The Case for Future Norms: Multilingualism in Europe

What is the future of multilingualism as a norm? This paper discusses from a forward-oriented perspective the possible developments in the middle term of multilingualism in a European setting. Social sciences are familiar with predictions, previsions, forecasts and scenarios. These terminologies each designate different types of future claims informed by disciplines such as sociology, economics, political science, demography… These studies generally focus on the future of conflict, economic integration or the environment. However, the study of future norms as such has been neglected by the different attempts to develop social sciences thinking from a future-oriented perspective. This paper will first draw a methodology for the study of future norms. It will then apply it to the case of multilingualism in Europe and use IR studies on norms. Finally, it will discriminate between different scenarios and will argue in favor of a set of appropriate future worlds, trying it to assess them from the perspective of the meta-norms likely to prevail in the middle term.