Regional Languages

E’ risaputo quanto sia difficile determinare con esattezza le condizioni sufficienti per assicurare l’inversione della deriva linguistica. Nonostante ciò, l’introduzione della lingua locale o di minoranza nel sistema scolastico è ampiamente accettata come una delle poche condizioni necessarie per il mantenimento di tale lingua, oltre ad essere un diritto particolarmente difficile da ottenere. Facendo riferimento ai concetti di “diglossia” e “bilinguismo”, questo articolo esamina le dinamiche comunicative che caratterizzano le comunità linguistiche d’Italia, ponendosi il doppio scopo di (i) provvedere una tassonomia che inserisca tali dinamiche in un contesto più ampio e (ii) esaminare le implicazioni di tale tassonomia in relazione alla deriva linguistica ed alla sua eventuale inversione. Questo esame dimostra come l’Italia sia passata da una situazione di stabilità (diglossia) ad una di deriva linguistica (bilinguismo verticale), e rivela dunque l’immediata necessità di inserire le lingue locali nelle scuole come primo passo verso l’istituzione di un bilinguismo di tipo “orizzontale” attraverso il quale gli idiomi locali possano, sottoforma di lingue regionali, coesistere a livello istituzionale con la lingua di Stato pur non entrando in conflitto con essa.

Il est bien connu combien il est difficile de déterminer avec précision les conditions suffisantes pour assurer l'inversion de la dérive linguistique. Cependant, l'introduction de la langue locale ou minoritaire dans le système scolaire est largement acceptée comme l'une des rares conditions nécessaires pour le maintien de telle langue. Mais il est bien connu aussi que ce droit est particulièrement difficile à obtenir. En utilisant les concepts de "diglossie" et de "bilinguisme" cet article considère les forces dynamiques et communicatives qui caractérisent les communautés linguistiques d'Italie, ayant pour double but, (i) fournir une taxonomie qui intègre ces forces dynamiques dans un contexte plus ample et (ii) examiner les implications de cette taxonomie en relation à la dérive linguistique et à sa propre inversion éventuelle. Cette analyse démontre que l'Italie est passée d'une situation stable (diglossie) à une situation de dérive linguistique (bilinguisme vertical) et révèle donc la nécessité d'insérer dans l'immédiat les langues locales dans les écoles comme premier pas vers l'institution d'un bilinguisme de type "horizontal" à travers lequel les idiomes locales puissent, sous forme de langues régionales, coexister au niveau institutionnel avec la langue d'état, sans pour autant entrer en conflit avec celle-ci.

En este trabajo analizaremos la diversidad lingüística de Europa occidental y el estatus de las lenguas minorizadas que podemos encontrar. Comentaremos, también, el papel que creemos que debería desempeñar la Unión Europea para proteger esta diversidad.

