Language Policies and Language Rights Author(s): Christina Bratt Paulston Reviewed work(s): Source: Annual Review of Anthropology,

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Annu.Rev.Anthropol.1997. 26:73-85 CopyrightC 1997 by AnnualReviewsInc. All rights reserved

LANGUAGEPOLICIESAND LANGUAGERIGHTS
ChristinaBrattPaulston
Departmentof Linguistics,Universityof Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania15260; e-mail: paulstongvms.cis.pitt.edu
KEY WORDS: individual vs collective rights, linguistic human rights, linguistic minorities, vs principlesof territoriality personality

ABSTRACT

This review is an overview of the newly developing field of languagerights. It distinguishesbetween (a) historical/descriptivestudies where languagerights are treatedas the resultantvariable with no attemptto predict consequences, and (b) exhortatoryand ideologically based studies in which language rights are considered a causal variable.An attemptat definitions follows, set within the field of languageplanning.Principalconcerns, such as territoriality versus personalityprinciples and individualversus collective rights, are discussed. The review ends with an argumentto consider language rights as emic rights, which is to say culture-language-context-specificrights, ratherthanto consider linguistic human rights from a universal rights perspective which overstates issues and masks rights to as also being rights against. We need a careful explorationof the natureof language rights and their consequences.

INTRODUCTION
"Majorlanguage legislation in the area of languagepolicy is evidence, within certainpolitical contexts, of contracts,conflicts and inequalities among languages used within the same territory" (Turi 1994, p. 1 1). So does Turibegin his essay "Typology of LanguageLegislation."He furtherstates that the fundamentalgoal of all legislation aboutlanguageis to resolve the linguisticproblems which stem from these language conflicts and inequalitiesby legally establishingand determiningthe statusand use of the concernedlanguages.It is a good capsule descriptionof the study of languagerights, a new field thathas
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developed recently within language planning and sociolinguistics, because language rights is basically about the legislation or absence of legislation for the rights and privileges of languages and their speakers. A quick glance at any on-line librarycatalog will verify the newness of this topic. In a librarysearch at the University of Pittsburgh,of the 81 book titles found using the keyword phrase"languagerights,"48 were writtenin the past decade. For the phrase"linguisticrights,"all 18 were writtensince 1979 (with 15 in the 1990s), and for "linguistic human rights," all were written in the 1990s (one is an update of a United Nations reportfrom 1979). Most of these writings concern conditions in Europe and North America; in Europe, these are mostly directly traceableto the EuropeanUnion and a concern for its minority languages (e.g. Coulmas 1991, Rouland et al 1996) and to the collapse of the Soviet empire. In Canada,they focus on the long-impendingand now acute crisis in Quebec. In the United States, the interest can be traced to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Leibowitz 1982, Teitelbaum & Hiller 1977), not only because of the zeitgeist that led to their enactmentbut primarilybecause these acts form the legal precedent to most subsequentlanguagelegislation in the United States. Also an importantimpetus for this new interesthas been increasedimmigrationfrom the thirdworld, the Bilingual EducationAct of 1968, and the backlash English-Only movement. Formerly colonized areas and nations continue to show a concern for languagerights,but this concerntypically surfacesunderotherheadings, such as official languages, medium of instruction,or language standardization. The literatureon languagepolicies as languagerights and linguistic human rights falls into two majorcamps. First are the historical and present-daydescriptiveaccountsof official or nonofficial languagepolicies in practice.Some of the best of these have been writtenby lawyers not necessarily easy to read (e.g. De Witte 1993) historians [Giordan(1992) and Vilfan (1993) are my personal favorites], and political scientists. Typically these accounts are descriptive and atheoretical,and languagerights are mostly treatedas a dependent or resultantvariable. There is no attempt or perhaps even interest to predictthe consequences of languagerights.Languagerightsare often considered as individualrights, accordingto the legal situation. The other camp is exhortatory at times quite wildly so and often ideologically biased and can range from ethnic nationalism e.g. in the Baltic States to federalistextremism e.g. in Quebec. These writings are basically concernedwith social change or futuredevelopmentsin which languagerights politiis clearly the independentor causal variable.Linguists, anthropologists, cians, and educatorsall figureprominentlyhere some, of course, also belong to the first camp. In the majority,the rightsadvocatedhere arebased on the notion of group or collective rights.

