Urs Dürmüller

Introduction

Switzerland with its four national languages in a small, densely populated area has always been a good object to study contacts among different language groups. How do the German, the French, the Italian and the Rumantch (or Raeto-Romance) speakers get along with each other? Why is it that no open conflicts have ever flared up? Is the apparent peace really to be trusted? Such questions have frequently been asked - and they have been answered, though not always in a fully objective way, but in ways marked also by political deliberations. Currently Switzerland seems to be undergoing a change from a nation of four languages to a country with many languages. Substantial groups of immigrants have begun to upset the old ways of communication in Switzerland, so that multilingualism in Switzerland cannot be studied any more just in terms of the time-honored four-language model, but must now be looked at in terms of a new model, one allowing for many more than the traditional four languages. In this paper I intend to contrast the two models. I‘ll mention how the four traditional language groups have succeeded in preserving their identities and have still been able to establish sufficient contacts to their co-Swiss of different language backgrounds so that Switzerland could indeed be one nation. I‘ll also allude to the barriers that have been created between the various territories - the „territorial principle“ of Swiss national language policy will be important in this discussion - and the bridges that have been built to cross the demarcation lines - here I‘ll speak of the national policy of bi- or multilingual education and the resulting „polyglot dialogue“.Then I intend to show how migration within Switzerland and immigration from abroad into Switzerland has begun to blur the formerly clear distinctions, how contact is no longer a matter of geography, as it were, taking place (if it does) between language groups living in their own clearly defined territories, but that is a matter of the mind - here, I‘ll refer to the principle of language freedom. Bridges and barriers that are built in the countryside or in the cities are important for physical communication, but those that are are erected in people‘s minds have the greatest effect on linguistic communication. Multi-language repertoires are developed according to people‘s needs and preferences, not according to politicians‘ strategies. The network of one‘s daily activities may make possible contacts to members of many and quite diverse language groups as much as it may exclude others from being contacted at all. There is therefore a need for revision in national language education, allowing the Swiss to acquire in the schools any language that might be useful to them, not just the traditional Swiss languages, but also the language of important immigration groups in their neighborhood, the language of their workplace, which may also be a foreign language, and a language in which they could communicate with everybody in the nation.

Quadrilingual Switzerland

The Swiss constitution states that Switzerland is a quadrilingual nation and that all the four languages - German, French, Italian and Raeto-Romance have the status of national and official languages. There are indeed four language groups and these co-exist with each other. If the first (or principal) languages of the Swiss residents are mirrored in a geographical map, language areas become clearly visible. The West appears as francophone, the middle, the North and much of the East as Germanophone, the southern canton of Ticino and the southern valleys of the Grisons appear as Italian, and Raeto-Romance stands out in some parts of the Eastern regions. Indeed, according to the census of 1990, 73.5% of the Swiss resident polulation were German speaking, 20.5% French, 4.1% Italian and 0.7% Raeto-Romance. There is an obvious imbalance, which can be emphasized if the language groups are transformed into graphic blocks. German speaking Switzerland outnumbers Romance speaking Switzerland (French, Italian and Raeto-Romance taken together) at the ratio of 3 to 1. Of course, the German speaking Swiss are even more dominant if compared with the other language groups separately: German/French: 4 to 1, German/Italian: 16 to 1, German/Raeto-Romance: 72 to 1. The majority-minority pattern is also detectable among the Romance group. There the French speakers are the dominant group; they outnumber the Italian speaking Swiss at a ratio of 4 to 1, and the Raeto-Romance speakers at a ratio of 20 to 1. Small group interests seem to be more important than the larger, common ones. That is why the much talked about „Latin solidarity“, a pact of the Romance-speaking groups to counterbalance the German block, does not really work. Typically, each group fights for and looks after its own interests. There are barriers between each and all of the four language communities. What might unite the Romance groups against the German group is their fear of „Germanification“. However, this is translated into negative attitudes towards the German speaking Swiss not among the Rumantch, whose language, since the 12th century has been losing ground to German and seems to be nearing extinction in the next two generations, but among the French speakers, whose share has not declined and might at present even be growing. The fact that these groups exist is deeply rooted in people‘s minds. Folklore has always seen these language areas as separate blocks. Cartoonists have pointed out the disruptive potential of the unequal size of the four blocks and the resulting imbalance. They have regularly drawn pictures of the barriers existing between German and French, German and Italian, French and Italian speakers. Surveys regularly confirm the existence of attitudinal stereotypes. By applying what is called the principle of territoriality, state language policy strengthens this thinking even more. The idea behind the principle of territoriality of course has its merits. It states that each language community has the right to determine which language is to be used as its official language, e.g. the language of schools, and it garantees that language shift is at least made difficult.Territoriality has been largely responsible for the linguistic stability and the resulting language peace in Switzerland. However, granting territoriality to the language groups also fortifies the frontiers between these territories and the erection of barriers between them. Attempts to overcome these effects have been made, especially in the realm of language education. Enforced learning of a second, sometimes even a third national language by every Swiss is meant to make contacts and communication between the different language groups easier. The idea behind teaching German to all the French speaking Swiss, or French to all the German speaking Swiss, is to give them some understanding of the culture and mentality of the respective target language group and to make polyglot dialogue possible between them. Again, however, surveys show that, on a general level, these endeavours do not have much beneficial effect. Swiss of different language background do not visit with each other, do not communicate much with each other, do not speak each other‘s language sufficiently well. (See Bickel & Schläpfer, 1995)

