Language Policies Designed to Protect and Promote Minority Languages in Romania
Language Policies Designed to Protect and Promote Minority Languages in Romania

Case Study: The Education in Armenian

Summary/Abstract: The main goal of the present study is to show that linguistic policies, atleast in the case of minority languages, mean presumably more than the macro-policiesadopted and implemented by the national authority at a government level. They may proveto be either inadequate or too general for the specific needs of a particular minority.Therefore, they must be updated and complemented based on a minority’s own needs – ameso-level type policies generated by minority representation bodies (NGOs, politicalrepresentation, private schools, the media, the Church, etc.). Furthermore, a majorcontributor to this regard are the micro-level type language policies – households andindividuals belonging to a language minority – which should contribute to the efforts ofperpetuating the linguistic heritage by using the language and passing it on to the nextgenerations, or by becoming involved in the approaches designed to appropriate andenhance the vitality of the mother tongue. Thus, the language policies can be regarded aslinks in an operational chain, with each of them answering to a well-specified role. Eachof these segments must assume and apply their respective roles, while preserving a fluentand bi-directional communication between them. When one of these links is – totally orpartially – malfunctioning or when communication is done defectively, the linguisticpolicy will also present inherent failures. The subject of the analysis below is investigatingand demonstrating these hypotheses, with regard to the Romanian authorities and theArmenian language in education.

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