Celem pracy jest analiza ekspresywizmów osobowych używanych przez mieszkańców gminy Iwanowice w perspektywie zachodzących zmian językowych i społeczno-cywilizacyjnych, takich jak: recesywność gwar, unifikacja języka, a także — odchodzenie od tradycyjnego wiejskiego etosu wartości. Praca służy również przejrzystej prezentacji całości zgromadzonego materiału w formie alfabetycznie uporządkowanego słownika, który zostaje dodany do pracy jako załącznik. Omawiana w pracy leksyka została zgromadzona poprzez rozmowy z najstarszymi mieszkańcami gminy oraz badania kwestionariuszowe. Przeprowadzone ankiety składały się z dwóch zasadniczych części: sprawdzenia znajomości dawnych gwarowych leksemów pamiętanych przez najstarsze pokolenie oraz pytań otwartych o konkretne desygnaty.
Praca składa się z pięciu rozdziałów. Pierwszy z nich to wprowadzenie informujące o celach pracy, stanie badań i zastosowanych metodach badawczych. Drugi rozdział podejmuje rozważania nad teoretycznymi aspektami badań nad ekspresywnością i ekspresywizmami osobowymi. Rozdział trzeci przybliża czytelnikowi specyfikę badanego obszaru językowego: sytuację na współczesnej podkrakowskiej wsi, system aksjologiczno-normatywny społeczności wiejskiej oraz położenie gminy w odniesieniu do map podziału dialektu małopolskiego. Po teoretycznej części pracy w rozdziale czwartym uwaga została poświęcona analizie zgromadzonego materiału w odniesieniu do etosu wiejskich wartości.
Przeprowadzone prace badawcze pozwoliły na dojście do wniosku, że znajomość dawnych ekspresywizmów osobowych zauważalnie maleje, choć i tak ta część słownictwa jest zdecydowanie najtrwalszą częścią gwarowego słownictwa. Poszczególne ekspresywizmy są zapominane z dwóch głównych powodów. Pierwszy z nich to unikanie gwary — zastępowanie gwarowych wyrazów ogólnopolskimi synonimami. Drugi powód wiąże się z odchodzeniem od wyznawanych dawniej wartości, takich jak: rodzina, praca, lokalność i religia. Cechy bądź przypadłości ludzkie zasługujące w oczach tradycyjnej społeczności na naganę w oczach młodszych pokoleń przestają takie być, przez co różne typy osób przestają być nazywane nacechowanymi emocjonalnie określeniami. Badania kwestionariuszowe wykazały również, że część dawnych gwarowych leksemów jest wciąż pamiętana, choć czasami w obrębie ich znaczeń zachodzą wyraźne zmiany. Ekspresywizmy osobowe są interesującym korpusem badawczym, który pozwala nie tylko na analizę językoznawczą, ale też — podjęcie refleksji socjologicznej na temat zmian zachodzących w społecznościach wiejskich.

The article presents the current state of discussion on the status of indigenous language varieties of Poland which strive to gain more prestige and a certain level of independence. In sociolinguistic literature, they are described with multiple specialised terms, while traditional dialectology considers them (or did so until recently) as dialects or subdialects (gwary) of the Polish language. The selected languages/ethnolects are: Kashubian (recognized by the Polish law as a regional language), Silesian (attempts are being made to give it a similar status) and Masurian. For the purposes of non-Slavic comparison, the article refers to the Vilamovian language. Paying attention to the difference between the scientific, political/legal, and colloquial discourses, the author attempts to answer the question of whether it is possible to describe newly emerging languages in an objective and unbiased way, and whether specialized terms such as ethnolect or collateral language may be useful outside strictly scientific debate.

Während das Wissen um die Existenz einer autochthonen keltischen Sprache in der Bretagne zur selbstverständlichen romanistischen Allgemeinbildung gehört, ist die Oïl-Varietät der Haute-Bretagne, das sogenannte Gallo, selbst in Dialektologenkreisen weitgehend unbeachtet geblieben – für gewöhnlich wurde ihm in romanistischen und dialektologischen Standardwerken nicht einmal der Status eines eigenständigen Dialekts eingeräumt. Umso erstaunlicher müssen die Aktivitäten einiger Gallo-Sprachkämpfer anmuten, die seit den 70er Jahren für diese Varietät den Status einer Sprache reklamieren und dabei beachtliche Erfolge erzielt haben. So können Lehrer heute beispielsweise ein staatliches Certificat d’Aptitude à l’Enseignement du Gallo erwerben und an den Gymnasien wird Gallo als Wahlfach angeboten. Öffentliche Institutionen tendieren zunehmend dazu, das Gallo und das Bretonische als gleichberechtigt zu behandeln.
Der Vortrag setzt sich mit dieser geheimnisvollen neuen romanischen Sprache (?) auseinander, versucht eine dialektologische Charakterisierung und untersucht, was es mit ihrer immer wieder behaupteten “Keltizität” auf sich hat. Es wird versucht, die Gallo-Bewegung innerhalb der spezifischen Gegebenheiten des bretonischen Regionalismus zu verstehen und kritisch zu würdigen. Das bretonische Beispiel soll schließlich auch Anlaß zu einer Diskussion allgemeiner Kriterien geben, nach denen (Sozio-)Linguisten den Sinn oder Unsinn regionaler Sprachausbaubewegungen bewerten könnten.

