ABSTRACT
Linguistic diversity has always been conceived as a constituent characteristic of European identity (Arzoz, 2008). Both the European Commission (established in Brussels, Belgium) and the Council of Europe (established in Strasbourg, France) have published many policy documents in which language diversity is cherished as a key element of the multicultural identity of Europe. This language diversity is considered to be a prerequisite rather than an obstacle for a united European space in which all citizens are equal, but not the same, and enjoy equal rights (Council of Europe, 2000). However, as will be shown in this chapter, some languages play a more important role in the European public and political discourse on “celebrating linguistic diversity,” the motto of the European Year of Languages (Coss, 2001). The constellation of languages in Europe actually functions as a descending hierarchy (Extra & Gorter, 2008; Nic Craith, 2006) with the following ranking of categories:
English as lingua franca for transnational communication;
national or official state languages of European countries;
regional minority (RM) languages across Europe;
immigrant minority (IM) languages across Europe.
In the official EU discourse, RM languages are referred to as regional or minority languages and IM languages as migrant languages. Whereas the national languages of the EU with English increasingly on top are celebrated most at the EU level, RM languages are celebrated less and IM languages least. IM languages are only marginally covered by EU language promotion programs and, so far, are mainly considered in the context of provisions for learning the national languages of the migrants’ countries of residence.