European language ideologies: is there a future for homogeneity?
ENMultilingual communities have always experienced self-conscious struggles over the issue of language; as a result, ideologies of language have always had great social, political, and even linguistic significance. The traditional sociolinguistic topics in these contexts have been concerned with language maintenance and shift, language planning and development, language attrition and loss, and language and identity. Consequently, identification of a close relationship between language and nation has been fundamental for language ideology. It is a truism that the equation of language and nation is not a natural fact but rather a historical and ideological construct. The emergence of this construct is conventionally attributed to late eighteenth century German Romanticism and Johann Herder’s famous characterization of language as the genius of a people; since then it has often been referred to as the Romantic or Herderian concept of language (Woolard, 1998). Today this Herderian (or nationalist) ideology of language is globally relevant. State policies are structured by national ideologies of language and identity and are often related to linguistic purism, which is seen as being of the utmost importance to the survival of minority or national languages. The defense of language ideology is very popular in many European countries, especially in the era of globalization; with the English language having acquired a dominant position, national languages are threatened. In view of this, the question “Is Europe losing its languages?” reflects the anxiety and feelings shared by many Europeans. The speakers of so-called “big” European languages, like French and German, as well as those of “smaller” or lesser-used languages, like Slovenian or Lithuanian, are worried about what appears as marginalization of their cultures and languages. [...]. [Extract, p. 121]
