Public Policy Perspectives on Language Policy Research Paper

The development of languages, especially in written form, has been closely interrelated with state formation. For example, Chinese ideographic writing, elaborated over 4,000 years ago into a system for ruling a vast empire that encompassed a wide variety of spoken tongues, contributed to the unique resiliency of China as a polity despite many upheavals and regime transformations and still serves as an instrument of communication between groups whose spoken languages are not mutually intelligible. By contrast, the European pattern, which was set when the Athenian and Roman empires elaborated the vernaculars of their respective territorial centers into onomatopoeic written languages, rendered these polities more vulnerable to disaggregation into territorial entities constituted around other vernaculars (Diamond 1999 pp. 215–38, 322–33). Vastly facilitated by the advent of printing in the late fifteenth century, linguistic unification within territories moved to the fore as Europe’s rival states sought to transform their populations into ‘nations’ sharing a distinctive identity (Anderson 1983, Gellner 1983). In both France and the United Kingdom, state expansion by way of the incorporation of peripheries or of adjoining foreign territories, the advent of mass armies, democratization, and industrialization, rendered linguistic unification ever more urgent (Nordman 1998, de Certeau et al. 1975, Weber 1976, Dillard 1985, Colley 1992). Both states imposed strikingly similar repressive language policies on their respective Celtic peripheries, and both also adopted analogous language policies in their colonies with regard to central administration and the education of indigenous elites.

By virtue of the hegemonic position the states of Western Europe achieved in the modern world system, linguistic unity came to be equated with modernity and emerged as a global norm that shaped policy among the states arising from European settlement in the Americas and Oceania, notably the United States, where the founders expressed concern over the persistence of German-speaking communities, as well as among the modernizing empires of the European periphery and, later on, the postcolonial states of Asia and Africa. But the fact that most of the latecomers had more heterogeneous linguistic configurations than Western Europe during the equivalent period of state formation rendered the pursuit of uniformity illusory. Paradoxically, Europe’s equation of state with nation also fostered a contradictory norm, whereby distinct linguistic groups were entitled to political autonomy. The tensions between these two norms, as well as the discrepancies between them and socio-linguistic realities, are at the root of the wide variety of language policies observable in the world at large today and of the contentions they evoke.

Although language has long been of concern to states because of its instrumental and symbolic functions, issues of language policy have recently achieved unprecedented prominence as a concomitant of the expansion of governmental activity and of citizen participation, as well as of the advent of postindustrial conditions that enhance the value of linguistic skills (Bell 1973). Among older self-acknowledged multilingual countries such as Belgium, Switzerland, and Canada, historical arrangements reflecting earlier power relationships between the groups have been called into question. This is true also of situations involving surviving indigenous minorities such as the Saami in Norway and Native Americans in Canada, the United States, or the Amazon basin. Concurrently, the decolonization of imperial possessions in Asia and Africa has resulted in the emergence of a large number of new states with heterogeneous and complex configurations involving both indigenous and imperial languages. Previously established arrangements have been called into question also among the new states of the post-Communist world. The quantitative growth and expanding scope of international migrations has produced additional diversity in both old and new states, while changing attitudes toward the incorporation of immigrants have broadened the range of policy responses, notably with regard to the education of immigrant children. Beyond the state level, entirely new language questions are being raised by the formation of international organizations engaged in governance, notably the European Union. Finally, policy makers throughout the world must deal with the implications of the ascent of English as the first global language.

A basic policy choice is whether or not to declare one or more languages ‘official.’ Among older states in which one language was clearly dominant, as in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Italy, Thailand, or the United States at the time of the founding, the default stance was silence, reflecting the fact that the language’s hegemonic status was taken for granted. In relation to this baseline, the specification of an official language expresses determination to maintain or reinstate the status quo in the face of changing practices or perceived challenges. In this vein, in the last two decades of the twentieth century, approximately half the states of the United States adopted laws or constitutional amendments declaring English their official language, and there were efforts to enact a constitutional amendment to that effect at the national level as well. In 1992 the French government also initiated a constitutional amendment establishing French as the national language. Among multilingual states, ‘officialization,’ which usually involves an invidious distinction between privileged languages and others, signifies the establishment of a language regime providing general rules for policy making.

