Language and lives through a critical eye: The case of Estonia

This article seeks to situate Estonian language use and policy within the emerging field of critical language policy and planning (LPP). Critical LPP draws on poststructuralist theory to deconstruct normalized categories that maintain systems of inequality. It is akin to the queer theory project for gender and sexuality. Since the country regained its independence in 1991, Estonian language planners have attempted to promote Estonian given the domain loss it suffered under Soviet occupation. But what justification can there be today for a policy in favor of Estonian when this is once again a majority language? The poststructuralist perspective allows us to view operations of power not as the result of intergroup or interlingual tensions but rather of discursive structures that privilege certain ways of knowing over others. This, it is hoped, will afford us lessons for exploring equitable and ethical outcomes in other polities that are trying to reverse the decline of an indigenous language following periods of colonial or other forms of political oppression. Indeed, the preservation of diversity, I argue, is often-but not always-an equitable and ethical outcome in and of itself

La repressió de llengües nacionals sota l'autoritarisme al segle XX: els casos d'Estònia i Catalunya

Els règims soviètic i franquista pretenien estendre la seva ideologia política, a Estònia i Catalunya, respectivament, al segle XX. Les llengües autòctones estaven controlades per mitjà de la censura i la repressió. És més, com a part de les seves ideologies, els líders d'ambdós extrems volien reemplaçar les llengües autòctones per les seves (el rus i el castellà) ja que aquestes formaven gran part del nou ordre que procuraven crear. Aquesta tesi compara i contrasta els diversos mètodes de control de llengua i de llenguatge, per demostrar que els estats multilingües centralitzats -qualsevol que en sigui la ideologia política- poden emprar sistemes sorprenentment semblants, deixant les comunitats lingüístiques privades del dret d'usar i desenvolupar les seves llengües pròpies. La majoria de gent no va fer cas del llenguatge públic oficial o de la seva ideologia en ambdós casos i es pot parlar de dos mons sociolingüístics a Estònia: un d'oficial i -sovietitzat-; i, l'altre, no oficial i de caràcter molt nacional (P. Vihalemm i Lauristin, 1997). Els catalans també van mantenir tenaçment el seu món cultural i lingüístic privat. L'efecte del control centralitzat en la cultura nacional i, per tant, també en la llengua, tanmateix, no s'ha d'oblidar: la tolerància lingüística amb persones de parla russa (en el cas estonià) i de parla castellana (en el cas català) fins i tot si ells parlen estonià o català es pot veure com a part de la continuació del "complex de minoria" (Druviete, 2003, pàg. 5) que es va formar durant el període autoritari. Per cert, aquest tipus d'acord lingüístic és menys freqüent a Estònia però encara existeix i a Catalunya sembla que és bastant habitual. L'omnipresència del control de l'Estat en camps (sòcio)lingüístics va tenir com a resultat «l'adaptació subconscient al patró cognitiu i conductual» imposat pel règim» (P. Vihalemm i Lauristin, 1997, pàg. 108)

Narratiiv, ulestunnistus, identiteet: Emil Tode ”piiririik”

The narrator of Emil Tode's (Tõnu Õnnepalu's) Piiririik ("Border State", 1993) is "driven by the need to confess". A scholar from an unnamed Eastern European country, and a male preferring sexual relationships with other men, he finds himself in a seemingly unbearable crisis of identity, laden with the "double burden" of inferior societal roles in the unfamiliar "Western World". Departing from a Foucauldian discussion of confession, the article analyses "Border State" from the perspective of constructed identities – be they sexual or ethno-political – drawing particularly on the more recent paradigm of Queer Theory. The article shows how Tode is seeking to expose the mythical nature of the supposed truths about who we are in our culture-bound existence

Can the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis save the planet? Lessons from cross-cultural psychology for critical language policy

