Pluricentric linguistic justice: a new ethics-based approach to pluricentricity in French and other languages

Drawing on the example of the French-speaking world, this article makes the case for the valuable contribution of a systematic ethics-based approach to understanding linguistic pluricentricity. Following a critical review of three key definitional dimensions of the concept - political, linguistic and representational/attitudinal - it argues for the inclusion of a fourth ethical dimension to assess whether there are moral arguments which might also favour the recognition of distinct national standards. It builds on the recent linguistic justice literature in the fields of political theory and political philosophy to propose the notion of “pluricentric linguistic justice” as a framework for evaluating the ethics of local norm-setting and enforcement in pluricentric contexts. To demonstrate how pluricentric linguistic justice might be assessed, it examines a series of valued-based arguments discussed in the linguistic justice literature relating to the instrumental and identity functions of language, considering how they might apply to specific contexts in the French-speaking world. Besides contributing to existing theory, the notion of pluricentric linguistic justice has the potential to help advance social equality, by drawing attention to some of the social and political injustices associated with diatopic variation in spatially diffused languages more generally.

On the variation of fragmental constructions in British English and American English post-match interviews

This article takes a cognitive, interactional perspective on pluricentricity and examines the use of fragmental constructions in a mid-sized dataset, drawing on recordings of British English and American English post-match interviews (PMIs), i.e. media interviews conducted with football players after matches in the British and North American top leagues. It examines what types of fragmental constructions are deployed in the PMIs and whether the use and distribution of such constructions vary between the British and American “communities of practice” (Lave/Wenger 1991). The study finds that the quantity and quality of fragments largely differ, with the British English data showing a higher relative frequency of fragmental constructions, more grammatical variation, and a use of fragmental constructions which do not necessarily draw on latent grammatical structures from the prior speech for meaning-making. It has been suggested by Biber et al. (1999) that clausal elliptical structures are generally less typical of American English. The present genre-specific analysis suggests an interdependence between fragmental constructions and their routinisation and frozenness, interactional constraints, as well as deviant sports and media cultures shared by these communities of practice, which can be treated as a form of “enregisterment” (Agha 2007).

De jure but not de facto : pluricentric Portuguese in post-colonial Cabo Verde

In Cabo Verde, Portuguese is the official language, while Kriolu is the first language of virtually all the population. The schooling context clearly reflects this diglossic situation: while the vast majority of children speak Kriolu at home, Portuguese continues to be the exclusive language of instruction. Thus, Portuguese in Cabo Verde represents a post-colonial language that has maintained its de jure status but has not entered de facto domains of use. The research described in this article is based on discourse analysis of legislative and policy documents and extended semi-structured interviews with politicians, educators and language activists. Our results in this former colonial context invite us to reconsider traditional understandings of pluricentricity, as they suggest that Cabo Verdean Portuguese is not (yet) associated with local identity and has not (yet) been accepted by its speakers as a legitimate, standardised variety.