Lombard is one of the 12-15 non-recognized regional languages spoken in Italy. This article focuses on the new speakers of Lombard, i. e. people who have learned or are learning Lombard as a second language. Through an open questionnaire the author has probed into various aspects concerning these new speakers' competence and learning trajectories, situations and opportunities for using the language, motivations, aims, commitment, metalinguistic awareness and the difficulties encountered in acquiring the language. Issues of authenticity, legitimacy and especially of identity and political allegiances have also been looked at. After a brief outline of the Lombard language and the research on new speakers that has been carried out so far, the article presents the methodology employed, followed by an analysis of the answers provided, which show that new speakers are very different from native speakers in sociolinguistic terms. A discussion of the results and some conclusions close the article.

Thisarticledescribestheresultsofafollow-upsociolinguisticstudyto . assess changes which have taken place in Strasbourg, France, since the early / 1980s, when the situation there was studied by the same author. The linguistic
à contextandtheresultsoftheoriginalstudyaredescribed,aswellastheimplica-  tionsanddicultiesofsuchreal-timestudies.Althoughthelatestlarge-scalesta- ( tisticalsurveysarenotdirectlycomparablewiththeearlierones,anaccelerating ) shi"awayfromtheAlsatiandialecttotheuseofFrenchisnonethelessevident. * This results partly from diverse social changes aecting the city as opposed to + thecountryside.Alongsidethis,thereisasnowballeectoftrendswhichwere , alreadyvisibleinthe1980s,re%ectingthelossofanelderlydialect-speakinggen- à erationwhohelpedmaintainAlsatianwithinthefamily.Rapidanonymoussur- . veyscarriedoutintownshowthedialecttobeusedonlyinspeci&c“pockets”. / Some six hours of conversations involving code-switching were also compared (à withasimilarcorpuscollectedearlier,andrevealedadeclineinmorecomplex ( grammaticalformsofswitchinginfavorofmoresingle-wordswitches.Alterna- (( tionwasthedominantpatternalthoughdierentproportionsofswitch-typesoc- () curred in dierent conversations. The functions of code-switching, e.g., for hu- (* morandsolidarity,remainedsimilar.Theconclusionreiteratesthedicultiesbut (+ alsotheadvantagesofreal-timesociolinguisticcomparisons,asdierentsocio- (, economic and lifestyle factors interact with ongoing linguistic shi" and change.
(à Keywords: code-switching, Alsatian dialect, French, age-grading, language shift.

This article is a part of an ongoing study aiming to map the growth of the regional entertainment industries in the Hindi speaking areas of India. This paper however is based on material collected during fieldwork in Bihar and Haryana and focuses on the music artists and their main livelihood concerns in recent times. The fieldwork on the Bihar and eastern UP music industry was carried out in 2009-10 around the peak of the CD/DVD industry in the region, when its decline had just begun to set in. The stint was conducted in Haryana in two phases in 2014, by when the CD/DVD industry had clearly foundered and the market had decisively shifted to the eclectic era of downloads, with a variety of formats, instruments and devices in use among the audience. In both the cases, in-depth conversations were held with several singers, instrumentalists, producers, music suppliers/retailers, studio technicians and local experts to acquire a good idea of how they viewed the developments in their trade environment and assessed their own changing position in the industry and society.

