why linguistic territorialism in the uk does not justify differential minority language rights
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Why linguistic territorialism in the UKdoes not justify differential minoritylanguage rightsShaun Gates aa Doshisha Women's College of Liberal Arts , Kyoto, JapanPublished online: 26 Apr 2010.
To cite this article: Shaun Gates (2010) Why linguistic territorialism in the UK doesnot justify differential minority language rights, Ethics and Education, 5:1, 3-13, DOI:10.1080/17449641003590530
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Ethics and EducationVol. 5, No. 1, March 2010, 3–13
Why linguistic territorialism in the UK does not justify differential
minority language rights
Shaun Gates*
Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts, Kyoto, Japan
Despite the declarations of international documents on minority languagerights, provision is patchy for supporting minority languages in the UK,where since the 1980s governments have deliberately or unwittingly greatlyraised the profile and comparative standing of English. The partialexception to this trend has been the treatment of indigenous/regionalminority languages, stimulated by policies of devolution intended to reviveor create a sense of national identity, and to redress perceived historiclinguistic injustices. In a multicultural state or region these apparentlyreasonable goals appear to conflict with current views of citizenship thatargue for inclusiveness and equal treatment for all under the law.In particular, the question arises why indigenous minority languagesshould receive official support and funding that is denied to speakers ofminority ethnic languages. In this article, I examine various justificationsoffered for this, including higher population levels, the geographicalconcentration of indigenous speakers, the long historical ties betweenregional language and culture, and the notion of promotional rights.I attempt to show each argument lacks force and ignores the fact of naturallanguage change. I argue for an approach to indigenous languages thatweights support and funding according to a range of factors including thenumber of minority speakers, their perceived need and the benefits thatwould flow from funding. Support from the local community and privatesources could also be encouraged.
Keywords: civil liberties; language education; citizenship
In an era marked by rapid globalization and increasing interdependence amongsocieties, the question arises whether democratic education should cultivate cosmopo-litan or patriotic sensibilities among students. (Gutmann 2003, 500)
Introduction
In the summer of 2006, a heated debate broke out among residents in the small townof Sleat in North-West Scotland over whether their state primary school shouldbecome a Gaelic-only school (BBC 2006). For Gaelic speakers and their supporters
*Email: [email protected]
ISSN 1744–9642 print/ISSN 1744–9650 online
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DOI: 10.1080/17449641003590530
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in Sleat and further afield, the issue was one of maintaining and promotingan indigenous minority language, and arguably also one of obtaining linguistic
justice. Their opponents, particularly parents who wanted their children to beeducated in English, argued that the establishment of such a school would be divisivein such a small community. Perhaps not immediately obvious to those closely
involved in the debate is an issue that has consequences for states like the UK thatare home to both indigenous and ethnic minority languages. In such multiculturalsocieties can it be fair that indigenous languages are given government support such
as educational funding while other minority languages are denied it?1
Citizenship and language rights
In modern democracies, citizenship entails an equal distribution of rights andduties across a broad swathe of society. The Greek polis conferred citizenship onfreeborn men but denied it to women and slaves. A ‘metic’ � a long-term foreign
resident � might be granted certain rights but could never obtain full citizenshipsince this depended on having both parents who were Greek. In contrast, the trend inmodern democratic states has been to make citizenship as inclusive as possible.
We can see a clear example in the current campaign in the UK to give prisoners theright to vote, one of the arguments for this being that it would encourage offendersto become law-abiding citizens. Similarly, with the exception of right-wing
ideologues, few think it odd for naturalised immigrants in the UK to receive fullcitizenship rights.