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There is also a middle camp between the two and a useful literatureit is formedby special-interestgroups and organizationssuch as the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF), the PuertoRican Legal Defense and EducationFund (PRLDEF),the National Association of Bilingual Education (NABE), and the Centerfor Applied Linguistics, all of which have distinguished publication lists (see also Dominguez & Lopez 1995). In addition, there is a nonideological and rathernostalgic concern for endangeredand disappearinglanguages,mostly on the partof linguists (Hale et al 1992, Robins & Uhlenberg 1991). The EndangeredLanguage Fund, Inc, newly founded, is dedicatedto the scientific study of endangeredlanguages.The following message, part of its formal statement, on Linguist List (Vol. 7-1595, Nov. 11, 1996), strikesme, thoughsurelyit is not intendedto, as consumerrightscast as language rights:"Languageshave died off throughouthistory,but never have we faced the massive extinctionthatis threatening world rightnow. As lanthe guage professionals,we are faced with a starkreality:Much of what we study will not be available to futuregenerations."

DEFINITIONS
Threeterms commonly used in the literatureto denote the field are "language rights," "linguisticrights,"and "linguistic humanrights."There is a remarkable lack of definitions in the literature;the three terms are commonly used synonymously.In addition,they may differ in the law from countryto country, resulting in no generally accepted standardlegal definition, as Joseph Lo Bianco, Chief Executive of the National Languages and Literacy Institute of Australia, pointed out at the ComparativeEducation Societies' World Congress in 1996. Languagerights and linguistic rightsusually do mean the same thing. The latter form is presumablyinfluenced by derechos linguisticos and droits linguistiques, as they are known in Spanish and French, respectively. Language rights, in the sense of the German Sprachenrecht,may be interpreted,accordingto Vilfan (1993; for an interestingreview, see Ager 1994), as the legal regulationof the use of languagesin public life as partof the arrangements dealing with interethnicregulations in a country with a mixed ethnic structure. Otherareasof regulationdeal with languageuse in schooling andreligious life, the political representation ethnic groups, and the international of protectionof minority groups, as well as the rights of members of nondominant ethnic groups in using their particularlanguage in administrativeandjudicial legal procedures.One objective of language rights for a nondominant ethnic groupis the recognitionof that group's existence. This implies "thedegree of statussoughtby the groupas partof its efforts to overcome a feeling of inferiorityactingto hampermembersof such a nondominantgroupin theiren-

76 PAULSTON deavoursboth to maintaintheir ethnic identity and advance in terms of social mobility" (Vilfan 1993). In his US Federal Recognition of the Rights of MinorityLanguage Groups, Leibowitz (1982) does not define language rights outrightbut does so indirectly in terms of access political, legal, economic [especially employment (Piatt 1993)], and educational in a narrativesummaryof the legislative, administrative,and judicial efforts made to recognize the needs and secure the civil rights [sic] of minority-languagecitizens. In addition, one may add the concern over access to social policies and health care (Hamel 1997a). Turi (1994) commentedthat language legislation is typically aimed at the speakersof a languageratherthan at the language itself unless that legislation is clearly a public policy law. As an exception, he cited the FranceQuick Case in which Courd'appel de Parisin 1984 acquitteda firm of using terms such as on "bigcheese"and "hamburger" the grounds that the French consumersunderstood them. This ruling was overturnedby France's Cour de cassation, which arguedthat"Frenchlanguagelegislation protectedthe Frenchlanguage ratherthan francophones," Turi(1994) adds cryptically"withoutenteringinto much detail."Some cases cannothelp but strikean anglophoneas quite amusing. Linguistic humanrights (LHRs), however, is a different concept. Its awkward stylistic tautology if it is linguistic it must, of course, already be human derives from the attemptto link language with humanrights, i.e. to reframethe issues of language rights in terms of humanrights, now a generally accepted notion. "The challenge to lawyers, politicians and language professionals is to see how a humanrightsperspectivecan supportefforts to promote linguisticjustice," wrote Phillipsonet al (1994) in a recentand firstmajorpublication on LinguisticHumanRights: OvercomingLinguisticDiscrimination. The expression"human rights"is relativelynew. It takes the place of"natural rights"andhas come into generalparlanceonly since WorldWarII andthe atrocities of Nazi Germany. Forerunnersto the United Nations' Universal Declaration of HumanRights (1948) "as a common standardof achievements for all peoples and all nations"(EncyclopediaBritannica 1993) were the US Declarationof Independence,in which it is writtenthat "We hold these truths to be self-evident, thatall men arecreatedequal,thatthey areendowedby their creatorwith certaininalienablerights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuitof Happiness"(1776), and the FrenchDeclarationof the Rights of Man andthe Citizen, which statesthat"menarebornandremainfree andequal in rights" these being "Liberty,Property, Safety and Resistance to Oppression" (1789). The moot point whether language rights are individual or collective (see discussion below) has its roots in the conjunctionof Roman law (individual)

