Language serves those who use it, so who controls the language of an entire country? And how does policy affect its speakers?

Evi Judge
Course: World Language Policies (LING 3545)
Advisor: Professor Raichle Farrelly
LURA 2021

Language is something people use on a day to day basis, and it is incorporated in many different modalities, including but not limited to: oral, signed, written, imagery, and other representations. Humans' desire to communicate is innate, and we find ways to express ourselves at all costs—sometimes failing to see the complexities that underlie language use. Among these complexities, social and cultural influences often steer the pathways for language use in society—often leveraging one at the expense of another. In World Language Policies, students explored these nuances of language policy around the world, and how different communities structure their policies. An interesting case that I chose to study was Switzerland, a uniquely quadrilingual country in Europe.  

Freedom of language use may seem like a given to many, including those living in such a multilingual country as Switzerland. Constitutionally, the country has three official languages: French, German, and Italian, and a fourth national language, Romansh. Despite the multilingual identity of Switzerland, there still remain restrictions in Swiss culture regarding language use and ideologies.

In comparing Switzerland's language policy to the United States', one can draw similarities between the Swiss' treatment of German and French to the US' treatment of English and Spanish. As the Secretary General Philippe Schwab commented, "[One] Italian-speaking member of the Council of States is in the habit of saying that he speaks Italian in Parliament when he is addressing his constituents, French when he wants everyone to listen to him, and German when he wants everyone to understand" (2014). This German language preference is not unlike the preference for English in the United States, despite our country having a large and growing Spanish-speaking population. However, the definition of both countries' language tolerance diverges along this point too: where Switzerland has a de jure language policy, the United States maintains a de facto language policy—that is, the policy is not written into the constitution explicitly. Since Switzerland’s language policy is explicitly written in the constitution, there remains a stronger protection of its languages compared to the U.S.. 

The Romansh language is an interesting element of Switzerland's language policy, as the language was made a national language but still stands as a minority language. Romansh was made a national language, in part, to preserve its status as a language (Swiss Const. art 70). Still, it remains that Romansh is spoken in a remote part of Switzerland, most notably in the Grisons region.   

Despite the challenge of having four national languages, the Swiss are unified by their identity as a multilingual country, which is embedded in their history. As language is often perceived as a commodity—as capital—it is also used as leverage or a distinguishing feature that a country shows at its borders. As language is used to draw these borders, nationalism and nationalistic tendencies form—people become divided by this very real language barrier. For instance, during the two world wars, Switzerland needed something to hold its people together when the country's two largest ethnic groups stared at each other down the barrels of their guns. Both communities aligned themselves with their respective nations and threatened to disrupt Switzerland’s neutrality (Giudici and Grizelj, 2016). The Swiss government and elites saw their country in dire need of paradigm shift and immediately began pushing a new type of nationalism—one not only bound by language, but also a sense of pride in being a multilingual nation. This "multilingual Swissness" is part of what held the country together and kept the country neutral during wartime.

Language policy serves those who enact it and impacts those who use the language, so it's important to be aware of whose beliefs and ideologies are reinforced when decisions about language use are being made. Switzerland, as a case study, presents a unique environment for language policy: four national languages have been set through explicit policy, but the inner workings of the communities speaking these languages have allowed French and German to sit atop a language hierarchy. The government merely recognized the country's strength in being multilingual, and so, they officialized that strength by writing it into the constitution. The important takeaway from Switzerland's multilingualism is that having many languages in a society is not easy, but in working with the speakers of different communities, it is still possible to respect people's expression through language. 

References

Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power. Harvard University Press.
Giudici, A., & Grizelj, S. (2016). National unity in cultural diversity: How national and linguistic identities affected Swiss language curricula (1914–1961). Paedagogica Historica, 53(1-2), 137-154.
Hega, G. M. (2010, July 01). Regional Identity, Language and Education Policy in Switzerland. Retrieved November 01, 2020, from https://www-tandfonline-com.colorado.idm.oclc.org/doi/abs/10.1080/030579...
Schwab, P., (2014). The Swiss Parliament as a plurilingual forum. Inter-Parliamentary Union. https://www.parlament.ch/centers/documents/en/discours-philippe-schwab-a...
Spolsky, B. (2004). Language policy. Cambridge University Press.