Nic Craith, Mairead. (2006). Europe and the politics of language: Citizens, migrants, and outsiders. Reviewed by Joseph Axel, Arizona State University

Nic Craith, Mairead. (2006). Europe and the politics of language: Citizens, migrants, and outsiders. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan. Pp. v + 217 $80     ISBN 1-4039-1833-3 Reviewed by Joseph Axel Arizona State University October 26, 2006 Mairead Nic Craith takes readers on a vicarious European tour, one which includes an array of cultures and a cacophony of languages, and is illuminating to the sociolinguistic issues that are found within the European Union. In Europe and the politics of language: Citizens, migrants, and outsiders, the author examines the intersection of language and policy. She conceives the post-colonial EU to be a centralized federal policy-maker that simultaneously promotes, while fails to endorse certain European languages. The EU grants official and working status to member states’ languages, which she claims, creates social and economic disparities for unofficial minority languages. She looks critically at this hierarchical stratification while examining the de-territorialization of nation-state languages. Nic Craith is a professor at the University of Ulster in Londonderry Northern Ireland and is the Director of the Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages. She has written extensively on identity and culture, language planning and politics, and more specifically those issues pertaining to Ireland. Chapter one begins with the formation of the concept of Europe, a foundation from which to view the many boundaries outlined by centuries of empires, wars, and trade, making visible an ancient to modern multi-threaded (abbreviated) story of Europe. The book begins with a historical perspective to set a dynamic and divisive tone. The author starts with the apex of the Roman Empire and Marcus Aurelius in the second century A.D., proceeds to witness Charlemagne’s ascension to throne in 800 A.D., through to the fall of Constantinople under the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II in 1453, the French Revolution, WWI and WWII, etc. The chapter ends with the description of a religiously and geopolitically discordant continent. The author constructs a center-periphery model of post-modern Europe, emphasizing social politics and the rise of transnationalism. Statehood, citizenship and language are the interwoven topics of chapter two, and language is presented as a symbol of national unity. The author links language to political and social ideologies as well as ethnic identity e.g., Euskara, Catalan and Castilian in Spain, and the German ideology of national consciousness tied to language in the 19th century. A section of this chapter is devoted to Croat and Serbian identity, politics, and language (p.22 and 25-31). Nic Craith also looks at the post-Soviet, or what she calls in later chapters the post-homogenized, Baltic States. The fragmentation of the USSR in 1989 and the entry into the EU in 2004 of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, has had positive implications for these three national languages which were once subordinate to Russian. Issues arise concerning social and economic equity, as chapter three examines official languages in the EU, or what Nic Craith considers the European elites. She chronicles the accession of languages up until a list of twenty official, working languages as of 2004, and includes Irish as a soon-to-be officially recognized EU language. She points to official languages in the Union, such as Maltese, which has an estimated population of around 400,000 people. Catalan, with a population of speakers of over six million people in Spain, as well as Italy and France, operates on perhaps a more numerically and geographically significant level in Europe without possessing official, working status within the EU. She acknowledges explicit promotion of linguistic equality, supported by the European Bureau of Lesser Used Languages (EBLUL), and that which is outlined by the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages (ECRML) adopted in 1992. Recognizing the de jure status of some minority languages, entitled to EU members’ national languages, Nic Craith also points to the de facto nature of languages like French and English. Although having official status as others, these two languages enjoy an implicit form of power, as “documents are usually translated or drafted first in English or French, which gives those who read and speak those languages more time to prepare a response [to new initiates and policy proposals]” (Wright 2000a in Nic Craith p.51). The author looks more into English language dominance in the final chapter. Chapter four defines a hierarchy of legitimacies for minority languages. Nic Craith employs Joshua Fishman’s (1991) Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale to rank specific minority languages in Europe (p.70-71). She also looks at the contextual paradox of a language having a minority status in one context, like Danish in Northern Germany, while having an official national status in another (Denmark), and yet is an official language within the EU. With the emergence of the EU, the author contends that the context for minority languages has changed considerably, and speakers of such languages operate in transnational