26.5004, Review: Historical Ling; Socioling: Heinemann, Vicario, Fesenmeier (2014)

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Subject: 26.5004, Review: Historical Ling; Socioling: Heinemann, Vicario, Fesenmeier (2014)

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Date: Mon, 09 Nov 2015 17:42:50
From: Marco Caria [caria.mar at tiscali.it]
Subject: Sprachminderheiten: gestern, heute, morgen/Minoranze linguistiche: ieri, oggi, domani

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-3451.html

AUTHOR: Ludwig  Fesenmeier
AUTHOR: Sabine  Heinemann
EDITOR: Federico  Vicario
TITLE: Sprachminderheiten: gestern, heute, morgen/Minoranze linguistiche: ieri, oggi, domani
SERIES TITLE: Studia Romanica et Linguistica - Band 40
PUBLISHER: Peter Lang AG
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Marco Caria, (MIUR) Ministero dell'Istruzione Università e Ricerca

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

This publication, belonging to the collection “Studia Romanica et
linguistica”, brings together all the papers of a study meeting under the
title “Alte und neue Sprachminderheiten / Minoranze linguistiche – vecchie e
nuove” that took place in October 2012 at the Friedrich -  Alexander  - 
Universität  of Erlangen – Nürnberg. 

In the introductory paper  Sebastian Kürschner investigates the general
definitions that could outline the research of “new and old linguistic
minorities”. As the author points out, a linguistic minority exists only if a
“linguistic majority” exists, but this can obviously be seen neither as
sufficient nor as an exhaustive factor to delineate the many problems
presented by a minority.  Actually, several aspects must be analyzed according
to the special situation of each linguistic minority, in the frame of the
different perspectives involved in the research, i.e. the necessity to
recognize that an area with a minority status has not only a different
language, but even a different ethnic and cultural background. Furthermore, it
is important to consider how a linguistic minority can originate or die, how
the minority language itself can develop, and eventually its relationship with
the linguistic majority territory.

In the second paper of the volume Marián Sloboda and Katja Brankačkec aim to
answer the question of whether the knowledge of Sorbian can help speakers or
learners of this language with the study and comprehension of other Slavic
languages and ''whether the mutual intelligibility of Slavic languages can
adequately serve as an argument in the efforts to gain more learners and
speakers for this minority language”. The study, an audio listening task-
experiment about the intelligibility of Czech, Slovak and Polish (closely
related to the Sorbian languages) to students of a Sorbian-language secondary
school in Bautzen/Budyšin (Lusatia, Germany), shows many interesting aspects.
First of all, the experiment confirms that being a speaker or learner of
Sorbian can really help to understand other Slavic languages, particularly
Czech and Slovak (Polish in a lower degree, with an intelligibility score
close to zero). Concerning the second question of the authors, they conclude
asserting that Sorbian speakers’ ability to understand other Slavic languages
as an instrument to promote the study and knowledge of the minority speakers
among the non-speakers should be seen as adequate and even useful for other
small linguistic minorities, such as the Slovene or the Molise Slavic in
Italy.

Johannes Kramer, the fourth contributor of the meeting, focuses his study on
the situation of Belgium, today a country hosting three different communities:
the French-speaking Wallonia in the south, the Dutch-speaking Flanders in the
north and the German-speaking Community of Belgium in the east. After giving
the historical and cultural background which has led to the formation and to
the establishment of the linguistic borders in the modern State of Belgium,
the author analyses the problems which can be noticed in territorial matters
by the point of view of the two major linguistic groups: the Walloons and the
Flemings.  As the author clearly points out, bilingualism in Belgium has
always been problematic: all the essays, whether from the Dutch or French
side, to convert the country from bilingual into monolingual have led to
failure.  After a period of general Frenchification and social promotion of
the French language, a solution was seen in the drawing up of regional
linguistic areas along the municipal boundaries, with the consequence of a
sort of jus soli for the two main languages of the country:  if someone
resides in a place belonging to the Flemish community, he/she must be
considered of Dutch mother tongue, and vice versa for the French speaking
region. An exception to this model is represented by the Capital, Brussels,
which geographically belongs to Flanders but is considered a francophone
enclave.  In the end, one question seems to be the most relevant:  if 
nowadays problems related to the cohabitation of French and Dutch speakers
still exist (problems that sometimes involve the unity  of the country
itself), how can Belgium afford its own future? The answer given by the author
sounds clear: the only solution can be seen in the so-called solutions belges,
the many Belgian political and linguistic compromises adopted from the
unification of the country until the present day.

In the next paper Simone Ciccolone tries to compare two different minority
areas in Italy: the bilingual region of South Tyrol and the Cimbrian village
of Luserna in Trentino. The paper aims at investigating the different
sociolinguistic perspectives offered by the two examined areas, and the
language policies adopted in consideration of the role of German. In such a
study it is important to highlight two important issues: a) the protected
linguistic variety and its eventual relationships with a roof language; b) the
different varieties seen as sociolects.  Regarding the case of South Tyrol
where the many German dialects spoken are roofed by Hochdeutsch, the language
policies aim to defend and promote standard German in almost every field of
the daily life of the speaker (school, TV, newspapers, etc.) but on a “lower
pole” of daily communication South Tyroleans normally use their dialects with
almost no interference from the standard language.  On the contrary, with
regard to Luserna where the distant standard German cannot be considered the
roof language for the minority language, the preserved code is the variety of
Cimbrian really used by the community and, thanks to the elaboration and the
lexical implementation, it is becoming more and more competitive even in the
communicative fields where Italian as majority code is normally used.

