p. 15; p. 18) (2) Literal translation (calque) 'Land of Hope and Glory' (p. 106): «Pays d'espoir et de gloire» (p. 162) (3) Definition In principle, this can range from the simple use of a generic term to substantial definitions and include any possibility in between: cream crackers (p. 77): biscuits (p. 120) the Mills and Boon rack (pp. 40-41): le rayon des romans d'amour (p. 63) Bennite (p. 167): gauchiste extrémiste militant (p. 257) (4) Cultural substitution milometer (p. 13): compteur kilométrique (p. 15) Bovril (p. 41): Viandox (p. 63) (5) Lexical creation conkering (p. 125): jouer à casse-marron (our equivalent) One should point out that morphology can be put to use to provide information on the semiotic value of the referent in the source culture: poisson-frites (being a variation on the steak-frites pattern) suggests that fish and chips is a standard combination, whereas du poisson avec desfrites would not convey this impression (similarly baked beans: haricotstomate vs. haricots à la tomate). (6) Deliberate omission In the following example, it has proved possible to omit the term terraced house, which is notoriously problematic to render, since it was not central to the point being made:

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School was closed this morning because the teachers couldn't manage to get in on time because of the snow. That will teach them to live in old mill houses and windmills out in the country! Miss Elf lives with a West Indian in a terraced house in the town, so she bravely turned out to prepare for the school concert in the afternoon. (p. 157): [...] Mlle Elf, qui vit avec un Caraïbe, habite en ville et a eu le courage de venir pour répéter le spectacle. (p. 242) (7) Compensation We walked to Sainsbury's. (p. 36): On a été faire des courses chez Sainsbury (p. 55) 2 Although Sainsbury is a cultural borrowing, faire des courses corresponds to none of the other procedures mentioned here, so we are not dealing with a simple case of combination. What faire des courses does is to compensate for the unavailability of adequate shared cultural information by providing a clue to the target reader. Compensation is probably the best concept to account for the way in which certain cultural faux amis have to be rendered. Thus the term Europe, in British English, does not usually correspond to l'Europe but to le reste de l'Europe, since, in most cases, it tends to exclude the British Isles. In a similar vein, the French will use the word anglais loosely with the meaning of British, and sometimes the English can be guilty of the same sort of improper use with the term English, which may call for a rectification when translating. For a discussion of a possible conceptual framework for the notion of compensation, see Harvey (1995). (8) Combination of procedures Alice Bernard from Three-C (p. 157): Alice Bernard de la classe de troisième C (p. 243; literal translation + minimal definition (la classe)) (9) Footnote Blue Peter (p. 158): [translator's note] «Blue Peter» est une émission très scout pour enfants de douze à quatorze ans. (p. 244)3 Interestingly, all individual CR procedures, even combinations, seem to be possible, at least in some form, in the minimum presence text procedure. However, the following types of combinations of cultural borrowing and definition procedures would clearly be ruled out, as they amount to an overt acknowledgement of a target reader's requirements: la gabelle: the gabelle, or salt tax la taille: la taille, which was the old levy raised in feudal times from the civilian population (Newmark, 1988: 92)

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Faced with the problem of translating a CR and having identified the tools available, the translator must assess the parameters involved to formulate a strategy. 2. Parameters Given the existence of two kinds of procedures (text and CR), parameters must be considered at each level. (a) Text parameters Although Newmark (1988) does not talk about text procedures and text parameters as such, some of his strategy statements imply both (see 1988: 47, quoted above). However, the text typology which underlies his strategies is not operational, because it is seriously flawed by discrepancies between the general category definitions and the text genres which they are supposed to contain. Basing his classification on Bühler's functional theory of language as adapted by Jakobson, Newmark opposes three types of texts in terms of their communicative function: the expressive function, the informative function and the vocative function. The 'core of the expressive function' is 'the mind of the speaker, the writer, the originator of the utterance. He uses the utterance to express his feelings irrespective of any response.' (p. 39). This category includes 'serious imaginative literature', i.e. 'lyrical poetry, short stories, novels, plays', 'autobiography, essays, personal correspondence' (id.). Yet, it also includes 'authoritative statements': 'Typical authoritative statements are political speeches, documents, etc., by ministers or party leaders; statutes and legal documents; scientific, philosophical and 'academic' works written by acknowledged authorities' (id.). Clearly, this sub-category is radically different from the others and does not meet the criteria stipulated: party manifestos, statutes and legal documents will normally have unknown authors; authors' feelings cannot be said to be prominent in statutes, legal documents, scientific, philosophical and academic writing, nor will these texts bear the mark of an idiolect, one of the characteristics assigned to the expressive function. (p. 40) The 'core of the informative function of language' is 'external situation, the facts of a topic, reality outside language, including reported ideas or theories.' (p. 40). He adds: 'The format of an informative text is often standard: a textbook, a technical report, an article in a newspaper or a periodical, a scientific paper, a thesis, minutes or agenda of a meeting' (id.). This clearly overlaps with the previous category which contained 'scientific and academic writing'. The first language variety given as typical of this function corresponds exactly to the

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'authoritative statements' mentioned above: 'a formal, non-emotive, technical style for academic papers, characterized in English by passives, present and perfect tenses, literal language, latinised vocabulary, jargon, multi-noun compounds with 'empty' verbs, no metaphors'. (id.) The 'core of the vocative function of language' is 'the readership, the addressee' (p. 41). The term 'vocative' is used 'in the sense of 'calling upon' the readership to act, think or feel, in fact to 'react' in the way intended by the text' (id.). Typical instances are characterized as follows: 'For the purposes of translation, I take notices, instructions, publicity, propaganda, persuasive writing (requests, cases, theses and possibly popular fiction), whose purpose is to sell the book/entertain the reader, as the typical 'vocative' text' (id.). Again, the inconsistencies are obvious: academic writing is once more present in the form of theses, which means that it figures in all three functions; popular fiction and theses do not call upon the reader to act in the same way as notices, instructions, publicity, etc. and the status of the author is quite different. Although Newmark does present these categories with a degree of caution and they are meant to overlap up to a point, the above contradictions are such that the typology cannot be used in its present form as the basis for strategies. Besides, the multifunctionality of most texts is such that, in order to take decisions about text procedures relating to CRs, the translator cannot simply operate at the level of text type (e.g. expressive text) or genre (e.g. short story). 4 All communicative functions must be taken into account. Even if there were proven links between type or genre and strategies, this would not rule out the possibility of the text considered being in some way atypical of its type or genre. In practice, as far as text strategies relevant to CRs are concerned, it looks as though the number of parameters can be reduced to four and one can operate without having to draw up a text or genre typology. (1) Purpose of the text What is the purpose of the text in terms of specific communicative functions? It is essential to establish this, because the answer to the question will clearly have a bearing on all the other parameters. (2) Role of the CRs Are the CRs essential to the communicative functions of the text or are they merely peripheral and incidental? In the case of a literary text, for instance, CRs could, in principle, contribute to many dimensions: characterization, plot, structure, development of themes, imagery, etc. and prove impossible to eliminate in the translation. Thus in the case of The Diary of Adrian Mole, CRs, which are numerous, are central to three major and closely linked aspects of the book: the

