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- Title
Das Seilziehen um Zahlen Schweizer Volkszählungen und das Bündnerromanische.
- Authors
Coray, Renata; Duchêne, Alexandre
- Abstract
Language statistics are important sources for science and politics. They enjoy a status of neutral authoritative facts. However, their production and reception are heavily connected to the (re)production of knowledge and language ideologies. Censuses define which languages «count» and they register the existence and development of minority languages and their speakers. Therefore, statistics are an integral part of experts’ rhetoric on endangered languages and regularly become a terrain of struggle for language activists who fight for appropriate representation and funding. The production and discussion of language statistics in Switzerland can be considered as emblematic: Changes and developments in the statistics of the smallest national language – Rhaeto-Romance – are regularly objects of discussions and complaints. Reactions of language activists illustrate a tradition of criticism, narratives of crisis and strategies of countercounting – and, more generally, the impossibility to produce the «good» numbers. This case study provides a more general understanding of the importance for language activists of fighting for and with numbers in their struggle for recognition and support.
- Subjects
LANGUAGE &; languages; STATISTICAL linguistics; LINGUISTIC minorities; RAETO-Romance language; NON-English speaking people
- Publication
Vox Romanica: Annales Helvetici Explorandis Linguis Romanicis Destinati, 2020, Vol 79, p61
- ISSN
0042-899X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2357/VOX-2020-004