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.

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.

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