The association between language and territory is particularly significant in terms of indigenousness. Therefore, the argument of this paper is to examine this aspect of the Kurdish language through the interpretation of the Kurdish political movement in Turkey based on self-identification, an essential component of indigeneity. Since the 1990s, the Kurdish political movement has been demanding mother-tongue rights with the growing grassroots support. This study examines pro-Kurdish political party programs, statements/press releases, and interviews with deputies of the HDP, current parliamentary party. The article explores acquiring Kurdish as a native language by Kurds and non-Kurds in the region, mainly through mothers, homes, and the community environment. The process of acquiring the Kurdish language varies according to how individuals interact with the local Kurdish community, such as marrying into Kurdish families, systematic settlement, and growing up in the region. Whilst Kurdish is regarded as the mother language of the Kurds by Kurds and non-Kurds members of the Kurdish political movement in Turkey, this article draws further attention to the regional and local aspects of Kurdish, including its natural learning process of non-Kurds within the region.

Whereas the geography of a certain area is certainly linked in many ways to the ethnic group occupying it (or who used to occupy it), the link between the land and the language/s spoken (or that used to be spoken) can only become visible through the linguistic landscape, which not only asserts identity and ownership, but can also help to reinforce prestige and vitality of the languages employed. The problem is that if the local heritage language is a minority or regional one, only in few cases can it be used to affirm the identity and ownership of its speakers. There are two sine qua non conditions for the local language to appear in the linguistic landscape: 1) The language must have gone beyond the ‘threshold of literacy’, i.e.  it must have developed as a written language, with its own orthography and literature; 2) The language must be allowed to be used in the linguistic landscape and /or enjoy a degree of official recognition.
This article presents five case studies on the presence of local minority/regional languages in the linguistic landscape based on the author’s research:  two in Italy (Udine and Milan) and two in Southeast Asia (Kuala Lumpur and Bandar Seri Begawan, the capitals of Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam respectively). The very interesting situation in Macao will be also touched on, where the colonial language, Portuguese, has been given prominence in the linguistic landscape in spite of the fact that only a tiny percentage of the population can speak it. In this case Portuguese is portrayed as a kind of heritage language (as well as an international language) that does not need to be mastered as its main function is symbolic, i.e. to help Macao retain its special status as a Special Administration Region of China.

The paper was written together with Siôn R. Williams and published in: Asmus, Sabine and Barbara Braid (2014) "Unity in Diversity. Cultural and Linguistic Markers of the Concept", Cambridge: Scholars Publishing. After an overview over major developments in the social history of Welsh, structural weakness in Welsh institutions as well as an overdiversification of registers (whilst the standard is weak) and subsequent language forms are identified as major problems in its maintenance.

La contribución propone el establecimiento de una nueva rama en los estudios de las lenguas regionales: la „tipología areal sociolingüística”. Partiendo de la observación de que muchos factores en la configuración histórica, socio-política y cultural de una lengua regional dependen  del área cultural en que dicha lengua esté ubicada, se sugiere buscar áreas que en este sentido conformen clases naturales de comportamiento paralelo. Se argumenta que las lenguas regionales de Europa central y occidental forman una tal clase, del tipo configuracional LeREu (= Lenguas Regionales Europeas). Las LeREu comparten una historia en la que el auge de sus respectivas lenguas nacionales las relegó al estatus de lenguas orales dentro de una situación diglósica; en el siglo XIX y con el romanticismo, todas ellas resurgieron como lenguas escritas y lograron, en diferente medida, volver al estatus de lenguas de cultura. El resultado moderno de esta configuración histórica es una competencia típicamente conflictiva con la lengua estatal en que la lengua regional lucha para emanciparse respecto a ella; de esta competencia emerge una situación con dos estándares alternativos que ya no tiene nada que ver con la diglosia anterior. Las LeREu son definidas como lenguas autóctonas sin estado propio, no dialectalizadas e históricamente arraigadas en una diglosia con el latín durante la edad media y con sus respectivas lenguas estatales después y hasta el siglo XIX. En el espíritu de una sociolingüística cognitiva, se propone establecer las características prototípicas de las LeREu y luego utilizarlas como puntos de comparación en la descripción de cada caso suelto.

