Language Rights and Linguistic Citizenship

2016 ◽  
pp. 198-225
Keyword(s):  
Language Rights ◽  
Linguistic Citizenship

scholarly journals Lisa Lim, Christopher Stroud and Lionel Wee (Eds.). (2018). The Multilingual Citizen: Towards a politics of language for agency and change. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. xiv + 303 pp. €144.95 (hardcover). ISBN: 9781783099658

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 66
Author(s):  
Haley De Korne
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The State ◽  
Language Rights ◽  
Language Politics ◽  
Linguistic Rights ◽  
The World ◽  
Politics Of Language ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Linguistic Citizenship

Waiting for the egalitarian agenda ofuniversal human rights, and its relatedbranch of linguistic rights, to be fulfilledthrough official political processesand structures is not an option. As thecontributors to this volume discussand illustrate, language rights policiesand discourses have yet to providecomprehensive improvement of the wellbeingof members of multilingual andminoritized communities in many partsof the world. They call for investmentin and recognition of other channelsof political action, in particular theagency of local individuals who engagein language politics through formsof linguistic citizenship. This volumebuilds on the growing body of workwhich explores linguistic citizenship(hereafter LC) as an alternative tolanguage rights and recognition policies(Stroud, 2001; Stroud & Heugh, 2004;Williams & Stroud, 2013), directingfocus towards “what people do with andaround language(s) in order to positionthemselves agentively, and to craftnew, emergent subjectivities of politicalspeakerhood, often outside of thoseprescribed or legitimated in institutionalframeworks of the state” (Introduction,p. 4). It is a welcome contribution tothe scholarship on language policyand planning which gives seriousconsideration to the nature of languagepolitics on the ground, and attempts tograpple with the inequalities that persistregardless of official pluralist policies(Canagarajah, 2005; Hornberger etal., 2018; McCarty, 2013; Ricento &Hornberger, 1996).

Power, Politics, and Language Rights

1996 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 623
Author(s):  
Reynaldo F. Macías ◽  
Alastair Pennycook ◽  
Tove Skutnabb-Kangas ◽  
Robert Phillipson ◽  
James W. Tollefson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Rights ◽  
Power Politics

scholarly journals TALKING PARTS, TALKING BACK: FLESHING OUT LINGUISTIC CITIZENSHIP

2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 1636-1658
Author(s):  
Christopher Stroud ◽  
Quentin Williams ◽  
Ndimphiwe Bontiya ◽  
Janine Harry ◽  
Koki Kapa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
The Body ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Linguistic Citizenship ◽  
Insight Into

ABSTRACT One of the greatest challenges of our times is that of lack of voice for abused bodies. These are the bodies of children and men and women who have inherited the brutalities of colonialism, plantation servitude and slavery and now re-live these miseries in the belly of a rampant global neoliberal and patriarchal capitalism. They are the racialized, sexualized, genderized and godless bodies that first took form in coloniality-modernity in conjunction with the emergence of MAN, the White, rational, disembodied male as HUMAN. They retain their shape today through technologies of vulnerability, with which the manufactured lack of voice works in dynamic synergy. This is particularly the case for South Africa, with its tender histories and distraught presents, raw emotion and sore vulnerabilities of racialized and neoliberal patriarchy. In this paper, we suggest that vulnerability, beyond its potentially devastating effect on souls and livelihoods, may also be a productive site for the articulation of alternative, and habitually silenced voices. In this regard, we explore how a focus on acts of Linguistic Citizenship may orientate thinking on voice and agency to different sites of the body, as well as allow insight into the complex technologies and practices of vulnerability.

scholarly journals Are traditional minority languages a bench marking for the rights of migrant languages in the European Union?

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 40-60
Author(s):  
Christopher Houtkamp ◽  
László Marácz
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
Language Rights ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Member States ◽  
Linguistic Rights ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One

In this paper a normative position will be defended. We will argue that minimal territorial minority language rights formulated in terms of the personality principle referring to traditional minority languages granted in the framework of the European Union (EU) are a benchmark for non-territorial linguistic rights. Although territorial minority languages should be granted collective rights this is in large parts of Europe not the case. Especially in the Central and Eastern European Member States language rights granted to territorial languages are assigned on the basis of personal language rights. Our argumentation will be elaborated on the basis of a comparative approach discussing the status of a traditional territorial language in Romania, more in particular Hungarian spoken in the Szeklerland area with the one of migrant languages in the Netherlands, more in particular Turkish. In accordance with the language hierarchy implying that territorial languages have a higher status than non-territorial languages both in the EUs and Member States’ language regimes nonterritorial linguistic rights will be realized as personal rights in the first place. Hence, the use of non-territorial minority languages is conditioned much as the use of territorial minority languages in the national Member States. So, the best possible scenario for mobile minority languages is to be recognized as a personal right and receive full support from the states where they are spoken. It is true that learning the host language would make inclusion of migrant language speakers into the host society smoother and securing a better position on the labour market. This should however be done without striving for full assimilation of the speakers of migrant languages for this would violate the linguistic rights of migrants to speak and cultivate one’s own heritage language, violate the EUs linguistic diversity policy, and is against the advantages provided by linguistic capital in the sense of BOURDIEU (1991).

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