“…It cannot remedy the past deeds and trials of the dead. The historical redress argument is problematized in the Catalan context by Gifra (2014, p. 213): “Despite the power of this argument, it … cannot be taken far … since it attributes to the Castilian‐speaking community … the role of contributors to a historical injustice. Given that a majority of the Castilian‐speaking community … is … of the second and third generations, they would be reticent to accept the positive discrimination argument ad infinitum.”…”
Language policy is a hugely diverse field, united only by the intent to influence language use in some way. Much early research in the field asserted that language policy had an emancipatory drive, to empower downtrodden minorities against the cruelty or indifference of majoritarian politics. But over the years, critical accounts have increasingly questioned who precisely benefits from promoting minoritized languages. Indeed, can the language itself, valorized as an emblem of heritage, sometimes become invested with its own separate value? Can that value even outweigh concerns over improving people's prospects and capabilities? In what follows, I compare that balance between people's capabilities and the language itself, across a range of cases. I show especially how a growing focus on “new speakers” affects that balance.
“…It cannot remedy the past deeds and trials of the dead. The historical redress argument is problematized in the Catalan context by Gifra (2014, p. 213): “Despite the power of this argument, it … cannot be taken far … since it attributes to the Castilian‐speaking community … the role of contributors to a historical injustice. Given that a majority of the Castilian‐speaking community … is … of the second and third generations, they would be reticent to accept the positive discrimination argument ad infinitum.”…”
Language policy is a hugely diverse field, united only by the intent to influence language use in some way. Much early research in the field asserted that language policy had an emancipatory drive, to empower downtrodden minorities against the cruelty or indifference of majoritarian politics. But over the years, critical accounts have increasingly questioned who precisely benefits from promoting minoritized languages. Indeed, can the language itself, valorized as an emblem of heritage, sometimes become invested with its own separate value? Can that value even outweigh concerns over improving people's prospects and capabilities? In what follows, I compare that balance between people's capabilities and the language itself, across a range of cases. I show especially how a growing focus on “new speakers” affects that balance.
“…Several scholars have put forward LTP as a desirable strategy for achieving linguistic justice in countries with more than one historical language group (see Grin, 1996Grin, , 2011Kymlicka, 1995Kymlicka, , 2001aKymlicka, , 2001bLaponce, 1984;Stojanović, 2010;Van Parijs, 2011;Vergés Gifra, 2014). The most developed defence in the literature of a strict understanding of the LTP is that of the Belgian political philosopher Philippe Van Parijs.…”
This article examines the regulation of linguistic diversity in Spain from a combined empirical and normative perspective. Spain is a particularly interesting case due to the intersection of linguistic and national diversity and its peculiar combination of territoriality and personality. We first present a conceptual framework which draws on the personality and territoriality distinction as established by political philosophers. Second, we examine the way multilingualism is regulated in Spain. A dual system emerges in which Castilian is the only state language while four other languages – Aranese, Basque, Catalan and Galician – are co-official in six Autonomous Communities. We identify two models concerning the degree of institutionalisation of non-Castilian languages: co-officiality and limited recognition. Finally, we characterise and assess normatively the advantages and disadvantages of the Spanish linguistic regulation. We argue that the Spanish linguistic system may be characterised as an Unequal Personality Linguistic Regime. This regime offers several instrumental advantages related to the prevalence of a shared language as well as a significant degree of territorial accommodation for minority language groups, but it also gives rise to injustices related to unequal treatment and domination. This article contributes to the academic debate about the politics of language by analysing a paradigmatic case of multilingualism and plurinationalism, Spain, and considering the usefulness of the territoriality and personality framework to study specific cases.
“…Vergés Gifra goes in the same direction. He shows useful linguistic data about Catalonia and argues that the Catalan model used to be a ‘reference in sociolinguistics and language politics’ (2012: 2–3; my emphasis).…”
It is usually thought that a shared public sphere is a prerequisite of any democratic regime, where citizens can deliberate and act according to their duty to carry out justice. This prerequisite, however, can be complicated due to linguistic diversity. Until recently, the literature on linguistic justice has primarily focused on how to achieve just linguistic regimes in compound (i.e. federal) multilingual states, granting some kind of linguistic and political autonomy through the territorial division of the state. But what actually happens inside the territories? This paper deals with linguistic diversity and the establishment and maintenance of a shared public sphere in political communities in which territorial divisions are not possible because the linguistic communities are intermingled. I argue that linguistic justice, with the aim of creating the conditions that maximize the incentives to share the public sphere, would be achieved if, and only if, two principles were reached: (1) the equal recognition of all the host language groups of the political community and (2) the non-segregation of people for reasons of language. Although the relation between the principles can be problematic, I argue that they can be fitted into a linguistic theory of justice named ‘Multilingual Convergence’.
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