This essay raises ethical questions regarding the loss of dialects. The objective facts regarding dialectal changes in Norway are well documented, but less often is emphasis put on the ethical considerations thereof. ‘Languages’ are protected and documented internationally, while ‘dialects’, despite being independent forms of language belonging to local cultures, seldom enjoy the same attention and consideration. With this in mind, I explore evidence of dialectal regionalisation from the regional centre of South Norway, Kristiansand, on the Norwegian dialect Vallemål, traditionally one of the most linguistically conservative dialects in Norway. This serves as an extreme example of dialect regionalisation, as Kristiansandsmål, the dialect of Kristiansand, is regarded as one of the most phonologically and morphologically simple dialects in Norway. Using the Nordic Dialect Corpus and previous literature, I investigate the effects of Kristiansandsmål‘s regiolectal spread on the lexis, phonology and morphology of Vallemål. The evidence suggests that regionalisation from Kristiansandsmål has had and is continuing to have a significant effect, evidenced by a generational loss of local dialect words, simplification of traditionally complex phonology and a reduction of marked morphological forms. Despite widespread documentation of such effects, the Norwegian state, while a signatory of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, appears to be taking little action to preserve the Norwegian dialect landscape. The current regiolectal trajectory points to a coming widespread loss of historic dialects of Norwegian. If linguistic diversity and its preservation are desirable, this widespread homogenisation acts as an opposing force to it.

"Kashubians – one’s own or strangers?"

Nowadays Kashubia occupies part of Gdansk Pomerania (also called Eastern Pomerania), spreading West from the lower Vistula River, not extending further than the borders of the ancient Gdansk voivodeship in the West, and in the South and South-East making a boundary with the rest of the Polish dialectal territory. 
This historic situation provided the ground for the development of a multi-linguistic character to these territories. On the one hand, German colonization going back to the times of the Teutonic Knights, then intensified as a result of the politics of the Prussian state, and on the other, the natural inflows of the population from central Poland, have meant that on this extremely small territory, up till the end of the Second World War, it was common to find both Polish and German, as well as the autochthon Kashubian language spoken here.
On account of the multicultural character of the settlement of these territories, distinctive national social and cultural divisions appeared that found their reflection in language. Linguistic data illustrating the relation one’s own : stranger show a very strong sense of the community of a linguistic group once endangered by a dominant stranger population. Linguistic identification, along with religious identification, turned out to be two fundamental features holding together the group designated under the category one’s own. 
The category stranger – according to the general tendency towards an ethnocentric vision of others – is mainly based on a negative stereotype fixed in phraseology: an ethnonymically derived appellative lexis. The main division line, based on religious differences, between Kashubian autochthones and Polish people from the Crown, traditionally Catholic, and the stranger population of German Protestants now pertains to history

The chapter provides a semiotic analysis of several signs photographed
between 2012 and 2014 in Perpignan, Toulouse, and Corsica. The signs
document not only multilingualism, but the struggle of different agents to mark and design the public space. It will be shown that the main function of using a regional language on signs is not revitalization of this language, but placemaking evoking a local identity frequently in the form of a myth. As far as methods are concerned, the chapter will advocate for a neo-semiotic approach unfolding the semiotic potential of signs in a topo-sensitive way and with regard to the linguistic and semiotic competence of their potential readers. A semiotic analysis is considered to be indispensable in Linguistic Landscapes because it implicitly underlies all other quantitative as well as qualitative methods.

