State, national, regional, ethnic and pseudo-dialectalised sister languages: a socio-linguistic typology of language-characterising discourses

Abstract

The article contemplates the possibility of a structured sociolinguistic comparison between various language based regionalist movements in Europe. An integrated terminological model for the categorization of various configurations of societal multilingualism is proposed for this purpose. More concretely, we postulate a configurational type of interaction between WESS (Western European State Languages) on the one hand and WERL (Western European Regional Languages) on the other. WERLs have the following characteristics: 1. They are autochthonous, rather than languages of immigrant minorities. 2. They are strictly stateless, rather than out-groups of neighbouring states. 3. They are spoken within the area of influence of the Latin Church during the middle ages, where Latin was the lingua franca of educated people. 4. They have developed a written Standard variety and a certain degree of status planning for this variety.

Full text

State, national, regional, ethnic and pseudo-dialectalised sister languages:
a socio-linguistic typology of language-characterising discourses
1 Comparing regional languages: Towards a framework for a meaningful comparison
Regional and minority languages are generally considered to be a clearly identifiable
configurational type of societal multilingualism and, as such, have always been an important
object of sociolinguistic research. However, the vast majority of research undertaken in this
field has tended to focus on analysing individual cases, while the actual notion of Regional
Language as such has as yet received little to no attention from the scientific community,
apparently under the impression that the concept is largely undisputed and self-evident.2
Moreover, it seems to be generally accepted that a comparison between minority languages
promises insights that may be difficult to gain from the mere addition of individual case studies;
actual systematic and structured comparisons, on the other hand, are surprisingly rare. This
paper is based on the conviction that, in the case of research into regional languages, a
systematic typological comparison should be untertaken within a clearly defined areal type such
as to guarantee that apples are not compared with pears.
Two pre-selections should be made beforehand in order to maximise the expected yield
of this comparison: Firstly, the relationship between the concepts of “minority language” and
“regional language” should be defined and differenciated as exactly as possible (which will be
undertaken in part 1 of this paper). It will be argued, that Regional Language is a highly specific
sub-case of Minority Language. Directly comparing a single given case with multiple other
cases is an endeavour that would immediately catapult the complexity of the description to
dimensions that are no longer manageable, impeding rather than promoting the advancement of
knowledge. In order to address this problem, we suggest to extrapolate a hypothetical type of
configuration which we will call an Areal Type, a prototype gained from the common properties
observed in a group of cases with a similar historical, cultural, religious or political background.
Upon comparison, this Areal Type may then be used as a template, much in a similar way to
the method used for Indo-European, where individual IE languages are compared using
reconstructed Proto-Indo-European as a tertium comparationis. As the second pre-selection, we
suggest to concentrate our comparisons on language configurations within the same areal types,
instead of comparing cases freely chosen from all of the world’s regional languages. This will
be the subject of part 2. Our proposal consists primarily in founding an Areal Typology of
Regional and Minority Languages as a solid base for future large scale comparisons.
All Western European Regional Languages – albeit not under this name – have been studied
in depth from various angles, including sociolinguistics, sociology, politics and the identitarian
discourses associated to them. However, until now there has been no generally accepted
terminological framework tailored to the needs of languages like Catalan, Welsh, Frisian or
Ladin (as opposed to, say, Pirahã in Brazil or Turkish in Berlin). In what follows, we shall try
to devise such a terminological framework, which will be designed as a tool for the systematic
categorization of the cases to be compared. The resulting categorization is informed by the
2 A good indication of this is the absence of both key words in the prestigious handbook on sociolinguistics
belonging to the series entitled Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science (HSK; Ammon et al. 11987,
22006), published by De Gruyter, and its compilation of fundamental and key terms.

