This thesis studies the Greenlandic debate on language as an identity political negotiation. The focus is on the position of monolingual, Danish speaking Greenlanders, as Greenlandic identity discourse poses the Greenlandic language as a diacriticon, delimiting Greenlanders from Danes, and as a central, positive element of Greenlandic identity - while at the same time describing the Danish language as an indispensable means to education and modernization.

Chapter 2 presents Greenlandic identity as discursive structure. While developing a concept of identity as discourse, which is at the same time relational, processual and heterogeneous, the chapter summarizes previous anthropological and historiographical research. Greenlandic identity is constructed in relation to 'Danishness' as the constitutive Other, while ability in the Greenlandic language has succeeded the ability in seal hunting as the most prominent diacriticon. Since the seventies, a re-invocation of the past has - as a reaction against the modernization policy of the fifties and sixties - combined the linguistic criteria with romanticization of aboriginality in general. A discursive repertoire depicting Greenlandic history as a decline of original culture thus dominates a repertoire depicting a history of development and modernization, even though the decline figure needs elements of modernization to be able to promise the reconstruction of aboriginal dignity. The specific articulation of elements of modernization into a discursive structure, basically legitimized by the decline figure, is negotiated under the heading of 'greenlandization'. This process of greenlandization, departing from sparsely defined 'Greenlandic conditions', is the way to approach a situation, in which Greenland is self governing and self supporting.

Chapter 3 analyzes the Greenlandic debate on language as an identity political negotiation. The chapter initially makes theoretical room in the discursive structure for the Subject and its discursive actions. It then develops an analytic, focused on rhetorical threat constructions to catch the delimitation of identity, which takes place through the discursive interventions in the debate on language, pointing out referent objects as threatened by all sorts of threats, and pointing out means to counter the threats. A discourse analysis of the Greenlandic debate on language in 2002 identifies a number of discursive themes. The themes draw on the discursive repertoires of Greenlandic identity discourse and on other discursive repertoires, constructing different places for Danish speaking Greenlanders. The analysis points to the need to include elements of democracy and welfare in the description of Greenlandic identity; nobody envisions a future, in which Greenland is not a democratic welfare state. However, both the demand for self government and the demand for welfare, put strains on the central place of Greenlandic language in the identity discourse. A rather large proportion of the young people being educated in Denmark are better at speaking Danish than Greenlandic. In 2002 some of these Danish speaking Greenlanders articulated the wish to be more unreservedly accepted as Greenlanders - and a survey showed that a substantial number had serious reservations to returning to a Greenland, that did not accept them.

Chapter 4 concludes that the place of Danish speaking Greenlanders in Greenlandic identity discourse is both ambiguous and disputed - qualities which might add to the likelihood of a scenario, in which Greenland in the process of linguistic greenlandization loses some of the resources needed by a self-governing welfare state. In chapter 5 it is proposed to re-prioritize the language policy of the Home Rule Government to focus on a greenlandization of the day to day service of the citizen instead of the present all-encompassing ambitions. Finally, it is suggested that Danish speaking Greenlanders - as an alternative to replacing language as main diacriticon for Greenlandic identity - ventures to challenge the essentialist concepts at the heart of much identity discourse in Greenland and abroad.