Whether or not a regime has been formally established, language policy involves at the minimum a determination of the language(s) in which public services are provided, ranging from the posting of street signs to the educational system and law enforcement; of the linguistic qualifications of the appropriate officials and government employees; of the language(s) in which citizens can exercise their rights, notably voting, contacting representatives, or officials, or defending themselves against charges; and of the language(s) in which citizens are expected to exercise their obligations, such as military service, paying taxes, or maintaining business records subject to inspection. Language policy usually extends also to the specification of criteria for membership in the society, as expressed in linguistic requirements for naturalization and occasionally for immigration itself. Beyond this, the advent of the welfare state has drawn government deeply into the private sector, notably to monitor the appropriateness of language requirements for various types of employment and to insure the availability of consumer information, such as labels, to the several language communities. State intervention may extend to the regulation of language use in printed and electronic media, and even in private speech. The persecution of human beings merely for speaking their mother tongue is an extreme but unfortunately not uncommon manifestation of language policy.

In all types of states and at all levels of governance, language policy is often acutely controversial because almost any institutional arrangement entails an uneven distribution of costs to the individuals affected, considered as members of distinct language groups (Pool 1991, De Swaan 1991). The costs are both economic and psychological because language not only carries considerable weight as capital in the determination of socioeconomic status (Bourdieu 1979), but also is intimately linked to the formation of personal and collective identities. Overall, language institutions reflect prevailing class and majority-minority relations. The development of policy in this as in other spheres tends to be path-dependent. Established conceptualizations, power relationships, and institutional arrangements, set a course from which it is difficult to depart; consequently, there is likely to be a considerable discrepancy between political and social conditions at the time these institutions were established and the present. Understandably, challenges to the status quo tend to arise from efforts by the disadvantaged to lessen the costs they bear. Characteristically, the resulting confrontations take on the features of a constant-sum game, even if the proposed policies do not impose very great economic costs on the larger community, because those who hold the upper hand perceive the change as a decline of hegemony. The relatively modest costs imposed on the majority tend to be inflated, and the new arrangements magnified into a threat to the community’s integrity. The agenda of language policy arises in the first instance from a population’s actual socio-linguistic configuration, itself shaped by past policies. Relevant aspects include not only the number of languages and the size of the groups, but also their spatial distribution (territorially concentrated vs. dispersed); their sociopolitical power (languages that have achieved written form and are used in government, business, and science, vs. others); and whether the relevant groups are native or immigrant. Other significant elements of the sociolinguistic configuration include the language groups’ location in relation to the poles of political and economic development (center vs. periphery), as well as the relationship of language differentiation to the overall stratification system and other cultural signifiers, notably religion and physical appearance or ancestry (Laponce 1987, pp. 120–35).

Another weighty factor is linguistic culture, the set of behaviors and beliefs a speech community has about its own language and the others with which it comes into contact, whose explicitly political aspects may be termed linguistic ideology (Schiffman 1996, p. 5, Stevens 1999). The culture or ideology of the dominant group(s) naturally carries extensive weight in the determination of policy. Of special import in the contemporary period are the cognitive elements of linguistic culture, notably scientific discourse. For example, in the early twentieth century, British psychologists reported, on the basis of studies of Welsh children, that bilingualism interfered with the development of intelligence. Their findings supported the maintenance of an educational system that brutally suppressed Celtic speech on behalf of total immersion in English. The harmfulness of bilingualism was subsequently confirmed by American psychologists investigating Japanese children in California and immigrant European children in New York. This theory prevailed until the 1960s, when Canadian research, undertaken in the context of a reformist national administration more responsive to French-speakers’ grievances, not only exposed the studies on which it had been based as deeply flawed, but suggested instead that bilingualism produced beneficial effects (Hakuta 1986, pp. 14–27). The new theory was then quickly invoked by Hispanic advocates of bilingual education in the emerging US debate on the subject. Of special relevance in the Third World is the ambiguous cultural loading of the colonial language in postcolonial countries: on the one hand it is resented as a language of subjection, but on the other admired as a language of prestige, which is also instrumental for accessing the world at large. The resulting am-bivalence is often manifested in the educational sphere. For example, Algeria has undertaken to replace French with Arabic in its elementary schools—without concessions to the country’s large Berber-speaking minority—but is maintaining French as the language of instruction at higher levels.