overall goal of achieving maximum comparability. In its first and more global layer of analysis,
the proposal follows the Aristotelian type of categorization yielding clear-cut boundaries of the
yes/no-type. As the analysis goes deeper, the resulting subcategorizations will become more
prototype-oriented descriptions of the more/less-type. We propose to make explicit the criteria
by which various cases might be grouped together in one category as opposed to other
configurations of societal bilingualism. This will be done by proposing a sequence of
dichotomies designed to narrow down the scope of the investigation.
We will contend that the historical and sociocultural context is an important parameter
in such a typology. It is not the same, if a language of several 100.000 speakers is situated in a
multicultural, multi-ethnic and multilingual country like Afghanistan or Cameroon, in
traditionally centralized countries like China, or in Europe. It is not the same, if the minority
language is up against a fully standardized traditional state language which is conceived of as
the main identifying cultural element of the country’s nationhood (cf. France and French) or if
it is just one vernacular among others. Our typology will therefore be an Areal Sociolinguistic
Typology of Minority and Regional Languages. In the end, the type we will undertake to
establish is the areal type of configuration which is found in Western European regional
languages as listed above and which we propose to call Western European Regional Language
(WERL). As a first step, we will begin by narrowing down the sample of configurations to be
compared:
1.1 Societal vs. individual
In investigating multilingualism, the first division to be made is the one between individual
multilingualism on the one hand – the investigation of which relies mainly on techniques from
psychology and psycholinguistics –, and societal multilingualism on the other – which will be
investigated using descriptive tools devised by sociology, sociolinguistics and discourse
analysis. The differentiation between these two labels must be made on two levels: On the level
of the observed, there may be individual multilingualism with or without societal
multilingualism. These would be two separate fields of investigation. On the level of the
observer, the difference between societal and individual is mainly one of the chosen
perspective. We shall only concentrate on societal multilingualism from this point onwards, a
subject that is conventionally treated under the headings of Minority Languages and
Linguistic Minorities. The notion of Regional Languages appears to be used more or less
alternatively and no generally accepted, clear-cut distinction between the two seems to be
available. This lack of terminological precision is detrimental to a meaningful comparison of
cases.
1.2 Minority vs. Majority Languages
The notion of Linguistic Minority is inherently problematic because it tends to take for granted
the criterion, by which the relevant “majority” of the case is established. This may be
unproblematic in clear-cut cases, where a few thousand speakers stand against tens of millions
and the country in question is a highly organized and industrialized western country, where the
state effectively organizes everyday life in the last recess of the territory. Problems arise, if the
relationship between minority and titular nation is strained and there are conflicting views as

to the relationship between the two. If the so-called minority does not associate itself with the
titular nation and doesn’t see itself as a minority on its territory, calling it a “minority” amounts
to taking sides, where professional neutrality would be more appropriate (see Eichinger 2006:
2479).
These conflicts can take various forms: Pirahã (Brazil) and Catalan (Spain and France)
are both non-state languages in their respective countries. Furthermore, both represent, in terms
of the total population of each country, linguistic minorities. However, the Pirahã are an
indigenous people of hunters and gatherers numbering a mere 350 people, almost all of which
are practically monolingual maintaining next to no contact with the outside world. Catalan, on
the other hand, is a regional official language in Europe with more than 8 million speakers, its
speakers being able to choose between several translations of Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason”
as well as write a dissertation in chemistry or find advertisements for Coca-Cola, all in Catalan.
Using the same term to cover both a tiny ethnic language as well as a medium-sized European
official language thus reduces the usefulness of such terminology significantly. To resume: The
concept Minority Language is so broad as to be virtually meaningless.
1.3 Minority Languages vs. languages of Linguistic Minorities3
The notion Minority Language has been used very loosely in the literature. The only common
denominator appears to be that Minority Languages are not national or state languages.
However, if we think that the approximately 6500 languages spoken on our planet are currently
spread across a mere 193 states, it becomes clear that almost all human languages are, according
to this definition, “Minority Languages”. In various contexts, Pirahã may be treated as a
Minority Language in Brazil, Catalan as a minority language in Spain, but also Spanish as a
Minority Language in the US. It is obvious, that we have to be careful here not to confuse the
notions of Linguistic Minority, which might be applicable to all three cases, and Minority
Language, which clearly is not. I suggest, therefore, that the term Minority Language should
not be applied automatically to any variety as used by a minority. Rather, we might wish to
limit it to those languages that are non-state languages on a worldwide scale. Only these
languages characteristically lack the state infrastructure necessary for creating a relevant group
of literate speakers capable of sustaining a school system and a literary language. I suggest that
this criterion be the common denominator and defining feature for a Minority Language in a
sociolinguistically meaningful sense. To resume, the first criterion for my proposed definition
of the concept Minority Language would read: A Minority Language is a language that is
not a State Language (= obligatory) anywhere in the world.
1.4 Autochthonous vs. migrant
The above definition of a Minority Language implies, that almost all migrant languages fall
outside the scope of this concept. Migrants may be Linguistic Minorities in their receiving
societies, but in most cases their languages remain State Languages, which happen to be
circumstantially spoken by a minority. Migrant languages are not perceived as autochthonous
to the receiving country – not even by their speakers. Spanish in the US or Turkish in Germany
3 The following discussion is largely based on Radatz (2013).

