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European Language Diversity for All: Reconceptualising, promoting and re-evaluating individual and societal multilingualism

Final Report Summary - ELDIA (European Language Diversity for All: Reconceptualising, promoting and re-evaluating individual and societal multilingualism)


Executive Summary:

The interdisciplinary research project ELDIA was consciously developed to launch and to propagate a new understanding of the “natural” multilingualism of European minority groups as an integral part of European language diversity, a goal which is officially acknowledged and celebrated in political discourses. Contrary to the majority of earlier studies usually concerned with a few well-known and well-defined Western European traditional (regional) minorities, ELDIA concentrated on Central, Eastern and Northern European minority communities, also including migrants and languages with an unclear or contested status. The case studies were concerned with nine Finno-Ugric languages spoken in 12 linguistic communities in Northern Europe, Russia, Slovenia, Austria and Germany.

The main operational goal of the project was to develop a systematic tool, the European Language Vitality Barometer (EuLaViBar). It can be used for identifying those areas of language management which need special attention, and for helping in planning and implementing concrete and effective measures to support the maintenance and development of the minority language at issue. The barometer builds upon a massive body of recent decades’ research into the issues of language maintenance and revitalisation. These theories and methodological approaches were tested against new empirical data collected via questionnaire surveys and interviews. Especially the methodology of measuring the degree of language maintenance was significantly developed further through the creation of the EuLaViBar which is the first measurement tool based on systematically operationalized extensive survey data across the scientific disciplines involved in the project.

The results of the case studies have been published in internationally peer-reviewed open-access reports and monographs also accessible through the project website. The researchers will continue disseminating their findings in prestigious publications in their own fields of specialty. The core results of the legal analyses, the sociological media analyses and the sociolinguistic analyses were gathered, discussed and elaborated in an interdisciplinary Comparative Report. A short version of the Comparative report will be published as an open-access document with the title Work Report for Expert Use on the project website in November 2013. The full Comparative Report shall be submitted to an international publishing house for publication as a monograph. The reports and publications are complemented by the EuLaViBar Toolkit which explains and gives guidance on creating an ELDIA language maintenance barometer for any language. The Toolkit is available since October 2013 as an open-access document on the project website.

At their most general level, the results of ELDIA show that all the minority languages under study are at least to some extent facing the risk of extinction but, provided that proper measures are taken, they all can be empowered and maintained. On the ELDIA language maintenance scale from zero to four, none of the twelve linguistic communities achieved a score notably better than three in any of the parameters examined. In most cases the result was even significantly lower, and in some cases the lowest scores verged on zero. The lowest barometer scores registered in the case studies were characteristic of the languages investigated in Norway, Sweden and Finland. This suggests that even generally progressive attitudes towards human rights or high standards of democracy and human development, as in the Nordic countries, do not automatically guarantee the maintenance of endangered languages. In addition to the general principles of non-discrimination and equality, proactive and effective support measures are urgently needed to support the multilingualism of minorities. The ELDIA results further show that language diversity in European societies and for individuals has not been adequately promoted and operationalised.

Project Context and Objectives:

The European language landscape is changing rapidly, and maintaining linguistic diversity has even been defined as one of the central strategic political aims in the European Union. Consequently, not only academic researchers and members of the wide variety of language communities but also policy-makers need up-to-date knowledge and new, effective tools. ELDIA (European Language Diversity for All) was an interdisciplinary research project which sought to contribute to the scholarly and the practical understanding of multilingualism and its impact in varying European contexts.

ELDIA involved specialists of linguistics, law, sociology, and statistics. The empirical work was based on 12 case studies conducted with multilingual speaker communities in 8 countries: Northern Sámi in Norway, Meänkieli speakers and Finns in Sweden, Karelians and Estonians in Finland, Karelians, Veps in Russia, Kvens in Norway, Võro and Seto speakers in Estonia, Estonians in Germany, Hungarians in Austria and Hungarians in Slovenia.

ELDIA attempted to target multilingualism and linguistic diversity from a holistic viewpoint, involving both major(ity) and minor(ity) languages. The main objectives of ELDIA were to

• Create a novel multidisciplinary research approach which duly took into account the multilingualism of the modern European minorities: Instead of dealing with isolated questions of language as a system, a “commodity” or a part of ethnic identity, ELDIA emphasised speaker agency and interaction and the parallel use of multiple languages: native and vehicular, majority and minority ones.
• Create new knowledge and tools. In addition to up-to-date reports and case studies, ELDIA created the European Language Vitality Barometer (EuLaViBar), i.e. a testable, descriptive and predictive model of the dynamics of European multilingualism which can be used for assessing and evaluating the state of languages and speaker communities.
• Identify gaps in language policies and develop sustainable policies for the future
• Create an interdisciplinary network of specialists.
• Make the new empirical data gathered during the project available for future scholarly use as a data bank.

Project Results:

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Potential Impact:

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List of Websites:

http://www.eldia-project.org

Coordinator of the Project:

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Anneli Sarhimaa
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
FB 05, Dept. of English and Linguistics
Northern European and Baltic Languages and Cultures
Jakob-Welder-Weg 18
55099 Mainz
Germany

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secretary. +49(0)61313923080
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