Investigating the status of Italian as an ‘official minority language’ within the Swiss multilingual institutional system

Abstract

Switzerland is a multilingual country in which three languages are granted the same legal status, as unequivocally stated in Article 70 of the Federal Constitution: “[t]he official languages of the Confederation are German, French and Italian.” This chapter analyzes the level of equality between these languages, taking into account their representation within the federal institutions and focusing in particular on Italian. Italian is not only an official but also a minority language. A historical overview will shed light on how the status of Italian has evolved over the last two centuries. The narrative will start from the foundation of the modern Confederation in 1803 and will cover the three language regimes (of 1848, 1917 and 1974). It will illustrate the most important events and milestones that led from the absence of Italian within the federal institutions to its de jure equality to German and French. However, the struggle to reach a de facto equality is still not over, as shown for example by the fact that Italian is (almost systematically) a translation language and that some institutional texts are not available in the ‘third language'. Will a fully trilingual institutional system ever become a reality? In order to answer this question, a reflection on the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) of such a system will be presented, thus depicting a potential future scenario in which the three official languages of Switzerland may in reality enjoy the same status.

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