Chapter 1
What are contested languages and why should linguists care?
The literature on regional and minority languages has seen strong developments in recent years, and
new frontiers have been opened on issues of minority language planning and development as well as on issues of
speakers’ rights. Nevertheless, there are many varieties that are left in a sort of “linguistic limbo” within both the
public and the academic domain. These are varieties that likely qualify as regional languages from an
Abstand perspective (Kloss 1967), but are typically
treated as “dialects” or “patois” by their respective governments, by many of their speakers and often by linguists,
who typically cite the low sociolinguistic status for their terminological choice. In this chapter we discuss the
characteristics of these “contested languages”, what underlies their “contestedness” and how they differ from the more
widely accepted regional and minority languages. Specifically, we discuss how the very notion of regional “language”
presupposes the notion “language” in opposition to that of regional “dialect”, though this supposed distinction is
hardly ever tackled in any depth by the mainstream literature on regional and minority languages. Furthermore, we
argue that the widespread, purely socio-political view of what qualifies as a “language” is untenable as well as
undesirable in a discipline that, like linguistics, is also concerned with the structural and communicative properties
of its subject matter as well as with objectivity and scientific inquiry. Throughout the chapter, we bring to the fore
the need for a discussion of the notion of “language” with a focus on regional varieties and reject the supposedly
sociolinguistic nature of the distinction between regional “languages” and regional “dialects”.
Article outline
- 1.What are contested languages?
- 2.
Ausbau-centrism
- 3.What is the contribution of this volume?
- 4.The conclusion of an introduction
-
Notes
-
References
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