British citizenship would seem to offer much if one accepts Marshall’s analysis(1963). In his view, citizenship consisted of a set of rights that had evolved over
several centuries. The first to emerge were civil rights including freedom of speechand equality before the law; they were followed by political rights such as the rightto vote and hold public office; and in the twentieth century by social rights, including
a right to a minimum level of income, health and education. Socio-economic rightssubsume the idea of ‘positive liberty’ governments are expected to provide aminimum level of health care and education so that individuals achieve their full
potential. Classical liberals dispute the existence of such socio-economic rights,arguing that they lead to a weakening of more traditional rights such as propertyownership. Securing language rights also falls within the socio-economic dimension
of citizenship but this too has been controversial, for while legal and politicalrights are typically seen as inhering in the individual, minority language rightsusually pertain to a group of speakers. Before discussing the implications of this
point, it is helpful to briefly survey the educational status of minority languageswithin the UK.
Several international documents support minority language rights. For example,in Article 5 of the Resolution on the languages and cultures of regional ethnicminorities in the European Community (1985). The European Parliament
recommends to member states that: ‘they carry out educational measures including:arranging for pre-school to university education and continuing education to beofficially conducted [in minority languages] on an equal footing with instruction in
the national languages’.
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Similarly, Article 4(3) of the UN Declaration on the rights of persons belongingto National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (1992) says:
States should take appropriate measures so that, wherever possible, persons belongingto minorities have adequate opportunities to learn their mother tongue or haveinstruction in their mother tongue.
These documents, however, paint something of a rosy picture. After a detailedexamination of the linguistic rights upheld in international documents, Skutnabb-Kangas concludes they are often so hedged by qualification that minority educationis often at the whim of the state (2000, 527–42). And states can simply turn awayfrom declarations they dislike, as the Conservative government did in 1992 when itrefused to sponsor the UN Declaration referred to above.
The relationship between English and minority languages in the UK
Far from promoting minority languages in the last two decades, British governmentsof different political hues have pursued policies that have strengthened English at theexpense of both minority and foreign languages. The 1988 Educational Reform Act(ERA) implemented by the Conservative government created a National Curriculumthat placed the control of educational content firmly in the hands of the state.This government also established a ‘nationalist’ language policy that greatlyprivileged English with respect to other languages. While the nature and scope ofcitizenship education has evolved since the ERA was enacted, current languagepolicy still bears the stamp of Conservative ideology. Brumfit identifies three specificlanguage policies of the post-1997 Labour Government which suggests that, likeprevious Conservative governments, it sees the UK as a country of monolingualspeakers (2002, 113): first, general language development takes place throughEnglish; second, multilingualism is territorially based; and third, all other languagework comprises foreign language learning for beginners.
Even before the ERA was enacted, the evidence shows English was in aposition of strength with respect to minority languages. First, since the 1960s,politicians had seen English language teaching as a way of assisting assimilation:Section 11 of the Local Government Act 1966 provided funds for large-scaleESL teaching in schools and reception areas (Grosvenor 1997, 52). Second,parents from minority language groups had long been aware of how important itwas for their children to learn English, even if they also wanted them to retaintheir first language (Gaine and George 1999, 49). Finally, although multi-culturalism had become established policy in ‘progressive’ LEAs by the mid-1980s, the teaching of community languages like Urdu, Punjabi and Gujarati stillfared poorly compared to languages like French and German (Molteno andRussell 1988). The Swann Report (1985) had shown some understanding of theindividual and social need for community languages, but argued it would bedivisive if they were taught in secondary schools. This conveniently ignored thesituation in Wales where bilingual provision was the norm (Brumfit 1995), apoint I return to later.