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the theory that language influences thought to the extent that people who speak different languages perceive the world differently, is discussed in the context of current calls to maintain and promote global linguistic diversity. Cross-cultural psychological research is examined to assess the extent to which the hypothesis can be shown to be true. In the 1970s, research on colour perception appeared to provide evidence against the hypothesis. More recent studies have shown that there are in fact significant and reliable differences across languages in how colour is perceived, classified, and remembered. Research at higher levels of language is also assessed. Language appears to exert considerable influence over how people categorise, evaluate, and remember the world, especially in languages where nouns belong to different semantic categories. Particular ways of thinking may also be more difficult in some languages than others. This may only mean that it is more cognitively taxing to arrive at the same notion or it can mean that an idea is highly unlikely to be expressed in a particular language. These differences may even transcend languages and cultures. It is concluded that, given the available evidence, it is vital to allow alternative perspectives of the world to be available by maintaining and promoting global linguistic diversity

Language & authoritarianism in the 20th century: The cases of Estonian and Catalonia

The 20th century saw the Soviet and Francoist regimes enforce their respective ideologies in Estonia and the Catalan-speaking territories in Spain. In both cases, the autochthonous language suffered under the stringent control of the mechanisms of censorship and repression. In fact, Soviet and Spanish leaders - representing both extremes of the political spectrum - tried to replace the use of the autochthonous language in many sociolinguistic domains with their own - Russian and (Castilian) Spanish - as these languages embodied the ideologies and the new orders that they wished to establish. This paper compares and contrasts the diverse methods of control over language carried out in Estonia and the Catalan-speaking areas of Spain in order to demonstrate that highly centralised multilingual states - whatever their political ideology - can make use of surprisingly similar means of control, ultimately depriving local linguistic communities of the ability to use and develop their own language

Moving the field forward: a micro–meso–macro model for critical language planning. The case of Estonia

This study investigates de facto language policy in Estonia. It investigates how language choices at the micro (or individual) level are negotiated within the macro (or social and historical) context: how official language policy and other features of the discursive environment surrounding language and its use in Estonia translate into real-world language behaviour and practices at a local level. This is achieved through the monitoring of language use in daily interactions of a group of university students with staff members in public and private organisations. This research also engages with the concept of practices as a meso-level of repeated activity, recently introduced into applied language studies, linking individual instances of (linguistic) behaviour with the macro social and historical context within which they occur. Such practices allow us a more complete understanding of how macro translates into micro (as in traditional top-down language planning), but also how the micro can resist the macro, and thus how behaviours in local contexts reshape wider perspectives on language issues (bottom-up language planning). This picture of language use “on the ground” forms part of a wider critical analysis of how “doing language” is managed in contemporary Estonian society, and how this management of language can be improved in order to achieve both the maintenance of (linguistic) diversity and the reduction of social inequality. In addition to contributing knowledge in language policy and planning (LPP) by offering a study on Estonia with a critical focus on local contexts, this article also moves the field forward by incorporating the latest thinking about language and its social contexts. Not only is this the first study to focus on the micro in Estonian in LPP, it is the first to apply a micro–meso–macro model specifically to LPP, overall. This multilayered approach, which includes the meso-political level of practices, allows us to advance LPP studies in powerful and productive ways. It provides a way of arriving at an informed understanding of why people use language in particular ways in multilingual contexts, thus permitting the formulation of LPP that can be effective and ethical in its outcomes

Challenges for the Estonian language: a poststructuralist perspective

This chapter examines the specific challenges faced as part of the process of promoting Estonian as the language of wider societal, interethnic use in Estonia.These challenges are largely a result of the Soviet occupation and the ensuing ethnolinguistic divide and tensions that came about following independence. Although these social and historical contingencies have led to diverging perspectives on the status of Soviet-era Russian-speaking immigrants and their need to speak Estonian, as we will see, there is certainly evidence of a growing rapprochement between the two major ethnolinguistic groups, opening the way towards a more integrated and open society based on a new common language - Estonian. I assess the Estonian case from a poststructuralist perspective, arguing that there are sound ethical reasons to continue Estonian-based integration efforts but that more attention needs to be paid to the specific circumstances that have led to and maintain social inequalities among many of the country's non-ethnic Estonian inhabitants

Discourses, Practices, and Behaviour: A Critical Study of Language Policy in Estonia