are majority languages in their own territories and only circumstantially become minoritized
for their speakers, when they emigrate and become a minority in the receiving country. In this,
their situation is radically different from “real” Minority Languages as defined above, like
Basque, Welsh or Catalan. We can therefore add another element to the characterization of a
prototypical Minority Languages by adding that they are autochthonous rather than migrant
languages. There are, of course, examples of Minority Languages spoken by autochthonous
minorities: German in South Tyrol, Slovene in Carinthia, French on the Channel Islands etc.
We can gather from these examples that the above rule only holds in one direction: According
to our definition, all Minority Languages are autochthonous but not all languages as spoken by
autochthonous minorities may be considered Minority Languages! To resume, the second
criterion for a more meaningful definition should therefore be: A Minority Language proper
is always autochthonous; if it is not, it is most probably just the language of a minority.
1.5 Regional (Minority) Manguages vs. Ethnic (Minority) Languages
We have now narrowed down the notion of Minority Language to a more meaningful concept.
However, we still have to account for an extremely relevant distinction within these Minority
Languages, which splits this notion into at least two relevant sub-types. Consider the following
European Minority Languages: Plattdütsch (Low German), Welsh, Catalan, Franco-Provençal,
Kashubian, Basque etc. These languages fall into two groups in function of the societal
discourses that accompany them. Plattdütsch, Franco-Provençal and Kashubian may be
considered languages by linguists, but they are usually not by their speakers. Rather, they are
what Heinz Kloss (1967) has described as pseudo-dialectalised languages. I will here
tentatively call them Ethnic Languages. The classification as an Ethnic Language is based on
a prototypical behaviour of speakers with respect to their autochthonous variety: when the
speakers happily accept diglossia and therefore see no potential conflict with the titular nation
on linguistic grounds, a central defining criterion is fulfilled. We thus suggest to call those
languages Ethnic, whose speakers do not consider their native Minority Language as a defining
element of a hypothetical stateless nation of their own and consequently see no use for its
standardization. As a result, Ethnic Languages as defined her tend to be strongly fragmented
into dialects; the state language is probably encroaching on all levels of the language system;
the typical speaker today is a semi-speaker; and the languages are not passed on to the next
generation. Examples for the Ethnic-Language-configuration would be Plattdütsch, Franco-
Provençal, Occitan or “Valencian”, i.e. Catalan spoken by illiterate native speakers in the
Spanish Comunitat Valenciana.
Welsh, Catalan, and Basque, on the other hand are the exact opposite in their
accompanying discourses. They all went through a historical phase of diglossia but have since
had important movements of cultural and language activism (re-)claiming full language status.
Important parts of the regional population see their language as a defining element of a stateless
linguistic nation. Prototypically, this entails political demands ranging from varying degrees of
regional autonomy up to a secession into an own national state. A central defining element for
a Regional-Language-configuration as proposed her is the speakers’ claim to a separate national
identity centrally based on the autochthonous language. They therefore see the standardization
of their language as an essential aspect of their cultural needs and political demands. Their claim
to nationhood tends to pit the regional language against the state language, which it challenges