LANGUAGE RIGHTS 77 with Germanictriballaw (collective) at the collapse of the Romanempire.Today LHRs proponentstend to take for grantedthatboth individualand collective rights apply. Humanrights are often discussed in terms of "threegenerations of humanrights"proposedby the FrenchjuristKarelVasak, based on the themes of the Frenchrevolution:liberte, egalite, and fraternite.Libertyrepresents "freedomfrom";equalityrepresentsindividualand collective "rightsto" (languagerights, had he thoughtof them, would fit here); and fraternity represents collective "solidarityrights" such as self-determination,economic and social development, and benefit from the common heritage of mankind(e.g. earth-spaceresources). The latter emerged from the claims of the so-called third-worldnations in the postcolonial period, the legitimacy of these being a function of context. are The humanrights of the first two "generations" typically conceived as "quintessentiallygeneral or universalin character,in some sense equally possessed by all humanbeings everywhere,including in some instances even the unborn.In starkcontrastto the 'Divine Rights of Kings' and other such conceptions of privilege, humanrights extend, in theory,to every person on Earth without discriminationirrelevantto merit"(EncyclopediaBritannica 1993). It is precisely this notion of droits universels of LHRs which becomes the basic problemwith this putativeconcept (see also Capotorti1991). The question of language rights concerns ethnic minorities in most cases, and a word of caution is due here. "Minority" implies quantitativedifferences only, but as a numberof writers (Giordan 1992, Paulston 1994, Vilfan 1993) have pointedout, the most salient differenceis thatof a superordinate/subordinate statusrelationship.As Vilfan discusses, it is more correctto speak about privileged or dominant and nonprivileged or nondominant ethnic groups. Dominance, or its lack, depends "uponnumerouscircumstances,for instance social structure, dispersionof social groups,the electoralsystem, historical the traditionsandthe respectiveprestige of the 'historicalnations' involved"(Vilfan 1993).

LANGUAGERIGHTSAND LANGUAGEPOLICIES AS LANGUAGEPLANNING

Languagepolicies are probablybest consideredas a subset of language planning, an importantfield of sociolinguistics that emerged in the 1960s, triggered by real-worldproblems(Fishmanet al 1968, Whiteley 1971). This new field of language planning found itself consistently dealing with language policies for linguistic minorities.Even the absence of explicit policy, as Heath (1976) pointed out, is in itself an act of languagepolicy.

78 PAULSTON This is not to say that historians and political science people do not also write aboutlanguagepolicies. They do so, andvery well, but they typicallydeal with them as events (i.e. case studies) or as contextualor dependentvariables. For a theoreticalunderstanding the consequencesof languagerights, of the of causal effect of languagerights as languagepolicy, the field of languageplanning is probablythe most rewardingapproachto pursue(see e.g. Grabe1994). The term "languageplanning"is usually limited to "the organizedpursuit of solutions to language problems, typically at the national level" (Fishman 1973). A recent frameworkthat integratesearlierscholarshipis Homberger's (1994) work on theoreticalapproachesto languageplanningandlanguagepolicy, discussed again in Ricento & Hornberger (1996). Nancy Hornbergerconsiderspolicy (concerningmattersof society andnation)andcultivation(relating to languageandliteracyat the microscopiclevel) planning[Neustupny's(1974) terms originally]. She also uses Cooper's (1989) distinction of three types of planning, which Cooper adapted from Kloss (1969): status planning (about uses of language), acquisitionplanning (aboutusers of language), and corpus planning (about language). Most language policy relating to language rights falls understatusplanning,e.g. recentchoice of nationallanguagesas in South Africa, or under acquisitionplanning, e.g. choice of medium of instruction. Ricento & Hornbergerpoint out that planning often results in unintended outcomes. [Fishman(1973) had earliertermed such failure "unexpectedsystem linkages."]Implementation may be poor and evaluationnonexistentor dependenton the values of who does the evaluating.They list some issues in the ongoing development of language planning of which the following are of interesthere (see e.g. Tollefson 1991, 1995): (a) the investigationof specific lanexplanation(the imporguage policies in specific contexts to provide "richer" tance of the context is stressed throughoutthe article and from my viewpoint rightly so); (b) the shift of interestfrom the nationbuilding and modernization in third-worldcountries to language rights globally and the perpetuationof structuralsocioeconomic inequalitiesand language revitalization;and (c) the discovery by English-languageteaching (ELT)professionalsof criticaltheory 1 and the historical-structural approach: (i) Languagepolicies representthe interests of those in power. (ii). Such interests serve to maintainthe socioeconomic interestsof the elites.(iii). These ideologies permeatesociety at all levels and all its institutions. (iv). Individualsdo not have freedom of language choice, neitherin educationnor in social life. They go on to -point thatnone out
IThere is in the United States a markedlack of academic intercoursebetween ELT and bilingual education(BE) professionals.The issues Ricento & Hornbergerdiscuss were all writtenabout in the 1970s by scholarsworking in the field of (bilingual)education.See my chapter"TheConflict in Paradigm," Paulston(1980).