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portrayal of society, characterization and the humorous tone of the story. On the other hand, one can see that if CRs played very much a peripheral part and were irrelevant to the main thrust of the work, then cultural transplantation would prove the right option. One could imagine, for instance, a text whose main function was to communicate a particular moral, religious or ideological message to which CRs had nothing to contribute other than incidental local colour; or a culture-neutral scientific article with only the occasional CR used metaphorically, etc. (3) Pragmatic coherence Is it the sort of communication situation in which ample information can freely be added for the benefit of the target reader, or are there obvious constraints imposing the minimum presence option? To come back to our example, there is no question of, say, Adrian Mole, constantly providing encyclopedic information about every single cultural referent, since this would immediately distort its perceived semiotic value in the source culture. So, minimum presence has to be the answer. With a newspaper article whose purpose is to describe the British way of life, for instance, maximum presence would be required. (4) Readership's knowledge of the source culture It is necessary to decide not only on the nature of the pragmatic space available to the translator, but also on the quantity and quality of the information communicated in this space, something which will be conditioned by the target readership's knowledge of the source culture. Newmark's three broad categories mentioned earlier (expert, educated generalist, uninformed) can be used here. Obviously, the less informed the reader, the greater the amount of information required. (b) CR parameters Newmark lists six 'contextual factors' as part of the 'frame of reference': purpose of text; motivation and cultural, technical and linguistic level of readership; importance of referent in SL text; setting; recency of word/referent; future of referent (1988: 103). In spite of the fact that the whole chapter discusses strategies on the basis of referent types (animals, plants, food, etc.) and text types, these concepts are not included. As far as the purpose of the text is concerned, we have seen that Newmark's text typology suffered from a number of inconsistencies and that the purpose of the text is best considered in terms of specific communicative functions rather than text type or genre. In the case of referent type, there seems to be some degree of correlation in some cases (e.g. titles of books or films, will tend to be rendered by the standard target language title, if there is one, unless there is a valid reason not to do so). Nevertheless, an absence of correlation is not uncommon for a particular type of

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referent. So, although the following are all examples of food, they are rendered by different procedures: haggis (p. 112): haggis (cultural borrowing + footnote; p. 172) Ry-king (p. 37): biscuits (definition with generic term; p. 156) Horlicks (p. 35): Ovomaltine (cultural substitution; p. 53) As we shall see when we come to CR procedures, there are good reasons to be cautious about the existence of simple correlations between referent type and procedure. As far as the 'future of the referent' is concerned, it seems difficult to conceive how such an unknown and unpredictable quantity can possibly be taken into account. As for the notion of 'setting', which refers to the context of publication (periodical, newspaper, textbook, etc.; p. 15), it is linked to the concept of 'recognised translation' ('Setting (does recognised translation exist?)'; p. 103), nevertheless the reason for this link is not made explicit. The recency of the word/referent represents only one aspect of an important factor which is the semiotic value of the referent in the source and target cultures. This factor, together with a number of other important dimensions, does not figure in Newmark's summary. The list below is based partly on Newmark's, partly on Ivir's article (1987) and partly on our own observations. (1) Purpose of text As previously with text parameters, the general purpose of the text as reflected in its various communicative functions is a key parameter which will condition to various degrees a number of other parameters. (2) Selected text procedure As we have seen, the choice of text procedure (cultural transplantation or one of the two exoticism options) is crucial, since it will have an impact on all the CRs. (3) CR role In a sense, as Ivir (1987) rightly points out, the first decision to take is whether the CR should be translated or not. This must be decided in terms of 'focus of communication' (p. 46). When the CR is at the centre of the focus, then it must be translated, when it is peripheral, then the translator is faced with the dilemma of translating it at the risk of giving it 'undue communicative weight' (id.), or omitting it, which will lead to a loss. The latter is the solution which was adopted in the example quoted above for terraced house. In addition to focus, the role of the CR can, of course, include other dimensions which must be seen in the light of the communicative functions of the context and the text as a whole. For instance, Woolworth's is translated as Woolworth but also as Prisunic, because in the following context it is meant to connotate cheap-

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ness, and this function is felt to override the need for cultural coherence and consistency: Fetched the dog from grandma's, she has given it a shampoo and set. It smells like the perfume counter in Woolworth's. (p. 35) Je suis allé chercher le chien chez grand-mère, elle lui a fait un shampooing mise en plis. II sent comme le comptoir des parfums du Prisunic. (p. 52) (4) Cultural transparency This can be envisaged in terms of how transparent the CR is in the first place in view of the distance between the source and target culture; e.g. a reference to a Mars bar is transparent, because the referent exists in the target culture, but playing conkers is not, because the game is culture- specific. It can also be seen in terms of the degree of transparency which can be or is achieved by the translator. Compare Which? (p. 116) translated as Que choisir? (p. 179), where transparency is achieved, with Bert gave me a stick of broken Skegness rock (p. 27) rendered as Bert m'a offert un bout de rocher de Skegness (p. 39), which constitutes a mistranslation and does nothing to convey what the term rock refers to. (5) Readership As we have seen the readership's knowledge of the source culture can be characterized in relation to Newmark's three categories (expert, educated generalist, uninformed). There are also other dimensions such as cultural and aesthetic canons, ideological climate, attitudes towards foreign cultures in general and the source culture in particular (which will have an impact on tolerance towards loan words), etc. (6) Contextual information This factor, which is omitted by Newmark, often plays a crucial role, since the cultural information available in the context can be of great help to the translator, as shown by the following example, which provides enough information to deduct that the Morning Star must be a communist paper: Bert Baxter gave me ten pence and asked me to get him the Morning Star from the newsagent's. So he's a communist as well as everything else. (p. 24) (7) Referent type As pointed out earlier, it looks as though referent type can play a role in some cases. So, titles of books in The Diary of Adrian Mole, for instance, are usually rendered by the standard recognised French title.

