LANGUAGE LAW AND LEGAL CHALLENGES IN MEDIUM-SIZED LANGUAGE COMMUNITIES. A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE Col·lecció Institut d’Estudis Autonòmics 82 LANGUAGE LAW AND LEGAL CHALLENGES IN MEDIUM-SIZED LANGUAGE COMMUNITIES. A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE Antoni Milian-Massana (ed.) Xabier Arzoz André Braën Mahulena Hofmannová Niamh Nic Shuibhne Mart Rannut Iryna Ulasiuk Iñigo Urrutia Libarona José Woehrling Generalitat de Catalunya Departament de Governació i Relacions Institucionals Institut d’Estudis Autonòmics BARCELONA 2012 The IEA’s decision to publish this book does not imply any responsibility for its content. No part of this publication, including the cover design, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording a otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holder. Cover photo: Palau Centelles, Barcelona (16th century). Sculpture on the door of the main study room (detail). © 2012 Generalitat de Catalunya. Institut d’Estudis Autonòmics First edition: December 2012 ISBN: 978-84-393-8986-6 Legal deposit no.: B.34130-2012 Layout: El Tinter, SAL (certified company ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and EMAS) CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ANTONI MILIAN-MASSANA .................................................................... 9 PART 1. CASE STUDIES 1. THE UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE: WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD? (A LEGAL PERSPECTIVE) IRYNA ULASIUK ............................................................................... 25 2. THE CASE OF ESTONIAN IN ESTONIA. THREATS AND CHALLENGES OF ENGLISH AND THE RUSSOPHONE COMMUNITY MART RANNUT ................................................................................ 53 3. FRENCH IN QUEBEC: INTERNAL THREATS AND CHALLENGES ANDRÉ BRAËN ................................................................................. 89 4. SUSTAINABILITY OF MEDIUM-SIZED LANGUAGE COMMUNITIES IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION: THE CZECH LANGUAGE MAHULENA HOFMANNOVÁ ............................................................... 107 PART 2. INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT 5. MEDIUM-SIZED LANGUAGE COMMUNITIES AND THE EU LEGAL FRA- MEWORK: EXPLORING THE CHALLENGES AND STRATEGIES FOR CHANGE NIAMH NIC SHUIBHNE...................................................................... 121 6. THE IMPACT OF EUROPEAN UNION LAW ON MEDIUM-SIZED LAN- GUAGE COMMUNITIES ANTONI MILIAN-MASSANA ............................................................... 149 7. GLOBALIZATION AND LANGUAGES: NEW CHALLENGES FOR QUÉBEC’S LANGUAGE POLICY JOSÉ WOEHRLING............................................................................. 183 7 PART 3. SECTORS 8. THE TRANSFORMATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND MEDIUM-SIZED LANGUAGE COMMUNITIES XABIER ARZOZ ................................................................................ 219 9. THE EUROPEAN LEGAL FRAMEWORK FOR PROTECTING THE ME- DIUM-SIZED LANGUAGE COMMUNITIES IN THE MEDIA: A COMPARA- TIVE LEGAL ANALYSIS IÑIGO URRUTIA LIBARONA ................................................................ 253 8 INTRODUCTION The aim of the book The studies published in this book share two fundamental characteris- tics: first, they have a common focus, the issue of language rights; second, they centre exclusively on medium-sized language communities (MSLCs). Looking at the second of these characteristics first, we should start by explaining what we understand by MSLCs and why we have decided to restrict our analysis to these communities. We define MSLCs as communi- ties that speak languages which are not international languages, nor lan- guages with a large number of speakers, nor (at the other extreme) minor- ity languages or languages that are not widely spoken. In demographic terms, MSLs are conventionally defined as languages spoken by between one and 25 million people. I say conventionally because the numerical criterion is neither definitive nor necessarily inflexible, and, for the pur- pose of this study, it is not the only criterion we will apply. A second point to bear in mind regarding the definition of the MSLCs we will study here is the requirement that the communities should belong to socioeconomi- cally developed societies. This bestows on them homogeneity, both in terms of the problems and challenges they face and in terms of the legal instruments they require in order to deal with them: these questions, as I say later, constitute the crux of our reflections in this volume. Finally, the third defining element of these communities is the fact that their languages enjoy healthy intergenerational transmission and a high degree of vitality, as witnessed by their use at all levels of contemporary society in both the public and the private domain: