Types of Multilingual Communities: A Discussion of Ten Variables

HEINZ KLOSS
Forschungstelle fur Nationalitdten und Sprachenfragen, Marburg

FIRST VARIABLE: TYPES OF SPEECH COMMUNITIES As we try to find out about types of multilingual communities we are confronted with a number of variables. One of these is implied in the highly ambiguous term community. To simplify my task in the brief presentation to follow, I shall take this term to mean all the citizens in a given state but excluding members of those whose mother tongue is spoken natively by less than three per cent. For brevitys sake I shall call this group the national core community, or NCC. Regarding the mother tongue or tongues used by these NCCs, we have to distinguish the following three major types: the monolingual type A, the bi- or trilingual type B, and the multilingual type C. These three types represent our first variable. Not much has to be said about type A at this stage. Iceland and Portugal are good examples. Type B-the bi- or trilingual NCC-consists of two or three linguistic communities each of which comprises at least four per cent of the population. Three seems to be the maximum number of languages which can be placed on equal footing as official languages o f the nation. T h e day-to-day affairs of a countrys administration and even its legislative proceedings will soon be overtaxed, tangled, and inefficient if transacted in more than three languages. But there is equality of two national languages in Belgium, Canada, and Finland, and equality of three languages in Switzerland. Actually, the Swiss example shows that even a trilingual administration is not too workable a proposition. While, for example, all official periodicals are issued in both French and German, the Italian f cases or consists of an version is just mimeographed in a number o abstract or is left out entire1y.l That, to be sure, is due in part to the relative smallness of the Italian-speaking population (roughly four per cent). But from conversations I had with officials in Berne, the
1 Cyril Hegnauer, Dm Sfirachenrecht der Schweiz, Zurich Schulthess, 1947; Mario M. .. Pedrazzini, La Lingua Italiana nel diritto Federale Svizzero, Zurich: Tesi legge Zurigo, 1952. For similar problem8 in the officially trilingual Kanton of Graubiinden (Grisons) see G. Schucany, in Zeitschrift fur Schweizerisches Recht, 75 (1956), pp. 371-384.

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federal capital, I also learned that civil servants who are equally familiar with three languages are hard to find even in Switzerland. f the dividing line between Here we touch upon the significance o NCC types B and C, namely, wherever there is an NCC with four or more major languages, it seems indispensable to have one language which serves as the countrys lingua franca and is understood by all literate citizens. This in itself constitutes discrimination of a kind against the other languages and language communities-discrimination which may be wholly unavoidable, however, and perfectly excusable if a national framework having translingual and transcultural communication is to be created and/or maintained. Thus it was basically legitimate for German to become the national language o f imperial Austria, for Russian to become that of the Soviet Union, and Hindi that of India. I n each of these countries there were just too many major speech communities to make equality feasible at the national level. Two alternatives seem available to mitigate the discrimination embarrassingly inherent to the privileged position of one of the domestic languages: either granting preferential treatment to not one but two languages, or falling back on an imported and therefore neutral tongue-usually the language o f the former colonial rulers. T h e first of these has been tried out, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example, while all over sub-Saharan Africa we find states that use an official language which has been imported over the last 150 years. The neutralizing effect that goes with languages introduced from abroad helps English to resist Hindi, though the former had been scheduled to be replaced by 1965. It is hard to overestimate the importance of the dividing line between multinational states of types B and C . T h e mere fact of more than three major speech communities in a state increases chances greatly of its disruption by international strife. NCCs of type B do not require superimposition of one language considered to be the national language and therefore to be learned by all citizens. They may function in such a way, nonetheless, that although bilingual at the national administrative level, their individual citizens remain nearly monolingual in daily life. This is even more likely to be the case where the linguistic groups are separated by clearcut geographical language boundaries and where the structure of government is federal, so that while the country at large may be called bilingual its component states are restricted to one language territories and are therefore monolingual. Thus in Switzerland the Federal Government is bi- to trilingual while the component states are monolingual, Geneva using French; Zurich, German; and Ticino, I talian.

