Language Rights as Human Rights

Keyword(s):  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-119
Author(s):  
Dana Schmalz

Abstract Language rights have traditionally been codified and discussed in the context of minority protection. The identification of language rights with questions of national minorities can, however, confound the analysis. This article explores the freedom of using a language and argues that the individual dimension of language rights must not be ignored beside the group dimension. The argument proceeds along a reading of three recent cases from the European Court of Human Rights, which concerned the use of Kurdish in Turkey. The Court’s reasoning illustrates the risk of an ‘anxiety logic’, which sees any language rights in connection with political claims of groups, thereby introducing additional conditions for the right and disregarding the significance a specific language can have for an individual, being more than a medium of conveying and receiving information. Conceptualising language use as an individual freedom is necessary also to account for situations other than national minorities, most importantly for the language rights of immigrants.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 13
Author(s):  
Abbas Deygan Darweesh

This study addresses a sociolinguistic evaluation of the universal declaration of linguistic rights in 1996. It aims to analyze the basic aspects and motivations of the declaration with reference to the problems that are not dealt with in it. Thus, the current paper adopts the following procedure to achieve its aim: (1) reviewing literature on language rights theories, (2) conducting a qualitative sociolinguistic analysis for each part of the declaration, (3) and discussing the results of analysis with some evaluation of the declaration. This study is supposed to be of value to sociolinguists, critical applied linguists, discourse analysts and language planners. It has been concluded that the universal declaration of linguistic rights is based on the human language rights hypothesis with some reference to the minority hypothesis. The factors that have been addressed are power, dominance, inequality, culture, and identity. Moreover, Language is seen as constituting rather than reflecting identity. The declaration treats important issues in language rights in several domains such as education, communication, politics, socio-economics, technology and public speech.


Author(s):  
Hossein Davari

Language Human Rights as a newly-grown type of human rights has been raised in the field of linguistics in recent two decades. Due to its increasing importance, this chapter attempts to firstly define this concept, its nature and scope. Secondly, it tries to introduce the trace of this type of human rights in the available documents. Then, the chapter deals with and discusses the reasons for growing importance of language human rights from at least three aspects, namely a) the exponential decline and loss of world's languages; b) the growing presence of English as the language of globalization; c) nationalism and the violation of language rights of the minority in the field of education. Finally, some suggestions and practical recommendations are provided.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document