Abstract
This article examines the regulation of linguistic diversity in Spain from a combined empirical and normative perspective. Spain is a particularly interesting case due to the intersection of linguistic and national diversity and its peculiar combination of territoriality and personality. We first present a conceptual framework which draws on the personality and territoriality distinction as established by political philosophers. Second, we examine the way multilingualism is regulated in Spain. A dual system emerges in which Castilian is the only state language while four other languages – Aranese, Basque, Catalan and Galician – are co-official in six Autonomous Communities. We identify two models concerning the degree of institutionalisation of non-Castilian languages: co-officiality and limited recognition. Finally, we characterise and assess normatively the advantages and disadvantages of the Spanish linguistic regulation. We argue that the Spanish linguistic system may be characterised as an Unequal Personality Linguistic Regime. This regime offers several instrumental advantages related to the prevalence of a shared language as well as a significant degree of territorial accommodation for minority language groups, but it also gives rise to injustices related to unequal treatment and domination. This article contributes to the academic debate about the politics of language by analysing a paradigmatic case of multilingualism and plurinationalism, Spain, and considering the usefulness of the territoriality and personality framework to study specific cases.
Highlights
This article examines the regulation of linguistic diversity in Spain from a combined empirical and normative perspective
Adopting a combined empirical and normative perspective, we address in this paper three core questions: (1) How is linguistic diversity regulated in contemporary Spain in terms of institutionalisation and level of policy responsibility? (2) What characteristics of the Spanish linguistic regime fall under the territoriality and personality linguistic principles, respectively? and (3) What are the advantages and disadvantages of the Spanish system from a normative point of view? The first and second questions are empirical and analytical, whereas the third is normative in nature
While minority language groups2 enjoy a significant degree of territorial accommodation, the unequal bases of the Spanish linguistic regime give rise to injustices related to unequal treatment
Summary
This article examines the regulation of linguistic diversity in Spain from a combined empirical and normative perspective. We argue that the Spanish linguistic system may be characterised as an Unequal Personality Linguistic Regime This regime offers several instrumental advantages related to the prevalence of a shared language as well as a significant degree of territorial accommodation for minority language groups, but it gives rise to injustices related to unequal treatment and domination. While minority language groups enjoy a significant degree of territorial accommodation, the unequal bases of the Spanish linguistic regime give rise to injustices related to unequal treatment This is so because only Castilian speakers may claim full personal language rights across the state, including territories with co-official languages. Drawing on the conceptual distinction between territoriality and personality, we introduce the concept of an Unequal Personality Linguistic Regime (UPLR) to frame the Spanish case and we explore the key normative advantages and disadvantages arising from this mixed regulation. We briefly elaborate on what the Spanish case tells us about the usefulness of the territoriality-personality framework to study specific cases and identify avenues for further research
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