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SECOND VARIABLE: NUMBER OF LANGUAGES USED BY INDIVIDUALS Types A to C are marked off by the linguistic composition of the population at large. We now shall consider another variable, namely, the degree of individual bilingualism or multilingualism among the adult literate population, It goes without saying and certainly needs no proof that there is some correlation between national and individual bilingualism. What has to be proven is that the covariation is not nearly so strong and consistent as some people seem to believe. This may be the proper point at which to state that our analysis is handicapped by the ambiguity of the term bilingualism. In calling Belgium a bilingual country we speak of a nation consisting of two f which may well be-and major linguistic communities, the members o in the case of the Walloons are-monolingual. By calling Haiti a bilinguai country we refer to the fact that the members of the single f linguistic community which forms the Haitian nation use either o two different languages, depending on functional level. It would be useful if terms were devised which would help us to circumvent this ambiguity. Some writers have tried to avoid unclarity by applying the term bilingual to individuals, even if many of the ones in question are multilingual, and to reserve the term multilingual for states (nations) regardless of their bi-, ti-i-, or truly multilingual natives. Obviously this highly arbitrary dichotomy tends to befog the essential distinctions to be made.2 Regarding the new variable, i.e., individual mono-, bi-, or multilingualism, I shall speak of the following types: Type 1, denoting a fully monolingual citizenry; Type 2, a diglossic citizenry; Type 3, one that is bilingual; and Type 4, a tri- or multilingual citizenry. These four types will first be related to type A (national monolingualism) and to types B and C thereafter. The NCC of Type A will consist in many cases of citizens who are fully monolingual in that only one language is used in all walks of life and by all age groups. Here Iceland and Portugal may again be cited. This may be called NCC Al. There are other monolingual NCCs which offer a more complex picture. Thus in Egypt and Haiti nearly all adult citizens may have spoken the same vernacular language during their early childhood (colloquial Arabic or Haitian Creole); but they had to study a closely related yet markedly different prestige language in school (Classical
It m:ght be a good thing if we had two sets of nouns and adjectives, pitting e.g. mono-, hi-, tri-, and multilingualness or mono-, bi-, tri-, and multilineuality against mono-, bi-, tri-, and multilingualism, so that we might speak e.g. of bilingualism in Haiti but of bilinguality or bilngualness in Belgium. Another way might consist in having one set of compounds combining lingualism and Latin-derived syllables, m i - , bi-, and multi-, and another set combining l.:~iualism (or lingualness, or linguality) with Greek-derived syllables mono-, di-, and poly-.

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Arabic or French), thus becoming diglossic.3 Here we have type A2. Again there are other variations of Type A in which all children learn a language upon entering school which is not at all as closely akin to the vernacular as French is to Creole, but is as unrelated to it as Spanish is to Guarani. Thus we meet Type A3: monolingual nations when viewed from the standpoint of mothertongueness but bilingual in terms of cultural setting and equipment. But even individual trilingualism, Type 4, can occur among monolingual NCCs. Thus Malta, where only one language, Maltese (akin to Arabic), is spoken natively, has used Italian as a second language for centuries and more recently has added English. While it is not yet quite clear whether there will ever be a stable equilibrium among these three languages (conceivably English may slowly be replacing Italian), something closely approaching such stability exists in Luxembourg. Here a diglossic situation between Letzeburgish and German is rounded out by superposed French, each of the three tongues being restricted to its own, clearly delineated functional domain. This NCC may be called A4. From the foregoing it will have become evident that NCCs of types A2-A4 are monoIingua1 merely insofar as only one language is spoken during early childhood in each of the countries. It might be appropriate to call them monopaidoglossic.4 While the term diglossia as conceived by Charles A. Ferguson seems applicable only to the NCC envisaged under A2, there is no gainsaying that some of the characteristics typical of the diglossic situation recur in NCCs A3 and A4; for in all three such NCCs we are dealing with a monopaidoglossic population. The school superposes a second tongue in all, whose introduction and use are characterized by the following features: (1) voluntarism, i.e., no compulsion by external factors to adopt a second tongue; (2) permanence, i.e., long term stability in the relationship between the two languages or speech forms; and (3) functional diversification, i.e., assignment to each of the languages concerned of a definite and important domain in the life of the nation. Thus it would seem that the diglossic situation conceived by Ferguson and the situations envisaged under codes 3 and 4 have enough in common to justify the quest for a cover term that will embrace them all. I am not sure whether the concept of diglossia could be broadened to cover these related situations.6
Concerning diglossia, see Charles A. Ferguson, Diglossia, Word, 15 (1959). pp. 325-340. The permissibility of this term has been discussed with Professor Andreas Koutsoudas of Indiana University. I f diglossia could become the cover term for 2-4, then perhaps we might distinguish between in-diglossia as referring to the relationship within a family or closely and recognizably related tongues (Creole-French, etc.), and out-diglossia as referring to the relationship between two unrelated tongues (cf. in-marriage and out-marriage).