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(8) CR Form The formal transparency of the CR can help: the AA: Automobile Association /Alcoholics Anonymous (p. 116): I'A.A.: Association automobile / Alcooliques anonymes. (pp. 179-80) Similarly, a more descriptive form like airing cupboard should prove easier to render than a CR like conkers. (9) CR Frequency Frequency can work both ways: it can help by providing additional information in different contexts for the same CR, or prove a constraint by making certain stylistically inelegant solutions, which would have been acceptable with a single occurrence, impossible when repeated. (10) Pragmatic coherence The following illustrates a violation of the minimum presence principle: The AA man (p. 116): le type de I'A.A. (Association automobile) (p. 179). The additional information between brackets changes the semiotic value of the referent in the source culture by implying that the A.A. is sufficiently obscure as a referent to warrant an explanation on the part of Adrian Mole, when in fact no such information was necessary as witnessed by its absence in the source text. (11) Cultural coherence Cultural coherence should be considered first in terms of homogeneity of the culture(s) portrayed. For instance, unless there are valid reasons to do so (see Mounin 1963: 57, quoted above), the source and target cultures should not be mixed in the target text or one should not mix the source culture with another foreign one, as in the following example, which erroneously introduces an American element (cents) in a British context: Bert Baxter gave me ten pence and asked me to get him the Morning Starfrom the newsagent's. (p. 24): Bert Baxter m'a donné dix cents [...] (p. 34). In addition, the resulting picture of the source culture must be internally consistent. Thus the way in which the term bac is systematically used as an equivalent for O-levels, with bac technique for CSE's (see, for instance, p. 98/p. 150), results in a rather confused picture of the British educational system and of what Adrian Mole is actually doing at his age. (12) Semiotic value of referent (source and target culture) The semiotic value of the referent in both the source and the target culture must be taken into account, since the same referent may exist in both cultures but with a different semiotic value (e.g. camembert, Valentine's Day, playing darts, etc.).

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(13) Situational coherence The translator must ensure that the translation of the CR does not make the situation described incoherent, as in the following, which suggests that Adrian Mole is saving to buy property: My mother puts my pocket money straight into my building society account (p. 34): Ma mère verse directement mon argent de poche sur mon compte épargne logement. (p. 51) (14) Source language / target language The relationship between the source and target languages can be an important dimension, particularly in the case of French and English in view of the large number of anglicisms in French. (15) Stylistic Equivalence A number of aspects need to be borne in mind such as the difference in the ease of processing of the target text compared to the source text. Presupposed shared information, which is comparatively 'lighter', will usually have to be made explicit, thus making the text longer and 'heavier' (see Hickey et al. 1993). (16) Elegance Everything else being equal, some solutions are clearly preferable to others. So, for instance, conkering (p. 125) would be better rendered by jouer à casse-marron than by faire une partie de conker accompanied by a footnote ('Jeu pratiqué en automne par les écoliers anglais et qui consiste à écraser les marrons d'lnde de son adversaire.', p. 193). Having examined both procedures and parameters, we are now in a position to consider strategies. 3. Strategies Strategies, which must not be confused with procedures (the latter being merely the tools at the disposal of the translators), must, in principle, be reducible to statements specifying the conditions under which a particular procedure (tool) is to be used. Strategies will in effect link together CRs, parameters and procedures. Two distinctions must be made here: the first one between text strategies and CR strategies; the second between individual ad hoc strategies, whose validity cannot be safely extended beyond a specific CR in a given context, and general strategies, i.e. rules determining the conditions under which particular procedures can normally be expected to constitute the appropriate tools. Naturally, translation studies as a discipline is primarily interested in reusable solutions rather than ad hoc ones.

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(a) Text strategies As far as texts are concerned, it looks as though the whole decision process to select an appropriate procedure can be reduced to a maximum of three decisions based on four parameters: the purpose of the text (communicative functions), the role of the CRs, the pragmatic coherence and the readership's knowledge of the source culture, in that order. Once the general purpose of the text has been established, the first choice (cultural transplantation or exoticism) will be made on the basis of the role of the CRs, with cultural transplantation corresponding to a peripheral role and exoticism to a central one. In cases when cultural transplantation is picked instead of exoticism, since neither the pragmatic coherence (degree of presence of the translator) nor the readership's knowledge of the source culture are relevant, the decision process stops there. If exoticism is necessary, then the parameter of pragmatic coherence must be considered to determine the space available to the translator (minimum or maximum presence). If minimum presence is forced upon the translator, then logically the readership's knowledge of the source culture should become irrelevant, since in essence, this option is characterized by the paradox of attempting to treat the target reader like a source reader, who, by nature, can only be deemed to have expert knowledge of his/her own culture. Besides, the scope available is so narrow that it is difficult to see how it could allow for any significant differentiation in terms of the quantity and quality of cultural information provided. If maximum presence is possible, then the last parameter needs to come into play, because the three types of readers (expert, educated generalist, uninformed) will have very different requirements which, given the flexibility available, can and must be met. (b) CR strategies Nine procedures, sixteen parameters: the figures speak for themselves. The formulation of CR strategies is bound to be much more complex and any approach, such as Newmark's, which tends to privilege single parameters, like referent type or text type, by claiming or implying a significant degree of correlation raises questions. This said, the absence of blanket decisions or obvious generalisations does not mean in itself that strategies are not possible and the degree of correlation required does not necessarily need to be extremely high. After all, the existence of limited patterns can still be helpful to the translator by enabling him/her to rank options in order of probability.

