Wallonia's Forgotten Language Analysis
1 A language in question – Walloon
1.1 A piece in the Belgian Puzzle – Wallonia
Within the federal state of Belgium, Wallonia is both a Region and a Community, two terms which reflect different political realities, the former is based on the principle of territoriality with Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia, while the latter was created on the premise of cultural and linguistic solidarity with the Flemish, Walloon and German-speaking Communities (Francard 2013: 29-30). The concept of Community as understood in the Belgian constitution is of particular relevance in the frame of this master thesis as communities are responsible for linguistic, cultural, and educational legislation. Thus, any attempts to revitalize Walloon is to take place …show more content…
The question of what differentiates a language from a dialect has been discussed extensively, and this thesis shall not attempt to answer whether Walloon fits in any of these category. Nevertheless, considering the fact that this thesis will analyze subjective norms about Walloon, it might be necessary to present the readers with the concept of both language and dialect, as well as to provide some background linguistic information about Walloon, in order for the readers to develop their own opinion based on facts and not the attitudes of a community.
Settling the debate on Walloon as a dialect or a language
J. K. Chambers and Peter Trudgill developed the criterion of mutual intelligibility to assess the whether a linguistic code is a dialect of language (Tilinger 2013: 9-10). However, they also add three main objections to this simplistic principle:
1. Political, geographical, historical, sociological and cultural factors have a determining influence on the status of the code. For instance, the evolution of Luxembourgish’s status from a German dialect to a national language is a prototypical example of how culture, history and politics have a deciding influence on a language recognition (Wagner & Winifred 2009: …show more content…
However, since the classification of Walloon is not the topic of this thesis, the exploration of the terminological subtleties is to be cut short here. In the frame of this thesis, the decision is to describe Walloon as a language for two main reasons. First, because, to the layman, the term dialect does not reflect an objective (socio-)linguistics truth, but stigmatizing attitudes characterized held by members evolving in a diglossic environment (Francard 2013: 39). Second, because the bulk of the literature written by specialists of Walloon use the term language and this thesis follows
1.1 A piece in the Belgian Puzzle – Wallonia
Within the federal state of Belgium, Wallonia is both a Region and a Community, two terms which reflect different political realities, the former is based on the principle of territoriality with Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia, while the latter was created on the premise of cultural and linguistic solidarity with the Flemish, Walloon and German-speaking Communities (Francard 2013: 29-30). The concept of Community as understood in the Belgian constitution is of particular relevance in the frame of this master thesis as communities are responsible for linguistic, cultural, and educational legislation. Thus, any attempts to revitalize Walloon is to take place …show more content…
The question of what differentiates a language from a dialect has been discussed extensively, and this thesis shall not attempt to answer whether Walloon fits in any of these category. Nevertheless, considering the fact that this thesis will analyze subjective norms about Walloon, it might be necessary to present the readers with the concept of both language and dialect, as well as to provide some background linguistic information about Walloon, in order for the readers to develop their own opinion based on facts and not the attitudes of a community.
Settling the debate on Walloon as a dialect or a language
J. K. Chambers and Peter Trudgill developed the criterion of mutual intelligibility to assess the whether a linguistic code is a dialect of language (Tilinger 2013: 9-10). However, they also add three main objections to this simplistic principle:
1. Political, geographical, historical, sociological and cultural factors have a determining influence on the status of the code. For instance, the evolution of Luxembourgish’s status from a German dialect to a national language is a prototypical example of how culture, history and politics have a deciding influence on a language recognition (Wagner & Winifred 2009: …show more content…
However, since the classification of Walloon is not the topic of this thesis, the exploration of the terminological subtleties is to be cut short here. In the frame of this thesis, the decision is to describe Walloon as a language for two main reasons. First, because, to the layman, the term dialect does not reflect an objective (socio-)linguistics truth, but stigmatizing attitudes characterized held by members evolving in a diglossic environment (Francard 2013: 39). Second, because the bulk of the literature written by specialists of Walloon use the term language and this thesis follows