The Limits of Linguistic Diversity in a Federal Context: A Comparative View of Canada, Spain and Germany

Canada, Spain and Germany are examples of three different ways to deal with linguistic diversity in a federal context. Canada has officially constitutionalized bilingualism for the respective languages of the two main founding nations, English and French. However, the actions of the federal government and its member states in the field of language have shown the limits of the Canadian federal structure with respect to the management of French and the Indigenous languages. In Spain, Castilian is the only official language of the state, while other Spanish languages (Catalan, Basque, Galician) are recognized only within the autonomous communities concerned. By contrast, Germany has no official language according to its constitution but has delegated to the Länder the policies relating to the languages of the small number of national minorities recognized by the federal government. This chapter analyzes these three cases to assess the extent to which a federal framework does, or does not, make it possible to integrate, safeguard and promote linguistic diversity, which mirrors the national identities present in the country.