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2 ECMI Brief 1 (1998)

handle is hein.ecmi/ecmiibrf0002 and id is 1 raw text is: Language Policy in Multilingual Switzerland: Overview and Recent Developments Paper presented at the Cicle de conftrencies sobre politica lingiiistica Direcci6 general de politica lingiiistica Barcelona, 4 December 1998 Franqois Grin1 1. Introduction Switzerland is often quoted as a success story for its handling of linguistic and cultural diversity. In this presentation, I will try to assess this success: to what extent is this reputation justified? What are the conditions that have resulted in this very particular way of dealing with diversity in a multilingual state? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Swiss model? Since time and space are too limited to engage in a full-fledged historical, political, socio- linguistic and economic assessment of Swiss quadrilingualism, let alone in a comparative discussion, I will eschew the usual presentation of demo- and sociolinguistic data in favour of a more interpretative approach, with the aim to provide the reader with an analytical, rather than descriptive perspective on Swiss multilingualism today. Much relevant detail will have to be omitted, meaning that this text will concentrate on what I consider to be the essential di- mensions of the problem. However, additional information (including an array of relevant figures) can be found in the references listed at the end of this paper. This paper is organised as follows. In Section 2, I review the historical foundations of Swiss multilingualism; the corresponding institutional arrangements are presented in Section 3; Section 4 is devoted to a discussion of the current challenges that Switzerland is confronted with in its handling of linguistic diversity. 2. The roots of Swiss multilingualism: an overview Despite a small population of barely over 7 million, Switzerland has four national languages, namely German (declared as their main language, in the standard or dialectal form, by 63,6% of the resident population), French (19,2%), Italian (7,6%) and Romanche (0,6%), according to 1990 Federal Census returns. Accordingly, 9% of the resident population claims a non-national language as their main language, which is a very high percentage in international comparison. A vast array of figures could be presented to give a fuller socio- and demolinguistic portrait of Switzerland. However, these can easily be retrieved from a variety of sources (e.g. Schldpfer, 1982; D6partement f6d6ral de l'int6rieur, 1989; Liidi, Werlen and Bianconi, 1997; Matthey and De Pietro, 1997), and I wish to stress other, possibly less known dimensions. More precisely, before discussing the institutional aspects which are a necessary part of any description of the Swiss language situation, it is interesting to discuss the history which has resulted in what is present-day Switzerland, because historical factors go a long way towards explaining the strengths and weaknesses of Swiss quadrilingualism. 1 Deputy Director, European Centre for Minority Issues, Flensburg, Germany, and Maitre d enseignement et de recherche, Department of Economics, University of Geneva, Switzerland.

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