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Naturally the scene becomes far more intricate as we consider our second variable, 1 4 , in terms of B, the bilingual NCC. However, in order not to present too complicated a picture I shall skip types 2 and 4 (individual diglossia and individual trilingualism) and restrict myself to the confrontation between mono- and bilingualism (between Types 1 and 3). I shall begin with a situation in which language policy has achieved perfect equilibrium between the two languages so that both are recognized as ofhcial a t the national level, while the members of the two language communities have at the same time remained largely monolingual. As we have indicated above, this state of affairs may be approximated where a bilingual federal government exists over monolingual component states such as most of the Swiss cantons. Swiss citibens are no more bilingual, by and large (apart from Alemanic diglossiae) than persons from, say, the Netherlands or Scandinaviaprobably even less than these. While the machinery of federal government makes use of several languages, the average citizen is aware of this kind of bi- and trilingualism only when he looks at his banknotes or postal cards; otherwise his daily life is conducted wholly in the mother tongue. The same kind of equilibrium may be brought about in very different fashion. Again both languages may be recognized as official at the national level; this time, however, bilingualism in the NCC at large is matched by exceedingly widespread bilingualism among the members of the two linguistic communities. I must confess knowing of no NCC in which this is an unquestioned reality, because closer scrutiny usually reveals that one of the two linguistic communities is less eager than the other to study and make use of the partner's language. Perhaps this is an entirely hypothetical event, one that never existed and which cannot exist. It is easy to point out examples, on the other hand, of states whose two languages are officially on an equal footing but in which only one of the two linguistic communities is more or less bilingual. Thus in Canada those who speak French are largely bilingual, but not those who speak English; until recently at least, bilingualism characterized Dutch7 speakers in Belgium, but not those who spoke French; and among white South Africans, the users of Afrikaans are more often bilingual than those speaking English. Attempts to explain this lack of equilibrium in terms of any lack
Concerning Swiss-German diglossia, see William G. Moulton, "What Standard for Diglossia? The Case of German Switzerland," in E. D. Woodworth and R. J. DiPietro, editors, Report on the 13th Annual Round Table Meeting on Linguistics and Language Studies, Washington, 1963. pp. 133-144 (Discussion 145-148). 7 I t should be noted that the standard language recognized as one of the official languages of Belgium is Dutch and not "Flemish"; there are Flemish dialects but no Flemish language-just as we have Austrian dialects but no Austrian language.

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in international prestige of Afrikaans or Dutch are refuted by the Canadian example where French complaints about Anglo-Saxon attitudes of superiority sound like an echo of Flemish complaints about Walloon arrogance. Actually, we know since WeinreichS that the international reputation and usefulness of a language has no great influence on the outcome of intranational, let alone local, language issues. We have assumed in all our examples of bilingual NCCs, so far, that both languages are official. We may now proceed to bilingual NCCs in which only one language enjoys this standing. This chiefly occurs (a) when one of the speech communities is culturally backward, (b) when one of the two is numerically inferior by far, or (c) when one of them pursues a policy of linguistic oppression at all costs. Case (a) is illustrated by 19th century Belgium with its then rather backward Flemish population; case (b), by a good many linguistic minorities all over the globe; case (c), by the policy pursued by the Iraq government at most times towards its sizable Kurdish minority. Needless to say, there are no hard and fast dividing lines between the three conditions. For example, the Kurds of Iraq are indeed a minority (though not a small one) and they may also lag somewhat behind their Arabicspeaking countrymen (but not considerably so and probably in part at least because of their cultural neglect by the Baghdad government). Our next step will be to link individual bilingualism with national multilingualism-in Type C NCCs. In the example to follow I have chosen an imaginary state which combines five major linguistic communities. T o make all languages official in the country at large would obviously be an event which, though theoretically possible, is utterly unlikely to occur. Only two principal solutions seem to offer themselves: either one of the five regional languages will come to be recognized as the national link, or a language is imported for purposes of playing this role. These two solutions can be combined by enthroning one indigenous plus one imported language (the Indian way), or they may be expanded (and complicated) either by enthroning two native languages (Urdu and Bengali in Pakistan, Persian and Pashtu in Afghanistan) or using two imported ones (Italian and English in Somalia, French and English in Cameroon). As a rule, only the developing countries will resort to using an imported, and therefore basically alien, language. At any rate, under the conditions of national multilingualism individual bilingualism generally means that most literate adult citizens will have to know at least two languages, the mother tongue plus the national language. At least four out of the five major regional languages have little chance ever to be studied as seca Uriel Weinreich, Languages in Contact, New York: Linguistic Circle of New York, 1953, p. 107.