with a project of “linguistic normalization”, i.e. a large-scale societal process directed at
reintroducing the Regional Language to all the higher domains that had previously been
occupied by the State Language (acting as the High variety in a Ferguson-type diglossia). The
language is typically passed on to the next generation; there are strong neo-speaker
communities. Although these languages are usually considered “national languages without a
state” by their advocates, we will, within the realm of sociolinguistics, call this particular type
of Minority Languages Regional Languages. The prototypical Regional Language is
characterized by the following traits:
 The speakers consider it a language rather than a dialect.
 They consequently reject diglossia.
 There is a tendency to construe regional identity according to the prototype of a stateless
linguistic nation.
To resume: A Regional Language is a language construed as the central identitarian
symbol of a stateless linguistic nation; an Ethnic Language is not.
1.6 State Languages vs. everything else: facultative vs. obligatory
Alongside the other suggested types, we must introduce further distinction based on the
criterion whether a given language may or must be used. We can find at least three strictly
different main cases as exemplified by languages like Pirahã, Catalan and Spanish, namely
between Ethnic, Regional, and State Languages:
 Ethnic Languages [- state, - official, - standardized, -obligatory]
 Regional Languages [- state, +/- official, + standardized, -obligatory]
 State Languages [+ state, + official, + standardized, +obligatory]
The prototype of an Ethnic Language has been defined as non-conflictive, not standardized and
coexisting in a stable diglossic situation with the State Language. Actual cases may resemble
this prototype more or less closely. The term Regional Language, on the other hand, has been
proposed for non-obligatory standardized languages that are defended as a regional alternative
to the State Language with all the conflictive potential this may entail. State Languages are
standardized and obligatory. The expression State Language – rather than “official language”
or “national language” – is used deliberately here, because defenders of Regional Languages
typically consider their languages to be “national languages without a state”. If such a
differentiation between “state” and “nation” is an important element of the characteristic
discourse that accompanies these conflict configurations, the sociolinguistic theory devised to
describe them should allow for the same distinction. The attribute “official” is typically not
only applicable to the state languages but also to the WERL themselves which may enjoy
varying degrees of (co-)officiality with the state language on their territory. Welsh, Catalan,
Galician and Basque are official in their respective territories, but they are not the national
language of any state; neither are they formally obligatory, not even on their own territories.
Past research has tended to over-emphasize the importance of officiality while under-
emphasizing that of obligatoriness.
In a modern European context, the main problem of a Regional Language is typically no
longer one of having or not having an official status; their problem is, that at any given moment

the use of the State Language may be enforced while the co-official Regional Language will
ultimately always be facultative. WERLs show the typical intermediate traits of a Regional
Language: They offer an alternative standard variety, which may be used regionally instead
of the State Language. However, the State Language is obligatory, while the Regional Language
is not (asymmetrical societal bilingualism). As opposed to Ethnic Languages, Regional
Languages have surmounted the state of diglossia without, however, reaching the status of a
full-fledged State Language. For WERLs, diglossia is supplanted by asymmetrical societal
bilingualism with two alternative standard languages. To resume, I propose to use the notion
Regional Language for cases approaching the following prototypical definition: A Regional
Language is a non-obligatory alternative standard language.
1.7 Regional Languages – symbolic centre of a conflictive identitarian discourse
Seen in such a way, Regional Languages represent a very specific and both particularly
interesting and relevant type of configuration of societal multilingualism. The reasons for this
can be found in the particular identitarian and conflictive potential of the discourse that
accompanies them.
 Regional Languages are an economical anachronism. Due to their mere existence,
they are swimming against the global tendency of simplifying globalized
communication and orientating towards criteria based on market economy efficiency.
Thus, Regional Languages should not even exist anymore and typically have to fight
for their survival.
 Regional Languages are the spanner in the works of the state. Unlike pseudo-
dialectal Minority Languages, Regional Languages create conflicts, because they
challenge the State Language in its claim for universal validity. Because of this
conflictiveness, Regional Languages receive much more visibility in the public eye than
any other kind of Minority Languages.
 Regional Languages are always “alternative languages” because they have to co-
exist with a State Language. The use of Regional Languages may be prohibited,
permitted, or sometimes even welcomed – but it is never obligatory. These linguistic
configurations are therefore characterised by asymmetric bilingualism, with speakers of
Regional Languages all being bilingual, compared to the rest of the state’s citizens who
are monolingual speakers of the State Language.
 Regional Languages have a high identity potential. If a region is able to stave off
both open opposition by the rest of the state as well as the general attempts to make its
language a pseudo-dialect, this language – at the very latest in connection with the
political and cultural struggle brought about – will have become a central feature of the
speaker’s own identity.
Our subject has now moved from the realm of classical sociolinguistics into an area, where
language attitudes and societal discourse become the focal points of interest.
 Regional Languages as defined here are what they are by virtue of what the speakers
want them to be.