Language policy varies also as a function of the general political regime. The historical expansion of political participation to encompass the more modest strata of the population imparted to language minorities greater weight in the political arena, fostering demands to lower what they perceived as an unduly large share of language costs by providing public services in additional languages as well as reducing or eliminating linguistic obstacles to upward mobility by way of education. Similar challenges tend to arise among hitherto authoritarian countries in the course of democratization. Another important regime variable is its degree of centralization. By virtue of the prevailing normative equation ‘language nation,’ where linguistic minorities are territorially concentrated, demands for greater linguistic equity tend to engender, sooner or later, aspirations to greater political autonomy, which are much easier to fulfill within a federalist framework (Switzerland, Canada) than a unitary one (e.g., pre-1970 Belgium). Indeed, democratization tends to propel hitherto centralized multilingual societies with spatially concentrated groups toward federalism (Belgium, post-Franco Spain). Devolution of authority to the regional level with concomitant control over linguistic policy generally satisfies demands for autonomy (Fishman 1986), but separatist aspirations may persist (e.g., Quebec), and occasionally result in the breakup of existing states (Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia).

The combined effect of these factors in determining policy variation can be highlighted by way of cases illustrating characteristic situations encountered in the world today.

1. One-Language Dominant ‘First World’ Democracies

1.1 United States

Despite the absence of a formal national policy, English reigned unchallenged at the federal level from the founding onward and was imposed as a matter of course on non-English-speaking dependencies such as Indian reservations, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico (Fishman 1986). However, in the course of the nineteenth century states and local bodies often diverged from this norm in response to local conditions: Spanish was recognized in New Mexico’s constitution; numerous school boards provided a modicum of bilingual public education to their immigrant communities; the use of foreign languages in the press and private education was unquestioned; language requirements for naturalization were minimal, if they existed at all; and foreign language ballots occasionally appeared as well. German was particularly widespread among public institutions through-

out the Midwest. However, hostility to the ‘new immigration’ from eastern and southern Europe of the late nineteenth century triggered demands to restrict admissions and to Americanize newcomers forcefully. The movement achieved considerable success in the wake of World War I, when German was in effect eradicated from the public sphere, including education. However, its triumph was limited by the Meyer v. Nebraska decision (1924), in which the US Supreme Court ruled on due process grounds that states did not have the authority to prevent the teaching of foreign languages (Wexler 1996, p. 346). Nevertheless, as noted earlier, the educational community overwhelmingly supported monolingualism on pedagogic grounds. Notwithstanding acceptance of cultural pluralism in other spheres, an English-only regime prevailed throughout the country for the next half century, except for the recognition of Spanish as the language of Puerto Rico in the New Deal era.

Policy changes, amounting to the elaboration of a mildly multilingual regime, were brought about by distinct developments in the post-World War II era: the civil rights movement; the massive importation of Mexican workers under the ‘Bracero’ program (1942– 65); the enactment of a less restrictive immigration law in 1965; and the adoption of a generous policy toward refugees from the Communist world. The turning point was the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, introduced on behalf of Spanish-speaking pupils in the Southwest, which added a Title VII to the first large-scale federal program in support of local schools enacted three years earlier. This provided a small demonstration program that was vastly expanded following the Lau . Nichols decision (1974), in which the US Supreme Court held the Civil Rights Act to mean that the failure to provide instruction in a language students can understand constitutes unlawful discrimination (Foster 1982, p. 293). Advocates of bilingual education seized upon the case to press for the expansion of their programs, and a task force subsequently convened by the US Office of Education to prescribe ‘Lau Remedies’ placed bilingual education in a preferred position (Leibowitz 1971, 1982, Schmidt 2000, p. 13). In the wake of these actions, as well as the continued flow of federal funding, bilingual education programs proliferated in a variety of forms, mostly designed to facilitate transition to English instruction, but with a minority dedicated to the maintenance of non-English mother tongues. Additional federal programs were launched in the 1990s to overcome the deficiencies of earlier ones.