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AND

SOME COMBINATIONS YIELDU) BY

TABLE 1 NUMBER OF LANGUAGES IN NCC BY VARIOUS INDIVIDUALS

Use Pattern

NUMBER USED

N a t i m a l Type

Example

A. Monopaidoglossic

2. Diglossia (Vernacular with

Prestige Language Studied Later) 3. Bilingualism 4. Trilingualism 1. Impersonal Bilingualism (Government Bilingual, Citizens Monolingual) 2 . Bilingualism i n Government and in Both Spech Communities 1,3. Government and One Speech Community Bilingual, Other Monolingual 1,3. Government and One Speech Community Monolingual, Other Bilingual All Regional Languages Considered National One Regional Language Considered National National Language Imported

1. Complete Monolingualism

Iceland Greece Paraguay Malta Parts of Switzerland (Hypothetical) Belgium Spain (re Catalans), Peru, Morocco (Hypothetical) Ethiopia Guinea

B. Bilingual

C. Multilingual

ond languages by any sizeable number of students within the country, let alone outside it. The psychological effect is obvious; the Tamils of Southern India, proud of their very ancient civilization, by way of example, resent the prospect of seeing their language permanently slighted in favor of Hindi, a newcomer they consider to be an upstart. Table I lists some of the combinations yielded by the first two variables. THIRD VARIABLE: TYPES OF PERSONAL AND IMPERSONAL BILINGUALISM The foregoing presentation distinguished between two basic types of lingualism in analyzing bi- and multilingual NCCs. Since each of these types include a number o f subtypes, we have seen their many combinations make for a considerable variety of possible NCCs. I shall now turn to our third variable, namely one which refers to the relationship between the individual citizen and bilingualism as a social force. The main distinction to be made is one between personal and impersonal bilingualism. What is meant by impersonal bilingualism becomes clear when we call to mind the relationship between the trilingual Swiss federal government and the citizens of the monolingual cantons of Geneva,

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Zurich, and Ticino. While the nation may be called trilingual, the daily life of the citizens in each o f these components is influenced no more by its coexistence with other language groups under one federal roof than is the life of the average Danish citizen by the fact that Denmark borders on countries where Swedish and German are spoken. Trilingualism is largely an affair of official blanks, postal cards, posters, etc. for most Swiss citizens-and even here trilingualism is sometimes avoided through the use of Latin. A familiar situation is found in parts of Belgium, especially among the W a l l o ~ n s . ~ Personal bilingualism may be divided into three types on the basis of its origin. We may call these natural bilingualism, voluntary bilingualism, and decreed bilingualism. Natural bilingualism will usually arise in one of the following three ways: as a result of mixed marriages, as a result of living in a multilingual locality, and as a result of living very close to the boundary line separating two language areas. Voluntary bilingualism may take two forms. It either occurs through strictly private endeavors, or the desire to become bilingual is matched by legislation or other action on the part of the state so that, for example, the result of parents urging is that a second language not only is taught in the schools, but also is used. Decreed bilingualism, though also backed by state authorities runs counter to the wishes of citizens. This is the policy pursued by pre-1914 Germany towards the Poles (but not towards the French-speaking inhabitants of Lorrain), by Czarist Russia towards the Ukrainians, and by pre-I914 Hungary towards most non-hlagyar minorities. The question as to whether we are dealing with natural, voluntary, or decreed bilingualism is of overwhelming importance should we Wy to predict future developments in a given area. Coercive measures will inevitably arouse resentment and will lead to attempts at restricting the actual use of the oppressors language to situations and encounters where there are no alternatives, such as when writing letters to authorities and the like. While natural bilingualism may often become compound, decreed bilingualism will almost always remain coordinate. FOURTH VARIABLE: LEGAL STATUS Besides these three main ones other variables-some of them very important-have to be considered if the Iinguistic situation in any given country is to be analyzed, or if developments within the foreseeable future are to be predicted.
M. R. Bourgeois in Charles Becquet, editor, Le Bilinguisrne en Suisse, e n Belgiquc et en Canada, Brussels; Publ. d. e. Fondation Charles Plisnier, Etudes et Documents No. 5, 1963, p. 46, warns against confusion entre bilingualisme des service et bilinguisme des individus; M. van Haegedoren, Le Mouuement Flurnand, Brussels: Le Conseil Culture1 Flamand, p. 43, speaks of bilinguisme des services, avec unilinguisme des agents.