Plurilingual Switzerland

Recently, Switzerland, like the rest of Europe and indeed large parts of the world, has become a more mobile society. People have begun to leave their territories of origin in larger numbers than used to be the case and to settle in other language areas. The traditional language blocks do no longer have speakers of one language only, but now have significant speakers of other Swiss languages as well. Thus, in German-speaking Switzerland 14.3% do not have German (or Swiss German) as their L1, in Italian-speaking Switzerland this figure reads 16.9%, in French-speaking Switzerland it goes up to 23%, and in the Raet-Romance regions to 26.7% (1990). No wonder, the principle of territoriality has come under pressure and greater prominence has been given to the principle of language freedom, i.e. to everybody‘s right to use his or her language. Apart from the mobility of the Swiss themselves it is also the increased immigration of foreigners into Switzerland which is changing the linguistic shape of the country. It appears that the quadrilingual nation is rapidly turning into a plurilingual state in which the equation of language and territory is losing its relevance. If one still wants to include Raeto-Romance in the catalogue of languages - and the political will for that is unmistakingly there - then many more languages must be mentioned as well. For Raeto-Romance now has fewer speakers in Switzerland than have Spanish, Portuguese or English and only a few more than Albanian (1990):

Rank Language Number of Speakers in Thousands 1 German 4374 2 French 1321 3 Italian 524 4 Slavic 128 5 Spanish 118 6 Portuguese 95 7 Turkish 60 8 English 60 9 Raeto-Romance 39 10 Albanian 38 11 Arabian 18

The shift from a quadrlingual nation to a plurilingual country is also clearly shown if one compares the shares taken by the traditional languages and the new ones. These appear in the census data als „other languages“; over the past 30 years they have increased 600%:

Language 1960 1970 1980 1990 German 69.3 64.9 65.1 63.7 French 18.9 18.1 18.3 19.2 Italian 9.5 11.9 9.8 7.6 Raeto-Rom 0.9 0.8 0.8 0.6 Others 1.4 4.3 6.0 8.9

It seems probable that, by the year 2000, the share of „other languages“ will reach 10%. The presence of the new languages is most noticeable in the urban areas of Switzerland. Currently (1990) foreign language speakers in the cities have a share of about a fifth on the average, i.e. between 34.3% (in Geneva, where is is largest) and 15.7% in Lucerne (where it is smallest).

Territoriality versus Language freedom

When the language article of the Swiss Federal Constitution was being revised around 1990 - the newly formulated article was accepted by the Swiss voters only in early 1996 - adherents of the principle of territoriliaty and defenders of the principle of language freedom could not agree on a common base which might have made it possible to include these two instruments of Swiss language policy into the text of the article. In retrospective it appears that the quarrel was over the potential shape of multilingual Switzerland. Traditionalist would lobby for the inclusion of the principle of territoriality and against an inclusion of individual languge rights. Modernists, on the other hand, would opt for language freedom, but against territoriality. The traditionalists, it appears, wanted to preserve the shape of the four-language nation, while the modernists wanted to do justice to he new realities of plurilingual Switzerland. With no foundation for a clear policy laid down in the federal constitution, language policy is now even more a matter of the smaller units than before, i.e. the cantons and the communities. Depending on the will of its constituency, a cantonal or community government may opt for territoritality or for language freedom. Thus, territoriality has won in the community of Pontresina, where all the children have to attend Raeto-Romance primary school, although there are fewer than 15% Rumantch inhabitants. In neighboring St. Moritz, on the other hand, which is equally German-dominated, children may now go to a German school while before the school language was Raeto-Romance, too. The application of the principle of territoriality, as this example shows, helps to maintain a language (in this case Raeto-Romance), even if the majority of the people concerned do not speak it. On the other hand, applying the principle of language freedom causes language shift (in this case from Raeto-Romance to German) as soon as a majority of the people concerned speak another than the traditional regional language. It is obvious that there are conflicting interests at work. Poeple who have migrated from language area A into language area B would like to make use of their language rights. On the other hand, people in language area B would like to fend off the unwelcome influence of newcomers by insisting on territoriality. That it is not possible strictly to apply either the principle of territoriality or the principle of language freedom is not only reflected in the fact that neither is mentioned in the language article of the Swiss Federal Conctitution, but also in a ruling of the Swiss Supreme Court which, in 1993, stated that the strict application of the principle of territoriality in schools means restricting individual language rights, i.e. a weakening of the principle of language freedom, which cannot be tolerated. As Switzerland is changing from a static quadrilingual nation to a mobile plurilingual one, more and more exceptions to the principle of territoriality will be permitted. The fear of some of the traditional language groups that they will lose ground cannot be fully justified. It is true that it will become increasingly difficult to define particular areas of Switzerland as being clearly Raeto-Romance, Italian, French or German, because increasingly more speakers of other languages will populate those areas, but these very speakers will also take their L1 with them and advertise them in the daily contact with speakers of other languages.