The establishment of the National Curriculum diminished the standing ofcommunity languages further and also altered the balance between foreign languages
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and English in the latter’s favour. The National Curriculum gave European Union
(EU) languages priority over community languages in that only the former
were listed as foundation subjects. This meant a school had to offer EU languages
before it could offer community ones. Given the pressure to meet performance
targets, opportunities for learning community languages suffered. This seemed short-
sighted in the light of Swann’s recommendation (1985) that minority speakers be
allowed to take public examinations in their first language. The standing of minority
languages has remained low under Labour governments. Gravelle found
official documents from the QCA and the DfEE used the term English as an
Additional Language when referring to minority pupils, rarely mentioning minority
languages (2000, 22). In 1990, the National Curriculum required all children at
state secondary schools to study five core subjects, which included English and a
modern foreign language. The Dearing Report (1993) slimmed down the curriculum,
but kept English as a core subject. Labour whittled away the National Curriculum
further (Baker 2002), and while English remains a compulsory subject the stock
of modern languages has plummeted (Swarbrick 2002, 11). When the Labour
government announced that a modern foreign language would no longer be
a compulsory subject in the secondary curriculum from 2004, the result was
a precipitate decline in the number of secondary school students taking modern
languages.In contrast, the position of indigenous minority languages has not been so bleak,
though it may not always appear that way to speakers of these languages. As a
consequence of devolution, the Welsh assembly and Scottish parliament have greater
power to enact language legislation within their respective regions without oversight
from Westminster. In Wales, the trend was initiated by the Welsh Language Acts of
1967 and 1993 but reinforced by Devolution for Wales (1997). The Scottish
parliament elected in 1999 signalled its intention to support Gaelic through ongoing
legislation, stating that Gaelic language and culture are key elements of Scottish
culture and national identity. Linguistic territorialism is the idea that underlies such
legislation. It allows regions to set their own language policies thus providing them
with the legitimacy to protect and nurture an indigenous language and its
associated culture. In practice, this can mean the language is mandated for use in
local institutions, particularly public (i.e. state-funded) schools and government
organisations.Consequently, a situation now obtains whereby minority language groups in
the UK are treated differently depending on whether their members speak an
indigenous language or a community language. As this has led to the selective
public funding of education within the regions, the question arises whether this is a
fair state of affairs in a multicultural, multilingual society. An initial response to this
question might be that if immigrants freely choose to migrate to a country then they
must accept, among other things, the language and educational policies that are
already in place. But if immigrants become naturalised citizens, why should
they and their children not receive the sort of first language support that is offered
to speakers of indigenous minority languages? The arguments for favouring
one minority language over another appear wanting.
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Why arguments for favouring indigenous languages lack force
One argument for policies that selectively favour indigenous languages derives fromthe notion of linguistic justice. Such policies are argued for as a way of achievingremedial or corrective justice for wrongs committed against previous generations ofregional speakers. Black (1996, 100) says the Preamble to the Act of Union (1536)states public offices in Wales were to be open only to English speakers. The 1872Education Act stipulated that instruction in British schools was only to be carriedout in English, a situation which continued officially in Wales until the passing of theWelsh Language Act (1967). In living memory, Welsh children who spoke Welsh inschool were punished. Gaelic speakers too were greatly marginalised in the wake ofgovernment suppression of the clans following the 1745 Jacobite rebellion and thesubsequent Highland clearances. Thus in establishing Welsh-medium or Gaelic-medium schools, regional governments would say they are merely redressing thebalance that in the past favoured the majority language, English. While at first sightthis seems reasonable, it ignores natural language change and, more importantly,appears to argue for a narrow view of linguistic justice.
A fairer way to approach this issue might be to adopt Kymlicka’s view oflanguage rights, which in turn is based on a Rawlsian theory of justice (Joseph 2006,56–7). This assumes from the start that the desire to use one’s first language is aprimary good that all citizens of a state would rationally want in order to fulfil theirvarious ends. Rawls himself defines self-respect as primary good so it does not seemunreasonable to extend coverage of that term to include the opportunity to use one’sfirst language. According to Joseph (2006, 56), Kymlicka’s reasoning leads to theview that ‘the most just solution would be equal language rights for all groups withina nation state, in every sphere’. Since ‘every sphere’ includes education, the resultappears to favour the demands of Gaelic speakers for Gaelic-only schools. Yet,logically this conclusion would also uphold the rights of other minorities to havetheir children educated in their languages, so Urdu-speaking parents, for example,could demand that their children are educated in Urdu. This does not seem a realisticgoal in multilingual states like the UK where minority languages can run into thehundreds.