Concurrently, a lobbying campaign initiated by the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) to obtain coverage for language minorities under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 led to the addition in 1975 of Titles II and III, requiring that registration forms, ballots, and other election materials be provided in a language other than English if more than five percent of the voters in a given district spoke the same non-English language, and if the district’s English illiteracy rate surpassed the national average. Applicable to American Indians, Asian Americans, Alaskan Natives, and citizens of Spanish heritage, the legislation covered 384 counties. Titles II and III were reauthorized in 1992 in strengthened form. Parallel developments occurred with regard to the language rights of defendants, as well as of employees in both the public and private sectors. In a dramatic reversal of past policy, in 1990 the Congress adopted the Native American Languages Act, which committed the United States to preserve and enhance its indigenous languages. The development of foreign language media, especially Spanish, in response to market opportunities has also contributed to the institutionalization of a more multilingual configuration.

Contrary to contentions that the new policies reduce incentives to learn English, research indicates that recent newcomers rapidly learn English and that, as with past waves, use of the country of origin’s language declines sharply in the second generation and almost disappears in the third (Stevens 1994, Espenshade & Fu 1997, Portes and Hao 1998). The steady shift to English is somewhat hidden from view because the number of American residents who used a language other than English at home rose by virtue of continuing immigration from 23 million in 1980 to nearly 32 million in 1990, with Spanish accounting for slightly over half of the total.

Not surprisingly, the dawning regime change provoked widespread opposition, often invoking the specter of conflict ridden multilingual countries (Petrovic 1997), and triggered moves to counteract the trend by officializing English at the state and national levels, as well as eliminating bilingual education. Hostility was especially high in California, which enacted several referenda to that effect, including Proposition 227 (1998) eliminating nearly all bilingual education; Arizona followed suit two years later. As against this, the rapid transformation of immigrants into electoral clienteles fostered support for the new regime. On balance, multilingualism of services is likely to persist, so long as substantial replenishment of foreign-language speakers by way of new immigration continues; however, the future of bilingual education is less certain. As of 1997, the United States had approximately 3.5 million students with limited English proficiency (LEP), a 57 percent increase since the beginning of the decade; but they had higher rates of repetition and dropped out of school four times more frequently than their English-fluent peers (United States General Accounting Office 1999). Research findings regarding the effectiveness of various approaches to the education of LEP children, including the effects of the elimination of bilingual education in California in favor of ‘immersion,’ were indecisive; but run of the mill transitional programs, many of which lacked qualified staff, were widely criticized for their ineffectiveness and possible perverse effects, notably fostering within-school segregation of newcomers.

1.2 France

Markedly different from American concerns, the issues driving French language policy focus on the changing role of regional languages such as Breton, Alsatian, Occitan, Basque, and Corsican; the protection of the national hegemony of French against the intrusion of English; and the promotion of the national language abroad as an instrument for enhancing France’s international standing. Nevertheless, overall movement has also been toward a softening of the traditional strict monolingual regime.

Notwithstanding the Jacobin centralist tradition, successive republics have also cultivated the image of a nation consisting of ‘small fatherlands’ and embraced a domesticated version of regionalism in the form of folklore, often expressed in the regional languages. The Loi Deixonne (1951) provided for the limited teaching of these languages as optional subjects in public secondary schools. The identity quests of the 1970s fostered demands for the expansion of such programs. Endorsed by a new leadership generation within the Socialist Party, they were translated into policy when it gained power in the 1980s and again in the 1990s. As of 1997, about three percent of preuniversity students in both public and private education were enrolled in regional language classes (Le Monde 1999, p. 12). However, in reaction to this, in 1992 a Gaullist government enacted a constitutional amendment declaring French the national language and invoked the amendment four years later as grounds for refusing to sign the European Charter of Minority Languages, on the grounds that this would undermine the hegemony of French (Wexler 1996). Language policy was made into an electoral issue the following year, when Socialist leader Lionel Jospin expressed support for linguistic and cultural pluralism. After his victory, France signed the Charter, albeit with some reservations. The Socialist government also granted an unprecedented degree of autonomy to Corsica and announced a plan to offer bilingual education to the island’s population.