 They only survive, because their speakers deliberately – and against all odds – have
remained faithful to them.
 This, on the other hand, they do only because of an effective societal and identitarian
discourse that motivates them to do so.
The discourse is at the root of the immense persisting force behind Regional Languages and
any study pretending to explain or only systematise the phenomenon of European Regional
Languages will have to take into account these discourses. In fact, any talk about “comparing
regional languages” must always be understood not as actually comparing the languages
themselves, but rather the whole conglomerate of factors that determine a complicated societal
configuration of alternative – and potentially conflicting – standard languages. It might be
argued that the underlying discourses are at the very heart of the entire phenomenon.
2 Areal typology: WERL (Western European Regional Languages)
The type we have dubbed Regional Language is sufficiently abstract to be – at least in theory –
applicable to all countries and continents. However, it is very likely that the historical and
cultural background, against which a regional language has developed, will largely define what
this status will mean in actual everyday life. In many regions of this planet, religion, ethnicity
or a common history may be more important factors for the national and regional identitarian
discourses, than language. Thus, a Minority Language as e.g. Kurdish in Iran – a nation mainly
defined by Persian ethnicity and Shia Islam – may not have the same identitarian importance
as might have e.g. Basque in France – a nation very much centered on the French language.
The last refinement of our definitory process will therefore contemplate the historical and socio-
political background against which the Regional Language discourse unfolds. We will
concentrate on one particular type of regional languages, namely those of Europe. Western
European Regional Languages (WERL) represent a kind of constellation with which Europeans
are particularly familiar. Its tangibility and acceptance in academic discussions is reflected in
many publications. Eichinger (1996: 49), for example, refers to a kind of “European linguistic
minority”, meaning “linguistic minorities in Western and Middle Europe” (Eichinger 1996: 37).
Bochmann (1989) is a survey of the “regional languages and languages of (ethnic)
nation(alitie)s in France, Italy and Spain”; Poche (2000) is a monograph on the subject of “Les
langues minoritaires en Europe” (which are called “langues régionales” in the subtitle), and
many other publications – including the Euromosaic Project funded by the European
Commission – also refer to “European” minorities yet almost exclusively or primarily deal with
Western and Central Europe (e.g. Wirrer 2000). We therefore already have a concept for such
a type.
2.1 WERL: Stateless indigenous languages of the former Latin West
The type might be called “Western (and Central) European” regional languages. However, these
designations would disguise the fact that historical, cultural and political factors, and not
geographical reasons, are the main factors in making these languages a natural category. In fact,
the best name for the category would be “Western” due to it encompassing a historical and
cultural area with numerous common linguistical and historical factors for the languages it
covers (see Haarmann 2002). Its millenary parallelism of relevant major cultural and historical

dynamics has profoundly marked the languages of this cultural sphere, making them a tangible
type. The intellectual, philosophical and linguistic parallelisms read like an abridged cultural
history of the Christian (later secularised) West: The respective regions were all christianised
by the Roman (Latin) Church and had Latin as the common language of culture and literacy,
thus sharing the culture of classical antiquity. This led to a Fishman-style diglossia that lasted
for centuries with the vernacular being pitched against the one and only supra-regionally
accepted variety, Latin. This gave rise to a parallel process of linguistic emancipation for the
vernacular languages from Medieval Latin. The Protestant Reformation with its
translations of the Bible into the vernacular languages ushered in the era of mass-literacy.
After the wars of religion, France was the pioneer in establishing its (proto-)national language
as a central element of its raison d’état and the neighbouring states eventually adopted this
language policy and developed their own State Languages in a similar fashion.
All of these historical developments relevant to language policy and language-in-culture
have united Western Europe (and the catholic parts of Central Europe), resulting in the
establishment of clear defining lines disassociating it from countries lying to the East, the
languages of which have experienced completely different developments. In a European
context, all Regional Languages dealt with here have been exposed to the same political,
cultural, religious, economic and technological developments that have surfaced over the past
one thousand years.
Therefore, the demand behind the establishment of such a sociolinguistic Areal Type is
the recognition of the term Western European Regional Language as meaning more than just a
geographical location; WERL represents a specific type of societal multilingualism. The most
comprehensive terms for the cultural sphere depicted here are undoubtedly those of “West” or
“Occident”, making in a similar manner “regional languages of the European West”
probably the most suitable term for the type of describing regional languages. When speaking
about the Western European type of regional languages, I am therefore referring to not only
Western Europe in a geographical sense but to a historically and culturally defined area of
converging societies. WERLs may thus be classified in the following manner:
 As regional languages, WERLs are indigenous varieties (i.e. they are not languages
recently introduced to the area by migrant groups and they are, typically, present in
the toponymy).
 They are autochthonous to an area in which Medieval Latin was the only or
predominant literary language in the Middle Ages.
 They have no external linguistic “roofing” (i.e. they are not externally located
groups of large national languages).
 They are more or less standardised and are seen by their speakers as languages rather
than dialects.
 Their ausbau, i.e. normativization and normalization, is promoted and supported by
a relevant part of the population.
 They compete with one or several dominant state languages on their territory and
jurisdiction as alternative standard languages.
 They are not obligatory and coexist with the state language in a situation of
asymmetric societal bilingualism.