Weinstock (2003) raises some important further objections to the idea thatthe state should intervene significantly to achieve some degree of linguistic justice.One of his criticisms is that it may ignore the natural process of language change.Overt policy is not the only reason why some indigenous languages can fall intodecline, and indeed it may not even be the most important reason. Scholars point tothe nineteenth century as a high water mark of European nation-building when‘one nation, one language’ policies were at their peak. Yet, this was also a period oflarge-scale industrialization and migration. Many Gaels moved to English-speakingcities like Glasgow to seek work in manufacturing and shipbuilding industries.A similar process happened in Wales where development of coal mines and steelworks in the English-dominant south drew in Welsh-speaking workers.Other regional language speakers emigrated beyond the UK to improve theirprospects, though usually driven by economic necessity rather than for reasonsconnected with language.
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Military service or conscription also weakened regional languages, not just in theUK but throughout Europe. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, statessometimes had to draw heavily on regional manpower to support imperial expansion
or to fight wars. Yet, how could an army be effective if its soldiers spoke mutuallyunintelligible dialects or languages? According to Wright, recruits to the Napoleonicarmy quickly became fluent in metropolitan French while soldiers in the Austro-Hungarian Empire received battle commands and training in German (2004,110–11). British regiments, in contrast, traditionally recruited from individual
counties and regions, leaving open the possibility for Gaelic that it would continue tobe used, at least unofficially, in the Highland regiments. However, heavy loss of lifeamong such regiments in battle meant a relatively disproportionate fall in the totalnumber of Gaelic speakers.
Another factor contributing to regional language loss has been the growth insecularism and the corresponding decline in religious worship. According to Mount,the growth of non-conformist churches exploded in the nineteenth century to the
extent that by the late 1850s one chapel a week was being opened in Wales, while75.4% of working class children were enrolled in Sunday schools (2004, 167, 172). Inrural areas, where churches and chapels were the major focus of community life,religion underpinned the use of the local language. One hundred and fifty years later,the situation had gone into perfect reverse with the chapels closing at the rate of one
a week (Mount 2004, 201). Although few Britons would admit to being non-believers, church attendance currently stands at 12% of the population. A decline ofthis order has fallen heaviest on sparsely populated regions since the loss of a localchurch removes one of the few venues where relatively large numbers of people canhear and speak the regional language. Without going into detail, public broadcastingand mass education, both conducted predominantly through the medium of a
standardised national language, have also played a major role in undermining thestrength of regional languages.
Even though natural language change occurs, it remains true that indigenouslanguages are relatively more concentrated in particular regions. Can one then dropthe provision that all minority languages should be treated equally on the grounds oflinguistic justice and simply argue that the concentration of numbers makes theselective educational funding of indigenous languages feasible? It might then be
argued that national and regional governments are acting in good faith to supportminority languages as a whole. Kymlicka lends support to this view, arguing thatsome minority speakers can be denied full language rights if they are dispersed thinlythroughout the state (2003). Accordingly, while some minority groups in the UK arespread too thinly to warrant granting full language rights the opposite holds true for
Welsh and Gaelic speakers because they are substantially represented in well-definedregions. This reasoning ignores some important facts. Gaelic speakers constitute lessthan 2% of the Scottish population and are spread thinly even on the west coast ofScotland where the language has its origins. In Wales, the 20% of the populationthat speak Welsh as a first language are concentrated in rural areas to the north andeast while the majority of English-speaking Welsh live in the more urbanised south.
The argument from numbers weakens further when we look more closely at the
ethnic minority populations of the UK. Speakers of South Asian languages such asBengali, Punjabi and Hindi outnumber Celtic-minority speakers and, in some cases,
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live in reasonably well-defined areas. In the London suburb of Tower Hamlets,for example, a large majority of children attending local schools speak Bengali as afirst language. A recent government survey shows that 12.5% of children at Britishprimary schools now speak English as a second language while the figure forsecondary schools is just under 10%, with both sets of figures showing an increasefrom the previous year (BBC 2007). That trend looks set to increase followingthe accession of several east European countries to the EU in 2004. The number ofPolish immigrants alone is officially estimated at 300,000 though unofficial estimatesput this much higher. Towns like Slough and Southampton in the south of Englandnow have substantial Polish communities and their state-funded schools must caterfor large numbers of children who do not speak English well.