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One of these variables has already been built into the preceding discussion, though only in very simplified form, namely, the distinction between languages which are recognized as one of the official (national) languages of a country and those which are not. Further subdivision of this attribute, however, leads to the following scale: recognition of the language as an official language of the nation; recogf the language as an official language of a major regional unit nition o (province, component state); promotion of the language by the authorities in various ways (use in public schools, in public notices, in public libraries, etc.), though it does not enjoy the status of an official language; tolerancelo of the language in the private sphere, e.g., in newspapers, broadcasting, and in nonpublic (parochial or independent) schools; and proscription of the language. FIFTH VARIABLE: SEGMENTS INVOLVED I n calling a speech community bilingual we imply application not only to a few high-ranking bureaucrats and some scholars but also to a sizeable segment of the population. It seems that we must consider four major possibilities, each having a number of subdivisions, to wit: that all adults are bilingual, that all breadwinners are bilingual; that all literate adults are bilingual; and that all secondary school graduates are bilingual. The first situation occurs, for example, among many tribes in New Guinea; the second one in Paraguay; and the third one, in a large number of African countries. SIXTH VARIABLE: TYPE AND DEGREE OF INDIVIDUAL BILINGUALISM This variable deserves an extended analysis which cannot be conducted in the present paper. It seems obvious that all instances of compound bilingualism would have to be included. Full-fledged coordinate bilingualism, on the other hand, may shade off into degrees of mastering a foreign tongue to a point which, though not insignificant, may not justify the term bilingualism. SEVENTH VARIABLE: PRESTIGE OF LANGUAGES INVOLVED Prestige is also a topic which deserves more thorough discussion than can be provided here. Prestige may be the result of any one or more of the following factors: rich literary heritage, high degree of language modernization, considerable international standing, or the prestige of
l o On promotion-oriented and tolerance-oriented language laws see Heinz Kloss, Dos Nationalitiitenrecht der Yneinigten Stuaten, Vienna: Braumiiller, 1963, pp. 20-26.

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its speakers. These may neutralize one another in some cases and be mutually complementary in others. I n India, Bengali, and Tamil may boast of much richer literary heritage than Hindi which, however, may soon be foremost in efficient] planned modernization. Preliterate societies may contain a victorious caste of proud warriors who lend prestige for a long time to a tongue, which does not have any special intrinsic merits itself or any impressive literature. French-speaking Belgians have coined11 the terms bilinguisme de promotion, and bilinguisme de concession (or even de resignation). T h e latter occurs where speakers of a tongue that is widely used internationally are compelled to learn the less prestigious language of their fellow-citizens, who are supposed to be learning the first tongue in order to promote their own well-being. EIGHTH VARIABLE: DEGREE OF DISTANCE T h e language situation may also be influenced by the degree of intrinsic distance between the various languages spoken in a country. Thus in India we seem to find less readiness to acquire Hindi among the Dravidians than among the speakers of other (non-Hindi) IndoAryan languages. By and large, however, this variable might be of minor importance. NINTH VARIABLE: INDIGENOUSNESS OF SPEECH COMMUNITIES T h e treatment that is meted out to various speech communities may sometimes vary greatly according to relative length of residence. In Hawaii, for example, the language of the Polynesian inhabitants has been favored over that of the far more numerous (and culturally more advanced) Japanese who came to the Islands only a few decades ago. T h e feeling that latecomers ought to conform with existing language patterns is often shared by immigrants themselves; they often display considerable readiness and even eagerness to shed their ancestral tongue. T E N T H VARIABLE: ATTITUDE TOWARD LINGUISTIC STABILITY T h e degree of linguistic stability or instability in a language, its maintenance or shift, is often associated with certain of the variables listed above. But what was once an effect may in turn become a cause,
l Cf. Marion Coulon, LAutonornie Culture& en Belgique, Brussels: Fondation Charles Plisnier, second edition, 1962, pp. 10-11; and Bourgeois, op. cit., p. 46.

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i.e., a new factor which influences the linguistic scene. Thus in the United States a century-old tradition of abandonment among linguistic minorities has led to the basic attitude that language shift is a natural and wholesome step which is to be expected from a psychologically mature minority population. There is some prima facie evidence which indicates that, while large scale language shift is usually considered indicative of a progressive attitude in the Americas and in Africa, in both Europe and Asia language loyalty is considered to be natural as well as wholesome. But this is little more than a tentative observation which calls for extended and detailed spadework before a final answer can be given.