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Article published In:
Revisiting Linguistic Territoriality in Contemporary Europe
Edited by Till Burckhardt, John Coakley and László Marácz
[Language Problems and Language Planning 45:2] 2021
► pp. 187–217

Linguistic territoriality in Switzerland

Exploring the roots of a constitutional principle

| Université de Genève

This article argues that the linguistic territoriality principle cannot be considered as a general guideline for the design of language policy but rather as a tool to find the right balance between linguistic freedom and linguistic peace under given circumstances. The article traces the origin and evolution of language policy principles during the drafting process of the new constitutional article in its three official language versions. The Swiss language regime is embedded in an institutional system of executive federalism in which mostly monolingual cantons and municipalities are in charge of implementing nearly all public policy. This significantly reduces the relevance of the inconsistency between a formally personalistic multilingual federal language regime and linguistic territoriality deriving from cantonal language regimes. The point of the new federal regulation is to provide room for manoeuvre for cantonal policymakers to adopt legislation based on linguistic territoriality. The relevant constitutional article recognises that territorial language policies can be implemented to ensure linguistic peace. At the same time, the personality principle may be adopted to protect autochthonous linguistic minorities.

Keywords: territoriality principle, personality principle, linguistic freedom, state traditions, Switzerland
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The roots of linguistic territoriality
  • 3.The Swiss national languages and their challenges
    • 3.1The survival of Romansh
    • 3.2The ambiguous status of Italian
    • 3.3The threatened equality of French
    • 3.4German or Swiss-German?
    • 3.5Non-territorial national minorities
  • 4.The (non-)recognition of the territoriality principle
    • 4.1Recognition of Romansh
    • 4.2Language communities or language regions?
    • 4.3Minority rights at national level
    • 4.4Territoriality
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lplp.00077.bur
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