Supporters of indigenous languages say that the issue of the number of minorityspeakers misses the point.What really counts is the cultural and historical associationsof their language. In their respective regions, Welsh and Gaelic have become tightlywoven into the local culture and institutions, so much so that they can be seen analternative national language spoken within a defined territory. The Britishgovernment appears to use the notion of territoriality to justify two such differentlanguage policies: those that uphold ‘tolerance rights’ and those that uphold‘promotion rights’ (Kymlicka and Patten 2003). Welsh and Gaelic speakers receivepromotion rights, which means government acts to maintain and support theirlanguage through a range of policies. Hence the creation of Welsh-speaking schoolsand the requirement that official documents, notices and information be printed inWelsh and English.While Gaelic receives less extensive support thanWelsh, it is betterserved than community languages like Punjabi or Urdu. The Scottish parliamentfunds a Gaelic language college in Skye and several Gaelic secondary schools in therest of Scotland. In contrast, speakers of minority languages without official statusreceive only ‘tolerance rights’, which recognizes their right to use their language inprivate settings but removes the state’s obligation to cater for it in the public sphere.Punjabi speakers, for instance, have a right to speak their own language with familyand friends, but cannot expect the right to use it in, say, a local court of law.
But, perhaps the picture being painted is too black and white. The situation inSleat, it could be argued, is exceptional due to its remoteness. Typically, languageprovision in the regional states does not lead to a stark choice and children have anopportunity to learn both English and their regional language. What, though, if oneobjected that if children are going to be bilingual, then they should be offered thechoice of being bilingual in English and a ‘major foreign’ language like French orSpanish? In an age of global trade and mass communications, one could plausiblyargue that some individuals would be better off knowing an important foreignlanguage rather than an indigenous language spoken by few others. Weinstock(2003) makes a similar point, adding that a language policy would be coercive if itstipulated that all members of a minority should learn their language when someprefer to learn another language.
Linguistic identity: the link between citizenship and language
The focus on how important language is to indigenous groups tends to overlookthe value the language has for ethnic groups, particularly the role it plays in
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creating identity. The foundation of the Israeli state provides a fairly recent exampleof how language can aid the creation of national identity. Jews who immigrated toIsrael from Europe and the Middle East in the aftermath of the Second World Warspoke a variety of languages. To help establish a national identity, Hebrew waschosen to be the national language even though few spoke it at the time. A goal of anational language policy is to create a national identity that is unitary and stable. Toput this another way, command of the national language is promoted as essential toidentity (Carmichael 2000); without it an individual cannot be considered a fullcitizen. But in addition to its influence on national identity, language also aids thecreation of a social identity. The language community that provides the deepest,richest interaction for the individual is the one that will have the strongest influenceon this identity. Patten describes it well:
The individual self-identifies with the (local) communities of speakers of her language.She is proud of the language and the cultural achievements that have been expressedthrough it. She takes pleasure in using the language and encountering others whoare willing to use it. She enjoys experimenting with the language and discussingits intricacies and subtleties with co-linguists. She hopes that the languagecommunity will survive and flourish into the indefinite future. (Kymlicka and Patten2003, 313–4)
Language can contribute to the development of ethnic identity too. As early as theage of four, children are aware of their ethnicity, but it becomes critical inadolescence, especially if individuals perceive they belong to a low-status group.Anger or insecurity can accompany this perception (Phinney 2001). Some youngblack Britons, for example, express their ethnic identity through the consciousadoption of a non-standard English dialect, a stance which Gaine and George traceback to the early postwar years when many white Britons refused to acceptCaribbean immigrants as British citizens (Gaine and George 1999, 53).
