National language ideology in Lithuanian media

Rasa MikalauskaiteGhent University IPP Dutch and translation

2013

I

‘Within the EU institutions, ideology trumps pragmatism, and the founding ideology of the Union is “Unity in Diversity.” Back in 1957, when there were only six member states and four languages, it was an easy credo to follow. But fast-forward to today and things are not so easy: 27 member states and 23 official languages.’ PRI (Public Radio International)1, 24 May, 2013 The quote from the article dedicated to the accession of Croatia to the EU and (a month later, on 1 July, 2013), succinctly captures the general mood accompanying the latest accessions to the EU and the EU language regime.The institutional multilingualism2 of the European Union is based on the (very first) EEC Council Regulation No.13 which granted the status of ‘official and working language’ to the national language(s) of the member state; the (then four) languages were thereby declared equal in legal power. Further details were not stipulated, mainly because the system was remained reasonably workable and transparent, even with the subsequent enlargements of the the EU in 1973 (the UK, Denmark, Ireland), in 1981 (Greece), 1986 (Spain, Portugal) and in 1995 (Austria, Finland, Sweden). It was only in the 1990’s that institutional multilingualism became part of coherent multilingualism policies of the EU.4 According to Wodak5 the main impetus was provided by the Lisbon strategy (launched in 2000 and relaunched in 200) whereby the actively stimulated knowledge of languages was counted among the ‘skills’ indispensable for the development of a European Knowledge Based Economy, Over the years, ‘the policies on multilingualism [oscillated] between economic (KBE) values and ideologies and traditional European cultural values such as diversity and education’. In this context, another stimulus was the most ambitious enlargement in the history of the EU, that of 2004. In contrast to the previous, smaller ones, it brought nine6 new languages to the family of the official languages of the European Union, which raised their total number to 20. The accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 and, recently, Croatia in 2013, added 3 more, and, together with Irish, which also gained the official status in 2005 (took effect only in 2007) the EU has 24 official

1 http://www.pri.org/stories/politics-society/government/european-union-prepares-to-adopt-24th-official-language-as-costs-mount-calls-for-english-rise-13903.html2 An institution’s (in this case, the EU institutions’) policy on the use of languages in both internal operations and external communications, as cited in Baaij, Cornelis, J.W.3 EEC Council : Regulation No.1 determining the languages to be used by the European Economic Community (1958)4 Main policy documents: the European Commission’s Action Plan 2004–2006 on ‘Promoting Language Learning and Linguistic Diversity’ (European Commission 2003) or its New Framework Strategy for Multilingualism’ (European Commission 2005), and Multilingualism: an Asset for Europe and a Shared Commitment (European Commission 2008).5 Wodak, R. 6 One of the ten new member states, Cyprus, ‘shares’ its official language with Greece.

languages at the moment. In reaction to the posed challenges and changing circumstances, the need was felt to reaffirm and clearly articulate the commitment to the essential principle: Unity in (linguistic) diversity.The EU institutional multilingualism is thus founded on the principle of language equality and the principle of democratic legitimacy and transparency, i.e., equal access of the EU citizens to EU institutions and the EU legislation. Hence, the aims and objectives of the official EU multilingualism policy is to uphold the basic democratic rights of European citizens and; the assumption is that institutional multilingualism will also in the long term, help create the European public sphere, the so-called ‘community of communication (after Habermas).7’ However, at least in public perception, the ever-growing and barely manageable number of the official languages tends to be firmly associated with exactly the opposite of what has been envisaged: the bureaucratic debris, logginess and opacity of the Institutions as well as with the extreme lack of economical pragmatism. The academic and public debate about the desirability and, especially, the tenability of the current language regime is ongoing. Unfortunately, the institutional language regime has become one visible and tangible embodiment of the perceived inefficiency of the EU institutions. The eurosceptics and critics of EU at large employ the image of the institutional ‘Tower of Babel’ to illustrate metaphorically the EU’s failure to communicate its vision and goals.

The critique of the EU institutional multilingualism

The ‘traditional’ arguments against the institutional multilingualism focus on perverse effects the application to the aforementioned principles brings about in practice. They either fail to attain the goal or result in the opposite of what was envisaged. They could be summarized as follows:8

Practical and economical inefficiency

1. The translation and interpretation expenditure of the EU institutions already runs excessively high,9 and will keep rising due the ever increasing number of languages;2. a) As far as interpretation is concerned, some combinations are still unavailable, and the cumbersome and inaccurate relay system (e.g., Finnish to Lithuanian via English) may be used; even in direct interpreting, the transmission of information suffers from delay; moreover, both the spontaneity and quality of discussions is lost, since the speakers tend to simplify their speeches when they know that they have to be interpreted; in long discussions, speakers of smaller language communities will face the disadvantage of being ignored due to the tiresomeness of interaction; b) when translation of working documents is needed, some delegations (example from the EP) will be in disadvantage due to delay in translation.

