Language policies in Norway and Galicia : comparing the impact of diglossic situations on policy strategies in two European communities

Abstract

Linguistic realities in Norway and Galicia have much in common. The situations are in many ways similar, though in some important ways different. Still, the two communities can re present cases for a study of how language policy and national identitymaking relate to each other, in a situation with two closely related and competing written languages. This text tries to give a survey of the linguistic ambiguities and twofoldednesses of the two communities, and into how this affects policy practices in Galicia and Norway. The linguistic concept of diglossia is introduced, to describe the typical situation of political and structural relations be tween a dominating and a dominated language. The dilemmas in both communities can be seen as the ones of proximity and distance, of independence and cooperation. This goes for both language and language policy, and linguistic and cultural identities. "If we stay quiet and don't move, maybe the problem goes away" may from time to time be more of a rule than the exception in government behaviour, when it comes to language policy. "United in diversity" seems to be both a slogan and a strategy, when authorities try to come to Solomonic solutions of the sometimes "hot" language challenges.