But, perhaps the relationship between language and identity does not matter somuch in a postmodern age. The languages we encounter in life, particularly our firstlanguage, may shape identity, but mass immigration, global communication andpluralism have led some to claim that we no longer have a unitary identity butmultiple ones. Furthermore identity is supposed to be contingent, changing with thecircumstances we find ourselves in. We may accept this view, but it does not followthat we can choose an identity to suit. Socializing influences such as the family andschool, and social pressures like race, class and gender, set the limits to choice(Tuckwell 2002, 75). Moreover, some evidence suggests that those who accept theyhave multiple identities still believe language is an important component of identity.When Mills (2001) interviewed third generation British-Pakistani children aboutlanguage and identity, some of the older children said they felt the family languageplayed an important role in their identity, even if their grasp of it was weak.For example, when Uzma (19 years) was asked about what constitutes her identity,she replied:
My first response would be Muslim because that is my religion and that is what I believeI am, my religion comes first and then it would be British and the Pakistani after thatbecause it is my ethnic origin. And because of that, because I do feel that, because of myethnicity I feel that is where the language comes in to maintain the ethnicity you have tohave the languages. And if you haven’t got the language, then basically you’ve lost thatidentity, the origin. (2001, 399)
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Views like this may have particular resonance for ethnic language speakers who livewithin an area where an indigenous language is prominent. Some evidence for thiscomes from research carried out in Wales where Scourfield and his colleagues foundthat among small, isolated communities of Pakistanis, their first language was animportant component of a composite national identity (2005). In contrast, therelationship between language and identity seems less solid when we consider nativeBritons who live in a region but who do not speak the indigenous minority languageto any degree of proficiency. The far more numerous speakers of Lallans, the Scots-English spoken in the lowlands, probably dismiss the idea that knowledge of Gaelicis an essential component of Scottish identity. Similarly, the 80% of Welshindividuals who speak English as a first language are unlikely to feel any less Welshfor not speaking Welsh as a first language.
Conclusion
It has been argued that devolution, far from weakening the British state, hasstrengthened it. The shift in power away from the centre has maintained cohesionwithin the nation-state by satisfying demands for regional autonomy. However, thisrecently acquired power allows regional governments to create ‘difference’. They canenact policies that distinguish their region and the national character of its peoplewithin the larger state. One way to do this is by restoring the regional languages andtheir associated cultures to prominence, but, as I have argued, such linguisticterritorialism ignores social change, adopts a limited view of national identity, andundermines democratic conceptions of citizenship.
Differential language rights seem to run counter to the modern viewof citizenship where all are supposed to be treated equally under the law. Thesame burdens fall equally on all citizens whether it is simply the duty to obey the law,the paying of taxes, or the performance of jury service. By the same token, rights,which are the benefits of citizenship, should also be distributed equally. To arguethat some language groups within a state or a region should receive preferentialtreatment because they can trace their historical roots back further than others isillogical. It would be akin to saying that the members of such groups should pay lesstax or be exempt from jury service because ‘their group’ has contributed morepreviously. In a liberal, multicultural state, an individual’s historical origins andcultural heritage should be as irrelevant to their status as a citizen as their ethnicity,gender or skin colour.
The argument pursued in this article seems to lead to the unacceptable conclusionthat in order to fair to all minority language groups, governments at the national orregional level should refrain from publicly funding minority languages at all. This isfair inasmuch all groups are treated equally poorly though it is unlikely to find muchpublic sympathy. A better alternative is a more subtle weighting of public fundingbased on the number of speakers belonging to a group, their perceived need and,perhaps, the benefits to society. Such a utilitarian approach does not rule out privateor community support. Parents, communities and private interest groups couldprovide supplementary language training as is sometimes the case in the teachingof classical languages and is now the case with the teaching of Polish. I conclude thisarticle by returning to the situation in Sleat. The proposed solution to the dispute has
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been to create an English language unit within a Gaelic-medium primary school.
The reader may want to ponder how fair this is.
Note
1. Indigenous languages in this article refer to Welsh and the version of Gaelic spokenin Scotland. In Northern Ireland, more than 6% of population speak Irish Gaelic butrecent events in this region have limited moves to greater regional autonomy and so thisregion is not dealt with here. I use the terms community language and minority ethniclanguage interchangeably.
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