The Struggle for Linguistic Human Rights

Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads, “All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination” (Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Of course, this concept is more of a goal to work toward than a reality, but progress is being made. The fight against discrimination has gained public attention through many movements, such as the Civil Rights movement by African-Americans demanding racial equality, the worldwide feminist movement for gender equality, and the recent gay rights movement in many places around the world. But a human rights issue that has not been very much in the public eye is linguistic discrimination. Also known as linguicism, it can be defined as “‘ideologies, structures and practices which are used to legitimate, effectuate and reproduce an unequal division of power and resources (both material and immaterial) between groups which are defined on the basis of language’” (as quoted by Robert Phillipson, cited in Zuidema 687). Like many other forms of discrimination, those who engage in linguicism make judgments about another person’s “wealth, education, social status, character and/or other traits” based on which language they speak or the way they speak a certain language (“Linguicism”). This can occur not only in a social context but also in politics, which can lead to some groups having a linguistic advantage if they are natives of or fluent in the favored language. By working toward granting linguistic human rights to everyone, we will preserve cultural and linguistic diversity while fostering understanding and protecting the basic rights granted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Linguicism is one of the most difficult forms of prejudice to combat because it is subtler than other forms. People may do it subconsciously because they simply feel more comfortable with a person who speaks the same way they do, as it is familiar to them and they conduct all or most aspects of their life in that language. On a more discriminatory level, people may also do it because they associate all speakers of a language or dialect with certain traits, subconsciously or not. When making judgments like these ones, people are perpetuating ill-founded stereotypes based on one trait. And yet, many people still do not consider linguistic discrimination morally wrong. The most probable reason for this is that there is not much awareness about the topic in society as there is awareness about racism or sexism. While people may think they are not being discriminatory towards others based on those criteria, they are still being prejudiced if they make judgments about the way a person speaks without even realizing they are discriminating. This phenomenon tends to continue up through society to the level of governments, where, if this kind of discrimination happens on a political level, it has devastating cultural and social consequences for those groups who speak minority languages (Zuidema 666).

Linguistic discrimination has major moral and cultural implications. It denies people of their rights established in the Universal Declaration on Linguistic Rights to “be recognized as a member of a language community…[the] use of one’s own language both in private and in public…to maintain and develop one’s own culture” (Universal Declaration on Linguistic Rights, 5). In countries such as Canada or Spain where there are one or several minority languages, language rights have become a sensitive and controversial subject. Canada’s French-speaking minority in Quebec has fought English dominance by creating Law 101 in 1973, which established French as the official language, making it the only language used in the Quebec political and educational system. Although the law succeeded in making French the dominant language, by the late 1990s French speakers still felt threatened being the only French-language minority on the continent. In Spain, regional languages such as Basque, Catalan and Galician were outlawed under the reign of Franco, which was a traumatic blow to the populations that spoke those languages. After Franco’s death, the languages were quickly and fervently revived in many aspects of life of those regions, but their speakers have still not reached a point of total psychological recovery (Spolsky 196). Especially in the case of Catalan and Basque, the languages have become a point of regional identity and pride, sometimes to the point of nationalist and separatist movements. The Spanish government sometimes still has trouble being politically correct enough in their policies on these languages – in 2011, the Spanish Supreme Court ruled that the language of instruction in schools should be Spanish rather than Catalan, resulting in appeals, outrage and a burst of nationalism in Catalonia (“Catalan Supreme Court”). In both Spain and Canada, the management of minority languages has presented challenges in public policy. In situations where there are hundreds of languages in a region that each have tiny numbers of speakers, such as the indigenous languages in the Americas, it is even harder to try to preserve the languages because government policies usually neglect saving them in favor of other projects that apply to the more general population. For this reason, indigenous languages are being wiped out at a rate almost as fast as their speakers’ ancestors were wiped out by the conquistadors five hundred years ago – scholars estimate that over half of the world’s roughly 7,000 languages will die out by the end of the twenty-first century. This has brought about a huge loss in linguistic and cultural diversity that can never be replaced (Lovgren). It is also evident that preference is given to the majority, who speak the national or dominant language, over the needs of those who speak other languages.

Language discrimination also has indirect socioeconomic effects. English as the overwhelmingly dominant international language is a form of linguicism because it puts non-native speakers at a disadvantage in the globalized world in which we live. François Grin, professor of linguistic economics at the University of Geneva, lists several effects of having a dominant language on non-native speakers of that language, including the “privileged market effect,” when native speakers of the dominant language have a competitive edge in the markets for translation, language instruction, and language editing, opening up more employment opportunities for those speakers; the “language learning savings effect” and the “alternative human capital investment effect” which recognize that native speakers of the dominant language do not need to invest time and money on foreign language education to learn the dominant language, and can therefore use those resources to give speakers a competitive advantage in other areas; and the “legitimacy and rhetorical effect” which holds that native speakers have an advantage in negotiations or arguments with non-native speakers because the conversation will always take place in the dominant language (Grin 456). Clearly, native speakers are almost always at an advantage and non-native speakers are almost always at a disadvantage. Even the languages used on the Internet can prove this – Wikipedia articles in English total over 3,816,000, more than two million more articles than the next highest number of articles in a language – French with over 1,181,000 (Wikipedia). The disproportion is astounding, and demonstrates the sheer volume of information on the Internet that would be unavailable to someone who does not know English. It seems unfair that English speakers get the advantage of having access to this information, which can lead to educational and economic opportunities that others will not have.

Linguicism can take many forms, some obvious and some subtle. But clearly not all languages have equal status in the world, and populations that speak minority language are at a disadvantage. It is also true that languages are dying out due to neglect because of linguistic discrimination. François Grin states that “Ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity is a feature of society that cannot be left to itself, because it is both conflictual and threatened” (449). A standard, guaranteed solution has not yet been found, but hopefully governments will step in and take steps to prevent language discrimination in the future.

Works Cited:

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School Language of Instruction." Catalan News Agency. Intracatalònia, 15 Sept. 2011. Web. 10 Dec. 2011.

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"Linguicism." Handspeak. Handspeak, 2011. Web. 10 Dec. 2011.

Lovgren, Stefan. "Languages Racing to Extinction in 5 Global ‘Hotspots’" National

Geographic. National Geographic Society, 18 Sept. 2007. Web. 10 Dec. 2011.

Spolsky, Bernard. Language Policy. Cambridge [u.a.: Cambridge Univ., 2005. 197. Print.

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The World Conference on Linguistic Rights,"Universal Declaration of Linguistic

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Linguistic Prejudice." Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 48.8 (May 2005): 666-75. Web. 10 December 2011.