rather than a national context. For many, this is an advantage as opposed to a disadvantage. Starting in chapter four through to the remainder of the book, the author focuses primarily on ECRML and EBLUL as being two language support systems. Both promote policies that challenge traditional nation-state countries like France, whose language policies reflect on a solitary language for national identity while citizens speak many other mother-tongue languages. Chapter five deals with languages across borders, and Nic Craith recognizes boundaries based on language that lie in contrast to historically established national borders which separate groups of people from their languages’ autochthonous roots. In illustrating specific historical policy, she uses, for instance, the De Gasperi-Gruber Agreement (1946) to serve as a model for current and/or potential EU policy. After WWII, the Italian state guaranteed important cultural and economic rights for speakers of German in South Tyrol. She also cites the cross-border co-operation in the Schleswig-Holstein region as a model for post-conflict ventures involving a German minority in southern Denmark and a Danish minority in Northern Germany (p.92). Both language minority groups have maintained close links with their ancestral home and receive comprehensive support. As well, Danish groups such as the South Schleswig Association in Germany and the German School and Language Association for North Schleswig are committed to the promotion of their prospective languages (p.89). In contrast to language support institutions like these, the Basque in southern France have a “limited capacity to develop initiatives to promote and safeguard their culture…They need to rely heavily on support from the other side of the border, at least in linguistic, cultural, educational and media initiatives” (Grin and Moring, 2002, p.160 in Nic Craith, p.96). However, Nic Craith states that, “from the perspective of many Basque nationalists, the national border through Basque speaking regions is not legitimate and they would hardly view their work in a cross-border context” (p.97). Chapter six looks at contested languages’ quest for recognition from an important theoretical perspective, one in which the legitimacy of a language is seen as operating or existing on two axes, the horizontal and the vertical (p.113). The former is self-affirmed and can be validated at a local, non-governmental level. The latter is conferred by an official or outside observer. “In either case, legitimacy becomes ‘prereflexive’, and is internalized and treated as though it were natural or self-evident” (Bourdieu, 1994, p. 127 in Nic Craith, p.113). For instance, speakers of Luxembourgish began to think of themselves as a separate nation with a distinct language which has now acquired considerable status within the EU, as well, British Sign Language had sought national recognition until the British government included BSL in the ECRML (p.125) On the other hand, a failure to legitimize language may result in language shift. Younger members of minority languages, like the Kashubian in Poland, are often protected against the native language by the older members of the family. The motivation is to “ensure a better future” (p. 115). One of salient variables that is crucial to the once or still socially and politically subordinate languages of Europe is the promotion of literature in that language, through which the dissemination of the language itself, as well as ideas and knowledge, can be replicated and promoted within the culture. The author states that, “writing in a language can sometimes prove a significant element in the quest for linguistic independence, and a contested language that is not written down will have great difficulty in acquiring full linguistic status” (p.117). Nomads, language, and land are the subjects of chapter seven, and the author writes about the irrelevance of the relationship between territory and language. She looks at the Travellers of Ireland, the Sami of Russia, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and the Roma of various European regions as the three prominent nomadic groups of Europe. Sami author Valkeapaa defined his fatherland as following the landscape, and that the “mechanical lines of demarcation are unnatural (Valkeapaa, 1983, p. 83 in Nic Craith, p.139). The Traveller’s definition of the term “country” is radically different from that of the sedentary society (Burke 2002 in Nic Craith, p.139). The author further discusses how modern technology has developed a sense of community among the Sami and among the Traveller’s. Nic Craith is critical of the ECRML for excluding “non-territorial languages” from the category of regional and minority languages due to the lack of territorial base. It does, however, advocate that languages traditionally used on state territories by citizens could be included on a limited basis, such as Romani (p. 144). Chapter eight focuses on non-European languages and the people that speak them. The Chinese in Northern Ireland, the Turks in Germany, and the Maghrebian Arabic in France are on the farthest edge of the center-periphery model i.e., they are the “outsiders”. Although the author mentions the lack of data that is available on immigrants in Europe several times throughout the chapter, she paints a visible picture of a more globally