in government, administration, the legal system, health, and at all levels of education, including higher education; in daily interpersonal communication, obviously; in the written and audio- visual media, cinema, theatre, music, the book industry and popular cul- ture; on the Internet, and in the economic and commercial spheres. The aim of this definition is not to create a new category or to establish a new classification of languages. A task of this kind would not correspond to legal experts. Our more modest aim is to group together a set of linguis- 9 tic communities whose viability and survival in today’s globalized world appear to face common problems and challenges which are often quite different (in terms of either their nature or their intensity), from those fac- ing other languages and which, therefore, require the adoption of specific legal instruments. We contend that the dichotomy between majority and minority languages is insufficient for detecting and explaining some of the phenomena that are common to MSLCs. Our reason for focusing our study on MSLCs lies, then, in the feeling that the challenges which are in general common to all languages — for example, competition with one or more international languages (in particu- lar, English), which obliges them to share certain areas of use, or the need to defend themselves from other languages which are also used in the same state – present some specific features in the case of these communities. The studies collected together here are contributions from a group of legal specialists to a broader interdisciplinary research project entitled The Sustainability of Medium-Sized Language Communities (MSLC) in the age of globalization: new trends, new solutions?, run by the University Centre for Sociolinguistics and Communication at the University of Barcelona (CUSC-UB)1 and the Department of General Linguistics, and sponsored by Linguamón – House of Languages and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (currently Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport).2 This project has also given rise to another publication, which analyses MSLCs from a sociolinguistic perspective. So readers who are interested in the framework of the studies we present here, or who would like a fuller ac- count of the criteria used to define MSLCs, should consult the project’s website,3 and the introduction and the conclusions of the book Survival & Development of Language Communities: Prospects and Challenges, which is currently in press.4 This also excuses me from having to give a more complete analysis of these questions, which do not really correspond to the world of the law; and it is from the perspective of the world of the law, or more precisely from that of the area of language rights, that the studies 1 <http://www.ub.edu/cusc/> 2 The reference of Ministry’s project is the follow: Globalización, intercomunicación y lenguas propias en las comunidades lingüísticas medianas (MLC Medium-sized Language Communi- ties) FFI2009-10424 (1-1-2010 to 31-12-2012). 3 <http://www.ub.edu/cusc/llenguesmitjanes> 4 F X Vila (ed.). In press: Survival & Development of Language Communities: Prospects and Challenges (Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters). 10 gathered here have been written. This is, as I said at the beginning, the other feature that the studies in this volume share. So far we have talked about the homogeneous elements of the nine studies we present here. However, there is a heterogeneous element that merits comment. This is the fact that not all the studies adopt the same fo- cus. Some of them study the linguistic regime of particular MSLs: for in- stance, the cases of Ukrainian in Ukraine, of Estonian in Estonia, of French in Quebec and of Czech in the Czech Republic. Others analyse the position of the MSLs in supranational organizations (specifically, the European Un- ion) and in international law on human rights, and in the rules relating to international trade and economic integration; finally, two studies explore the legal challenges facing MSLCs in specific sectors. Among the many sectors that we could have analysed, we chose Higher Education and the audiovisual media services. The choice of these two sectors is not arbi- trary: as the conclusions of the book mentioned above stressed, these are precisely the domains in which all MSLs are vulnerable, above all due to the penetration of English, and so it is in these sectors where the principal challenge facing them, that of linguistic assimilation, is manifested most starkly. So the wide variety of the perspectives applied in the studies in this volume reflects our aim of presenting a comprehensive analysis of the le- gal instruments adopted to face these new challenges. In today’s globalized context a study focusing only on specific communities would not do justice to the range of problems and challenges;