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. 218–238

Personality and territoriality in theory and in Belgium

| KU Leuven
Language policy debates regularly refer to the principles of personality and territoriality. Yet the precise meaning of these principles remains unclear. In this contribution, I conceptualize these principles as poles of a continuum between official bilingualism (instantiating the personality principle) and official unilingualism (exemplifying the territoriality principle), with a mixed regime in between (which grants a certain territorial primacy to a language, but allows exceptions based on linguistic affiliation). The question of the determination of particular points on the continuum cannot be separated from the metaterritorial question of the boundaries of the units within which those principles apply. Application of this ‘continuum model’ to Belgium draws attention to three language-political regimes. The first invokes a strict personality principle (Brussels). The second follows the strict territoriality principle (almost all municipalities in Flanders and Wallonia). The third is a mixed regime (a total of 27 ‘municipalities with facilities’ where one language enjoys primacy but speakers of another language enjoy certain linguistic ‘facilities’). The article also analyses the manner in which these regimes were historically established in Belgium in combination with a delineation of the language border and the division of the country into four language areas.
Keywords: linguistic justice, language policy, territoriality principle, Brussels, Belgium
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 24 November 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/lplp.00078.sch

Full-text

Personality and territoriality in theory and in Belgium
References

References

Barry, B.
(2001) Culture and equality. An egalitarian critique of multiculturalism. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Burckhardt, T., Coakley, J. and Maracz, L.
(2021)  Inguistic territoriality under stress: European perspectives, Language Problems and Language Planning 45 (3), 121–142. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
De Schutter, H.
(2001) Taalpolitiek en multiculturalisme in het Brussels Nederlandstalige onderwijs. In: E. Witte & A. Mares (Eds.), Brusselse Thema’s 6. Twintig jaar onderzoek over Brussel (pp. 155–167).Google Scholar
(2017) Two principles of equal language recognition. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 20 (1), 75–87. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Grin, F.
(2011) Using territoriality to support genuine linguistic diversity, not to get rid of it. In: P. De Grauwe and P. Van Parijs (Eds.), The linguistic territoriality principle: Right violation or parity of esteem? Re-Bel E-book 11 (pp. 28–33). Brussels: University Foundation.Google Scholar
Janssens, R.
(2018) The impact of mobility and migration on the identity-constructing policy in Brussels. In P. A. Kraus and F. Grin, The politics of multilingualism. Europeanisation, globalisation and linguistic governance (pp. 65–88). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kymlicka, W.
(2001) Politics in the vernacular. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Laponce, J. A.
(1987) More about languages and their territories: A reply to Pattanayak and Bayer. Political Geography Quarterly, 6 (3), 265–267. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
McRae, K.
(1975) The principle of territoriality and the principle of personality in multilingual states. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 4, 33–54.Google Scholar
(2007) Toward language equality: Four democracies compared. International Journal for the Sociology of Language, 187/188, 13–34. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Patten, A.
(2003) What kind of bilingualism?, in W. Kymlicka and A. Patten (Eds.), Language rights and political theory (pp. 296–321). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
(2014) Equal recognition: The moral foundations of minority rights. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Raskin, B.
(2012) De taalgrens: of wat de Belgen zowel verbindt als verdeelt. Leuven: Davidsfonds.Google Scholar
Réaume, D.
(2003) Beyond personality: The territorial and personal principles of language policy reconsidered. In W. Kymlicka & A. Patten (Eds.), Language rights and political theory (pp. 271–295). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Renner, K.
(2005 [1899]) State and nation. In E. Nimni (Ed.), National cultural autonomy and its contemporary critics (pp. 15–48). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
van der Jeught, S.
(2017) Territoriality and freedom of language: The case of Belgium, Current Issues in Language Planning, 18 (2), 181–198. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Van Parijs, Ph.
(2004) Europe’s linguistic challenge. European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie / Europäisches Archiv für Soziologie, 45 (1), 113–154. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2011) Linguistic justice for Europe and for the world. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Witte, E. and Van Velthoven, H.
(1998) Taal en politiek. De Belgische casus in een historisch perspectief. Brussel: Balans/VUBPRESS.Google Scholar