Democratical transparency and language equality > Theoretical commitment to multilingualism vs. everyday practice:

7 Buchmüller, C.8 Idem.9 The official figures: the total cost of translation and interpretation (carried out by over 3000 translators and interpreters, most employed by the European Commission) in all the EU institutions (the European Commission, European Parliament, Council, Court of Justice of the EU, European Court of Auditors, European Economic and Social Committee, Committee of Regions) is around €1 billion per year, which equals approx. 1% of the EU budget or €2 per citizen.

All official languages have always been equal in status on paper, but never in reality. Regulation No.1 itself provides basis for inequality in Article 6: ‘The institutions of the Community may stipulate in their rules of procedure which of the languages are to be used in specific cases.’ 10 In reality it means that only official documents with legal power in all the member states, resolutions and directives prepared and adopted by the EU, are translated in all the official languages; the same holds for the documentation of all the official assemblies of the European Parliament and official meetings of the Council of Ministers, and there is also simultaneous interpreting from and into all the languages. Meanwhile, all the informal meetings and day-to-day communication within the institutions is conducted in a few languages only, i.e., English, French and German, which are also used for preparing drafts of official documents, and only these languages are de facto working or procedural languages. The declared equality of the languages is de facto ignored. Even the status of German is not as secured as that of English and French; German barely survives as a procedural language, in spite of Germany’s economical weight and political status within the EU. In practice, contrary to the actual working language regime is ‘the result of the balance of political power and economical importance of the dominant nation-states of the EU’.As of late, the debate is being dominated by the omnipresence and omnipotence of English which has

The arbitrarity of the choice of official languages > democratic legitimacy and language equality

The claims to democratic legitimacy of the EU institutional multilingualism are seriously undermined by the presence of regional and minority languages whose speakers do not enjoy equal access to European institutions or legislation. The member states are allowed to select one national language to become an official language of the EU, and their choice is motivated by the politics of national interest and prestige. Predictably, small languages with few native speakers are favoured over larger linguistic communities. For example, Irish is the official first state language of Ireland, is only spoken by about 4% of the Irish (1.6 million people). In contrast, about 10 million people speak Catalan, the second official state language of Spain. At the national level, too, historical and political considerations in respect to minority languages prevail over the democratic principles. The European Charter for Regional and Minority languages, adopted under the auspices of the European Council in 1992, and signed by 33 countries, is still not ratified by 8 signatories (including Lithuania).11

Unsurprisingly, the loudest critical voices have always been British. Unsurprisingly, because of their ‘traditional’ euroscepticism that has become a commonplace; and because they are likely to be the sole winners of the EU language debate, since virtually all proposals for reducing the number of languages include English at least as one of the lingua francas 12. The position of English within the EU institutions has also been catapulted to the level of linguistic monopoly by the influx the new Europeans, the majority of which utilize English as their second language. The speakers of EU are understandably less enthusiast, although only the French, the Germans and, to even lesser degree, the Spanish and the Italians, are in position (at least theoretically) to counter the dominance of English. 13

What about the ‘new Europeans’? 10 See : note 2. 11 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages CETS No.: 14812 Ammon, Ulrich.13 Idem.

(New) Europeans and their languagesIf we are to trust the most recent Eurobarometer ‘The Europeans and their languages’14 just over half of respondents in EU15 (the Europe of 15) (53%) and NMS12 (the new member states as of 2012) (54%) agree that European institutions should adopt a single language when communicating with citizens. On average, the outcome is the same for the old and new Europe. However, the figure (below) reveals the tendency: the most answers ‘totally disagree’ and the least of ‘totally agree’ come from the new member states.

On the other hand, another relevant Eurobarometer survey ‘On New Europeans15’ concludes:'New Europeans by ancestry alone' in turn, stand out by being the most likely (42%) to mention mastering the national language as an important element of national identity, compared to both 'Old Europeans' (32%) and 'New Europeans by openness alone'16 (35%).N.B Lithuania (59%) as well as Estonia (66%) are among the countries whose residents consider the national language as a core element of national identity. 14 ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/.../ebs/ebs_386_en.pdf15 ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_346_en.pdf16 These are people who developed strong ties to a country other than their country of residence. This can be so for four different reasons: they have worked or studied in another country for some time, or have a partner from another country, or they may own property abroad (20% of the sample).

