• The Conference
  • Home
  • Programme
  • Venue & directions
  • Organizing Committee
  • Scientific Committee
  • Exhibitors & sponsors
  • Satellite events
  • Conference Party
• Past & future
  • Previous symposia
  • Finland 2014
  • Spain 2016
• About FU Berlin
  • University homepage
  • Humanities at FU

Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 641

Part of Session 145: Conflicts in the city, cities in conflict? (Other abstracts in this session)

Language-in-education policy in German-speaking Belgium: a historical sociolinguistic analysis

Authors: Boemer, Magali Maria
Submitted by: Boemer, Magali Maria (FUNDP Namur, Belgium)

In my presentation I will present some preliminary results of my ongoing PhD project that intends to provide a historical sociolinguistic analysis of the evolution of language-in-education policy in the German-speaking Community of Belgium (GC).

In the course of the 20th century, the GC – like many other areas located along the Romano-Germanic language border – became a laboratory for research on individual and societal language contact phenomena. Since the 1960s, special attention has been given to the empirical investigation of changes in the linguistic composition and/or behavior of the population living in the GC as an area of French-German language contact (cf. Darquennes 2006 for an overview). Concerning language-in-education policy, one finds a number of descriptive synchronic sketches. However, a systematic analytical account of the evolution of language-in-education policy over the last 90 years is not yet available.

Given the fact that the GC is situated at the Romano-Germanic language border, it has been subject to a certain number of (geo-) political changes during history that had an impact on the organization of (language) education: the period of linguistic assimilation following WW I (1919-1940), the period of annexation to Germany (1940-1945), the period following WW II and leading to the (coordinated) language laws (1945-1963), the period of the creation of (cultural) communities following the state reform of 1970/71 until the transfer of school authority to the communities in 1989 (1963-1989), the period leading to and following a new law on language-in-education adopted in 2004 (1989-2012).

For each of the time frames, an analytical account based on a careful study of relevant formal and more informal documents related to language-in-education policy retrieved in libraries, the national archives and the archive of the local newspaper (Grenz Echo) will be provided. The corpus of relevant texts will be analysed by means of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). In addition, face-to-face interviews with important stakeholders in language-in-education policy will be conducted, at least for the more recent time frames. The interviews should allow me to obtain information that has not been registered before.

In this talk, I will address the results of archival research. In line with the topic of the thematic session, I will concentrate on a discussion of official documents (e.g. bills of law and decrees concerning language use in schools) and the way in which these documents have been commented upon in the local press in the GC. These documents will allow me to illustrate how the different actors influencing the language-in-education policy in the GC have either perceived the German-French language contact and the (asymmetrical) societal multilingualism to which it has given shape as a problem, as an opportunity, or as both a problem and an opportunity in the course of the reform of the centralist Belgian state into a federal one.

References:

Darquennes, Jeroen (2006): Duits als autochtone taal in België: een schets et aandacht voor onderzoeksdesiderata. In: Handelingen LIX van de KZM, 93-109.