Monolingualism in Iceland – Icelandic Language Planning I

What is the “Language Planning”?

The term “language planning” was first introduced in literature by Haugen (1959). He used it to describe the efforts carried out in Norway to achieve a language that was expression of national identity. Haugen suggested this scheme as “the activity of preparing a normative orthography, grammar, and dictionary for the guidance of writers and speakers in a non-homogeneous speech community (…) we are proceeding into an area where judgment must be exercised in the form of choices among available linguistic forms. Planning implies an attempt to guide the development of a language in a direction desired by the planners. It means not only predicting the future on the basis of available knowledge concerning the past but a deliberate effort to influence it.”
Specifically, national language planning is made up of three parts: status planning, corpus planning, and acquisition planning.

1. Status Planning

It concerns the definition of the variety(s) that should be given official status. In this respect, it is important to draw a distinction between de jure monolingualism or  bi/multilingualism (officially by law), and de facto monolingualism or bi/multilingualism.

Icelandic: the only official language?

In the case of Iceland, it is the only official  language. Thus, we can see that Iceland is characterized by de jure monolingualism. Iceland is also characterized by de facto monolingualism owing that, as discussed above, there is no diglossia. Therefore, the majority of Icelanders are only fluent in Icelandic.

Icelandic (íslenska) is a language belonging to the Indo-European language family, which is sub-divided into several subfamilies: One of them is the Germanic languages, which is divided into two branches: the West Germanic branch and the North Germanic branch, to which Icelandic belongs.

The history of Iceland

Iceland’s linguistic constitution can be justified by historical processes, as its policy is closely related to the period of colonization and foreign rule. In 1262, Iceland came under Norwegian control. Later, in 1380, Norway, and therefore also Iceland, became part of Denmark. Icelanders remained under Danish rule until 1918. Consequentially, the revival of nationalist consciousness, reflected through the nationalist movement to struggle for Iceland’s independence (Sjálfstæðisbarátta Íslendinga), started in 1850, took hold.

           Icelandic flag

Language as an element of strong national identification

Noteworthy, the Icelandic movement for political independence from Denmark emphasized linguistic nationalism: it revived the Icelandic nationalist consciousness and, consequently, the interest in its composition. Language is an element of strong national identification itself. Quoting Fraga (1992): “without corresponding to any hierarchization, we consider language as a primordial vector — because it is capable of being the greatest support of the socialization process — of a nation’s cultural identity. It is through the use of the same language that it becomes possible to disseminate among a population — ending up transforming it into the people of a nation — the principles of traditional coexistence, of moral order, of a religious order, and even of a labor order.”

Icelandic independence 

The nationalist movement for Icelandic independence ran through the very significant period of the French revolutions. These gave rise to a new ideology: each Nation must correspond to a State. Then, it comes the concept of the Nation-State. According to it, the Nation is defined as sharing of characteristics, such as language. Gradually, it was considered that the Nation must have its autonomous state. Therefore, the 19th century appeared as the century of nationalisms, more specifically of ethnic nationalisms, which translated into the belief in the unity and cohesion of the Nation from a cultural and linguistic point of view.
Icelandic language policy, as stated, is closely related to the period of colonization and foreign rule and thus reveals itself as a reflection of the period that marked its independence process.

To be continued…