engleski

Multilingualism at the Crossroads of Europe: Minority Language Rights

Multilingualism is a means to defend and maintain the diversity of languages and cultures on the local, national, and European level. One of the basic goals of the Council of Europe is defending the richness and variety of the European cultural heritage. Minority languages are a part of this heritage and can be preserved by providing for their use in the discourse of education and in that of media, as well as in the discourse of politics, that of administration, and that of law. An explicit language policy covers which language or languages we will use, when, in what contexts, and for what purpose. All these parameters are important in defining and executing language policy and it is necessary to adopt legal provisions protecting languages and cultures and furthering the use of various languages as symbols of this diversity. An important segment of human rights are language rights of minority communities which, in some European countries, are still in question. Language rights include a definition of the status of minority languages and their relationships to the majority language. Different languages have higher/lower status and greater/smaller values on the macro level, and it is easy to find correlations in the communities where they are spoken, since languages can be linked with current politics in similar ways. The new EU members, and the old ones, together with all their minorities will surely intensify the changes in status planning for minority languages in a broader European context. This paper reconsiders both internal and external European language policy adjusted to real situation and communication context. Different readings of synchronic cross-sections should help to create a new language policy that will affect the status of minority communities, especially in defining some basic standards which are necessary for a life of dignity for all, without prejudices.

multilingualism, European language policy, status planning, minority language rights

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