1 Introduction

The topic proposed here requires a few preliminary comments, as follows. At this stage, it is an overview resulting from practice and admittedly fragmentary knowledge of the theme of minority languages. The scope of the latter is vast, insofar as it overlaps with that of languages in contact, which in fact includes the concept of functional asymmetry, often instituted in relationships between languages – although, according to Uriel Weinreich, such contact must be considered broadly by including “languages” and any variation thereof at any levelFootnote 1 or, put more conveniently, “lects” (Bavoux 1997, cited by Trimaille and Matthey 2013: 96). Nevertheless, we will refer here to “languages”, being linguistic expressions that can be distinguished from that mass of lects as emergent and institutionally recognized parts or results. We will simply mention here that these “languages” will be understood in an equally broad sense as being nonetheless attached to recognized and identified linguistic expressions, as defined above, and on the basis of a type of essential function, applicable to all languages, the framework of which is a human community.

This group or community – it is a question of scale, which nevertheless assumes a certain sufficient critical mass – serves as a framework for the communication function of language. And, here, the “language” or communication code, is a language or, even more neutrally, this lect or collection of related lects, causally or teleologically adapted to linguistic needs and on a par with a communication group that is sufficiently large to be defined in relation to another with similar characteristics and interact with it. From such a perspective, language appears as an instituted language – referring here to a minimal understanding of the concept of institution – which is effectively operational within a traditional or legal structure, governed by rules intended to organize a society and the bodies governing it. “Institutionally enshrined” effectively means the same thing. However, those rules do not always operate homogenously and, occasionally, only some of them render the communication code effective. Owing to their subordinate status and diglossic dynamics in which they find themselves, minority languages may only partially take on those functions corresponding to that code (for internal and external reasons) without that constituting a prohibitive obstacle to them remaining in the category of “languages” as understood in this paper. This reality also applies if we consider these languages at a given point in their history when they functioned thus, even in diminished circumstances, though they may subsequently be greatly endangered and at risk of disappearing altogether. Incidentally, we will not refer here to dead languages but to those which, as negative or promising as the contexts in which they operate may be, are part of sociolinguistic – and, indeed, glottopolitical – dynamics.Footnote 2

2 Minority/Minoritized Language

Some languages have, over time, and indeed continue to find themselves in a minority position/position of minority, in various respects, in relation to other languages. Some are rather or outright minority languages, while others are rather or outright majority languages; both categories emerge as such in the light of a quantitative understanding. This will correspond to an initial understanding of the adjectives “minority” and “majority”. In that regard, the definition adopted by the Council of Europe in the Explanatory Report to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (Council of Europe 1993) is also, and intentionally, statistical and, in terms of demolinguistic density,Footnote 3 refers to “factual information, not legal concepts”.Footnote 4 We will nevertheless adopt a broader intension behind the word “minority”, which will be understood as covering not only the semes linked to statistical status, but also those related to processes reducing the legal and factual status of a language and, ultimately, its functional capabilities. Hence the linked concept of minoritized languages as a result of an ongoing or completed minoritization process. This type of widespread configuration is, in the end, conducive to the reduction of the number of speakers, owing to the dwindling instrumental appeal of the language in question and thus drives it towards a quantitatively minority situation.

In summary, this refers generally to language contact situations; we will confine ourselves here, in accordance with the title of this paper, to those in which languages considered to be minority languages are presented from sociolinguistic, juridical and political perspectives. And according to the broad understanding adopted here, this includes languages which, taken together, are not necessarily marked by traits of modest scope or demolinguistic insignificance, but which may also be found in minority situations in one or several countries and not in one or others. This means that the frame of reference for our defining suggestions is a political and administrative entity such as, first of all, the country or State and, in some cases, for specific heuristic needs, any particular infra-State administrative territory. The fact that a language can occupy the position of official State language in a country where it is used by a majority, and be a minority language owing to the number of speakers and by its status in another, generally neighbouring country (German and French in Italy; Bulgarian in Greece; Russian and Hungarian in several countries; etc.), is illustrative of a number of current situations. On the one hand, the adjective “minority” may, firstly, refer to an existing quantitative situation with no explicit relationship with a dynamic of language dominance. On the other hand, the diglossic dynamic, in fostering a functional, statutory and symbolic minoritization, can also foster a decrease in the language loyalty curve for the speakers concerned and, consequently, over years and generations, the statistical reduction of the number thereof.

