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Cultural and Linguistic Minorities in the Russian Federation and the European Union pp 315–334Cite as

The Impact of Language Policy on Language Revitalization

The Case of the Basque Language

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Part of the book series: Multilingual Education ((MULT,volume 13))

Abstract

The assertion of language rights recognized on behalf of speakers of a non-dominant language requires a sustained long-term language planning. This chapter will analyze the impact, on the revitalization of the Basque language, of language policies implemented in the Basque Country after the proclamation of the Spanish constitution (1978) and the transformation of Spains authoritarian unitary regime into a decentralized democratic state. It will focus on two key areas of language revitalization, education and public administration. The Basque experience shows the effectiveness of selective intensive policies that focus on those segments of population most engaged and supportive of social change.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Basque-speaking French provinces make up with Béarn the Département Pyrinées Atlantiques. This and four other Départements belong to Aquitania, one of the French regions. Therefore, the Basque-speaking provinces not only do not coincide with any existing administrative division, but they also constitute a very small part of Aquitania, both in demographical and in territorial sense.

  2. 2.

    In Spanish politico-legal jargon, the objective is called normalization, that is, the establishment of a situation in which speakers of non-dominant languages are effectively granted the same chances of using their languages in both public and social contexts.

  3. 3.

    52.57 % of posts in local administration, 58.47 of the posts within provincial administration and 44.32 % of posts within the regional administration must comply with a linguistic requirement. The figures for the local and the provincial administration are an average: The sociolinguistic context varies enormously from the South to the North and from the West to the East.

  4. 4.

    However, in October 2009 the High Court of the BAC annulled that assignation of LR2 and LR3 to justice posts as long as that assignation had not been individualized.

  5. 5.

    On decentralization as a tool for minority language maintenance, see Marten’s Chapter  “ Parliamentary Structures and Their Impact on Empowering Minority Language Communities” in this volume.

  6. 6.

    I am not arguing that a certain number of speakers is important, or even the most important criterion, to anticipate language survival or death, but a different issue: that the number of speakers is relevant when it comes to design and, above all, to implementation a feasible scheme of language rights in public administration, education, justice, media, private sector, etc. On the relationship between the number of speakers and the probabilities of survival of a language, see Barreña et al. (2007).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of The Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain

    Xabier Arzoz

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  1. Xabier Arzoz
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Correspondence to Xabier Arzoz .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of German, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia

    Heiko F. Marten

  2. Department of Scandinavian Studies, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

    Michael Rießler

  3. Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Janne Saarikivi

  4. The Erik Castrén Institute, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Reetta Toivanen

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Arzoz, X. (2015). The Impact of Language Policy on Language Revitalization. In: Marten, H., Rießler, M., Saarikivi, J., Toivanen, R. (eds) Cultural and Linguistic Minorities in the Russian Federation and the European Union. Multilingual Education, vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10455-3_12

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