Abstract:
Speakers of a minority language in contact with a majority one are confronted to a trade-off: by using the majority language they reach a bigger pool of (potential) counterparties to speak to but they contribute to the dissapearance of part of their culture. Linguistic conventions, acting as a social norm, might be more or less in favor of the use of the minority language, hence helping the preservation of the minority language, among other tools. Using data from the Sixth Sociolinguistic Survey on the use of the Basque language, we try to estimate the linguistic conventions that are used in each of the Basque speaking regions where the Survey took place. We find that in the Navarra and Northern Basque regions (in Spain and France, repectively), conventions appear to be more in favor of the minority language than in the Basque Autonomous Community (Spain). This result might at first seem surprising as the Basque Autonomous Community is the region where efforts to preserve the Basque language have been more intensive. We conjecture that the society in the Basque Autonomous Community is more mature, and relaxed, about the disapearance of Basque. In other words, the speakers in the Basque Autonomous Community feel that the Basque language is less endangered (possibly due to State efforts) than in the other two regions. In this sense, conventions and state efforts would be substitutes in preserving the Basque language.

Co-écrit avec Annick Laruelle