by strictlyemma

What’s in a label? How the impact of being labelled a dialect can influence the national & transnational status of a regional or minority language

Anna Sofia Churchill and Caroline De Becker

The European Union (EU) seeks to promote the linguistic equality of its twenty-four official languages through policies and charters such as the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages (ECRML, 1992). With multilingualism as one of its founding principles,1 the EU aims to (a) communicate with its citizens in their own, official languages, (b) protect Europe’s “rich […] linguistic diversity”,2 and (c) promote language learning in Europe.3 Indeed, as both an Italian and a German, our right to communicate with EU institutions and receive a reply in any of the twenty-four official languages is enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights (EU 2012). But what would be the case if, as an Italian citizen, my first language was not standard Italian, but Neapolitan? Or if, as a German citizen, my first language was not Standard German, but Low Saxon? 

This is where our project comes in. We have taken two regional languages of Italy and the Netherlands: Neapolitan and Twents. Neapolitan is a regional language within the Southern Continental Italian continuum used in Naples and its surrounding area in Campania, Italy. Twents, a dialect of Low Saxon, is predominantly spoken in Enschede and its surroundings in the Twente region of Overijssel, the Netherlands. Despite the geographical and linguistic distance of these regional languages and complications regarding their names,4 both have a similar question mark over their labelling. This has a direct consequence on how they are treated by local speaker communities, (local) non-community members, their nation states, and ultimately, by the EU. There is one label in particular which we focus on: ‘dialect’. It is in the consequences of this label that we see two different stories unfold. 

For ECRML protection to be allocated to a regional or minority language, the nation state first has to ratify the charter and also officially recognise the language as such. Languages labelled by the national state as ‘dialects’ are not granted protection (ECRML 1992). In the Netherlands, Low Saxon is a regional language officially recognised by the Dutch government. The Netherlands also ratified the ECRML in 1996 and by doing so enabled Low Saxon (linguistic) projects to receive funding. Twents is considered to be a dialect of Low Saxon and thus receives an extension of the ECRML protection as it is able to gain funding under the umbrella language Low Saxon. We can thus say that Twents is (largely) what we call a dialect without consequence. 

In Italy, Law no. 482/99 recognises and protects twelve minority languages in the country. On the surface, this seems positive. However, a closer look shows that six of the protected languages are other standard European languages, such as French and German, and the other six are all located in the north of Italy.5 Law no. 482/99 does not include any regional or minority languages from the south of Italy, such as Neapolitan, and thus they are not protected by Law no. 482/99 and are classified as ‘severely endangered’, averaging 2.6, on UNESCO’s Major Evaluative Factors of Language Vitality, with number 5 being ‘safe’ and number 1 being ‘critically endangered’ (Coluzzi, 2008; UNESCO 2003). In addition, Italy has yet to ratify the ECRML, meaning that even the twelve languages protected by Law no. 482/99 do not have ECRML protection. To top things off, Neapolitan is also considered by the Italian government to be a dialect, with ‘dialetto’ in standard Italian being quite pejorative. This is a phenomenon seen nationally in Italy, as “regional languages are often inappropriately referred to as dialects” (Basile, 2022). This classification should, in our opinion, be changed to allow Neapolitan to be framed as a regional language in its own right. It can be argued that Neapolitan is not a dialect of standard Italian,6 nor is it mutually intelligible with it (Coluzzi, 2009). As stated by Paolo Coluzzi, “with regard to those [language varieties] which are still known as ‘Italian dialects’,[…] it would be more correct to [use the] term ‘regional languages’ as they do not derive from Italian but are independent Romance varieties that developed directly from Latin (the same as fourteenth century Florentine which became what we know today as Italian)” (Coluzzi, 2008). Given all of the above, we can say that Neapolitan is a dialect with (negative) consequences. 

The top-down labelling of ‘dialect’ as less important than ‘language’ has international legal ramifications. We are interested in whether this negative top-down designation influences the way speaker communities regard their regional varieties, and the contexts in which they use them. In both cases, we hypothesised that the word ‘dialect’ would be considered negative for both Twents and Neapolitan speaker communities, and thus both would demonstrate reservations about language use in prestigious contexts, such as in the workplace or schools, despite both languages having a history of being used in contexts of high art.7

We conducted two surveys, distributed amongst people from Twente and Campania to gauge:

  1. How they view the label ‘dialect’;
  2. How they believe their regional language should be treated; 
  3. With whom and with what frequency they use their regional language. 

In order to conduct the surveys with as little bias as possible, and with the help of native speakers, we provided the survey  in Twents, Dutch, and English for the Twents speakers, , and in Neapolitan, Italian, and English for the Neapolitans. The preparation of the surveys for the data collection was both interesting and difficult in both regional varieties due to the absence of a set orthography for either one. 

The results proved to be extremely fruitful. Our hypothesis – surprisingly for us – was proved wrong, with 77.4% of Twents speakers and 91.89% of Neapolitan speakers having positive opinions about the word ‘dialect’. Interestingly, despite their positive perception of ‘dialect’, Twents speakers do consider Twents to be a ‘dialect’, whereas Neapolitan speakers on the whole (59.46%) consider Neapolitan to be a ‘language’. We can thus surmise that the Neapolitan speakers who participated in our survey do not agree with the top-down opinion of the Italian government. 