This substitutive trend can be checked, even reversed, through language policy choices targeting restorative planning in the sense of the concept of linguistic normalization (with a view to creating specific conditions for fostering “normal” language use), the principle of which was inspired by the Catalan sociolinguistics of the 1970s and 80s (Aracil 1965; Viaut 1996: 44–54). We can also mention at least the two known analysis and procedures for language planning, which aim to provide favourable conditions for the use of such languages: Language Planning by Einar Haugen (1987); and the eight stages of Reversing Language Shift by Joshua Fishman, allowing a threatened language gradually to attain increasingly practical, instrumental and symbolically significant functions (Fishman 1991).

Another important element is generally remembered as is the case in the definition of the Explanatory Report to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (see above, note 3). This is the territory, that of historical settlement, the one that is referential for the immigration languages, the one which corresponds to a broad conception of “area of migration of nomad peoples” according to the terminology of the Universal Declaration of linguistic rights signed in Barcelona in 1996 (Concepts, Article 4).Footnote 5 Here, we will retain a dynamic aspect of the territory insofar as it plays a decisive role either in support of the manifestation of linguistic identity, or as an indispensable material for implementing linguistic planning measures, whatever the nature the relationship between the language and the territory and the type of territory in question. In these two configurations, representative of many others, the dynamics of the territory can appear in several ways, including those of the ebb and flow of the minority language that loses or gains speakers over more or less important parts of this territory. If this territory is the one in which the language has historically been present, it can also overtake it and be outside of it as a result of the attraction it exerts, all of these phenomena being able to origin of various linguistic margin cases (Viaut 2012: 20–25).

This link to the territory and the resulting effects depend in one way or another on the social demand for language as they may be related to the effects of a language policy. Nevertheless, this link to the territory remains conditioned by the demolinguistic reality of the language concerned.

3 Variety of Configurations

It is clear that a minority language, or a language in a minority situation, must first be ranked in terms of the demolinguistic situation of languages; whence the question of where to place a quantitative threshold, below which we can speak of minority languages. To this end, it should be remembered that the Council of Europe’s European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (1992/1998)Footnote 6 provides, at Article 3.1,Footnote 7 and in accordance with the interpretation of paragraph 51 of the Explanatory Report to the Charter,Footnote 8 that an official language in all or part of a country may fall into the category of languages to be protected and promoted, referred to as a “regional or minority language”. In this respect, the wording employed in said Explanatory Report is clearly a reference to a quantitative criterion as it concerns languages referred to as “less widely used” (Article 3 of the Charter). Swedish in Finland, under personality regimes,Footnote 9 or Italian in Switzerland, under territoriality regimes, co-official State languages are, in fact, languages whose natural speakers represent minority percentages on a national level, i.e. under 10% in the two cases of populations whose majority first languages are other official State languages (Finnish in Finland; German and French in Switzerland). It should be noted that these are configurations in which the “less widely used official language”, similar to a regional or minority language, is on the same legal footing as another or other official State language(s) of lesser importance. This could have included Gaelic, for example, had Ireland ratified the relevant Convention.

In relation to this, an official regional language may be a language understood and spoken verbally by a great majority of the population. This is the case of Catalan in the autonomous community of Catalonia, Spain. Around 80% of its population can speak the language fluently, which is nevertheless in a minority position – between 30% and 40% overall according to 2013 figuresFootnote 10 – compared to the official State language (Castilian or Spanish) in the three cases of first language (“llengua inicial”), language of identity (“llengua d’identificació”),Footnote 11 and language of habitual use (“llengua habitual”) in a specific administrative territory. On the basis of these figures, it should be remembered that statistical reality of a language must be understood in a dynamic perspective. The figures yielded by language censuses or surveys “measure”, in this case, Catalan at a given point t, but also indicate its advance or decline with regard to previous measurements and in relation to Castilian, the only official State language, coofficial in Catalonia, and indeed the main language in Spain. From that perspective, reference may also be made to the Calvet language barometer, according to which Catalan ranks nineteenth, between Romanian and Czech, in the leading group of quantitatively and instrumentally important languages in the world.Footnote 12

In conjunction with these results, language minoritization processes have been at the root of diglossic processes, the trends of which have been either active or passive. As a reaction – and this is now frequently the case in Europe in the broad sense – more or less specific and sustained language revitalization policies have been implemented for those groups of language speakers that are actually or potentially concerned. Generally, positive trends can be observed when the curve for new younger speakers fluent in a minority language regularly moves upwards, and if said language retains its acquired functions and gradually takes on new ones. In Western Europe, in contexts, certainly, of favorable linguistic planning, at least Catalan, Basque, Welsh and Frisian fall into this category, which can only be maintained through positive representations of symbolic significance allied with practical instrumentality.