Language Repertoires

While the application of the principle of territoriality has the effect of a language barrier, mobility and the application of the principle of language freedom have a bridging function. The new plurilingual Switzerland is finally getting a chance to become truly multilingual. One will no longer talk of a country with four language areas that have their own territories and are separated by clearly defined language boundaries, but of citizens that are multilingual themselves. If the language boundaries can be moved from the geographical map to the mental language apparatus of individual speakers, boundaries are no longer felt as barriers but as bridges. The language repertoires of migrants have been documented by Lüdi (1993), Lüdi/Py (1994) and their collaborators. A French speaking bank clerk in Basel, e.g., has a repertoire of five languages which she uses according to situation, activity or partner. Similarly an Italian state employee working in German speaking Bern uses six different languages in his everyday life: Swiss German when talking to neighbors, when going shopping, when doing sports, Swiss German, French, Italian and Italian dialect when being together with friends, Italian and Italian dialect in his family, Italian dialect exlcusively with his wife, Italian, but also some Swiss German with his daughter; Standard German and English are added to his repertoire when he goes to work, studies documents or talks to colleagues. Migrants from abroad equally build up language repertoires. In addition to ther language of origin they will have to make use of the languages of the neighborhood, of the schools, of the workplace.

Freedom in Polyglot Dialog

As the principle of territoriality is losing ground, another important pillar of multilingual Switzerland is crumbling. Enforced bi- and trilingualism was the solution Switzerland had to offer to the problems of communication in the four-language nation. However, the partner-language model has never worked successfully in practice (Dürmüller 1991). Polyglot dialog can only work is speakers are well motivated. Such motivation is given by one‘s personal interests and everyday activities. Nor can the languages to be used in polyglot dialog be decreed. People living in plurilingual Switzerland may have geater need to acquire English and other non-Swiss languages than a second, a third or even a fourth of the traditional Swiss national languages. And where they need additional Swiss languages, their needs might be different from what has been arranged to satisfy these needs by the official language education program. French and Italian speaking Swiss, e.g., need courses in Swiss German, which they are denied. Italian speaking Swiss have much greater needs for Standard German than for French; nevertheless, they have to take French before they are offered Standard German. And, although all the Swiss claim that they have greater needs for English than for any other language, they are offered courses in Englishonly in second or third position, if at all. Due to the many guest workers from Mediterranean countries, in many workplaces of German and French speaking Switzerland, Italian has acquired the status of a lingua franca. Nevertheless, school programs make it difficult for Swiss as well as for non-Italian speaking immigrants to learn that language.

Summary

State policy and state intervention have not been successful in making language contacts possible, not even when it was still possible to define Switzerland as a four-language-nation. The insistence on terrioriality has created a status of co-existence, which on the one hand gave Switzerland peace, but, on the other hand, did not create interaction. Migration from within and from without has now upset that traditional order. Plurilingualism now gives Switzerland the chance to become truly multilingual, because it is no longer just the nation that is defined as multilingual, but the citizens themselves. The decisive factor in this process are not abstract ideologies regarding the multi-language state or measures taken in language policy based on these, but the real language needs of the individual citizens living in a babylonion surrounding.

References

Bickel Hans & Schläpfer Robert, eds. 1994. Mehrsprachigkeit - Eine Herausforderung. Basel/Frankfurt a.M.: Helbling & Lichtenhahn. Botschaft des Bundesratesand die Eidg. Räte über die Revision des Sprachenartikels der Bundesverfassung (Art. 116 BV) vom 4. März 1991. Bern: EDMZ. Dürmüller, Urs. 1991. „Swiss Multilingualism and Intranational Communication“. Sociolinguistica 5: 111-159. Dürmüller, Urs. 1996. Mehrsprachigkeit im Wandel. Von der viersprachigen zur vielsprachigen Schweiz. Zürich: Pro Helvetia. Eidg. Dept. des Innern. 1992. Zustand und Zukunft der viersprachigen Schweiz. Bern: EDMZ. Lüdi, Georges. 1993. „Sprachliche Identität und demographische Mobilität in der Schweiz.“ Babylonia 1993, 2: 17-30. Lüdi, Georges. 1994. „Qu‘est-ce qu‘une frontière linguistique?“ Babylonia 1994,1:: 7-17.