Initiated on a personal basis by Charles de Gaulle after he returned to power in 1958, the promotion of special ties with French speakers abroad constitutes a counterthrust to the ascent of English as a world language, itself denounced early on by de Gaulle and prominent literary intellectuals. The francophone policy, which encompasses France’s former colonies, Belgium, Switzerland, and overseas communities of French descent, notably in Canada and the United States (Louisiana, New England), was endowed with a permanent administrative apparatus in 1966, entrusted to a distinct Secretariat of State in 1986, and elevated to cabinet level in 1993 as one of the responsibilities of the Minister of Culture. Protection of French within France was institutionalized in 1975 by way of a law requiring its use throughout the public and private sectors, including contracts, marketing, and advertising. However, the measure proved difficult to enforce, and the courts insisted on a narrow interpretation of its authority. The Loi Toubon, enacted by a Gaullist government in 1994, further imposed the use of French by private citizens in all aspects of public discourse (Wexler 1996, p. 311). But although these actions have evoked considerable attention in France and abroad, English has continued to gain ground in many spheres of society, notably within the scientific and financial communities and at the level of popular culture.

The fact that France is as much of an immigration country as the United States, with a similar proportion of foreign-born residents, has had little or no impact with regard to language in the public sphere. Albeit attributable in part to the fact that a majority of the immigrants originate in the Maghreb, where French is widespread both as a language of instruction and as a lingua franca, the absence of change largely reflects the lasting power of France’s assimilationist stance. No provisions have been made for public services in languages other than French, except to a limited extent with regard to court translators for the benefit of the accused. Bilingual education, even of a transitional sort, does not exist; the only concession made to immigrant communities at the elementary level is to allow the teaching of ‘languages and cultures of origin’ as an elective subject outside of regular school hours. In 1989–90, attendance ranged from 13 percent for children of Algerian origin to 35 percent for Turks (Tribalat et al. 1996, pp. 188–213).

2. Multilingual ‘First World’ Democracies With Large Spatially Concentrated Groups

2.1 Belgium

Issued from the vagaries of Europe’s dynastic tribulations and united by the Roman Catholic religion, the kingdom of Belgium straddles the long-established boundary zone between Germanic and Romance languages. Around the time of the state’s founding in 1830, approximately 60 percent of Belgians, concentrated in the north, spoke varieties of Flemish, closely related to Dutch; and another 30 percent, concentrated in the south, used mostly varieties of Walloon, a group of Romance speeches with more Germanic root words than standard French. However, following the introduction of French as a language of state by their Austrian Habsburg rulers in the eighteenth century and the subsequent annexation of the Belgian provinces by revolutionary France, the traditional elites of both regions, amounting to perhaps 10 percent of the population altogether, had by then mostly adopted French as their usual language. It is therefore hardly surprising that they unhesitatingly imposed French as the country’s sole official language. French exclusively was used in government as well as secondary and higher education, limiting Flemish to local administration and terminal elementary education in the north, and relegating Walloon to the margin. The capital city, situated within the Flemish region, functioned as a French-speaking transmission center. The resulting linguistic inequality was compounded by uneven economic development, centering on the Walloon coalmining region. Hence until well into the twentieth century, Flemings striving for upward mobility had no choice but to learn French, and in time many of them abandoned their ancestral language altogether (Zolberg 1974).

