Language question in the history. An outline

Abstract

Language question consists in debates over language situation, i.e. position of individual languages in a territory (language status), or over their corpus, or over their classification as belonging to a larger linguistic category (group/family) which sometimes is politically tainted. It appears when there is a competition between languages or between concepts of language policy. In Europe it emerged first in early middle ages in the Christian Church over the role of local languages in liturgy which was one of causes of the split into Western and Eastern Christianity. It occurred again during the reformation being a cause of the split into Catholicism and Protestantism. Language question was the most intense since mid-18^th until mid 20^th century parallel to the idea of nation state and imperialism. It led to disintegration of multiethnic states and imposition of the model of monolingual states, the latter consisting in downgrading “dialects” and assimilation of linguistic minorities. This model was largely followed by non-European states. In the second half of the 20^th century a more liberal stance in Western Europe dominated in relation to regional, minority and immigrant languages. In recent years in some European countries there is a return to the language policy of assimilation of ethnic minorities and immigrants, and language policy is used as a barrier to inflow of undesirable migrants. At the same time institutionalization of the European integration raised the language question at the EU level.