La llengua i la dominació política

Resum

When linguistically dominated nations meet their own culture, sometimes because of a period of economic growth, the meeting leads inevitably to political claims. This is the point where the interrelation between language and politics become evident. The coexistence or the confrontation between two (or more) languages within a State become definite through a legal regulation that accepts this coexistence and, therefore, that all languages are official or, simply, refuses and submits certain languages to another, which is politically dominant. With the aim of systematizing situation which are legally different, we could make the following distinction: a) System of delimited multilingualism, that is to say, a system that admits different languages of a State to be official, but within a perfect territorial delimitation. This is the case of Switzerland, Belgium and Yugoslavia. b) System of superimposed multilingualism, in which two or more official languages are superimposed, for sociolinguistic and political reasons. This is the case of several Asian and African countries that obtained their independence after the Second World War. c) System of mixed multilingualism, in which the other two systems coexist. That is to say, there is an only official language in the main part of the country but, in some other parts; there are two or more official languages. This is the case of Spain. When giving a linguistic regulation to a territory or a country, it is necessary to take the historical territory and the language which was historically spoken there as a starting point. In the second place, the sociolinguistic situation must be considered and, if there is a conflict, the historical precedent must be taken into account.