In familial contexts, the results were as hypothesised. With family and friends, both Twents and Neapolitan speakers predominantly use a mix of Dutch-Twents (with family 66.04%; with friends 64.5%) and Neapolitan-Italian (with family 54.05%; with friends 75.68%) respectively, with the latter even being used with colleagues more often than Standard Italian. Results indicate that daily language use is also a mix – Dutch/Twents 51.92% and Neapolitan/Italian 64.86%. Despite speakers indicating that usage with family consists predominantly of a mix of the standard and regional language, when asked to specify the usage with children Standard Dutch and Standard Italian are the speakers’ preferred choice. This seeming contradiction could be due to positive confirmation bias where the respondents said what they thought they ‘should’ say; however, further research would be needed to elaborate on this detail. Finally, with unfamiliar interlocutors, both speaker-communities prefer the standard language. 

Although respondents prefer using the standard variety with children, both speaker communities are in favour of Twents and Neapolitan being taught in schools. This is particularly interesting as it appears both communities value the use of both standard and regional languages in education. Thanks to the ECRLM, Twente does allow the teaching of Twents in schools;8 this is sadly not the case in Campania. 

Despite overwhelmingly positive opinions of the word ‘dialect’ and the fact that Neapolitan speakers view Neapolitan as a language in its own right, respondents from both speaker-communities stated that Twents and Neapolitan respectively should not be used in official governmental capacities, even in the case of translated documents. Here we can see the damaging extent of top-down influence in permeating the belief that a regional language or dialect should be confined only to ‘low-prestige’ usage, despite the appearing use of Twents on local curricula in schools. 

It can thus be seen that the label of ‘dialect’ and the negative connotation/meaning that is intended with this can have damaging consequences. It is our opinion that governments should refrain from using the label, especially in the case of unprotected and endangered languages, including Neapolitan. Furthermore, it is important that member states recognise and support the regional and minority languages that exist. 

Because of a lack of resources and support, both Twents and Neapolitan face the possibility of extinction; however, the top-down perspective of the Italian state means that Neapolitan does not have access to any official resources that would prevent this decline and it is therefore likely that its continued maintenance is more at threat than that of Twents.

Footnotes:

  1.  https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history/languages_en
  2.  http://data.europa.eu/eli/treaty/lis/sign
  3. https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history/principles-and-values/aims-an d-values_en
  4. For both Neapolitan and Twents, there is no agreement when it comes to the naming of their varieties. Instead of referring to them as ‘Neapolitan’ or ‘Twents’, typically speakers use the name of the area or village to refer to their local variety, e.g. in Faicchio (Campania) you would call your own variety ‘Faicchiano’.
  5.  https://en.unesco.org/creativity/policy-monitoring-platform/measures-under-linguistic
  6. https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/napo1241
  7. Some examples include: the collection of fairy-tales, Pentamerone (1634-36) written in Neapolitan by Giambattista Basile (1583-1632); Neapolitan songs such as ‘A vucchella, La serenata and Marechiare composed by Paolo Tosti (1846-1916); the famous Neapolitan comedian, Totò, also composed Malafemmena (1951); Neapolitan opera, chiefly written in the 18th century including composers such as Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725); modern translations of The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943) – ‘O princepe piccerillo, translated in 2000 by Roberto d’Ajello, who also translated Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll, 1865) – L’Avventure d’Alice ’int’ ’o Paese d’ ’e Maraveglie (2016).
  8. https://www.tubantia.nl/achterhoek/kinderen-leren-plat-praoten-in-de-klas-op-school-ook-onze-eigen-streektaal-aanleren~a11d031b/

References:

Basile, Rodolfo. Neapolitan language documentation: A transcription model. Accessed 20th November 2022. <https://osf.io/bszet/download>&nbsp;

Coluzzi, Paolo. 2008. Language planning for Italian regional languages (“dialects”). Language Problems and Language Planning, 32(3): 215-236. 

Coluzzi, Paolo. 2009. Endangered minority and regional languages (‘dialects’) in Italy. Modern Italy, 14(1): 39-54 

EU (2012). Charter of fundamental rights of the European Union. The Review of International Affairs, 63(1147). 109-123. 

Istituto Nazionale di Statistica. 2014. L’uso della lingua italiana, dei dialetti e di altre lingue in Italia 2012. <https://www.istat.it/it/files//2014/10/Lingua-italiana-e-dialetti_PC.pdf>&nbsp;

UNESCO. 2003. Language Vitality and Endangerment. 

Anna Sofia Churchill is currently finishing her MA in English Literature and Linguistics at KU Leuven, having completed a BA (Hons) in English Literature and Italian at the University of Edinburgh. Research interests include multilingualism, minority languages, migrant and comparative literature. Owing to her training as a professional opera singer (MMus, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) prior to her academic studies, Anna Sofia has a strong interest in inter- and multidisciplinary approaches to research. 

Caroline De Becker (BA, Friedrich Schiller University Jena) is an MA student in English Linguistics at Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Typology, sociolinguistics, and minority languages are part of her current research interests, focusing especially on the indigenous South American language Aymara, which has led her to learn more about the language from speaker communities during two field trips to Bolivia. 

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