Language Management in the Czech Republic 1 J.V. Neustupný School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia Ji øí Nekvapil Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, nám. Jana Palacha 2, CZ-11638 Prague, Czech Republic This monograph, based on the Language Management model, provides information on both the simple (discourse-based) and organised modes of attention to language prob - lems in the Czech Republic. This includes but is not limited to the language policy of the State. This approach does not satisfy itself with discussing problems of language variet - ies but tries also to attend to issues pertaining to situations, functions, and other aspects of communication. While Part I deals with theoretical prerequisites of the study, Part II surveys ethnic communities which are resident in the territory of the Czech Republic, and Part III, the most extensive in the study, provides a description of the current state of the major varieties spoken in the country. It is suggested that a weak form of diglossia (Standard vs. Common Czech) is one of the major areas of problems within the Czech language. Among the other communities the Roma community presents most distinctly interactional as well as narrowly communicative problems. All non-Czech communities seem to be gradually assimilating to the matrix (Czech) community, particularly with regard to language. Part IV is devoted to the survey of language management in different situations. The authors particularly deal with changes that occurred after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and resulted in intensive management in all domains of interaction. Part V presents individual observations on areas that have so far failed to attract system- atic attention. Included are problems of the functions of communication, problems of communicative settings, problems of participants and networks, problems of the communicated content (such as politeness), problems of the message form and of chan- nels of communication. This section also includes a discussion of problems affecting the use of electronic media. Finally, in Part VI attention moves to issues of theories of language management: the renowned Prague School Theory of Language Cultivation, the Communist Party theory of the 1950s to 1980s, and current theoretical stances. A Table of Contents is appended at the end of the monograph. Keywords : language management, language policy, ethnic minorities, Central Europe, Czech language, Prague School of Linguistics PART I: LANGUAGE MANAGEMENT IN CZECH SOCIETY: TARGET AND MODELS The Target Society and Languages Why Czech? In this study we wish to present a portrait of language problems in a mature, small-to-medium sized European nation. The nation we have in mind is the 1466-4208/03/03 0181-186 $20.00/0 ©2003 J.V. Neustupný & J. Nekvapil CURRENT ISSUES IN LANGUAGE PLANNING Vol. 4, No. 3 & 4, 2003 181 182 Current Issues in Language Planning Czech Republic. The treatment of language problems in the Czech Republic should be of interest to those who have only come in contact with languages such as English, French or German or with languages of the Third World. The Czech state has existed for more than a millennium but the ‘Czech Repub - lic’ is new: it came into existence on 1 January 1993, following the break-up of the former Czechoslovak Republic, which itself was in existence for only seven decades. The Czech Republic lies in central Europe, with Germany to the north - west and west, Austria to the south, Slovakia to the east and Poland to the north - east. It has a territory of 78,866 square km (30,450 square miles) and a population of 10,230,060 (as of the 2001 census). It is only slightly smaller than Austria, Portugal or Hungary, and its population approximately equals that of Belgium, Portugal, Hungary or Greece. Ireland is of comparable size but has only 40% of the Republic’s inhabitants. The situation of the Czech language can be briefly characterised by a number of features: (1) With over 9 million native speakers, Czech is a relatively small language, although well over the mark at which languages are immediately endan - gered. Its situation clearly differs from European languages such as Basque, Welsh or Catalan. (2) It serves a society that is one of the old industrial societies of Europe, and it serves it well, being the medium of communication from the workplace to the highest levels of tertiary education and science. In this respect it differs from some much larger languages of Asia and Africa, which are not used as tools of economic activities or intellectual inquiry. (3) Contemporary Czech draws on resources of other European languages and, although it has a close relationship with German, it has not been unilaterally dependent on any one of them. It is not characterised by strong purism. In its relationship with other languages it differs, for example, from Ukrainian which has been marked by a strong and often unwelcome relationship with Russian. (4) The history of the second half of the 20th century, when the whole territory of the then Czechoslovakia was under Soviet domination and strongly influenced by communist ideology, left somewhat underdeveloped certain attitudes to language that are typical for the USA, Canada, Australia and some western European societies. This includes in particular attitudes to language discrimination. An international comparative study will be needed to establish how individual issues of language discrimination are treated in Czech, other European and non-European languages. (5) Similarly to many other Continental languages, corpus policies have tradi - tionally been strongly developed at the governmental level, and this feature keeps Czech at variance with English, where corpus policies have remained at the outskirts of public concern with language. Some more features of the Czech situation will be developed in parts of this study. This concerns for example the fact that some aspects of language manage - ment have for decades been supported by the theory of language problems of the Prague School (see Part VI), which has represented the only well-developed approach to language management in structural linguistics. Here, as elsewhere, Language Management in the Czech Republic 183 our attitude will be in favour of learning from history, without accepting its limi - tations and failings. The neighbourhood The linguistic neighbourhood of Czech is surprisingly simple. The longest linguistic border is with German, as spoken in Germany and in Austria. In the east there is Slovak and in the northeast Polish. Historically Czech had contacts with Upper and Lower Sorbian (Lusatian), spoken in the territory of former East Germany. Note that there is no common border with Hungarian, and that histor - ically Czech-Hungarian direct contacts were limited, this being further rein - forced after the division of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. Czechs and the Czech language The core of the nation consists of the Czech ethnic group. According to the 2001 census, people who declare Czech as their ‘mother tongue’ (the term used in the census) amount to 9,707,397, that is 94.9% of the population of the Republic. Apart from those who reported as Czechs, this figure includes persons who in the 2001 census claimed other ethnic identity but declared Czech as their mother tongue: for example, Slovaks (32,529), Germans (10,836), Poles (4064) and other ethnic groups that have not been singled out in the census statistics. Also, 4527 Roma reported Czech as their mother tongue, but the real number of those who speak the language natively is probably much higher (cf. also Nekvapil, 2000a for data from Census 1991). Czech belongs to the western branch of the Slavic language family and is a language with a long tradition of literature and scholar- ship. The territory of the Czech language coincides today with the present-day Czech Republic. Up to the end of World War II extensive border areas were German speaking. Other ethnic communities Although border languages are limited to three, the fact that the territory of the Czech language has been located in the western part of what is today often called ‘Middle and Eastern Europe’ meant that it has always been at the cross-roads. France and Italy were not far away. In the 20th century, migrations from eastern Europe and even from Greece took place. However, the most important neighbour was undoubtedly Germany, which throughout history provided waves of immigrants, bringing with them their language. The maxi - mum extension of the German community was registered in 1910, when there were 3,492,362 ethnic Germans in the country. In the 1991 census the number was 48,556, while in 2001 it had decreased to 39,106. Slovakia was immediately to the east and, although the border between the Czech Republic and Slovakia has always been stable, the fact that the two territories formed a joint state from 1918 to 1939, and then again between 1945 and 1993, brought to the Czech territory large numbers of Slovaks. At present the number is not less than 193,190. Two other communities are large: the Polish community, which occupies, together with members of the Czech community, the northeast corner of the country, and the Roma community, which is dispersed throughout the Republic. In 2001 51,968 people opted for Polish identity, while 11,746 identified themselves as 184 Current Issues in Language Planning Roma. However, in the case of the latter the actual numbers are much higher, and we shall deal with this matter in Part II. In Nekvapil and Neustupný (1998) we had already pointed to the fact that the size of a community carries little importance. In the Czech Republic, at least the following communities must be acknowledged along with those mentioned previously: Albanian, American (USA), Armenian, Austrian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Greek, Hungarian, Jewish, Rumanian, Russian, Ruthenian, Ukrainian, Serbian and Vietnamese.