Quite pessimistic and in contradiction with Ciccolone seems to be Roger
Schöntag’s paper about the survival of the Cimbrian language.  After giving
some information about the history of the Cimbrians in Northern Italy, the
author describes the sociolinguistic situation of Luserna, the only place
where the Cimbrian language is still actively spoken.  Due to the increasing
reduction of the resident population and a strong assimilation of many active
speakers in favour of Italian because of social prestige reasons, Luserna
represents a model of language decay and of seriously endangered language. One
of the reasons that still prevent Cimbrian from being totally extinct is the
intensive promotion of the idiom with some public and private initiatives, but
if such initiatives certainly contribute to the survival of the linguistic
minority as language island, the real needs of the speakers in their everyday
life are scarcely taken into consideration, with an obscure future for
Cimbrian as a living language.

Sabine Heinemann writes in her paper about the legislation concerning language
minorities in Italy, from the European Charter for Regional or Minority
Languages to the most recent national and regional laws. In her paper the
author focuses in particular on the Friulian and Sardinian situations.  Thanks
to the Charter the language minorities in Italy are not only locally (national
or regional/provincial laws) preserved, but even internationally. In
particular for the case of the two big areas which are the object of the
paper, Friuli and Sardinia, the laws present some positive aspects as the
promotion and the official use of the minority language, even if the
standardization still remains an open issue for both the regional idioms.

Federico Vicario discusses  in his paper  Friulian lexicography and the GDBTF
(Grant Dizionari bilengâl talian furlan), which can be seen as one of the most
important results of the  Friulian language policy in the context of regional
and national laws in matters of minority language. This dictionary consists of
7000 pages, and it is quite difficult to judge it for its utility or adequacy.
Vicario highlights some mistakes or inadequate choices of the editors,
especially when giving grammatical or linguistic indications. The author
concludes his paper saying that the GDBTF hasn’t been able to give the
expected results, i.e. the creation of  a dictionary with normative value for
the modern Friulian, regretting the fact that the participation of specialists
in the project could have avoided the evident mistakes. The possible
alternatives are two: a completely new edition or a revision of the existing
one, taking into consideration all the difficulties deriving from the enormous
size of the work.

Georges Darms speaks about Romansh, the autochthonous Romance idiom of the
Grisons in Switzerland and one of the most endangered languages in the world.
The extinction of Romansh was predicted already in the XIX century, but
fortunately such negative predictions haven’t come true. The survival of this
idiom can be considered a sort of language miracle due to the fact that the
zone where it is spoken has been under the influence of German for over 1200
years and still today German is the first language in the Canton considering
the number of mother tongue speakers. Though the current situation of Romansh
cannot be considered really comfortable, there is no reason to predict the
death of Romansh, the survival of which can be guaranteed at least for the
next 100 years.

Heidi Siller-Runggaldier discusses Ladin in her paper, describing the many
features of the idiom, the areas where the language is spoken, its historical
origins, its status and the different measures taken from the Italian State,
the Autonomic Provinces of Bolzano-Bozen and Trento and the Region of Veneto
to preserve the survival of the Ladin communities and to promote the language.

Daniela Marzo investigates the situation of Sardinian, focusing her attention
on the question of whether modern experimental psycholinguistic methods and
instruments can be successfully used to analyze minority languages. The result
is that in the case of Sardinian most of these modern methods cannot be used
and the causes can be traced to the lack of a common standard language (both
written or oral) for all Sardinians, the attitude of the speakers of a given
Sardinian variety towards the other varieties and the demotivation of the
youngest people in speaking the minority idiom. 

In the last paper Adriano Mazziotti reports on the situation of the ancient
Albanian linguistic minority called Arbëreshe and living in seven regions of
southern Italy. The author offers a portrait of the identity, the history, the
language and the traditions of the so called Italian-Albanians, completing his
work by offering a presentation of the most important cultural initiatives
created in the different Arbëreshe communities, showing an ethno-linguistic
minority which is really vital from the point of view of the promotion of its
peculiar identity and which is still proud of its language and traditions.

EVALUATION

The aim of the meeting was to give, or at least to try to give, a clear
definition of what linguistic minorities really are, with regard to several
communities in Central Europe and especially in Italy, by analyzing politics,
geography, history, the everyday life and every aspect related to the peculiar
fact of being set in a context with a language and a traditional culture which
are different when compared to those of the “hosting” countries. Though the
minorities discussed during the meeting do not belong to the same linguistic
branch (Germanic, Romance or Slavic), the given guidelines for what concerns
the methods of analysis are useful and can be considered a valid instrument
for linguists interested in minority situations. As almost every author states
at the end of his/her paper that it is not easy to define in an exhaustive way
the future of a linguistic minority, due to the many sociolinguistic aspects
which are involved in the survival or in the death of a minority idiom and to
the many differences that characterize every single situation. For this reason
every paper highlights new issues and new possible approaches to the
investigation of a minority language and of a linguistic minority.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

I focuse my interest on linguistic minorities, with particular attention to the German speaking areas in Northern Italy. I have been awarded a Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of Sassari, Italy, defending a dissertation on the plurilingualism (German, Italian, Friulian and Slovenian) and on the sociolinguistic situation of the small valley of Valcanale/Kanaltal/Kanalska Dolina/Val Cjanâl in Friuli venezia Giulia. I would like to continue my research comparing the Valcanale with South Tyrol, because the two regions share the same history.




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