Mehrsprachigkeit in Europa: Plurilinguismo in Europa ... - EURAC

Enrico Chessa
spreading throughout the community from the top of the social spectrum. That is, before the
dominant language generalizes among the entire population, it is fi rstly acquired (to be used
within specifi c domains) by the (political, economic) élite. When the new language becomes
to be spoken in interactions within members of the same minority group (and, most of all,
between parents and children), the process of shift is clearly on its way to reach the fi nal stage
(the minority language extinction). Unless, of course, something is done to reverse the language
shift process. (Aracil 1982: 115-16; Bastardas 1996: 115-23; Boix and Vila 1998: 188-92).
Whenever language shift, as described above, occurs and (part of) the community displays
frustration and ‘anger’ for the language loss, Language Planning (or following Catalan
sociolinguistic tradition, Language Normalization) applies. 2 This being the case, the task of
the language planner is to introduce (partially or totally) the use of the minority language
in those domains occupied by the dominant code. On the one side, merely linguistic aspects
(e.g., spelling) will be looked after (corpus planning), in order to provide the community with
norms to refer to, and the creation of a standard variety will be the fi nal result of it (Haugen
1959). On the other hand, the planner will create the social conditions for the new standard
variety to be used for offi cial purposes, in the press, within the educational system, etc. (status
planning). Sooner or later, if the conditions are right, the minority language will become again
the intergenerational language transmission (in its colloquial form) among the community
(Bastardas 1988: 187-92).
This schematic approach to shift though is to be considered as a mere general model of
reference for Language Planning. It can only work when applied to single, specifi c cases, if is
conceived in terms of: a careful analysis of the sociolinguistic situation and adequate strategies
to achieve the objectives set at the outset (Boix/Vila 1998: 271-339; Fishman 1991: 81-7). If
not, Language Planning can be (in some of its aspects) unsuccessful. This is particularly true
in those situations where the majority of the population do not possess a good command of
the autochthonous language. If this is the case, the reversing shift process becomes more
complex, and the language planner has to be particularly careful in elaborating strategies, for
the process to be successful (Bastardas 1988: 193-8).
1.2 Aim of the paper
Through the description of the peculiar sociolinguistic case of Alghero, a trilingual town (Italian,
Catalan, Sardinian) on the North-western coast of Sardinia, the aim of this paper is to illustrate
the dynamics at the root of the (possible) failure of Language Planning processes. Specifi cally, I
will be focusing on standardization, which is an essential step, within the whole macro-process
of planning, for the minority group to be able to dispose of a prestigious superdialectal variety
to be used (mostly in its written form) within formal offi cial domains. A standard variety will
also facilitate the intercommunication among the members of the same linguistic community
(the whole Catalan-speaking community, in our case) and it will be the variety taught at school.
2 The terms Language Planning and Normalization are treated here as synonyms. Language Planning, as described
by Haugen in 1959, mainly focuses on linguistic issues: corpus planning (preparation of a normative orthography,
grammar, and dictionaries). On the other hand, Normalization – term fi rst applied to language by Aracil in 1965 (see
Aracil 1982: 23-38) – is more related to the norms of language use and the social functions of the language. In their
later development and elaborations, though, (see Branchadell 1987 for Normalization; Haugen 1966a; 1966b; 1972;
1983; and Kloss 1969 for Language Planning) the terms have evolved towards a combined interaction of both aspects:
corpus and status planning as part of the same process.
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