Demands for change arose in the second half of the nineteenth century from the ranks of the Flemish region’s expanding middle class, severely disadvantaged by the burden of having to function in French rather than in their mother tongue. Initially demanding recognition of Flanders itself as a bilingual region, they subsequently shifted to the establishment of official bilingualism at the national level. This was formally achieved in 1897. Nevertheless, Flemish retained in effect second-class status; most notably, university education continued to be conducted exclusively in French, and French remained the language of command in the army. In the early decades of the twentieth century, the more radical wing of the Flemish movement took on a nationalist cast, demanding the establishment of a federal system; a few even advocated secession, possibly followed by reunion with the Netherlands. However, Flemish nationalism was tarnished by its association with German occupation in the two world wars. In the mid- 1930s, a language settlement was achieved whereby the country was divided into two monolingual regions, with a bilingual capital district and national administration; as part of this, the state university at Ghent was converted into a Flemish-language institution. However, language conflict returned to the fore in the post-World War II period, and Flemish power increased as the economic standing of the regions was reversed. After a lengthy period of perennial low-level conflict, in the 1970s Belgium finally transformed itself into a complex federal system, with a language regime founded on ‘dual monolingualism’ rather than bilingualism. The country was divided into two regions and Brussels with regard to economic decision making, as well as into linguistic cultural communities (Flemish, French, and a small German one) with regard to educational and cultural policy. Parity prevailed at the center, with a mandatory equal number of cabinet posts allocated to each of the two major communities and parallel administrative services in the two languages (Zolberg 1976, Witte and Craeybeckx 1987, pp. 423–518).

2.2 Canada

Paralleling the status of Flemish in Belgium, Quebec French was long associated with backwardness in the eyes of Canadian officials and English-speaking businessmen, as well as their US neighbors, despite the near identity of its written form with standard French. Paradoxically, however, the conquered French Canadians fared better under Protestant British imperial authorities than the Flemings at the hands of their own countrymen. As part of the post-conquest settlement, in an attempt to secure French Canadian loyalties in the impending conflict with the unruly American colonies, the British granted the Roman Catholic Church and the Province of Quebec a considerable degree of autonomy. This enabled French Canadians to create from the very outset institutions of secondary and higher education that fostered the formation of a French-speaking professional middle class. Although many educated Quebecois learned English, outright language shift occurred only among those who left the province. After a period of repressive direct rule imposed in the wake of proto-nationalist agitation, the creation of the Canadian Confederation in 1867 accorded Quebec along with the other provinces a degree of self-government long unthinkable in centralized Belgium (Latouche and Poliquin–Bourassa 1977). Consequently, around the turn of the twentieth century French Canada possessed many more of the elements of a distinct society than did Belgian Flanders. Nevertheless, in the 1960s, lingering insecurity concerning the survival of Quebec’s distinctive culture within the Anglophonic North American environment stimulated a movement for outright independence, which experienced electoral ups and downs in the last three decades of the twentieth century. This prompted in turn reforms to implement full linguistic and cultural parity at the federal level, as well as perennial negotiations to provide Quebec with yet greater autonomy within the Canadian framework (Burnaby and Ricento 1998).

3. Postcolonial Multilingual Countries

The array of former colonial countries in Asia and Africa that achieved independence in the second half of the twentieth century display a policy pattern that has been formulated in game-theoretical terms as a ‘3+ /-1 language outcome’ (Laitin 1992, 1993). The basic model is drawn from India. Britain’s adoption of Urdu as the official language of colonial administration for the South Asian subcontinent in the early nineteenth century fostered a movement among Hindispeaking provinces on behalf of parity for their own language. The resulting alignment prefigured the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. However, within the Hindi-speaking zone, other languages such as Tamil emerged concurrently as rallying points for distinct regional nationalities. From the 1920s onward, the Indian National Congress adopted Hindi as the language of national business, but allowed its provincial committees to use regional languages at their own level. The arrangement anticipated India’s postindependence policy; but because of widespread English bilingualism within the bureaucracy, English was maintained also as a ‘temporary’ accommodation. However, the growth of regionalism after 1947 challenged the status of Hindi as India’s national language and concomitantly fostered support on behalf of English as a ‘neutral’ alternative. Hence, although the 1950 constitution provided for switching to Hindi as the exclusive national language after 15 years, opposition rendered this politically impossible and the status quo was maintained indefinitely (Dua 1993). The outcome was thus Hindi-English bilingualism at the national level, plus the appropriate Indian vernacular at the regional level (i.e., a total of three languages); but where Hindi was the vernacular, the outcome was 3-1, whereas for minorities whose mother tongue differs from the official regional language, the repertoire extends to 3+1 (Laitin 1992, p. 45).