representative Europe. Immigrant languages are excluded from the terms of the reference of the ECRML. The explanatory notes suggest that the “specific problems of integration” arise in situations of new and often non-European languages which are spoken as a result of recent migration flows (CoE, 1992, in Nic Craith, p.160). Conversely, she cites the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights, signed in Barcelona in 1996 as explicitly including immigrant languages as well as regional and minority languages. (p. 163). She contends that “there is little sympathy for Arabic and Turkish not being officially recognized in Europe because they are looked at as operating in global rather than European contexts…and yet to be dealt with is the association with language and terrorist activity” (p.167). Finally, in chapter nine, Nic Craith closes with looking at Europe and the politics of belonging. She focuses on the EU Action Plan of 2004-2006, which calls the attention to the principle of knowing the mother tongue plus two other languages. The author maintains that economics is the key to language survival, but maintains that people have to survive economically in their preferred language (p.187). In order to promote linguistic diversity in Europe, the author states that a multicentric language policy should focus on the people that speak those languages, which is inclusive of migrants and nomadic, transnational people. Nic Craith contends that there needs to be a far greater investment in language planning at the university level and states that to date, the field of language planning at all levels has received insufficient academic attention. She also believes that the EU needs to reconsider its language policies to take stock of the different ethnolinguist language groups. Throughout the book, the author mentions economics as an influence within contexts such as in the autonomous province of South Tryol in Italy, but fails to bring that important element to light at a deeper level. At best, she equates economics to the acquisition of jobs for foreign speaking populations of the EU. She mentions organizations, like Foras na Gaeilge in Ireland, which provides funding and allocates financial resources to Irish language festivals, Irish language newspapers, and promotes and funds educational resource materials in Irish. She also mentions that dominant languages have economic advantages while minority languages lack economic opportunities, but does not support the claims with any examples or anecdotes (p.55 and p.58). The entire conclusion of chapter four addresses issues of funding, which is the largest chunk of text in the book related to economics. She acknowledges the sources of funding for EBLUL, such as the European Commission, which constitutes the primary source of money to EBLUL, but also notes funds coming from the governments of Ireland, Luxembourg, Province of Fryslan in the Netherlands, and the German-speaking community in Belgium. She refers to EBLUL’s financial difficulties in 2004, and recommends that a “policy of decentralization would ensure the future of EBLUL and would involve member state committees more strongly”. She ultimately concludes calling for the recognition of minority languages at an international level for greater standing at a local and national level (p.80). The reader might justifiably feel somewhat short-changed in the author’s analysis of economic influences behind language policy. She made references to funding language initiatives and organizations, as well as wrote of the economic effects of language policies, but never thoroughly addressed this important phenomenon in any detail. I was inspired by this book overall, walking away from it with a greater knowledge of language policy in various European regions, which has given me an important perspective on explicit language promotion contrary to implicit power structure. References Bourdieu, P. (1994). Raisons pratiques: Sur la theorie de l’action. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Burke, M. (2002). ‘Hidden like a religious Arcanum: Irish writing and Shelta’s secret History’ in John Kirk and Donall O’ Baoill (eds), Travellersand their language. Belfast: Clo Ollscoile na Banriona, pp. 79-100. Council of Europe. (1992b). European charter for regional and minority languages: Explanatory report. http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/en/Reports/Html/148.htm. Fishman, J. (1991). Reversing language shift: Theoretical and empirical foundations of assistance to threatened languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Grin, F. & Moring, T. (2002). Final report: Support for minority languages in Europe. Brussels: European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages. Valkeapaa, N. (1983). Greeting from Lapland: The Sami – Europe’s forgotten people. London; Totowa, NJ, USA: Zed Press. Wright, S. (2000a). Community and communication: The role of language in nation-state building and European integration. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. About the reviewer Joseph Axel is a PhD student in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Arizona State University. His research interests include language maintenance, global, heritage and community languages, and integrated cultures in cosmopolitan contexts. 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