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of the theoretical approachesof language planning policies they discuss can "predictthe consequences of a particularpolicy or show a clear cause/effect relationshipbetween particularpolicy types... and observed outcomes" (Ricento & Hornberger1996). To which I would add, as they also do later:"Language policy must be evaluatednot only by official policy statementsor laws on the books but by languagebehaviorand attitudesin situated, especially institutionalcontexts"(italics mine; Ricento & Homberger 1996). It is indeed the majorargumentof this review that any real insight into the natureof language rights can only be reachedif we consider such rights emic ratherthanuniversal.Linguistic humanrights is a temptingand facile conceptualization for advocacy purposes, but it holds little explanatorypower and may ultimately backfire in that its claims are too strong and thereforemore easily dismissed.

PRINCIPALCONCERNS The TerritorialityVersusthe PersonalityPrinciples

Officially bilingual or multilingualnations often resortto eitherthe territoriality or the personality principle in their language legislation. McRae (1983), who has writtenaboutmany multilingualcountries,discussed these principles in an early, excellent article. According to McRae (1975), "[t]he principle of means thatthe rules of languageto be applied in a given situation territoriality will dependsolely on the territoryin question."Belgium or Switzerlandwould be examples. "[T]heprinciple of personalitymeans that the rules will depend on the linguistic status of the person or persons concerned"(McRae 1975). Federal,if not provincial, Canadianlegislation affirmsthe right to services in Frenchor English regardlessof territory(see Nelde et al 1992). After a lengthy discussion of the historical development, McRae adds three furtherdimensions of language policy, namely the distinction between linguistic equality and minoritystatus, the degree of domain comprehensiveness,and the degree of centralizationin decision making. He goes on to demonstratehow these dimensions, combined with the territoriality-personality axis, afford a basis for the analysis and evaluationof languagepolicies in a numberof selected countries. "Thecriteriafor the choice of a particularcombinationof options can be seen as resting on two groups of factors:(1) a set of given environmentalfacthe tors, includingin particular relative numbersof the languagegroups, their geographicaldistribution,economic and social status,levels of political development,and so on and (2) a combinationof goals based on the value structure of the society concernedor of one of its constituentgroups"(McRae 1975). He concludes that the number of relevant variables seems large enough that no two linguistic situationswill be alike in all significant aspects; therefore,one