It is a possible that there is a correlation between these outcomes, and the new Europeans tend to appreciate less a single lingua franca (most likely English) for the communication at the EU level, because they attach extraordinary importance to their national language.

We will analyse the relevant content of a Lithuanian daily ‘Lietuvos rytas’ to see if we can detect any pattern in the news coverage relating (as much as possible) to the status quo of the EU language regime.

II

The Lithuanian perspective

The daily ‘Lietuvos rytas’17 (LR) is part of the largest media hub in Lithuania (the LR concern owns, besides the titular newspaper, a TV station, and, curiously, a popular basketball club). It is an independent daily of liberal orientation, founded in 198918. According to the TNS LT (National Readers’ Survey), 19 it is the most popular Lthuanian daily with the share of 23,1% of the Lithuanian population reading it or accessing it online. It represents the mainstream public opinion in Lithuania. In this paper, the online version of LR newspaper is used. The search function or the current purpose the search was limited to the years 2010-2013; multiple search terms were used, to yield more results: ‘lietuviu kalba ES institucijose’ (Lithuanian (language) in the EU institutions), ‘naujosios ES kalbos’ (new EU languages), ‘ES instituciju kalbu politika’ (the language policy of EU institutions), ‘Europos Babelio bokstas’ ( Europe’s tower of Babel), ‘mazumu kalbos ES’ (minority languages in the EU). Since only several contributions dealt directly with languages as used in the EU institutions, some extrapolation was necessary (‘attitudes and sentiment mining’), and news items with the usage of languages and translation within the EU context were also included. About twenty articles were retrieved, (covering the years 2010-2013), ranging from purely informative to opinion articles. The selected items in order of relevance.

‘Learning’, e.g. ‘Vilnius University to prepare translators for the upcoming EU presidency’; the training of 35 new translators will be financed by the EU Structural Funds; the languages instructed will be English, French, German and Italian. (2010-02-20).

‘EU bureaucracy lacks proper terminology in Lithuanian’; A presentation given at the Lithuanian Parliament by the president of the Lithuanian language Commission: the status of Lithuanian has risen considerably, yet there are still practical problems of translating the EU terms into Lithuanian; Lithuanian politicians encouraged to use Lithuanian instead of English or French and actively promote new terms in public. Participants of the discussion need not worry that a ‘surrogate’, artificial Lithuanian should come to replace the real Lithuanian. Translation directory is to be created, based on the existing Lithuanian termbank with 300 000 terms; (2010-04-07).

‘Education’: ‘A Lithuanian student among the best young translators at Juvenes Translatores’; 3000 participants to the translators’ competition from all over Europe in Brussels. (2013-04-11).

17 http://www.lrytas.lt/18 http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/source-information/348521-lietuvos-rytas19 http://www.tns.lt/lt/news/tns-lt-populiariausiu-2012-m-vasaros-periodo-leidiniu-penketukai/

‘Studies abroad – an introduction into linguistic and cultural diversity’ (a joint program of sociolinguistics and multilingualism at universities of Sweden, Estonia, Germany and Lithuania) (2013-06-09). ‘A new English language programme ‘EU law and governance’ at the M. Romeris University’. (The programme wholeheartedly embraced by Head of Lithuanian Barristers board, due to the steady increase of court cases with EU law involved) (2013-05-29).

‘Human interest’: Lithuanian language led translators to the discovery of brown bread with beer’ (three translators, a Swede, an Italian and an American, working at the EU institutions learned Lithuanian and got infatuated by the difficult and ancient language)’ (2013-04-01).‘Opinions’: ‘Don’t push sausage down the throat of vegetarians’ (a polemic rant against militant language purists who fanatically protect Lithuanian against the influence of English);

‘Europe’: ‘A Europe’s new tower of Babel didn’t rise’ (an interview with Anna Grzybowska, Head of the Programming Unit of DG for Interpretation and Conferences at the EP) The interviewee plays down the worries about the shortage of translators into Lithuanian: the institutions are well-prepared to tackle the enormous load of translation. The discussions about reducing the number of languages effectively used are redundant. The cost of translation (some 7 Litas per EU citizen a year) is perfectly justified: ‘the cost of conducting all political communication in only one dominant language – be it English or French or any other - would be much greater,’ says the interviewee who was born in the country where such dominant language was Russian. She minimizes the shortcomings of interpretation (one expresses him/herself most freely in his/her own language, and the quality of interpreters is high). In informal meetings, knowing other languages is definitely an advantage. Surely, before the Enlargement (in 2004), a new tower of Babel was predicted, but the predictions fell short: people still speak different tongues, and they still understand each other. 2013-05-02).