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Conclusion To sum up our conclusions on the formulation of strategies for the translation of CRs, text and CR levels must be distinguished more clearly. Contrary to what tends to be suggested, there are not two but three fundamental text procedures: cultural transplantation; exoticism with minimum or maximum presence of the translator. It seems possible to formulate text strategies in terms of the purpose of the text, the role of the CRs, pragmatic coherence and the target readership's knowledge of the source culture, with a maximum of three decisions to take. The fact that it does not seem desirable to resort to a text typology in this instance does not preclude the need for text typologies in respect of other dimensions. Typologies of CR procedures must be kept simple to retain their operational usefulness. The sheer number of CR procedures and parameters clearly reduces the probability of any one parameter (e.g. referent type, text type) playing a key role in determining CR strategies; formulations based on combinations of parameters are more likely to be the norm. On the other hand, correlations do not have to be absolutely systematic to be of value to the translator. Knowing that in, say, 40% of instances taken from a substantial corpus, procedure X tends to be used, when a particular set of conditions is met, will represent a useful piece of information, if it orientates the translator towards one of the most frequent solutions to a problem. Further investigation is required to provide significant quantitative evidence on the role of the various parameters in determining the selection of procedures. The space corresponding to pragmatic redundancy can, in some cases, offer vital room for manoeuvre to enlighten the target reader while remaining within the limits imposed by pragmatic coherence requirements. Translators would certainly stand to gain from the exploration of this aspect by pragmaticians. Finally, a set of criteria to assess the translation of CRs can be drawn from our analysis, since some of the parameters outlined constitute requirements to satisfy, namely cultural transparency, cultural coherence, pragmatic coherence, stylistic equivalence, situational coherence. To these one should of course add the functional equivalence of the CR, which is based on its role (i.e. does the translated CR fulfil the same functions as the source one?) and includes, if applicable, literary functions such as, for instance, contributions in terms of characterization, imagery or structure. Notes 1 The term transference refers to cultural borrowing, i.e. the use of a loan word. We have corrected the spelling of Edimbourg which is mistakenly spelled Edimbourgh in the original text. 2 The fact that they went on foot should in fact have been made clear in the translation, because it was significant in the context (the car had broken down).

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3 In fact, the audience tends to be younger than suggested by the translator. 4 For a discussion of some of the issues involved here, see Hatim and Mason (1990). References Brown, I. (ed) (1958) A Book of England. London: Collins. Hatim, B. and Mason, I. (1990) Discourse and the Translator. London/New York: Longman. Harvey, K. (1995) A descriptive framework for compensation. The Translator 1, 1, 65-86. Hervey, S., Higgins I. (1992) Thinking Translation. A Course in Translation Method: French-English. London/NewYork: Routledge. Hickey, L., Lorès, R., G6mez, H.L., de Carrasco, A.G. (1993) A pragmastylistic aspect of literary translation. Babel 39, 2, 77-88. Ivir, V. (1987), Procedures and strategies for the translation of culture. In G. Toury (ed.) Translation across Cultures (pp. 35-46). New Dehli: Bahri Publications Ltd. Mounin, G. (1963) La notion de qualité en matière de traduction littéraire. In E. Cary et R.W. Jumpelt (eds) La qualité en matière de traduction. Actes du Ille congrès de la FIT (1959) (pp. 50-57). Oxford: Pergamon Press. Newmark, P. (1988) A Textbook of Translation. London: Prentice Hall. Townsend, S. (1982) The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾London: Methuen. Traduction française de B. Gartenberg (1984) Journal secret d'Adrien, 13 ans ¾ Paris: Hachette/Stock, le Livre de Poche Jeunesse.

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Translation as Cross-cultural Communication Christina Schaffner Introduction Throughout the centuries translations have contributed to the exchange of information within and across cultural boundaries. But what is translation? What happens when a text gets translated? What is the genuine object of translation theory? At first, it has to be stressed that there is no single and coherent translation theory, but rather a great variety of approaches to translation and translating. One reason for this variety is the fact that the processes of translation are fairly complex and can be viewed from so many different perspectives, from the textual perspective, the functional, the cultural, the semiotic perspective, etc., with these perspectives preferably to be regarded as complementary and supplementary. (see also Nida 1991: 21) Two statements are representative of such different perspectives. In a paper in 1991 Komissarov says that 'language, or rather difference in languages, is the raison d'être of translation. We translate from one language into another to make interlingual communication possible.' (Komissarov, 1991: 33). In contrast, Santoyo (1988: 101) says: 'the reader is the ultimate raison d'être of any act of translation. Translations are always madefor somebody ...'. When we see translation as cross-cultural communication we first of all see translations as enabling a widening of the audience of a particular text across language boundaries. Texts are normally produced for addressees in one particular culture, and they have normally fulfilled their original function in the source culture (the primary communicative situation). When they are (to be) translated, there is a need to get to know what the text is about, and this need may be related to the addressees in the target community or to the text producers in the source community. Various factors are relevant for the actual process of translation, for the 'source-text-induced target-text-production' (Neubert 1985: 18), these factors being, above all, (i) the purpose, or the Skopos (Reiss/Vermeer 1991), of the target text, (ii) the addressees of the text both in the source and in the target communities with their knowledge and their expectations, (iii) the text itself which fulfils a specific function both in the source and the target culture and whichas a token

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of a specific text typeconforms to a particular textual make-up, and (iv) the situational parameters of source text and target text production and reception. I do not want to go into detail here as far as discussions among translation scholars are concerned regarding the notions of equivalence and/or adequacy (cf. Neubert, 1985; Snell-Hornby, 1988). No solution to these problems is attempted here; rather, the paper will concentrate instead on the role of culture and cultural knowledge in the process of translation. Komissarov asks: 'Given the importance of the linguistic and cultural factors in translation, what are the relationships between them? Can a translation be made either on a linguistic basis or on a cultural one, or are they so interdependent that the one implies the other?' (1991: 34) He answers this question in the following way: 'The translator renders into another language what the words in the original message mean in their culture. The cultural specifics influence the way the language units are used and understood. Culture finds its expression in the language and through the language. A linguistic theory of translation must incorporate the cultural aspects as well. Translation from language to language is ipso facto translation from culture to culture.' (Komissarov, 1991: 43) Translation can be looked upon as a testing ground for the functioning of communication, for the conveyance of messages and ideas across frontiers. Messages have to be conveyed in an optimal way into another speech community, ideas have to stand the test of translation. For translations in the political, social, and cultural domains in particular, it is necessary for the translator to have a good understanding of the politics, history, and culture of other nations and people. Komissarov's point that translation from language to language is ipso facto translation from culture to culture raises the question: What is a culture? What is culturally relative or culture-specific when it comes, for example, to reflecting on actual political processes going on in Europe? Culture can be seen as 'the whole of norms and conventions governing social behaviour and its results' (Vermeer 1992: 38). Communication, too, can be seen as behaviour that is governed by norms and conventions, and in addition, communication is culture-specific. This culture specificity is reflected in texts and, thus, becomes relevant for translation. These points will be discussed with reference to two German texts and their English translations and one English text and its German (and French) translation.

