In the interest of advancing multilingualism in public services, the Swiss Confederation is legally bound to promoting federal employees' language skills in Switzerland's official languages. The divisions within the Federal Administration are obligated to ensure that all employees have sufficient knowledge of a second official language and that persons in a leadership role additionally have passive skills in a third official language. To implement these directives, the Federal Administration...

From 2006 to 2009, an official proposal for Swiss educational standards was formulated within the framework of the project HarmoS of the EDK. After concluding the political consultations, the standards required finalisation. To do so, the EDK held an initial seminar on 19-20 December 2010 (second seminar on 12-13 January 2011) to determine the final version (in three languages) of national educational standards for German, French and English as foreign languages at the end of primary...

The project examines the German-French language border in Switzerland through the analysis of touristic discourses and activities. By looking at the language border through the eyes of tourism, the project places Swiss multilingualism clearly in the context of globalisation and its related socio-economic changes. The research focuses on two regions situated on the language border in the cantons Valais and Fribourg: the areas of Sierre/Siders and Murten/Morat, where tourism plays a key...

Work in our project “Performing Swissness: institutions, discourse and social transformation” focuses on ways in which discourse practices at Swiss institutions for culture, tourism and economic development construct a particular image of Switzerland. The project also explores the role of social and economic transformation when (re-)defining what “Swissness” constitutes.

The city Biel/Bienne is experiencing an economic boom. Alongside the traditional watch industry, Biel/Bienne has set its sights on diversification and is now exploring the service and communication sector. This recent development is particularly interesting due to its link to the city’s bilingual character which in turn, is regarded as a major factor in the economic upswing. In the service and communication sector, bilingualism – or even multilingualism – has effectively become the actual...

The focus of the PhD project is placed on linguistic and cultural discourses which come to light in the course of merging communes in the Canton of Graubünden. The reform of political structures is currently a major topic on the political agenda, and the issues of language and culture are particularly sensitive at the language borders in Graubünden.

This literature review aims to present an overview of scientific research on the social, political and linguistic issues of language census by analysing international works conducted in various sociopolitical and sociolinguistic contexts. The purpose is to highlight the complexity of documenting languages as required for each census when quantifying information on respondents’ language practices.

The directors of the roughly seventy administrative units at the Swiss Federal Administration are responsible for ensuring that the prevailing rules regarding linguistic representation are upheld (in accordance with the Languages Act, the Languages Ordinance and directives on multilingualism). Persons in such influential positions have a certain amount of discretionary power and can thus have a major impact on the adequate representation of linguistic groups and the promotion of multilingualism...