‘Actuality’: ‘What do exactly Lithuanian Poles want?’ (2013-08-09); ‘European Commission has examined a Polish petition concerning the education reform, no legal steps will be taken.’ ‘Russian language will not become Latvia’s second official language’ (2012-02-19).

Preliminary conclusions

The view on practical and economical inefficiency. The absence of negative commonplaces usually associated with institutional multilingualism in the Western media. Practical inconveniences are overlooked, the cost of translation at the EU institutions is justified by invoking ideology rather than economical pragmatism: reminiscences to the recent totalitarian past still appeal to the East European, post-Soviet sensibilities. The practical problems in rendering the Brussels’ jargon into Lithuanian are approached positively and politicians are asked to popularise the new terms; the details of representing the Lithuanian language at the heart of European Union The theory and practice of language equality at the EU institutions.The first conclusion is the positivity, matter-of-factness of the tone: EU language policies and the presence of Lithuanian language at the EU institutions belong to the normal state of affairs and is part of daily news coverage: Lithuania for the upcoming presidency of the EU, young Lithuanians taking part in all-European translation competitions, perfecting their English in international programs, acquiring multicultural skills to participate in the future EU

governance. It is seen as a logical outcome of the Lithuanian membership of the European Union. The status of Lithuanian one of the 24 official languages is self-evident and is actually considered as a deserved recognition of the extraordinary language of Lithuania. The Lithuanian news coverage implicitly, if not explicitly, embraces the official rationale behind the EU institutional multilingualism. The problem of the nominal and real equality of all the (national) languages is not touched upon.

The recognition of the national language at EU level and minority languages. We observe irritated reactions to the claims coming from vociferous language minorities, be it in Lithuania itself or in the neighbouring Latvia (Latvian Constitutional referendum 201220) The exclusive status of Lithuanian as the sole official language of the country (and the sole language of Lithuania recognized at EU level) is not questioned, Polish is perceived as a threat to it, there is a feeling of solidarity with the Latvians are forced to defend their language from the threat of Russian. The superiority of the national language (over the country’s minority languages) is not questioned. At the same time, the admiration is expressed towards foreigners who proved capable of learning the ‘difficult and ancient’ Lithuanian.

III.

It is reasonable to assume that new members to a club will always gladly embrace whatever privileges granted to them by the membership. However, it is possible that, to many newcomers, including Lithuania, the symbolic significance of their national language being recognized at the highest European level, will not fade.

There are a few possible explanations of historical, political and cultural nature.

East-West divide?It could be argued that the nations in the ‘new Europe’ (Central and Eastern Europe) are inclined to associate very closely their national identity and national language, which is supposedly not (or no longer) the case in the west of the continent. The distinction between ethnic (exclusive, based on ethnie and language ) and civic (inclusive, based on civil contract) nationalism in East and West respectively is often being made after Hans Kohn, Ernest Gellner, John Plamenatz, i.a. (‘Ancient hatreds’ in the East vs ‘reason and rationalism’ in the West). 21 The negative connotations aside, the distinction seems to hold ground: the comprehensive study ‘The politics of language and nationalism in modern Central Europe’22

also recognizes that ‘the phenomenon of language politisation is be the most visible in Central Europe,’(Camusella:24) where certain historical circumstances lead to nation-building through enthnolinguistic nationalism. The resulting nation-states were based of the ‘normative isomorphism of language, nation and state,’ Lithuania among them.

20 A constitutional referendum on the "Amendments to the Constitution of the Republic of Latvia" was held on 18 February 2012.[1] Proposed amendments included Articles 4, 18, 21, 101 and 104 of the Constitution of Latvia by adding the condition about Russian as the second official language, as well as prescribing two working languages — Latvian and Russian for self-government institutions. The referendum's question was "Do you support the adoption of the Draft Law "Amendments to the Constitution of the Republic of Latvia" that provides for the Russian language the status of the second official language?" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian_constitutional_referendum_201221 H. Kohn. ‘The Age of Nationalism: The First Era of Global History’ (1962); E. Gellner. ‘Nations and Nationalism’(1983); J. Plamenatz.‘Two types of nationalism.’(1973).22 Tomasz Kamusella.

The recognition of the national language at EU level is highly symbolic and equals the political recognition of the nationhood and the nation-state.