The social conditioning of a language, “from the bottom up”, “from the top down” or “midway” (Léonard and Djordjević Léonard 2014), thus remains essential and its implications on various levels must be remembered with regard to minority languages. The minority character of a language may already be the result of a long-term existing situation (e.g. Breton, Occitan, etc.) just as it can be born of sudden circumstances such as political change, a shifting of frontiers (e.g. Danish in Schleswig at the end of the War of the Duchies in the mid-nineteenth century). The social and political intricacies that this implies with, occasionally, in terms of language planning, phases of levelling or of positive regulation, are likely to confer a degree of situational complexity to that category of language. To this complexity is added that which may be linked to their genesis. While some minority languages are Ausbau languages, in such cases there follow much less assured configurations than for official State languages (e.g. Norwegian, Slovak, etc.). Resources are made available more readily for such languages in light of their standardization, which exerts amongst its many functions one which, being consequently separator (Viaut 2005: 90–91), contributes to their autonomization in relation to a continuum or a “roofing language” (Dachsprache) from which they are standing out, as was the case, for example, of Norwegian with regard to standard Danish.

Beyond these difficulties, it is the process of linguistic emergence itself, often long and erratic, towards a status as a language that is at least taken into account publicly (see the examples of Occitan and, recently, Franco-Provençal),Footnote 13 sometimes combined with the recognition of language individuation (e.g. Asturian or Corsican), which is ultimately more problematic for minority languages than for others.

4 Characteristics in Situation of Minority Languages

In summary, and as is widely accepted, minority languages share certain characteristics, the most salient of which are, to our mind, the following:

  • the fragility of the contractual link between actual or potential speakers and linguistic expression, owing to the relativity of its symbolic and instrumental scope while a spontaneous link with a lect not identified as a language from a sociolinguistic perspective may be significant (Béarnese varieties of Gascon Occitan, Souletine variations of Basque, mixed varieties such as Suržik/Suržyk in Ukraine or Chiac in Canada, etc.), as well as that which gravitates more easily and spontaneously towards “majority” languages, considered more prestigious and instrumental.

  • Between the risks of losing spontaneity (cultural affect does not always suffice in itself) and questions as to the objective of utilitarian language needs, this fragility is compensated by taking into account procedures, which we place under the umbrella descriptive term of the concept of glottopolitics (see above). These procedures are the result of initiatives launched by the linguistic groups concerned, para-public bodies sometimes supported by intermediary administrative echelons and state authorities (constitutional provisions, organic laws, laws passed by central or federal parliaments, etc.) or even sub-state authorities (autonomous communities in Spain; regions in Italy; republics in the Russian Federation, etc.). Nevertheless, it would seem that all types of action that arise in such a glottopolitical configuration are expected and deemed useful or necessary by protagonists at various levels, even if it seems that it may disguise the status of a language awaiting, perhaps in vain or at random, a positive inversion of the curves for fluent speaks and vitality. The occasional dispersal, too, of glottopolitical operations can contribute to a fragmented or imprecise perception. In this respect, the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is a unique illustration, on the supra-national level, of a vast whole that brings together the 47 member states of the Council of Europe, and of standardized support that is subject to regular monitoring by the Council’s Committee of Experts for the 25 states which have ratified this Convention.

  • Minority languages are in tense situations that their representatives generally struggle to deal with alone. Corpus planning tasks (often discussed and developed belatedly and which are therefore all the more important with regard to the state of a given language) together with those of status planning (equally necessary on a different level) require an external framework and support which are inevitably provided by public and parapublic entities armed with means and authority suited to monitoring protective and promotional measures. The aim of such activities is, moreover, to make the existence of a given language known to interested parties likely to consolidate their natural inclinations towards that language, or discover and attach social, communicational and overall useful functions to it in terms of linguistic market (Bourdieu 1982), and for which the Catalan expression “extensió de l’ús social” (literally, “extension of social use”) (Vallverdú 1977) is fully justified.

5 From the Committed Construction of the Object to Its Multifaceted Crossover Approach

In relation to an object for which we have outlined above an approach, it should be pointed out that it is the result of various parameters of its construction and modern and current dynamics in a context of the increasing complexity of societies. Even though its definition continues to be challenged and deepened, the “minority language” only strikes us as an object clearly identified by a majority of interested parties and researchers from the end of the nineteenth century onwards, although the origins of this growing awareness can assuredly be identified before that point.Footnote 14 This object cannot be perceived as a relatively stable state but rather as a process, all the more so in a context of rapid globalization of societies that are rapidly subject to the laws of the linguistic market; in other words, and to an increasingly utilitarian trend of linguistic needs (Viaut 2010) in the broadest sense. The latter still include the linguistic needs linked to the necessities of communication and vital needs such as those resulting from affects and representations in terms of covert and overt prestige and attitudes underpinned by language loyalty.