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Discussion of Translation Problems On the basis of an evaluative comparison of the source texts and their translations, I have tried to reconstruct and explain the translator's strategies. My approach is product-oriented, that is, I have looked at actual translations to see whether they make cross-cultural communication possible or not. The sample texts are related to the political changes in Eastern Europe, and particularly in Germany, in 1989/1990. The texts analysed (see Appendix) are taken from two speeches and one political essay. One text is a speech by Christa Wolf, a prominent East German writer, given at a mass demonstration for freedom of speech in East Berlin on 4 November 1989, in which Wolf argued for a democratic change in East Germany (see Schäffner, 1992). The next text is the published version of a speech that was delivered by the well-known German writer Günter Grass to the parliamentary representatives of the Green Party and the Bündnis 90 alliance on the eve of German unification (2 October, 1990). This was a highly significant occasion, and Grass's intention was to express the warning that current policies, both at home and abroad, may results in Germans once again being feared and mistrusted in Europe. These two source texts were addressed to hearers or readers in the source language community, i.e. Germany, the addressees of the target language text are predominantly readers in Great Britain. As a reason for publishing a translation of text (2) it is said in the Guardian Weekly: Günter Grass, the German novelist, has long been one of Europe's most controversial men of letters. He has also often acted as the conscience of his nation, forcing Germany to re-examine its past. For Grass, the two Germanies' rush to unification is not a time for jubilation. Here he explains why. Germany, Britain, and Europe as a whole cannot afford to ignore his impassioned argument.(11 November 1990: 22-23) The third text is Timothy Garton Ash's personal account of the political events in Czechoslovakia in November 1989, i.e. of the activities of the Czech Civic Forum, the political opposition led by Vaclav Havel, who met in the rooms of the Prague theatre 'The Magic Lantern' (this is the motif behind the title). There is one difference as to the content and the purpose of the three texts: Wolf and Grass address Germans on German questions, primarily with the aim of making their addressees think seriously about what is happening. Garton Ash, on the other hand, informs American readers on what is going on in Czechoslovakia. In the case of the Wolf and Grass texts we can therefore assume a fair amount of common knowledge among the addressees, whereas Garton Ash has to provide his addressees with some background knowledge about Czechoslovakia.

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Translation as interlingual and intercultural communication involves members of two different cultures, whose background knowledge concerning the topic in question may be either common or different. A different level of background knowledge is often required when the text to be translated deals with facts of social life. Thus, in addition to overcoming the linguistic barrier the translator has to surmount the cultural barrier as well. Because of their timing, purpose and content, all three sample texts are to a high degree culture-bound and require a good deal of background knowledge for a coherent interpretation. One phenomenon often discussed in culture-bound texts concerns the so-called realia. They refer to a wide range of cultural patterns of the society in question, including aspects of its economic, political and legal life. It is mostly a word or a phrase which calls for the activation of (cultural-specific) background knowledge needed for a coherent text interpretation. The way textually explicit references to fairly topical events, institutions, or people appear in the original text, is evidence of the mutual knowledge of the text producer and the original addressees. It is generally recognised that if the target text addressees lack relevant background knowledge, because of cultural differences, it should be supplied or compensated for by the translator. Example (1) is an illustration for this translation strategy: (1) Und heute habe ich auf einem Transparent eine schier unglaubliche Losung gesehen: 'Keine Privilegien mehr für uns Berliner'. (Wolf) And today I saw an absolutely unbelievable slogan on a banner: 'No more privileges for us Berliners.' (Berlin is better supplied than other towns in the GDR.) The addition provides the explanation for 'unbelievable slogan'. Another possibility for providing background information about the source culture that the addressees in the target cultures are deemed not to have is to include footnotes, as is illustrated in example (2) (in all examples, the words and/or phrases to be commented on are highlighted by using italics): (2) Someone made a collage of the two editions, xeroxed it, and stuck it up on shop windows next to the photographs of Thomas Garrigue Masaryk,... (text 3, sentence 86) Ballads are sung, including President Masaryk's favorite song; ... (sentence 361) ... neben Fotografien von Tomás Garrigue Masaryk, ... (87) Balladen werden gesungen, auch 'Masaryks Lieblingslied'. (374)

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... à côté des photos de Thomas Garrigue Masaryk (1) (74) (1) Philosophe, premier president de la République de Tchécoslovaquie (1919-1936). On chante des ballades, y compris la chanson favorite du président Masaryk; ... (361) The French translator has used a footnote to explain who Masaryk was when he is mentioned for the first time in the text. With this additional information, no misinterpretation of sentence 361 will occur, even if we do not know which particular song was sung. The German text allows at least theoretically for the interpretation that 'Masaryks Lieblingslied' is the title of a song. But translators are not always successful in ensuring cross-cultural communication. What will the effects on the target language readers be when the message they get from a translation is not the same as the one intended by the original author and conveyed to the readers of the source text? The sample texts, and particularly text (2), include a number of translation errors (see Schäffner 1993), which were caused, I would argue, by the translator's lack of specific background knowledge, particularly knowledge of German culture and the political situation in Eastern Europe at the time of text production. Only a few of these mistakes are discussed here, which, however, will allow for some generalisation. (3) Die Zone, SBZ, der andere Teil Deutschlands, der Unrechtsstaat in Gänsefii chen, nicht anerkannt, dann anerkannt, die Deutsche Demokratische Republik, ab morgen Ex-DDR, ... (text 2, sentence 1) The German Democratic Republic, The Zone, the Soviet Occupation Zone, the other part of Germany, the 'Unjust State', unrecognised, then recognised, now the ex-GDR, ... and later in the same text: (4) Die Bewohner der SBZ, des Staates in Gänsefü chen, blieben 'die armen Brüder und Schwestern', an die man sich, anla lich Weihestunden, zu erinnern bemühte. (sentence 64) The inhabitants of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, of 'the State', remained the poor cousins one strove to recall at times set aside for remembrance. In example (3), the order in which the names appear reflects the historical changes in West Germany's naming practices towards East Germany. The phrase in Gänsefüßchen (in inverted commas) refers to the practice of some mass media which consistently put the abbreviation DDR in inverted commas, thus demon-

