Minority Languages as Living Heritage: Narrative, Performative and Participatory Europeanisation

L'Europe unie/ United Europe, 24 /2026 Minority Languages as Living Heritage: Narrative, Performative and Participatory Europeanisation Dr. Yi-De Liu Professor, Vice President for International Affairs - National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan[1] Abstract This article examines how minority languages are Europeanised as living heritage through three European cultural initiatives: the European Heritage Label, the European Capitals of Culture, and the European Heritage Days. Rather than treating language as a bounded identity marker, it analyses language as a performative resource, a participation technology, and a governance object that is rendered European through recurring institutional genres: label narratives, evaluation templates, programme logics, inclusion toolkits, and publicity scripts. Drawing on document-centred critical discourse analysis, the study traces how Europeanisation operates primarily through translation rather than regulation: minority languages are made European by being reframed as diversity, creativity, access, and civic involvement. The analysis shows that the three initiatives stabilise distinct but complementary modes of Europeanisation—narrative, performative, and participatory—while also reproducing silences around inequality, linguistic hierarchies, and the political economy of recognition. Keywords: minority languages; living heritage; Europeanisation; cultural governance; critical discourse analysis [1] Dr. Yi-De Liu is Professor, Vice President for International Affairs - National Taiwan Normal University, and Director of the Institute of European Cultures and Tourism, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan (Taipei). Awarded a PhD in European Studies from University of Portsmouth, UK, his main research focus is the EU’s cultural policy. Email: yideliu@ntnu.edu.tw ; Author profiles: WoS: https://www.webofscience.com/wos/author/record/PFI-7285-2025 ; Scopus: https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=23035701100 ; ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7633-876X ; Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com.tw/citations?user=6K5GkUQAAAAJ&hl=zh-TW ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yi-De-Liu ;