This article presents a comparison between three regional laws, namely the contents of Law 26/2007 for the protection of the " Slovene linguistic minority " , Law 29/2007 for the protection of the " Friulian language " and Law 20/2009 for the protection of the " German-speaking minorities " adopted by the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region in Italy. The analysis is based on the framework of diversity management theories and the related functions of minority legal protection and decentralization models. The author concludes that the system of minority protection in FVG is asymmetrical, as the regional legislation has a similar structure but is separate for each group. The differences regard also the protection of minority languages and their dialects as well as the legal sources and subjects.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the language policy in France in relation to French and the regional languages. We start the overview from the Renaissance period when the French national feeling began to form and the distinctiveness of the French nation started to manifest, leading to increased usage of the French language and gradual superseding of the regional languages. Taking into consideration the fact that after the French Revolution in 1789, the unity policy of the French nation intensifies and thus the directions of action in the languages of its territory change, we divided the overview of the language policy in France in two parts: before and after the Revolution. For the revolutionaries, the ignorance of the French language was an obstacle for the democracy and spreading the revolutionary ideas, thus extending the superseding of the regional languages throughout the 19th and early 20th century. After the World War II, the regional languages and cultures received more attention and they were regarded as a treasure that needed to be preserved and their disappearance to be prevented. According to the relations and the language activities undertaken by France in the contemporary period, we distinguish Language policy in relation to the French language and Language policy in relation to the regional languages.

SILESIAN: JARGON – DIALECT – LANGUAGE? AN OUTSIDER’S VIEW
The article is a voice of the outsider; a contribution to the discussion on the status of Silesian as a jargon, dialect or the self-governing, separate language. The author criticises the fact that because of the participants’ emotionalism, discussions about the subject in question, both current and academic, much too often overlook the latest theories and methods of language exchange research and sociolinguistics. On one hand, during its development, Silesian, both in its structural aspect (and not only due to the presence of Germanisms in it) and in the sociolinguistic one, drifted away from a prototypic dialect, on the other – neither its sociolinguistic nor structural aspects fully meet the terms of a prototype language as defined (at least implicitly) in the European context. The article’s attention-grabbing point is that in Europe, there are some other ‘lects’ of comparable characteristics to Silesian, which legally are recognized as languages or regional languages.
Keywords: language contact, dialect, language, regional language, Silesia

Malaysia has the largest Chinese population apart from Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao. Literature in the Chinese language has taken root and developed in this area since 1919. As Malaysia is situated at the cross-roads of Eastern and Western civilizations, the mixture of cultures and languages produced a Malaysian Chinese literature, quite different from the literature of China. Its most prominent distinction lies in the use of language. The authors resort to vocabulary from local dialects and languages and specific foreign loanwords, achieving a strong local color of the "Southern seas" (Nanyang). The paper takes The Reader of Malaysian Chinese Prose as linguistic material to discuss the "Malaysianized" vocabulary, the influence of local culture on literary language and the deep cultural background of Malaysian Chinese literature. <https://www.dropbox.com/s/pgkxh0o5l3k6tx5/FLS-2011-Vol6-fps-ykk-lts.pdf>

The study of the language of publication of folklore offers a unique perspective on the sociolinguistic history of regional languages in 19th century France as well as on the wider cultural context of contemporary folklore collection. Regional languages had a subordinate sociolinguistic status vis-à-vis French, yet they had preserved a richer folklore heritage, which, during the golden age of folklore collection, was also considered to be a valuable part of French national cultural heritage. The fact that the folktales of regional languages were often published first or only in French translation reflects both the hegemonic position of French and the prevailing contemporary perception of folktales primarily as a universal human cultural inheritance rather than as the literary heritage of specific cultures; folktale publications were typically aimed at a wider national readership and the perceived universal content – tale types and motifs – was considered more important than the linguistic form and cultural context. However, the fact that folktale and above all folksong collections were also published in the original regional languages shows that there was a genuine choice of language of publication. The publication of folktales only in translation was controversial because the lack of original texts – as well as a lack of transparency concerning the collection process – potentially undermined the authenticity of the published folklore. The publication of folklore only in translation also resulted in the loss of an important part of the cultural heritage of the regional languages and its effective appropriation as French national and French language cultural heritage.

That „there is – in the field of European languages – no contact situation which cannot be described as a linguistic conflict at the same time‟ (Nelde 2007: 64) is particularly true for the French state and its approach to both regional and non-European minority languages. In this essay, I ...