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strating that they did not accept the official state name. Unrechtsstaat (unjust state) is not another name for the country East Germany, as Zone and SBZ areit reflects a characterization, an evaluation of it by West Germany. The textual information in Gänsefüßchen qualifies neither Unrechtsstaat nor Staat; it is a signal to the reader to undertake some reasoning for a coherent intepretation. The English text, however, invites the assumption that the inverted commas here have the function of dissociating oneself of this evaluation. It is widely agreed that text comprehension is based on an interaction of linguistic knowledge and world knowledge, both being culturally determined. But what exactly is linguistic knowledge, what is world (or encyclopedic) knowledge? How can these two notions be differentiated from each other? And can such a separation really be useful to explain the notion of equivalence? The interpretation of Unrechtsstaat in Gänsefüßchen as the abbreviation DDR written in inverted commas is textually signalled (by the sequential arrangement of the names and by the very wording), and is thus explicit information and part of the text meaning. (5) Im westlichen Deutschland wurde der Ruf nach Einheit, wenn nicht vom Volk, dann von dessen Politikern eilfertig aufgenommen.... Als der Weisheit letzter Schlu wurde eine Bahnhofsdurchsage wiedergekäut: 'Der Zug ist abgefahren!' Und jemand, der sonst Probleme auszusitzen pflegt, glaubte, den Mantel der Geschichte rauschen zu hören, sprang auf und griff zu. (text 2) In West Germany the call for unity was eagerly taken up, if not by the people, at any rate by their politicians.... Wisdom's last message came in the form of a repeated station announcement: 'The train has departed!' And people otherwise used to riding out problems thought they heard the swish of history's cloak, so they jumped up and grabbed at it. In this example we have an allusion to Chancellor Kohl who is said to have a habit of not reacting immediately to problems but waiting instead until they have either been solved by themselves or have disappeared. In the case of German unification, however, he quickly took the initiative for fear of coming too late (miss the train), and be unable to influence the way unification was effected. In the translation, however, we have a generalisation. So the question is: is the referent Chancellor Kohl part of the textual meaning? The ultimate goal of understanding is the establishment of a situation model in long-term memory. 'Understanding is a complex integrated process of strategic selection, retrieval and application of various information sources in the construction of textual representations' (van Dijk, 1988: 148). The indefinite pronoun

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jemand (somebody) is a signal which calls for cognitive reasoning and inferencing. Missing information has to be searched for, and if it is not found in the text itself recourse to stored knowledge is necessary. This means that knowledge is at least partly organized in pre-packaged forms, so-called frames or scripts (van Dijk, 1988:102). The reader would then come up with a proposition which is something like The 'somebody' refers to Chancellor Kohl because the knowledge that he sometimes hesitates to take decisions is part of a Kohl-frame. Propositions that are implied or presupposed and which are not directly or fully formulated in the text are called implicit information of the text. But they are part of the mental representation of the text, of the text world, and thus of the text meaning. References to people require knowledge of who they are and what their function is in the respective culture. In sample text (2) I have come across some more references to people who the translator probably did not know or allusions to people that he or she did not grasp. (6) Doch jetzt kommen härtere Tage; Glocken läuten sie ein. Erfa t sind alle Daten undfortan leicht zugänglich dem gesamtdeutschen Mi brauch. Den Rest besorgt das Beamtenrecht: aus dem Diestel von heute spricht schon der Diestel von morgen. (text 2) But now tougher times are coming; they are arriving to the sound of pealing bells. All the dates are fixed and from now on the way ahead to the abuse of all Germany lies open. Administrative law will look after the rest: tomorrow is already speaking to today. In example (6) Grass refers to the data (information) in the files discovered in the headquarters of the East German Party and the Secret Service (the Stasi) which after unification had become accessible, and which in fact allowed the now all-German authorities both to use and abuse these data. The target text has a reference to chronological dimensions of the unification process, and it is not clear who abuses whom or what. Diestel was the last interior minister of the GDR, and in this position he was in charge of the collection and storing of the Stasi files, and their preparation for responsible and reliable utilization. Grass refers to him as an example of changes in politicians' attitutes that take place once their political role changes, i.e. Diestel beginning to think of his new political career in the united Germany. The misinterpretation of Daten as chronological dates might be explained by the textual arrangement of this information. The preceding sentence refers to unification day, October 3rd. And there is also an inner-textual reference here, since dates and bells have already been mentioned in sentences 5-6: '... die Einheit ohne Einigkeit, der ein Datum gesetzt ist. Zum 2. Oktober wurde Glockengeläut

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angesagt ...'), and this might have confused the translator. The German word Daten is polysemous (it may mean both 'dates' and 'data'). The translator chose the wrong meaning and tried to establish coherence by referring to the information contained in the preceding sentence. Once the wrong meaning was chosen, the textual interpretation was also impaired, and this is reflected in the translation. In example (7), Kohl and Genscher were mixed up. (7) Als sich vor einigen Monaten die Au enminister der Sowjetunion und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in der einst polnischen, seit 1939 wei russischen Stadt Brest trafen, war das ein Treffen neben vielen. Dieser Ort kummerte die Welt wenig. Nur die Polen reagierten verschreckt, weil Schewardnadse und Genscher taktlos genug waren, einander dort zu begegnen, wo im Herbst 1939 die Wehrmacht und die Rote Armee ihre Waffenbrüderschaft gefeiert und ihre Siegesparade abgehalten hatten. Eine Schande, zumal nicht, wie gewohnt, der Kanzler Kohl Polen gegenüber den Riipel herauskehrte, sondern ein Politiker Riicksichtslosigkeit bewies, der allgemein als schlau, vorsichtig, ja, behutsam gilt. (text 2) When some months ago the Foreign Ministers of the Soviet Union and of West Germany met in the formerly Polish but, since 1945, Byelorussian city of Brest, that was one of many meetings. The world was not greatly concerned about the location. Only the Poles reacted with fear, because Shevardnadze and Genscher were tactless enough to meet in the place where, in the autumn of 1939, the Wehrmacht and the Red Army had celebrated their comradeship in arms and had held their victory parade. It is particularly shameful that Chancellor Kohl did not, as he usually does, play the lout towards the Poles, but instead demonstrated the thoughtlessness of a politician who is generally reckoned to be shrewd, cautious, indeed wary. It is not Kohl who is generally reckoned to be a cautious politician but Genscher. Kohl is known for his often rude words and behaviour in relation to Poland. Grass finds fault with Genscher who, although usually a cautious politician, demonstrated thoughtlessness towards Polish sentiment in one particular instance. We see here that the translator lacked background knowledge of the source language culture in a particular respect, namely current policies. This led to a miscomprehension of the source text and subsequently to a mistranslation. The target text readers get different, sometimes even wrong, information, and this is an instance of the latter. When we think of the reasonthe Guardian Weekly gave