Following this characterisation, the following linguistic communities might be considered as
cases for comparison: Galician, Asturian, Aragonese, Basque (Hegoalde and Iparralde), Catalan
(Catalonia, Valencia, Balearic Islands), Breton, Welsh, (Scottish) Gaelic, Irish, (West) Frisian,
Sorbian (Upper and Lower), Ladin, Friulian, Romansh and possibly Sardinian. It should be
noted that the comparisons are not primarily concerned about the languages but more
importantly about the multilingual configurations and discourses represented by the languages
themselves.
2.2 WERL – a complementary phenomenon in the emergence of European State
Languages
The concepts of “nation”, “nationalism” and the modern “nation-state” are essentially European
developments in which language played a key role as the most important cohesive element of
(national) identity. Kloss (1969: 44) goes as far as interpreting 19th and 20th-century European
nationalism as a movement of emancipation for linguistic communities, coining the term
Linguistic Nation (“Sprachnation”) in this regard. Although the concepts of ‘nation’ and
‘nationalism’ first took on their modern form and political efficacy in the wake of the French
Revolution, the “[…] basic roots of European linguistic nationalism […] stretch far beyond the
18th century, dating back to antiquity: just as language has always been a political issue, so
have assessments on one’s own language and that of others been a vital ingredient in
intercultural relations between the peoples of Europe” (translated from Haarmann 1993:18).
The division of Europe into two cultural provinces has been evident since antiquity: the Latin
sphere of influence in the west and the Hellenic East (see Haarmann 1993:131).
When referring to “languages” in a European context and in the manner indicated above,
we generally do not mean the spontaneous local native spoken varieties (“genolects”, see
Kailuweit 1997), i.e. those not perceived to be a necessary element in the discourse on national
or regional identity but rather those supra-dialectal distance varieties and literary languages
formed by culture (“grammolects”, see Kailuweit 1997), i.e. those that constitute a key defining
element of a Cultural or Linguistic Nation for their speakers. In that regard, languages should
thus be considered historic and socio-cultural objects that, in their function as “politolects” (see
Berschin 2006, Berschin/Radatz 2015), play an important role in the identity discourse of the
groups in question. The following “linguistic type” is therefore not a “type of language” as
understood in descriptive linguistics, but rather a socio-cultural phenomenon deriving from
different discourses about the social integration of grammolects.
2.2.1 WESL – Western European State Languages
The emergence of Western European State Languages (WESLs) can thus be seen as a culturally
closely integrated complex comprising of both parallel and often interacting individual
processes. As the accompanying discourses inspired each other mutually, the formation of the
individual State Languages was homogenous enough for them to be described as varieties of a
joint abstract prototype (Janicki 1990:85-6), as is understood in cognitive linguistics (see
Dirven/Hawkins/Sandikcioglu 2001). The close cultural integration makes the concept Western

