Counting matters: quantifying the vitality and value of Basque

Abstract

AbstractScholars of language policy and politics have increasingly come to appreciate that there is much insight to be gained by scrutinizing data collection practices and the debates around them. What is (or is not) counted and how counting is done has consequence, but in ways that are not always self-evident. Taking the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) in Spain as a case study, this article examines the historical context in which census and other statistical surveys of language emerged and what the changing forms of quantification can tell us about the evolution of language advocacy discourse and politics more generally. We will look at how concerns with tracking marginalization led minority language advocates to experiment with measures of oral use and linguistic landscapes in the public sphere. The final section examines how economistic and quality management techniques have gained traction in recent efforts to quantify Basque value and vitality today. We conclude with a consideration of the insights to be gained by looking at quantification efforts from the point of view of minority language advocacy.