The Protection of Minorities and Minority languages. The Case of Friulian and Friulian Minority

The definitions of minority and minority language permit, per se, to explain what protection is. Facing situations where languages with individual and diverse characteristics exist but they are not recognized as such and whose presence in the society and in the territory where they are traditionally used, is limited and subjected to the dominant language, the protection of minority languages does not mean to put in place actions finalized only to their conservation or their protection. Conversely, minority protection means to promote their use (and their free and dynamic development) in all the scopes of public life, from the media to the public administration, from place names to economy and cultural production to their teaching and use in the schools.

For this purpose, a linguistic policy is needed: a “set of rules and acts, especially of the state and of the public authorities, able to affect the use, the spread (…) and the school teaching of the existing language in a country”. To do so, a set of legal instruments is needed to obtain the necessary resources to develop actions of language planning: appropriate interventions for the usage of the language in different scopes of communication and as a mean of cultural production (official writing, standard variety of reference, dictionaries, terminology database and textbooks) and condition warranties on the usage of the language admitted to protection in all the scopes (education, relations between citizens and institutions, access to the mass media).

Speaking about protection, a reflection on recipients is needed: the minority languages, the linguistic minorities, the rights of minority languages or the rights of those who are members of the linguistic minorities. It is necessary to take into account what the linguist Edward Sapir affirms (“the language exists only to time and as it is actually used: spoken and heard, written and read”) and the meaning of the use of the own language for an individual (as a sign of belonging to the corresponding culture, as a factor of recognition to a social group, as a demonstration of the will to recognize himself in it and in its culture, as an instrument and a symbol of relations with and inside a particular community).

In this way, it is clear that it is difficult to distinguish between language, linguistic community and individual speakers. The actions of protection, if they are indeed those, must cover both the language and the speakers and the community, defined by the use of the same language. They cover the rights of each person (to be himself, to want to be himself, to recognize himself in a group with which he shares the linguistic and cultural values, to ensure himself in front of the laws and the state organization) who uses or who wants to use his own language and therefore is part of a linguistic community. In addition to the sphere of the linguistic rights, which are part of the fundamental human rights, the protection responds to another need: the recognition and the development of all the languages (and implicitly of all the corresponding communities), as parts of the world cultural heritage.

Taking into account the theoretical foundations of the protection, we can observe that its direct beneficiaries are the minorities, the people who are part of them, their rights, their languages, but also that the protection is convenient for the entire society: it has a symbolic and concrete value for everyone.

This is evident if we take into account the languages as the subject of protection: they are part of the world linguistic and cultural heritage and, for this reason, the actions undertaken to sustain their usage (fundamental condition for their existence) are important not only for their speakers, but also for the others. The concept can be applied also if we take into account the people (individuals and communities) and the rights. In this case, the advantage is for everyone, as far as it is a form of warranty of the fundamental rights. Finally, the implementation of actions of protection, in particular in multilingual contexts, is an opportunity of knowledge, of education, of relations and of citizenship. Moreover, to know that in an specific area there are more languages, means a greater awareness of themselves, of the others and of the place where they live, besides the possibility to use more languages, in a condition oriented to multilingualism.

The use of an education open to cultural diversities and founded on the multilingualism, to which the protection of minorities contributes, influences the “being” and the “knowing how to be”, because it reveals a condition more favorable to an active, open and positive confrontation with the others and their specificities, through the availability to use different forms of communication and of relation. Everything flows in the dimension of social living where, thanks to the recognition of the value of diversity and the right to diversity, there is more cultural and relational richness, more democracy and a formal warranty of protection of the fundamental rights of citizenship.