ABSTRACT
It is common practice in bilingual studies to separate and label the languages of a bilingual group of speakers their ‘we-code’ and ‘they-code’. At the same time, the former language is often said to be a ‘minority language’, the latter the ‘majority language’. As the preceding chapters in this book have already shown, both dichotomies as well as their association are problematic. The notion of a ‘minority language’ clearly cannot be defined by reference to the number of its speakers in a given unit, usually a nation or state; for under such a definition, English would be a minority language in South Africa, India, Hong Kong and many other places, Gaelic a minority language in (the Republic of) Ireland, and Italian and French minority languages in Switzerland. It is equally difficult to define minority languages by reference to their official status (or lack of status) in the administration and legislation of a state, for some bilingual communities to which we customarily apply the term without hesitation do not suffer from such official sanctions (such as the German-speaking community in South Tyrol/Alto Adige, the Danish community in Germany (Schleswig), the German community in Denmark, etc.).
