Language and nationhood in the Maltese experience : some comparative and theoretical approaches

Abstract

In searching for Malta through her language question over the past two centuries, this comparative study posits a theory of the margins: where empires meet, periphery reaches out for mainstream, both revealing and transforming itself in the process. Accompanying this painful confrontational engagement, there are assimilation-resistance paradigms peculiar to the culture clash in colonial politics; these tend to be more pronounced and risky on the geographical fringes, in outposts between boundaries. Responses to divisive colonial policy on language status demonstrate how there is no simple historical or psychological correlation between native language and national identity, and no de rigeur monolingual nationhood. Discourse on language, culture and nationality can be a statement about what people think and feel about themselves rather than about a particular language per se. English snuggled Maltese to oust Italian, would the nest-builder now become a cuckoo? Or had the vernacular's buttressed emergence as an official language mirrored the nation's own growing-up, the language anguish having been, like a soul in purgatory, its catharsis?