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for publishing this text, we would have to ask for the effect this information might have on the readers. In the German text, the propositions in the last sentence of example (7) are connected by a semantic relation of opposition (nicht Kohl, sondern ein Politiker der not Kohl, but a politician whosee Mann and Thompson, 1986), and this coheres with the previous information, exemplified particularly clearly by the semantic relation between taktlos and Riicksichtslosigkeit (tactless and thoughtlessness). These two words are textually synonymous, which implies that they denote an identical referent. Therefore we have co-reference between Genscher and ein Politiker. And this information is textually available, it is explicit. That is to say, my understanding of text meaning includes both propositions and the semantic relations between them, including the implicit propositions which have to be inferred in order to establish coherence. Research into text processing confirms this assumption. Van Dijk and Kintsch (1983) argue that readers start from a text basis which is a list of propositions. These propositions are checked step by step for coherence, and in a processing cycle a chunk of propositions (a macroproposition) is stored in working memory. If coherence cannot be established, knowledge stored in long-term memory (in frames, scripts, schemata) is called upon and integrated into the textually presented information. The explicitly formulated text basis is completed in this way. The more explicit text basis which has come about in this process represents (in an idealized way) the full meaning of a given text. Meaning, thus, is an inherent part of knowledge. What makes this model useful for research into text comprehension and also for translation studies is that text meaning is not explained simply in terms of inherent characteristic features of the text but in terms of an interaction between the text and the reader. The following two extracts are further examples of the consequences of lack of background knowledge on the part of the translator concerning the political functioning in communist systems. (8) Unglaubliche Wandlungen, das Staatsvolk der DDR geht auf die Stra e, um sich als Volk zu erkennen. (text 1) Incredible changes. The GDR's head of state goes on the the streets in order to recognise himself as one of the people. Christa Wolf uses Staatsvolk (state-owned people) to contrast it to the word Volk (people), which had been used in the slogan 'Wir sind das Volk' (We are the people) with which the GDR-citizens had shown that they are not subject to the

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wishes of the ruling communist party but that they themselves want to decide on what their lives should look like. With the people becoming the head of state in the target text, however, the whole idea is distorted, and the reader might also see the head of state in a rather positive light. In example (9) Garton Ash reports about changes in statements the Civic Forum made about a proposed general strike. (9) Day Nine (Saturday, November 25). Two Forum statements. One issued after the plenum last night at 11:30 PM ... describes the general strike as a 'symbolic referendum' on the 'leading role'. A second, issued at 4:30 AM, expresses dismay at some of the people elected to the new politburo (formally: Presidium) and Central Committee secretariat. The general strike is here described as 'an informal, nationwide referendum on whether or not they should go on humiliating us, and whether this country should continue to be ruined by the leaders of one political party, permanently abrogating to itself the leading role.' (text 3) (a) ' ... ob das Land weiterhin von den Führern einer politischen Partei ruiniert werden darf, die permanent selbst auf die Ablösung ihres Führungsanspruchs hinarbeitet.' (translation in Lettre Internationale) (b) ... die permanent selbst ihren Fiihrungsanspruch ad absurdurn führen'. (translation in the book) The German text in the (a) informs the readers that the Communist Party itself was orienting its work towards abolishing its leading role. This information, however, is totally contradictory to the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, namely that the Communist Party has a leading role to play in society and that it will strengthen this leading role in order to improve the life for everybody in a socialist country. Checking various dictionaries for the meaning of abrogate was not very helpful, since it was explained as abolish, do away with, put an end to. This dictionary meaning is indeed in contrast to the facts referred to in the message. The information centers around the 'leading role' of the Communist Party (which had been mentioned before in the textso there is internal coherence). The propositions of the last sentence, specifying the aim of the general strike, refer to negative effects due to the policy of the leading Communist Party. This is reflected in the lexical items (humiliating, ruined). So the last proposition should also reflect a negative fact, namely that the Communist Party assumed a power to which it had not been entitled by free elections. In the book the translator had obviously noticed her mistake. The translation problem here actually lies in the source text, in Garton Ash's (mis)use of the word abrogate which is often mixed up with arrogate:

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arrogate and abrogate. To abrogate a law is to repeal it; ... To arrogate to oneself (...) is to claim or assume that to which one is not entitled, or to claim or assume unreasonably or arrogantly, ... (Partridge 1980) Example (9) shows that the German translator's main strategy of staying as close as possible to the source text came into conflict with her insufficient background knowledgea conflict she was unable to solve in her initial translation. She only thought in terms of lexical units and their potential equivalent counterparts, but she did not sufficiently consult her factual and conceptual knowledge, i.e. did not realise that the text originator had confused the two lexical items. Conclusion A translator has to deal with text meaning in a wider sense, that is, a text meaning that is procedurally and dynamically negotiated in a specific sociocultural context of use, brought about by an interaction of textually presented knowledge and activated and integrated stored knowledge of the world. This has as a consequence that we cannot assume a clear dividing line between text meaning and extratextual meaning as a criterion for differentiating between equivalence and heterovalence (Jäger 1986), or between true translation and types of pragmatic adaptation. The notion 'communicative equivalence', denoting a relation between a source text and a target text whose production was induced by the source language text, goes beyond text meaning (in a wide sense) and includes functional aspects and text-typological conventions (see also Snell-Hornby, 1988). The question whether linguistic knowledge and world knowledge constitute separate modules in the human mind, however, cannot be answered yet. Cognitive linguistics rejects the familiar dichotomies of content and form, semantics and pragmatics, linguistic knowledge and world knowledge, etc.a position that I strongly agree with. How the human mind is structured and how it functions are issues that have not yet been satisfactorily answered. To come back to the question of the raison d'être of translation. We always translate for somebody. As this somebody is a member of a different culture, we also translate from culture to culture. To quote Komissarov again: 'The translator has to do not with the cultural facts per se but with their names and verbal descriptions in the source text. In many instances a cultural problem in translation can be reformulated as a language problem and handled as similar language problems of noncultural origin.' (Komissarov, 1991: 46)