European State Languages (WESL) sufficiently homogenous to define a common areal type.
On the other hand, this type differs greatly in its cultural history from other cultural zones of
influence such as Eastern Europe, Africa or Southeast Asia. Western Europe, i.e. in terms of
the former Roman cultural province, is thus a natural framework for comparing the socio-
cultural conditions for the emergence of standard languages.4 Parallels evident in the formation
of WESLs are, amongst other things, their usage as L varieties in the Middle Ages in a situation
of diglossia, with Medieval Latin as the H variety, their emancipation from Latin in the early
modern era and their subsequent politicization à la française as state and national languages.
WESL are, however, not the only type to be found in Europe.
2.2.2 WERL – Western European Regional Languages
Latin had coexisted with Western and Central Europe’s unwritten vernacular languages as a
joint and uncontested literary language in the early Medieval period; the subsequent centuries
brought about a period of slow emancipation which culminated in the development of the
nation-state and its idea(l) of a single national language used to forge a single identity. The
emergence of the nation-state led to the European vernaculars differentiating themselves from
one another in two fundamentally different categories: the successful ones, the WESLs, came
to represent the identity of the nation-state, whereas the less successful ones became their
opposites and developed into Western European Regional Languages (WERLs). This
differentiation makes Europe home to two kinds of linguistic nations: states with (a) WESL –
its official status representing a key element in the titular nation’s cohesion and identity
throughout its entire territory –, and regions with (a) WERL constituting stateless linguistic
nations – thus casting doubt on the state language’s claim to absolute validity and generating a
potentially conflictive situation.
2.3 WESL and WERL – two kinds of European linguistic nations
The emergence of WERLs is a phenomenon that complemented the enforcement of Europe’s
state and national languages. A linguistic history of Europe can therefore only be considered
complete when not only the history of its victors but also that of its losers is incorporated in a
complementary manner. It was the success of its larger (and smaller) state and national
languages that first gave rise to the emergence of the WERLs. As long as Medieval Latin’s
position as language of education and literacy remained uncontested, the vernacular languages
of Europe were, to a large extent, partners on an equal footing:
4 In this respect, the project forms part of the context of Eurolinguistics which also uses this cultural-
anthropological definition as a lot for defining its comparisons (for instance, see Reiter 1999).
(Western) European diglossia in the Middle Ages
H
variety
Medieval Latin

Some of the aforementioned languages were most certainly considered to be more prestigious
than others, yet, for centuries, none of them claimed to oust Medieval Latin or any other
neighbouring vernacular from its domains. By the High Middle Ages, parts of Europe were
beginning to display tendencies of reducing the use of Medieval Latin and replacing it with a
developed variety of the vernacular; but it was not until French absolutism made language the
raison d’État, that this situation took on a supra-regional dimension. It took centuries for
Medieval Latin to be driven from the last domains it occupied by a systematically and fully
developed state language, the latter becoming the uncontested and only H variety.
From a sociolinguistic perspective, this was a radical innovation: for the first time since
the demise of the Roman Empire, a vernacular language became a roofing language
(Dachsprache; cf. Kloss 1969, Muljačić 1993) for other vernaculars. With the advent of the
new standardised autochthonous languages, the linguistic elaboration and standardisation of the
other vernaculars was blocked, thereby laying down the basic conditions for the emergence of
WERLs at a later stage. However, we should not forget that despite WERLs being effectively
banished from the majority of domains pertaining to the written and formal registers, their use
as spoken everyday vernaculars was initially not affected. To take an example, despite Occitan
gradually disappearing as a written language in the early modern era, it was able to remain the
dominant (and in some cases even the only) everyday language on its territory well into the
20th century. The meticulously planned linguistic development or ausbau of the state language
was accompanied by the artificial atrophy of other languages, causing them either to lose their
supra-dialectal ausbau registers (secondary WERLs) or to even prevent them from developing
them (primary WERLs).
Diglossia in the early modern period (using the example of France)
H
variety
French
L
varieties
Picard
Catalan
Provençal
Gascon
Basque
German
Flemish
Lengadocian
Auvernhat
Limousin
Franco-
Provençal
etc.
At this stage, state language policy was virtually limited to the written word and the public
domain. Language policy following the French Revolution adopted the Ancien Régime’s
centralist element and the idea of a uniform national language as the nation’s symbol and
L
varieties
French
Italian
Occitan
Basque
Breton
Frisian
German
Welsh
English
Franco-Provençal
Sorbian
etc.