The “minority language” object is linguistic, with all that is linked such as components described by dictionaries, lexicons, grammars, linguistic atlases, and linguists who analyse and interpret them with a view to understanding the characteristics, common roots and evolution thereof. To qualify as a minority language implies taking into account its social, economic and political situation through specific traits shared with other minority languages. These traits are ultimately drawn from the extent to which these linguistic realities are taken into consideration on a superstructural level but also before, after or at the same time, from the amount of organizational autonomy of the group(s) which has implications for the overall glottopolitical orientations or for specific language planning measures.

The macrosociolinguistic approach which immediately springs to mind when dealing with minority languages will apply to their various facets through a categorization as regional languages (France), own languages (Spain), national languages, ethnic languages, languages of small peoples (Russia), etc. So many concepts which, even at this stage, in fact indicate resulting interactions between various levels of involvement, positive or negative, “from the top down”, “from the bottom up”, or “midway” (cf. supra, Léonard and Djordjević Léonard 2014). The qualifiers “regional”, “national”, “ethnic”, etc., to name but a few,Footnote 15 are themselves already rich in specific information that refers to national contexts and semantic contents which makes multidisciplinary research necessary. By its very nature, the object demands an approach that is both multifaceted and comparative. Comparative because what makes a language for a linguist may also be of interest for legal and political scholars, who take this object into consideration with a view to conducting an examination of political and/or legal and administrative doctrine or measures.

Thus the degree of standardization of a minority language will not, for example, be taken into consideration on the basis of its inclusion by the Council of Europe’s European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. This consideration is a political choice made by the ratifying States. It can be seen, however, that the application of the Charter has fostered the emergence (unforeseen, in theory) of Ausbau languages on the basis of dialectal varieties (Low German, Kven, etc.) which were, in principle, not eligible for protection under the Charter, according to Article 1.a.ii (Viaut 2002: 23–35). This fact indirectly recalls the value of a multidisciplinary understanding of an object so eminently social and political for all that it is initially linguistic. Sociolinguistics, whilst being a branch of the language sciences, is itself open to other disciplines in the social and human sciences in that it focuses on the link between language and society as the essential raison d’être of human language.

As regards minority languages mentioned above (specifically Occitan), the conscious perception thereof as a specific object in the modern era is a construct made up of specifically linguistic components, while others are drawn from sociolinguistics in terms of representations and attitudes, while yet others result from the involvement of different types of actors (language speakers and creators; cultural, legal and administrative, or political actors). Taken together, they have contributed to conferring autonomy to an object whose primal nature nevertheless consists of linguistic elements and societal implications that are also causal and teleological.

6 Conclusion

From this, it is clear that a multidisciplinary approach is essential as a prelude to an analysis of an object that has become increasingly complex whilst acquiring its own identity. At the very least, and through multidisciplinary research conducted into the typology of minority languages in Europe,Footnote 16 we believe that priority must be given to the following disciplinary perspectives. Based on a sociolinguistic, federative axis, properly linguistic (lexical, semantic) and juridical approaches have been here adopted first. These cannot preclude other approaches drawn from political science, for instance in terms of “policy networks” (Amado-Borthayre 2012: 33–43; Marsh and Rhodes 1992) to which the glottopolitical approach resemble (see above, note 2); psychology and psycholinguistics, sociology and history.

Beyond this prelude, the interdisciplinary practice in a second stage, aside from hard sciences, as regards this paper – with such collaboration between linguists and lawyers, conducted in the context of the abovementioned project on the typology of minority languages in Europe, has fostered the development of a multilingual textual database, tool that could help a cross-disciplinary approach, on the categorization of minority languages in Europe (CLME, see above, note 15). It may thus be seen, through the study of our object, that by proceeding in successive stages (multidisciplinary → interdisciplinary → cross-disciplinary), it may also be considered that each of them must be developed for itself at the same time as it lends itself to complementarity and combination with the others.

If language is in itself a complex object that internal and external approaches continue to explore, one of its actualizations, the minority language as an object draws its own complexity from its first cultural, political and social parameters that are by nature shifting and evolving. Minority language therefore supposes, in addition to the contributions of the disciplines mentioned here, a necessary and programmed link with the field. At the source of primary constitutive data of the minority language, between minoritization and revitalization, the field, approached in its dynamics by the sociolinguistics of language contact and by the law which sanctions its evolutions and guides them implementing its political choices, is central and requires as such appropriate research tools (survey questionnaires, survey guides, databases) that best integrate multidisciplinary concepts.