Similar policies prevail among the postcolonial states of sub-Saharan Africa as well, notably in Nigeria, which has a federal structure similar to India’s, as well as in Congo, to the extent that any policy may be said to exist, Senegal, and Ghana. Ivory Coast might have followed the ‘3 1’ pattern as well, thanks to the widespread use of Dyula as a lingua franca; however, in the first four decades of independence the country’s leadership insisted on maintaining French exclusively as part of a general policy of close association with the former colonial power, and their choice was reinforced by the association of Dyula with a widely resented trading minority, constructed as ‘foreign.’ Where there is no obvious vernacular, lingua franca, or pidgin that could serve to symbolize national values, remain politically neutral, and be widely understood, the European colonial language tends to remain the interregional link language, while vernaculars tend to prevail regionally, thus resulting in a two-language outcome. Examples include Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, and possibly South Africa, with Afrikaans figuring as a ‘regional’ or ‘group’ language. A major exception is Tanzania, which thanks to the prevalence of Swahili as a lingua franca for most and as a vernacular for many has been able to pursue a traditional European-type monolingual policy; as against this, neighboring Kenya is leaning toward Swahili-English bilingualism (Laitin 1992, pp. 119, 132, 141, Mazrui and Mazrui 1993, Sure 1999).

4. Language Policy At The International Level

Despite the absence of comprehensive authority at the international or global level, the imperatives of communication have fostered voluntary arrangements regarding language and within international organizations such arrangements have achieved more formal status. French emerged as the international diplomatic language at the time of that country’s European hegemony in the late seventeenth century; but English gained ground after the Napoleonic Wars in keeping with Britain’s leading role within the Concert of Europe, and its standing was reinforced by the emergence of the United States as a major international actor in the twentieth century. Accordingly, the League of Nations used French and English as its official languages; however, reflecting the waning of European hegemony and aspirations to globalize the international community, the United Nations subsequently added Spanish, Russian, and Chinese (Wexler 1996, pp. 305–6).

Arrangements involving a greater exercise of authority amounting to ‘international language policy’ have been evolving since the launching of the European Economic Community in 1957. The original Treaty of Rome limited itself to declaring that language matters regarding the organs of the Community shall be resolved unanimously by the Council, which declared in 1958 that the official languages of the six original members would serve as its ‘official’ as well as ‘working’ languages. This served as a guiding principle for the organization’s subsequent development. With the accession of Finland and Sweden, the number of official languages reached 11, but the combinations to be covered by the translation and interpreting services reached 110, and the likelihood of a substantial number of additional East European members affords the prospect of another quantum jump in complexity and cost. However, for purposes of internal communications, de facto pragmatic arrangements prevail: Irish and Luxemburgian have official status but do not serve as working languages, whereas Catalan—with more speakers than Danish—is recognized symbolically, but not officially. In practice, Eurocrats operate largely in French, German, and English, with the latter steadily moving to the fore (De Swaan 1993b, Kraus 2000, Wright 1999).

The emergence of English as a lingua franca is a worldwide and unprecedented development, fostered by globalization. However, the latter process is also promoting certain regional languages to international status, notably Spanish, so that the hegemony of English may be limited. The wave of the future may well be widespread multilingualism, where each language is assigned its own distinctive societal function; and this will probably be facilitated by the concomitant development of electronic translation programs. A likely pattern in practice and in policy will be ‘2+/- 1,’ with an increasing incidence of individual-level bilingualism involving a national language and one of a small number of world languages (English and Spanish, as well as possibly Arabic and Chinese). Whereas speakers of regional languages will use 2+1, those whose national language ranks also as a world language will have little incentive to learn another, and hence are likely to remain monolingual (2-1). Although these trends have stimulated the development of nongovernmental organizations urging the enactment of national and international policies dedicated to the preservation of ‘threatened’ minority languages, it is unlikely that they will succeed in arresting their decline (Fishman 1998–9, Laitin 1993, De Swaan 1998).

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