This thesis investigates attitudes towards and use of language in everyday communication in public places in Estonia. On the one hand, it focuses on language use “on the ground”, that is, the use/non-use of Estonian by staff in public and private organisations with customers who have Estonian as their dominant language of communication. On the other hand, it seeks to situate Estonian language use and policy within the emerging field of critical language policy and planning (CLPP) by investigating the discourses that frame linguistic behaviour. These are then related to the practices, or repeated activities, that maintain the activity uncovered by the investigation of everyday language use. The focus of the present critical language policy study is to uncover taken-for-granted categories framing social life, in particular those that maintain forms of inequality, and to investigate ways that these might be reshaped in order to bring about outcomes that take into account the everyday needs and realities of a greater proportion of Estonian society. Since Independence in 1991, Estonia has had language policy in place with the stated aim of reversing the language shift that occurred in the period of Soviet occupation (1940-1991). During that time, Russian became the language of prestige and mobility and the proportion of Estonian-speakers in the country dropped considerably. The normalisation and integration processes taking place in the post-Independence period present cases of significant theoretical and practical interest, particularly in terms of how the relationship between the different languages and ethnic groups in diverse societies can be managed. The poststructuralist perspective adopted in the thesis, furthermore, allows us to view operations of power not as the result of intergroup or interlingual tensions, but rather of discursive structures that privilege certain ways of knowing over others. This permits us to carry out critical analysis on how to promote more equitable outcomes, i.e., maintaining linguistic and cultural diversity while also working to minimise levels of social inequality. There were two main methods of data collection: language diaries and interviews. The aim of the language diary component was to obtain personal, naturalistic data about everyday language encounters. Participants were required to log, for a period of four weeks, details of their interactions with staff members in public and private organisations as they naturally occurred. The log had two central questions, one concerning the Estonian ability of the staff member, the other about the successfulness of the interaction, to which participants responded along a Likert-type scale. Participants also recorded numerous other variables related to the situation and the interlocutor. Interviews were conducted with various key ethnic Estonian and Russian-speaking figures in the field of language policy and planning (LPP), including representatives from the Ministry of Education, the Language Inspectorate, the Integration and Migration Foundation, and the Centre for Human Rights. The objective was to investigate the discourses framing these individuals’ views on LPP in Estonia and how these discourses relate to current as well as potential future linguistic practices in the country. Results indicate that Estonian enjoys “normalised” interethnic usage in the capital, Tallinn, but that Russian retains a relatively strong status in smaller towns in the capital region. There is also often little communication at all in interethnic transactions in public places. Integration and normalisation policies need to create social contexts that are conducive to practices of inclusion (i.e., mutual tolerance and meaningful interaction) between ethnic Estonians and Russian-speakers. This can be achieved through a rapprochement of discourses, by promoting a greater understanding of the attitudes, worldviews, and shared histories of the other group. At present, the discourses of many officials, ethnic Estonian and Russian-speaking alike, promote practices of exclusion (e.g., maintained separation of ethnic groups and lack of communication) rather than inclusion (e.g., integration and common language use). The findings afford us lessons for exploring more equitable and ethical outcomes for the future for all residents of Estonia. The particular critical, poststructuralist perspective employed in this research can be applied to the CLPP of any polity in order to evaluate this and propose modifications to bring about “preferred futures” (Pennycook, 2001)

On discourse, agency and buying eggs: Micro meets macro in Estonian language policy

This chapter discusses preliminary results of empirical work in Estonia which examines the interaction between everyday language practices at the micro level and the macro environment within which they occur. From the perspective of this study, macro level refers to the social and historical or discursive context. This micro-level investigation reveals areas of concern, parLicularly to do with health and safety, where ethnic Estonians are unable to carry out their daily lives in Estonian. For Russian-speakers, micro research can identify those for whom current macro policy has not achieved its goal of enabling them to participate in a society in which Estonian is the regular language of interethnic communication. These findings can inform acquisition planning in the case of particular groups that policy fails to adequately address. In the case of older Russianspeakers, it can provide an understanding of how policy itself may need to be altered, where there are, for example, individuals who cannot use Estonian at all and thus constitute a segment of the population that is still in need of public services in Russian. There arc important lessons for the macro-level to be learnt, in terms of equitable and ethical outcomes, by gaining an understanding of what is actually occurring at the micro level