Regional languages in Poland against a European background
– from the point of view of glottopolitics and ecolinguistics

The paper discusses and analyses the situation of regional languages in Poland against the background of phenomena taking place in Europe. The phenomena discussed include language extinction, language revival and raising the prestige of linguistic varieties generally considered inferior to recognised languages, i.e. state, national or official ones.

To be or not to be (a minority)? The case of Kashubian in Poland
Bëc czë nié bëc (miészëzna)? Kaszëbizna w Polsce

Michael Hornsby, Department of Celtic, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland
Tomasz Wicherkiewicz, Department of Language Policy and Minority Studies, Adam
Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland


When Poland signed the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages on 12 February 2009, of the fifteen languages listed all but one were categorised as minority languages. Kashubian was (apparently) the only regional language. Of course, the original wording of the Charter, when it was first drawn up in 1992, did not specify what the difference between a minority and a regional language actually was (Woerhrling 2005: 54). Thus Poland’s ratification, while totally complying with the Charter’s original remit, is nevertheless controversial in its application of the Charter’s principles.

In this article, we aim to explore the tensions that have been created by the implementation of the Charter in Poland. The most obvious point of friction concerns the singling out of Kashubian to the detriment of other less widely-used languages and this will be discussed in the context of one author’s expert knowledge and close association with the Charter’s implementation in Poland. Less obvious, but equally important, is the identification of the conflicting language ideologies at play here. If all minority languages in Poland (apart from Kashubian) are located within the confines of a ‘language-and-identity’ ideology, then locating Kashbian within a framework of territoriality (or a ‘language-and-territory’ ideology [Myhill 1999]) is not only bound to lead to a clash of counter-productive ideologies, but also seems achronistic at a time in the history of Kashubian when it is spoken regularly by more than 50 per cent of the population in only three districts of the traditional Kashubian-speaking area (Mordawski 2005: 56; Nestor and Hickey 2009). Given these conditions, we address the question of the effectiveness of such language planning for Kashubian in the final section of our article.

ABSTRACT Devising a writing system, or graphisation, is a fundamental aspect of corpus planning that no language can take too lightly. This paper begins with a general introduction to graphisation and to Italian regional languages, followed by an analysis of the different orthographies in use so far or proposed for the main regional languages in Italy, with reference also to the three Romance languages already accorded official recognition as minority languages: Sardinian, Friulian and Ladin. The practical aspect and the symbolic aspect of graphisation are discussed and the problems and difficulties that are being encountered in this process are highlighted, especially with regard to two Northern varieties that are presented as case studies: Lombard and Piedmontese. The paper closes with some general considerations and recommendations, particularly on the adoption of a polynomic approach to graphisation if at all possible, and of a digraphic regime as a transitional strategy for cases where a common orthography cannot be decided upon, or to help the spread of the language among new speakers.

When Thomas Luckmann, a pioneer of the “linguistic turn” in sociology, regarded Émile Durkheim as a source for the sociology of language, he had lifeworldly community–building in mind. However, the French sociologist himself understood language in the context of civil society–building. To Durkheim, language was a “social thing in the highest degree” that enabled general ideas and intermediated them to people. Abstract human ideals like the civil religion since the French Revolution could be shared through (a common) language. Thus, Durkheim took the exclusive use of French in the Third Republic’s laic public education for granted, ignoring the patois in the country: This “child of the Enlightenment” considered French to be a universal language of Gesellschaft and, beyond ethno-communal elements, to work as a basis for the organic solidarity of French national civil society where the social division of labor was progressing. Durkheim’s theory was predicated on civil-linguistic, not ethnolinguistic, nationalism.

This publication depicts largely the history of Welsh lexicography in its Celtic context, including a dictionary-orientated description of Welsh. In this context, the need of phonetic transcription, morphologically orientated hyphenation and standardisation of the language are discussed. The book contains a corpus of Insular Celtic lexicographical works until 2002, i.e. dictionaries and vocabularies of Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Cornish, Manx, Breton and Welsh, of course.