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cannotgeneralizeaboutthe relativemeritsof territoriality personalityper se or as alternativeprinciples of language planning. McRae's argumentsare worth keeping in mind when one considers universal languagerights. In a morerecentdiscussion,based on the situationsin Belgium, Canada,and Quebec,Nelde et al (1992) arguebasically the same point: "Because of the inof appropriateness adoptingeither a model based upon the territoriality the or personalityprinciplesandgiven the essentialneed for compromisein most concrete situations,the measureswe formulateare located somewherein between both principles."[For a similardiscussion of Catalonia,see Woolard(1985).] They acknowledge state interventionin languageplanningin legislative functions (promulgationof laws), executive functions(writingandimplementation of laws), administrativefunctions (introductionand assuranceof respect for laws), and judiciary functions (arbitration the constitutionalityand on the on respectingof laws) a distinctionof functionsI find quite helpful. They go on to point out, however, that"themotorof linguistic planning"is madeup of collectivities, i.e. special-interest groups, not necessarily based on territorial linguistic communities. For example, francophonesin Quebec were both for and against the latest referendumvote on sovereignty for Quebec. This leads the authorsto considerthe personalityprinciplein termsof individualand collective rights. They cite Woehrling(1989), in translation:"Languageis a collective possession which can only be used and maintainedin a group....The collective natureof these rights does not disappearsimply because they are leto gally attributed individualsandthey can individuallyclaim the benefit."The resultantthreeconcepts territorial, individual,and collective rights prevail in linguistic rights, by which I presumethe authorsmean they are the primary legal bases or foundationsfor language rights. There is a sizable literatureon these concepts territoriality,personality, individual, collective but I have foundthe Nelde-Labrie-Williamsmodel to be the most helpful. They conclude interalia thatlanguageplanningshould "genuinelytake into accountthe situational and contextual characteristicsof the linguistic groups" (Nelde et al 1992), a common argumentin the language rights literature. It is interestingin this context to considerthe Bord na Gaeilge (1988) report TheIrish Language in a Changing Society. The reportmentions that legislation inevitablyinterprets rightsas attachingto individualsratherthanto groups or collectivities and that non-Irish speakers are allowed to build houses in Gaeltacht areas and so become a threat to the survival of the minority language: "Individualrights become a threat to the common good" (Bord na Gaeilge 1988, p. 95). Comparethe Irish situationto that of Aland, a set of islands in the Baltic which is an autonomousregion of Finlandbut is Swedish speaking. The EuropeanUnion recently approvedthe so-called Alandprotocol, which grants as exception the right that only Alanders can buy land and

LANGUAGERIGHTS 81

farmthe soil (Berglund 1995). No reason is given in the reportfor this legislation, but if anythingis based on territorialrights, this certainlyis-especially in contrastwith the Irish legislation. Whateverthe intentionof the law, it will certainly serve to maintainSwedish on the islands (the rest of Finland shows shift from Swedish to Finnish).

Universal VersusEmic Language Rights

The leading proponentsof LHRs are Tove Skutnabb-Kangas RobertPhiland lipson (1994-see especially the bibliography; see also Gomes de Matos 1993). A fairly succinct introductionto this topic is the article "Linguistic Rights and Wrongs"(Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas 1995), in which they recapitulate their basic arguments:Linguistic rights are one type of human rights, partof a set of inalienable,universalnorms forjust enjoymentof one's civil, political, economic, social, and culturalrights (p. 483). After a review of human rights and LHRs, they make the generalizationthat lack of linguistic rights is one of the causal factorsin certainconflicts, andthat linguistic affiliation is a rightful mobilizing factor in conflicts with multiple causes where power and resourcesareunevenly distributedalong linguistic and ethnic lines (1995). They end their articlewith what a Universal Declarationof Linguistic HumanRights "shouldguarantee,in our view: "A. everybody can: 1. identify with their mother tongue(s) and have this identificationaccepted and respectedby others;2. learnthe mothertongue(s) fully, orally (when physiologically possible) and in writing (which presupposes that minorities are educated through the medium of their mother tongue(s)); 3. use the mother tongue in most official situations (including schools). "B. everybodywhose mothertongue is not an official languagein the country where s/he is resident, can become bilingual (or trilingual, if s/he has 2 mothertongues) in the mothertongue(s) and (one of) the official language(s) (accordingto his or her own choice). "C. any change of mothertongue is voluntary,not imposed." It is interestingto comparePhillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas (1995) with the Declaration of Linguistic Rights, which was actually signed in June 1996 in Barcelona and co-chairedby UNESCO and CIEMEN(a Barcelona-basedorganization specializing in linguistic rights issues), and which is ultimately headedfor the United Nations. The following (fromArgemi 1996) is an extract from the Declaration,Article 3 (note the "may"in point 2): "1. This Declaration considers the following to be inalienable personal rights which may be exercised in any situation:the right to be recognized as a memberof a language community;the right to use one's own language in private and in public; the right to the use of one's own name; the right to interre-

