William Safran - Language, Ethnic Identity and the State

The interplay between language and ethnicity is often underestimated as a component for political stability. Many scholars consider social class and economic factors to be the primary sources for political cohesion or, alternately, for malcontent with the system. Language, Ethnic Identity and The State redresses this focus and asserts that language can also be of pivotal importance. Leading scholars present five case studies and two general, comparative and theoretical discussions. The five countries, South Africa, Algeria, Canada, Latvia and Senegal are all multilingual nations where language has been a central political issue that has challenged both their unity and stability.

This is a special issue of the journal Nationalism and Ethnic Politics.

William Safran is Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado and Editor-in-chief of the journal Nationalism and Ethnic Politics.

Jean A. Laponce is professor of political science at the University of British Columbia and Director of the Institute of Interethnic Relations in Ottawa.

First published 2005 by Routledge

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2005 William Safran and Jean A. Laponce

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ISBN 0-415-37122-8

WILLIAM SAFRAN

J. A. LAPONCE

HERMANN GILIOMEE

MOHAMED BENRABAH

LINDA CARDINAL

FREDRIKA BJRKLUND

NANCY KWANG JOHNSON

University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado

Language is a marker of ethnic identity; a vehicle for expressing a distinct culture; a source of national cohesion; and an instrument for building political community. Yet the relationship between language and ethnonational identity is a contested matter. There is no question that language is one of the elements defining collective consciousness, the others being religion, history, common descent, and territory. In the 19th century, language was considered the major defining factor of a nation, at least in Europe; and it was almost taken for granted that each linguistic community deserved to have its own state. The German language was a crucial element in politically mobilizing a number of kingdoms, duchies, and city-states in central Europe toward a national state, the fight against Napoleon being the proximate mobilizing event. However, pan-Germanic unitythe unification of Germany and Austriawas blocked by dynastic and religious rivalries, and its achievement under Hitler was short-lived. Language was the most important force for Italian political unity; but the imposition of standard Italian has not prevented the survival of regional idioms, nor has it been sufficient for overcoming the economic, social, and cultural divisions between northern Italy and the Mezzogiorno. Conversely, the collapse of unity in post-Tito Yugoslavia must not be attributed entirely, and perhaps even primarily, to linguistic divisions, for the conflicts among the components of that state also had religious, historical, and other translinguistic causes.

In the opinion of T.R. Gurr, language issues alone are not a common source of deadly rivalries, because language differences, unlike racial and religious ones, are subject to individual and collective compromises. Individuals in heterogeneous societies can and ordinarily do speak several languages, but they cannot be both black and white or both Hindu and Muslim.1

Many political scientists consider language secondary compared to other factors of identitive demarcation and the formation of national consciousness. This is particularly true of constructivists and rational choice instrumentalists, such as Hobsbawm, Gurr, and Brass.2 Most of them stress class and economic determinants; and they tend to have a common theme: the competition for scarce resources. Thus, the competition between majority and minority language groups is essentially a competition for economic power.

David Laitin, a proponent of the rational-choice thesis, minimizes the importance of language, arguing that for reasons of practical adaptation, e.g., getting a job or civic rights, an ethnic group will adopt the language of the majority, even to the point of giving up its language. Often, however, minorities do not give up their linguistic heritage without a fight, even if the payoff is significant. During the Soviet period, only a relatively small number of non- Slavic peoples in the federal republics of the Soviet Union switched to Russian, despite the political advantages of doing so.3 One explanation is the official legitimation of national languages and the institutional support structure (e.g., parallel school systems); but there are two other explanations: the existence of a regional system of patronage, and the association of selected languages with old traditions, including religious ones. Since the Baltic countries regained their independence, many Russians are said to have switched to the local language because of promises of political and economic payoffs,4 as well as restrictive language laws. Yet despite these carrot-and-stick incentives, others have maintained their Russian languageeither as the primary language or the household idiom, whether for cultural reasons or because of nostalgia for the Soviet system.5

There is no doubt that the economic dimensionand that of the related element of social classfigures heavily in the language struggles in most of the countries dealt with in this volume. Economics has played a role in Anglophone dominance in Canada; in the Tamil struggle for ethnolinguistic recognition; in the pressure on the Russian-speaking minority in Latvia to give up Russian in order to obtain privileges of full citizenship; in the threat presented to the middle-class status of speakers of Assamese by the claims of speakers of Bengali in the Indian federal state of Assam; and in the fact that in India, English is increasingly becoming the language of the national as well as regional economic elite. In Norway and Greece, language differences are correlated with regional differences and urban-rural distinctions, but even in those countries, the economic element is undeniable. The Alsatian, Basque, and Breton languages in France and the regional dialects in Germany survived longer in rural areas than in the cities; in India, it is primarily the poor and uneducated who continue to speak regional ethnic languages.

Nevertheless, if economic advantage were decisive, a number of ethnic minoritiesthe speakers of Breton, Basque, Irish Gaelic, Welsh, and Yiddish, for examplewould not be fighting to preserve their language. Some members of ethnic minorities have given up the fight, of course, but others have not, and there is no point in arguing that the latter are less rational. Moreover, official policies aimed at linguistic uniformization may reinforce, or create, cultural resistance and exacerbate interethnic friction. Examples are numerous: they include the policy of the Turkish authorities government of forbidding the use of the Kurdish language (at least until the early 1990s); the Slovak policy forbidding the public use of Hungarian; legislation enacted in Sri Lanka in 1956 to make Sinhalese the only official language, which generated massive demand by Tamils for autonomy; the legislation in the 1960s to make Assamese the official language of the Indian federal state of Assam at the expense of Bengali; and the linguistic Arabization policy of the Algerian government, which has provoked strong opposition by the Berbers, a minority ethnic group in Kabylia; the language policies of post-Soviet Ukraine, under which the use of Russian in instruction has been discouraged and underfunded; the policies of Latvia, which have made citizenshipand privileges connected with itdependent on proficiency in Latvian and made life difficult for Russian speakers, a situation described in the analysis of Fredrika Bjrklund.6 In 1982, a television channel using the Welsh language was introduced after a strike by the leader of the Welsh Nationalist Party (Plaid Cymru). The language law in Moldavia in 1989, which made Romanian the only official language and required officials serving in Gagauz and Russian-speaking (Transdniester) areas to be proficient in Romaniana policy originally intended to facilitate future unification with Romanialed to the creation of a Gagauz Khalk Movement and the declaration of an independent Gagauz Republic. This was declared illegal; but negotiations for some form of autonomy are still going on. The language issue in Afghanistanthe quest for equal status of Uzbek with Pashto and Darimight well be a stumbling block in the efforts at creating a democratic constitution for a unified state.