2. Historic revanchism? In EU countries with vocal national minorities claiming the recognition of their linguistic rights (and further cultural autonomy), the exclusive status of the titular language may be seen as an ‘official’ confirmation of a projected monolingual/monoethnical national identity (Catalan in Spain). In the ex-Soviet Union countries there is the additional aspect of what could be called the historical revanchism which, in case of the Baltic countries Latvia and Estonia, takes the form of the ‘ethnopolitics of exclusion’ when the former can be denied minority language rights and protection, because they are not true language minorities, but ‘majoritized minority’, since their language is being understood by the majority of the titular population. (Pavlenko: 10) As Lithuania’s Russian-speaking population is small (8 % compared to more than 30 % Estonia and Latvia), it was less difficult to become ‘the most successful country of the European part of the ex-Soviet Union ‘in implementing the shift towards the titular language and assimilating its non-titular population’, and that owing to ‘high levels of national consciousness [and] language loyalty.’ (Pavlenko:14) The historical revanchism in Lithuania is not directed at the diffuse Russian minority, but at the politically organized and active Polish minority with its claims for linguistic rights, e.g. to grant the possibility to use the Polish orthography in names and place names. 23 24

The recognition of the national language at EU level provides a likehood of legitimacy to exert pressure on linguistic minorities and counter their claims for recognition.

3. The excellence of Lithuanian language

‘Perhaps the most important conclusion to be drawn about Lithuania is that the core of Lithuanian identity is neither the national myth nor symbols related to the myth. More so than most nations, language is central to determining inclusion.’ Terry D. Clark25

Historically, the Lithuanian nation building in the XIXth century relied heavily on the special status attributed to the Lithuanian language. According to Spires,26 ‘the Lithuanian case was special because of the amount and type of attention that was focused on the Lithuanian language, and the qualities that were ascribed to that language.’ Those qualities refer to the antiquity of the language, the fact most Lithuanians are keenly aware of and the object of

23 Lithuanian constitutional law stipulates that everyone (not only Poles) who has Lithuanian citizenship and resides within the country has to Lithuanianise their name (i.e. spell it in the Lithuanian phonetics and alphabet); for example, the name Kleczkowski has to be spelled Klečkovski in official documents.On April 24, 2012 the Europarliament accepted for further consideration the petition (number 0358/2011) submitted by a Tomasz Snarski about the language rights of Polish minority, in particular about enforced Lithuanization of Polish surnames.24 The Economist: ‘The rows are long-running and seemingly arcane. One is about spelling: Lithuanian law says official documents, such as passports and birth certificates, may be written only in the Lithuanian alphabet, which lacks the letter W and most of the diacritical marks of Polish. That is a nuisance for those with non-Lithuanian names. Poland's president, Bronislaw Komorowski, who visited Lithuania last month, would spell his name Komorovski if he chose to live there. […]’ http://www.economist.com/node/2154998725 Terry D. Clark26 Spires, S.

particular national pride.27 It is admittedly the most archaic Indo-European language still spoken.28 Among Indo-European languages, Lithuanian is extraordinarily conservative, retaining many archaic features otherwise found only in ancient languages such as Sanskrit or Ancient Greek. For this reason, it is one of the most important sources in the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European language. 29

The official recognition at EU level satisfies the need to communicate the pride the Lithuanians feel about the national language to the rest of Europe.

Arguably, for many new EU member states (such as Lithuania) even the ephemerical status of a EU ‘official and working language’ equals to a very real visible and tangible achievement. It doesn’t satisfy pragmatic or practical needs or guarantee actual recognition and yet it grants a certain feeling of accomplishment. The symbolical significance of the recognition and the feeling of historical justice being done is probably the main source of satisfaction.

Bibliography

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Baaij CJ (2012). The EU Policy on Institutional Multilingualism: Between Principles and Practicality. Language & Law, Vol. 1. (urn:nbn:de:0009-30-33384)

Buchmüller, Catherine. Democracy and Linguistic Justice in the European Union. Living Reviews in Democracy. Vol 3 (2012)

Clark, D. Terry. Nationalism in Post-Soviet Lithuania After Independence: Making and Protecting the Nation in Postcolonial and Postcommunist States. The University of Michigan Press, 2006.

Spires, S. (1999), Lithuanian Linguistic Nationalism and the Cult of Antiquity. Nations and Nationalism, 5: 485–500. doi: 10.1111/j.1354-5078.1999.00485.x

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Camusella, Tomasz. The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central EuropePalgrave Macmillan, 2012. Pavlenko, Aneta. Multilingualism in Post-Soviet Countries. Multilingual Matters, 2008.27 Interestingly, the episode dedicated to Lithuania in the travel program of the Flemish journalist and artist Jan Leyers about the new EU member states was called ‘The language of Lithuania’ (VRT (the Flemish public television) ‘De droom van Ludwig’ (2004)).28 http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/343881/Lithuanian-language29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_language