Multilingual The Hague: Municipal language policy, politics, and practice

The reality in many cities across the world today is one of multilingualism (Kraus & Grin, 2018; Smakman & Heinrich, 2018). Municipalities need to deal with this linguistic superdiversity to be able to communicate with their citizens and to navigate inhabitants’ linguistic needs (Blommaert & Rampton, 2001; Kraus & Grin, 2018; Skrandies, 2016). There is a relative lack of research into municipal language policy, while it can have a profound impact on citizens’ lives and sociolinguistic identities (Backhaus, 2012; Siiner, 2014; Skrandies, 2016). The Hague, as the third largest city in The Netherlands, is a prime, but understudied example of such a multilingual reality and associated municipal language policy and politics (Tieken-Boon van Ostade, 2019). Moreover, allegedly, The Hague is the most segregated city in The Netherlands (Cornips et al., 2018), which makes issues of language policy, politics, and practice all the more prominent and interesting to investigate. Therefore, I...Show moreThe reality in many cities across the world today is one of multilingualism (Kraus & Grin, 2018; Smakman & Heinrich, 2018). Municipalities need to deal with this linguistic superdiversity to be able to communicate with their citizens and to navigate inhabitants’ linguistic needs (Blommaert & Rampton, 2001; Kraus & Grin, 2018; Skrandies, 2016). There is a relative lack of research into municipal language policy, while it can have a profound impact on citizens’ lives and sociolinguistic identities (Backhaus, 2012; Siiner, 2014; Skrandies, 2016). The Hague, as the third largest city in The Netherlands, is a prime, but understudied example of such a multilingual reality and associated municipal language policy and politics (Tieken-Boon van Ostade, 2019). Moreover, allegedly, The Hague is the most segregated city in The Netherlands (Cornips et al., 2018), which makes issues of language policy, politics, and practice all the more prominent and interesting to investigate. Therefore, I examined two research questions: what are the language policy and politics regarding multilingualism in The Hague and how are these reflected in practice in municipal signage? The analysis takes a sociolinguistic and language policy perspective to answer these questions and is threefold: it consists of a Corpus Analysis of the language policy and politics of the current municipal council, a Critical Discourse Analysis of two language policy documents, and a Linguistic Landscape analysis of municipal signs in the city. The results of all three analyses indicate that the municipality focuses mostly on the acquisition and use of Dutch and generally describes multilingualism negatively, instead of as a resource. More specifically, the multilingualism of citizens who are already disadvantaged is viewed as an obstacle, while the multilingualism of so-called expats and internationals is embraced. This points to a social divide in The Hague based on socioeconomic class, language, and ethnic background, and is indicative of language ideologies about nationalism and economics (Skrandies, 2016).Show less

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Multilingual The Hague: Municipal language policy, politics, and practice