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late and associate with othermembersof one's languagecommunityof origin; the rightto maintainand develop one's own cultureand all the otherrightsrelated to languagewhich are recognized in the International Covenanton Civil and Political Rights of 16 December 1966 and the International Covenanton Economic, Social and CulturalRights of the same date. "2. This Declarationconsidersthatthe collective rights of languagegroups may include the following, in additionto the rights attributed the members to of language groups in the foregoing paragraph,and in accordance with the conditions laid down in paragraph2.2: the right for their own language and cultureto be taught;the right of access to culturalservices; the rightsto an equitable presence of their language and culture in the communicationsmedia; the right to receive attentionin their own language from governmentbodies and in socio-economic relations. "3. The aforementionedrights of persons and language groups must in no way hinderthe interrelationof such persons or groups with the host language communityor theirintegrationinto thatcommunity.Nor must they restrictthe rights of the host communityor its membersto the full public use of the community's own language throughoutits territorialspace." By emic (but see Harris 1976 for a range of meanings possible but not intended here) rights I intend nothing more than culture-, language-, and context-specific rights.It is not a termused in the literatureon languagerights, if close at handfor a linguist;nor is it discussed at all as a contrastto universal rights. The thoughtfirst occurredto me as discussantat a session on Minority and International Perspectiveson Linguistic HumanRights at the AAA meeting in 1994. Ana Celia Zentella (1997) had arguedthe rights for the minority language (Spanish in Puerto Rico), followed later by a presentationby Ina Druviete proclaiming the rights of the national language (Latvian in Latvia with undeniable and understandable-overtones against the now barely minority Russian). On the notion thatrights to are at the same time rightsagainst something (Hamel 1997b), I merely pointed out thattheir claims were contradictory and that we needed to resolve them, as it seemed to me thatboth were right. They later conferredand informedme that I was wrong in saying they disagreed, because they did not. Hence stems my fledgling thought that language rights are not universal, and my concern that such universal claims merely serve to weaken potential rights since many claimed rights patently cannotbe enforced in some situations,echoing Lo Bianco: "rightsare always modified by the pragmaticcapacityof theirenforcement"(personalcommunication, 1996). In addition,as Nelde et al (1992) point out, it is an acceptedfact in the legal domainin Canadathatlinguistic rights arebased on political compromise and thereforemust be interpreted the courts with more discretion by than is usually the case for other fundamentalrights (1992).

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CourtneyCazden somewhere has discussed the event of a child erasing a It blackboard: may be in punishment,it may be as reward,or it may be the routine of that particularclassroom, but until you have an emic understanding, you will not understandwhat is happening.On the whole, the notion of emic where the same event may have differentsignificance in differunderstanding, ent cultures,or where differentevents/phenomenamay have the same significance, is ignored in the discussions of languagerights. The more importantis Hamel's "Languageconflict and linguistic humanrights in indigenous Mexico: a sociolinguistic framework" (1997a), where he arguesfor the necessity to relateLHRs to a sociolinguistic analysis,which takes into accountnot only the surfacestructuresof languagebut also the culturalschemes andpatterns,similarto Dell Hymes's communicativecompetenceconstruct.He arguesconvincingly that to deal with an Indianminority in mattersof the Mexican judicial system, using concepts andnotions of the Westernworld will still be bewildering even if it is done in the Indian language. Surface structureof language is not enough. I do not expect that Hamel intended his work as an argument against universal languagerights, but nevertheless that is its effect.

CONCLUSION
What should follow here is a discussion in terms of language rights of the English-Only/EnglishPlus movement (Adams & Brink 1990, Cazden& Snow 1990, Crawford 1992, Gomez de Garcia 1996, Lang 1995, Wiley & Lukes 1996, Wong 1988); of the Canadiansituationand the Quebec secession movement (Corson & Lemay 1996, Coulombe 1995, Edwards 1995); Australian language policies (Baldauf & Luke 1990, Herriman1996, Lo Bianco 1987); the Arctic and Saami movements (Blom et al 1992, Collis 1990, Corson 1995, NordiskKontakt1993); and so on, i.e. languagerightsissues in specific localities aroundthe world; but space does not permit a mappingof this diversity. According to Giordan(1992), "the optimal development of the linguistic and culturalriches constitutedby this diversity is a majorcondition for the realizationof a democraticsociety capable of guaranteeingpeace in this geopolitical space" (my translation).Giordanis writing about Europe,but he could just as well have meant the world. Languagerights is an importantnew topic for us, because their existence usually reveals past and presentinjustice or exploitationagainstthe weak in the world. Ourresponsibilityas academicsis the careful explorationof the natureof language rights and their consequences.
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