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Wars of Position Language Policy, Counter-Hegemonies and Cultural Cleavages in Italy and Norway Guy Puzey PhD THE UNIVERSITY of EDINBURGH OILTHIGH DHÙN ÈIDEANN 2011 Declaration I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due acknowledgement has been made in the text. It has not been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification except as specified. Guy Puzey 31 January 2011 Abstract This thesis investigates the development of the present-day linguistic hegemonies within Italy and Norway as products of ongoing linguistic ‘wars of position’. Language activist movements have been key actors in these struggles, and this study seeks to address how such movements have operated in attempts to translate their linguistic ideologies into de facto language policy through mechanisms such as political agitation, propaganda and the use of language in public spaces. It also reveals which other extra-linguistic values and ideologies have become associated with or allied to these linguistic causes in recent years, how these ideologies have affected language policy, and whether such ideological alliances have been representative of language users’ ideologies. The study is informed by an innovative methodological framework combining the theories and metaphors of Antonio Gramsci (including hegemony and wars of position as well as his linguistic writings) with the theories of Stein Rokkan on cultural-political cleavage structures and the relationships between centres and peripheries. These constructs and relationships are thereafter documented as ideologically defining strands running through the history of the movements studied, through reference to activist periodicals and party newspapers. In Italy, the focus of the research is on the Lega Nord (Northern League), a far-right populist autonomist political movement. The Lega has sought to legitimise its imagination of a northern nation (‘Padania’) by portraying the dialects of northern Italy as minority languages, emphasising the hegemonic relationship between the Italian national language and northern dialects. The movement has also used this perception of northern dialects as peripheral and suppressed by Italian to bolster its depiction of ‘Padania’ as a wealthy periphery allegedly held back by central and southern Italy. Although this campaign has achieved some successes in increased visibility of dialects in public spaces, dialects largely remain restricted to ‘low’-status domains. In Norway, the thesis devotes special attention to the post-war efforts of the counter-hegemonic campaign for the Nynorsk standard of Norwegian, which was devised as a common denominator for Norwegian dialects, as opposed to the hegemonic standard Bokmål, which is a Norwegianisation of written Danish. In opposing the challenges of globalisation and centralisation, the Nynorsk movement has retained a radical character and is generally associated with a left-wing variant of nationalism, a key part of the Norwegian cultural cleavage structure. The social argumentation of the Nynorsk movement was instrumental in its successful promotion of dialects, now seen as an unstigmatised means of spoken communication in all social contexts. Dedication To Dr Ben Pickard, my Big Brother, for keeping me under his watchful eye since 1984. To my mother Tabby Angier, for always encouraging adventures. To my beloved Marzia, for our first decade together. vi Contents Acknowledgements - - - - - - - - - x List of Abbreviations - - - - - - - - - xii Notes - - - - - - - - - - - xiv 1 Introduction and Key Concepts - - - - - - - 1 1.1 Comparing Italy and Norway - - - - - - 1 1.2 Research questions, thesis aims and structure - - - - 6 1.3 Politics, ideology and linguistic cultures - - - - - 8 1.4 Language and dialect (and dialectic) - - - - - 13 1.5 Language and nationalism - - - - - - - 20 1.6 Language policy - - - - - - - - 26 1.7 Language activism: Language policy ‘from below’ - - - 30 2 Theoretical and Methodological Foundations - - - - - 36 2.1 Gramsci and Rokkan - - - - - - - - 36 2.2 Gramsci - - - - - - - - - 38 2.2.1 Hegemony - - - - - - - - 41 2.2.2 Wars of position - - - - - - - 45 2.2.3 Subalternity - - - - - - - - 49 2.2.4 Spontaneity - - - - - - - - 52 2.3 Rokkan - - - - - - - - - 56 vii 2.3.1 Centres and peripheries - - - - - - 58 2.3.2 Cultural cleavage structures - - - - - 63 2.4 Combining Gramscian and Rokkanian approaches in linguistics - 66 3 The Development of the Italian Language Question - - - - 77 3.1 Dante’s vulgare illustre - - - - - - - 77 3.2 The four proposals of the sixteenth century - - - - 80 3.3 Purism and anti-purism - - - - - - - 83 3.4 The language question at Unification: Manzoni and Ascoli - - 86 3.5 Gramsci and the language question - - - - - 93 3.5.1 Gramsci’s linguistic grounding - - - - - 94 3.5.2 The critique of Esperanto and Manzonian language planning 99 3.5.3 An alternative solution to the language question - - 101 3.6 Fascism and language - - - - - - - 103 3.7 The dawn of the Republic - - - - - - - 107 4 Linguistic Wars of Position in Modern-Day Italy - - - - - 112 4.1 ‘New Language Questions’ - - - - - - - 112 4.2 The continuum of varieties of Italian, and new dialectal domains - 115 4.3 Linguistic minorities in Italy, and dialects as minority languages - 118 4.4 The Lega Nord - - - - - - - - 127 4.4.1 Autonomist antecedents - - - - - - 137 4.4.2 The role of dialects in the formation of the Lega - - 142 4.4.3 Dialects from the first speeches to temporary abandonment 146 4.4.4 Printed propaganda: Posters and cartoons - - - 158 viii 4.4.5 Place-names and the linguistic landscape - - - 167 4.4.6 Dialects in education - - - - - - 178 4.4.7 A return to the dialect cause? - - - - - 182 5 The Development of the Norwegian Language Question - - - 194 5.1 A language struggle between the national and the social - - 194 5.2 The rise of a Danish linguistic hegemony - - - - 195 5.3 Union with Sweden and National Romanticism - - - 201 5.4 Ivar Aasen’s counter-hegemonic project - - - - - 204 5.5 Riksmål: Towards a new minimal hegemony? - - - - 209 5.6 The rise of Norwegian language activism - - - - 212 5.7 Official recognition of Landsmål - - - - - - 217 5.8 Language policy in post-1905 Norway - - - - - 221 5.9 1917-1940: Towards a Samnorsk norm - - - - - 226 5.10 1940-1945: Language activism under occupation - - - 232 6 Linguistic Wars of Position in Modern-Day Norway - - - - 240 6.1 The move towards national consolidation - - - - 240 6.2 Post-war urbanisation and centralisation - - - - 241 6.3 The language struggle heats up - - - - - - 244 6.4 The Vogt committee and ‘language peace’ - - - - 246 6.5 1972: The Nynorsk movement and the EEC referendum - - 249 6.6 Stalin and the Norwegian language struggle - - - - 254 6.7 Norsk Målungdom and the ‘dialect wave’ - - - - 259 6.8 1994: The EU referendum and Lillehammer - - - - 266 ix 6.9 The language question resolved or an eternal struggle? - - 273 6.10 Recent trends in language discrimination - - - - 280 6.11 The campaign for the Norwegianisation of place-names - - 285 6.12 Evidence from the linguistic landscape - - - - 291 7 Conclusion - - - - - - - - - - 305 7.1 Wars of position in language policy - - - - - 305 7.2 Counter-hegemonic language activism compared - - - 307 7.3 Extra-linguistic ideologies and cultural cleavages - - - 310 7.4 Counter-hegemony and linguistic democracy - - - - 312 7.5 Organic language policy and respect for the peripheries - - 315 Bibliography - - - - - - - - - - 318 x Acknowledgements This thesis was carried out with the financial support of the Arts & Humanities Research Council (award number 2007/130583) and the University of Edinburgh John Orr Research Award (2007-2008 and 2008-2009). I am most grateful to both organisations for their generous support. I would especially like to thank my supervisors Arne Kruse and Davide Messina for their patience, encouragement and guidance, and for steering me away from potential research cul-de-sacs. I would also like to thank all the staff of the Scandinavian Studies and Italian sections in the Division of European Languages and Cultures for their generosity of spirit, in particular Kari Dickson (‘the excellent’, as the book reviewers rightly say), my guru of the translation trade and inspiring fellow tutor of evening classes in Norwegian. Also at the University of Edinburgh, I would like to thank specifically Vaughan Rogers, Jonathan Usher, Peter Graves, John E. Joseph, Wilson McLeod and Bjarne Thorup Thomsen for kindly offering their advice before or during this doctoral project.