1. LANGUAGE RIGHTS AND POLITICAL THEORY

2003 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 3-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Kymlicka ◽  
Alan Patten
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Language Rights ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
Minority Language Rights ◽  
Theories Of Justice ◽  
Normative Issues

After years of neglect, political theorists in the last few years have started to take an interest in issues of language policy, and to explore the normative issues they raise. In this chapter, we examine why this interest has arisen and provide an overview of the main approaches that have been developed. A series of recent events has made it clear that language policy is central to many of the traditional themes and concepts of political theory, such as democracy, citizenship, nationhood, and the state. The rise of ethnolinguistic conflict in Eastern Europe, the resurgence of language-based secessionist movements in Catalonia, Flanders, and Quebec, the backlash against immigrant multiculturalism, and the difficulties in building a pan-European sense of European Union citizenship—in all of these cases, linguistic diversity complicates attempts to build stable and cohesive forms of political community. In the past, political theorists have often implicitly assumed that this sort of linguistic diversity would disappear, as a natural concomitant of processes of modernization and nation-building. However, it is now widely accepted that linguistic diversity is an enduring fact about modern societies. As a result, political theorists have started to explore the justifications for minority language rights claims, and to consider how different models of language rights relate to broader political theories of justice, freedom, and democracy.

Ideology Hunting: The Case of James Harrington

1959 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 662-692 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith N. Shklar
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
History Of

It is well known that each age writes history anew to serve its own purposes and that the history of political ideas is no exception to this rule. The precise nature of these changes in perspective, however, bears investigation. For not only can their study help us to understand the past; it may also lead us to a better understanding of our own intellectual situation. In this quest the political theories of the 17th century and particularly of the English Civil War are especially rewarding. It was in those memorable years that all the major issues of modern political theory were first stated, and with the most perfect clarity. As we have come to reject the optimism of the eighteenth century, and the crude positivism of the nineteenth, we tend more and more to return to our origins in search of a new start. This involves a good deal of reinterpretation, as the intensity with which the writings of Hobbes and Locke, for instance, are being reexamined in England and America testify. These philosophical giants have, however, by the force of their ideas been able to limit the scope of interpretive license. A provocative minor writer, such as Harrington, may for this reason be more revealing. The present study is therefore not only an effort to explain more soundly Harrington's own ideas, but also to treat him as an illustration of the mutations that the art of interpreting political ideas has undergone, and, perhaps to make some suggestions about the problems of writing intellectual history in general.

Some Recent Works on the Political Theories of the Medieval Canonists

Traditio ◽  
1954 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 594-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Tierney
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Literary History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
Significant Shift ◽  
International Diffusion ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
History Of

During the past decade there has been a significant shift of emphasis in work on the medieval canonists. The traditional studies on the literary history of canonistic sources and on problems of specifically ecclesiastical jurisprudence continue to flourish, and, indeed, have been stimulated by the plans for a new edition of Gratian's Decretum; but alongside this work, and complementary to it, there has appeared a new trend, a lively interest in the content and influence of canonistic doctrine concerning public law and political theory. This trend, moreover, shows all the international diffusion — and even, perhaps, something of the interplay of national susceptibilities — that its exponents have discerned in the work of the medieval canonists themselves. It is especially interesting that notable contributions have come from England and the United States as well as from the more established centers of canonistic studies.

scholarly journals Defining political community

2002 ◽  
pp. 179-192
Author(s):  
Michal Sladecek
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Liberal Theory ◽  
Theoretical Orientations ◽  
Social Communities ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Political Theories

This paper considers the concept of political community, its constitution and value. The starting point is that the concept of community is not sufficiently recognized in modern political theories, as well as in contemporary liberal theory. In the last two decades communitarian and republican political theory attempted to revitalize this notion. The first part of the paper elaborates on the polemics between these three theoretical orientations. The concluding part examines the possibilities and prospect for stable political community in conditions of pluralism of particular social communities and ethnocultural heterogeneity.

scholarly journals Language Politics

2021 ◽  
pp. 103-127
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Research Evaluation ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
Minority Language ◽  
Language Rights ◽  
Linguistic Practice ◽  
Republican Period ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Minority Language Rights ◽  
And Gender

This chapter discusses linguistic practice, governance, and power. Topics covered include rights and freedoms, law and policy, research evaluation and gendered pronouns. Chapter contents: 6.0 Introduction (by Séagh Kehoe) 6.1 China’s Minority Language Rights: No Bulwark Against Upcoming Change (by Alexandra Grey) 6.2 Linguistic Hierarchies and Mandarin Promulgation: An Excerpt from Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860–1960 (by Gina Anne Tam) 6.3 The Hidden Language Policy of China’s Research Evaluation Reform (by Race MoChridhe) 6.4 War of Words and Gender: Pronominal Feuds of the Republican Period and the Early PRC (by Coraline Jortay)

Language Rights and Language Repression

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen May
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Language Policy ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Minority Language ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Language Rights ◽  
Political Democracy ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Minority Language Rights ◽  
The World

Many historical and contemporary conflicts in the world today, while often ostensibly framed in ethnic terms, actually involve language—and by extension, language policy—as a key catalyst or concern. This chapter charts how the widespread practice of enforcing linguistic homogeneity within modern nations-states, based on the view that this will minimize ethnic and linguistic conflict, actually exacerbates it, forcing linguistic minorities increasingly into avenues and means of dissent. More broadly, it explores how this preoccupation with linguistic homogeneity at the level of the nation-state is an unhelpful artifact of a combination of the negative ascription of ethnicity, the politics of nationalism, and the promotion of an individualist conception of citizenship and human rights. It concludes by arguing that language policies that actively accommodate minority language rights are more, rather than less, likely to ensure political stability—promoting not just political democracy but ethnocultural and ethnolinguistic democracy as well.

Realism and Idealism in Avicenna's Political Philosophy

1979 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 561-577
Author(s):  
Miriam Galston
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
Complete Form ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
Political Decisionmaking

The legitimate goals of political communities and the proper objectives of law have been themes of political philosophy since its inception. Philosophers' disagreements about the nature of political life and law have occasioned divergent accounts of the best or ideal government and have generated an even deeper controversy as to whether the best case should be the measure of political phenomena in the first place. For the purpose of analysis, three kinds of political theories can be distinguished. Characteristic of the first kind is the belief that people can attain a wide range of excellences and that the function of a political community is to foster in a direct manner the best or most complete form of human excellence, regardless of how rare the individuals who profit from this guidance. Accordingly, a central concern of “idealistic” or “utopian” political philosophy is elaborating the nature of the absolutely best political order and the conditions of its emergence. Among the central activities of governments so conceived are moral and intellectual education, as presented, for example, in the works of Plato and Aristotle. A second kind of political theory shares the belief in a multiplicity of hierarchically ranked human ends but denies that the highest possibility for human development should serve as the foremost principle determining political institutions and governing political decisionmaking.

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