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Komissarov's point is that linguistic and cultural aspects of translation are complementary. But his conclusion that translation theory falls within the scope of linguistics, 'that is to say, macrolinguistics' (Komissarov 1991: 41/42) does not necessarily follow from his argumentation. For Snell-Hornby translation studies is a discipline in its own right, Neubert speaks of a multiperspective interdiscipline. Knowledge is culturally determined, but since the linguistic form, the cognitive representation and embeddedness, as well as the communicative use are closely interrelated, I would agree with Agar (1992: 13) that 'the separation between 'language' and 'culture' makes no sense ... it makes more sense to think of languaculture.' This is the sense in which I understand translation as cross-cultural communication. References Agar, M (in press) 'The Intercultural Frame'', (paper read at the L.A.U.D.-Symposium on 'Intercultural Communication', Duisburg, March 1992) Jäger, G (1986) Die sprachlichen Bedeutungendas zentrale Problem bei der Translation und ihrer wissenschaftlichen Beschreibung.in: GertJager / Albrecht Neubert (eds.): Bedeutung und Translation [= Übersetzungswissenschaftliche Beiträge 9], Leipzig: Verlag Enzyklopädie, pp. 5-66 Komissarov, V.N. (1991): Language and Culture in Translation: Competitors or Collaborators? in: TTR,vol. IV, no. 1/1991 (Languages and Cultures in Translation Theories), pp. 33-47 Mann, William C./Thompson, Sandra A., (1986): 'Relational propositions in discourse', Discourse processes, Vol 9, pp. 57-90 Neubert, Albrecht (1985): Text and Translation, [= Übersetzungswissenschaftliche Beiträge 8], Leipzig: Verlag Enzyklopädie Neubert, Albrecht (1990): Übersetzen als 'Aufhebung' des Ausgangstextes.in: Arntz, Reiner / Thome, Gisela (eds): Übersetzungswissenschaft. Ergebnisse und Perspektiven. Narr: Tübingen, pp.31-39 Nida, Eugene A. (1991): Theories of Translation.in: TTR, vol. IV, no. 1/1991 (Languages and Cultures in Translation Theories), pp. 19-32 Partridge, Eric (1980) Usage and Abusage. Longman: London Rei , Katharina / Vermeer, Hans J. (1991) Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Translationstheorie, 2nd edition, (= Linguistische Arbeiten 147), Tübingen: Niemeyer. Santoyo, Julio-César (1988): Pragmatic Aspects of Translation: Text-Focussed vs. Reader Focussed Equivalence.in: Arntz, Reiner (Hrsg.): Textlinguistik und Fachsprache. Akten des internationalen übersetzungswissenschaftlichen AILA-Symposions, Hildesheim, 13.-16. April 1987, Olms: Hildesheim, pp. 101-112 Schäffner, Christina (1992): Sprache des Umbruchs und ihre Übersetzungin: Burkhardt, A. / Fritzsche, K.P. (eds): Sprache im Umbruch. Politischer Sprachwandel im Zeichen von 'Wende' und 'Vereinigung', Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 135-153 Schäffner, Christina (1993): Meaning and Knowledge in Translation.in: Gambier, Y. / Tommola, J. (eds): Translation and Knowledge. SSOTT IV, Scandinavian Symposium

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on Translation Theory. Turku 4-6 June 1992, University of Turku, Centre for Translation and Interpreting, 1993, pp. 155-166 Schäffner, Christina / Herting, Beate (1994): 'The Revolution of the Magic Lantern': A cross-cultural comparison of translation strategies.in: Snell-Hornby, Mary (ed.): Translation Studies: An Interdiscipline (27-37). John Benjamins: Philadelphia/New York 1994, pp. 27-37 Snell-Hornby, Mary (1988): Translation Studies: An Integrated Approach. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins van Dijk, Teun A. (1988): News as Discourse, Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum van Dijk, Teun A. / Kintsch, Walter (1983): Strategies of Discourse Comrprehension. London: Academic Press Inc. Vermeer, Hans (1992) 'Is translation a linguistic or a cultural process?' in Malcolm Coulthard (ed.) Studies in Translation / Estudos in Traduçåo (= llha do Desterro, no. 28), 37-49. Appendix: Sample Texts Christa Wolf: Rede auf der Demonstration für Pressefreiheit in Berlin am 4. November 1989in: Neue Deutsche Literatur, 3/1990, 173-175. Christa Wolf: Was tun? Germany's greatest living writer celebrates a revolutionary moment of renewal and asks what happens next. In New Statesman & Society, 17-11/1989, p. 11 (translator not named). Günter Grass: Ein Schnäppchen namens DDR. In Günter Grass: Ein Schnäppchen namens DDR. Letzte Reden vorm Glockengeläut, S. 39-60. Sammlung Luchterhand, Frankfurt/Main 1990. Günter Grass: The West German business Blitzkrieg. Guardian Weekly 11-111990, pp. 22-23 (translator not named). Timothy Garton Ash: The Revolution of the Magic Lantern. The New York Review of Books, 18-1-1990, 42-51. (a)Timothy Garton Ash: Prag. Laterna Magica. Aus dem Herzen der Revolution. Lettre Internationale, Frühjahr '90,3443 (translated by Yvonne Badal). (b) Die Revolution der Laterna Magica. In Timothy Garton Ash: Ein Jahrhundert wird abgeählt. Aus den Zentren Mitteleuropas 1980-1990. (Aus dem Englischen von Yvonne Badal), 401-450. Carl Hanser Verlag, München 1990. 401-450. (c) Timothy Garton Ash: La Révolution de la Lanterne Magique. Lettre Internationale, 24/90 (Printemps), 8-17 (translated by Bernard Hoepffner).

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