became possible to separate the concepts of nationality and language. Albert
Barrera i Vidal (Liège) „Sympathetic but critical observations regarding
language policy in Catalonia today“ traces the complex development of the
relationship between Catalonian and Spanish, this being an intra-Romance
example of internal language policy. Here a prehistory with changing fortunes
was ended by the 19th century renaissance of Catalonian, which in turn was
followed by systematic persecution during Franco’s time. Since then language
policy has brought about equality of rights for the Catalonian language. There
are even attempts to displace Spanish and turn Catalonia into a monolingual
region. Such an extreme position (just like the former Franquist language
policy) is viewed rather critically. Max Pfister (Saarbrücken) „Privileged and
underprivileged linguistic minorities in South Tyrol and in the eastern part of
North Italy“ draws attention to the fact that linguistic minorities may be treated
variously even within the borders of one state, in this case Italy. The Romansh
speaking minorities are privileged in various degrees depending on the
respective provinces. In South Tyrol (Bolzano province) they profit from the
autonomy status that was originally granted the German language (a minority
language in Italy but a majority language within the province) whereas they
receive no such support in the province of Belluno. These differences have
consequences for the prestige and the chances of survival of the minority
language.
For obvious reasons, several contributions deal with the situation in the
immediate neighbourhood of the conference venue, viz. Alsace-Lorraine. This
German speaking region belonged variously to France and Germany. This and
the rather uneasy relationship between the two states explains the many changes
in language policy in the course of history. The fact that in this area (especially
in Alsace) it is mostly the German dialects but not the standard language that is
used adds to the complexity of the linguistic situation. Adrien Finck and
Maryse Staiber (Strasbourg) „Regional language in Alsace“ describe this
present linguistic situation. By introducing the term „regional language“ they
insist that it covers both dialect and standard language. They also describe
attempts to see the linguistic situation of Alsace with its bilingualism as an asset
in the European context. Wolfgang Haubrichs (Saarbrücken) „The war of
professors. Argumentation in the domain of language history and language
politics during the contention for Alsace-Lorraine between 1871 and 1918“
devotes his contribution to a curious kind of war, viz. the linguistic and
historical „war“ that raged between France and Germany from 1870 to 1918
because of Alsace-Lorraine. The arguments that both sides mustered in favour
of their position show quite clearly how easy it is to abuse linguistic „facts“ for
political purposes and how eager some scholars on both sides were to provide a
scientific fig-leaf for such propaganda. Günter Scholdt (Saarbrücken) „,Cuius
regio, eius lingua.4 Literary reflections of language policy in the German-French
border areas after 1871“ shows how language policy is mirrored in
literary texts on both sides. For a long time, the regional literature in general
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