unifying bond. Although the subjects’ everyday language was still perceived to be their private
matter in pre-Revolutionary France, the events of 1789 turned every citoyen’s linguistic
behaviour into the object of action with regard to language policy. The regime defined its
political programme as committing the entire population to the exclusive use of the national
language in its day-to-day affairs. Although it would take a further two hundred years for this
to be implemented, its effects can still be felt today in France’s language policy. In Spain, the
French policy of centralism and its achievement of enforcing a single state language was
adopted by the House of Bourbon. The idea of a uniform state or national language raged
everywhere.
2.4 The two typical historical phases: Substitution and recuperation
As previously mentioned above, WERLs display important parallels in their historical
development. Linguistically speaking, their most important common historical experience was
the phase of degeneration as languages of public and written expression, absence from literary
works and the concomitant fragmentation into dialects, generally called the phase of
“decadence”. All WERLs have managed to climb out of the decline and are now once again
cultural and literary languages. In the history of a WERL, we can therefore always distinguish
clearly between a phase of repression and one of recuperation. During the phase of
repression, the Regional Language’s formal and written domains are taken over by the State
Language. The repression usually results in the emergence of a diglossic situation, where the
Regional Language is slowly pushed into the role of a sub-standard variety. The phase of
recuperation usually starts from within the Romantic movement with activists collecting
folkloric elements of the language such as fairy tales, popular songs and stories, to then be
supplemented with poetry and (the emergence of) regional literature. With the recuperation,
speakers begin to reclaim full language status and reject denominations like dialect or patois.
As a consequence, a normative process ensues (typically and essentially as a result of the efforts
of individuals) resulting in the elaboration of a written standard variety and its increasing
introduction into all domains that had hitherto been reserved for the State Language.
Organisations are created by language activists and the demand for linguistic emancipation
adopts a regionalist or nationalist stance. The final state of this development is a regionally
official alternative standard language used in a situation of assymmetrical bilingualism with the
State Language.
3. Summary and conclusion
The general historical tendency in Western Europe to form nation-states with unified national
languages has either led to the stamping out of societal multilingualism or to its preservation in
the form of a Regional-Language-configuration. The ways in which language conflict specific
to this part of the continent has manifested itself – the repression and subsequent revitalisation
of its indigenous smaller languages – makes it the prototype of Western European societal
multilingualism. This Regional Language ‘momentum’ therefore constitutes a key element in
the continent’s linguistic and cultural history, confronting the majority State Language with an
array of Regional Languages to serve as alternatives and generally regarded by their speakers
as a focal point in constituting a linguistic nation alongside and alternative to their titular nation.

The languages belonging to this type can be arranged on a scale in accordance with their societal
vitality, ranging from semi-state alternative standard languages such as Catalan, Galician,
Basque or Welsh to residual and emblematic languages such as Breton and Irish. All of them
share the historical experience of being marginalised and consciously revitalised, yet the
varying degrees of success at revitalisation experienced in each language are the reasons behind
the huge differences that can be felt in the linguistic situations today. The languages in question
form a typical sociolinguistic kind of configuration, the prototype of which has been presented
in broad terms in this paper. The arguments expounded result in two desiderata for research:
 The WERLs in question here should be compared with one another increasingly by
relying on the similarities depicted in this Areal Type.
 More work should be carried out as to whether similar Areal Types can be found in
other cultures or societies and to what extent they can be used for research
concerning regional languages.
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Abstract: The article contemplates the possibility of a structured sociolinguistic comparison
between various language based regionalist movements in Europe. An integrated
terminological model for the categorization of various configurations of societal
multilingualism is proposed for this purpose. More concretely, we postulate a
configurational type of interaction between WESS (Western European State
Languages) on the one hand and WERL (Western European Regional Languages)
on the other. WERLs have the following characteristics: 1. They are autochthonous,
rather than languages of immigrant minorities. 2. They are strictly stateless, rather
than out-groups of neighbouring states. 3. They are spoken within the area of
influence of the Latin Church during the middle ages, where Latin was the lingua

franca of educated people. 4. They have developed a written Standard variety and a
certain degree of status planning for this variety.