Discourse figures in the Luxembourg language debate (2015–2020)

Abstract

The societal role of languages in issues of social integration and collective identity has long been a topic of public debate in Luxembourg. In this paper, I examine the latest wave of this language-ideological debate by focusing on the years 2015–2020. The study uses data from different sources and combines different methodological approaches to examine the contributions and perspectives of various social groups of actors to the structure and dynamics of this debate. I introduce the concept of discourse figure, that is, frequent couplings of linguistic forms and ideological motifs tied to different types of actors in discourse, as a unifying analytical lens to the multi-method and multi-sited study of public discourse. The case study is carried out in three steps, first, via a manual analysis of a large media corpus, then, through the computational modeling of a large corpus of user comments from RTL.lu, and last, using a perception study asking participants to make drawings of their experience with multilingualism in Luxembourg. The results show that there is a limited number of discourse figures with structural relevance for the Luxembourg language debate. These figures are found in all datasets and can be classified into three types: language-related, actor-related and feature-related. The ideological core of the central figures in Luxembourg’s public discourse reveals a close connection of the discussion on multilingualism and the role of Luxembourgish with questions of collective identity and social integration. From a methodological perspective, the study demonstrates that a multi-method approach – with the help of the concept of discourse figure – can be used to comprehensively reconstruct the dynamics of the Luxembourg language-ideological debate.