Disability Politics, Language Planning and Inclusive Social Policy

Abstract

Language is one of the primary media through which capitalism and the mobilisation of resistance against capitalism are perpetrated. However, although capitalism is becoming an increasingly global phenomenon, language continues to delineate nationstates and identities—no language is fully translatable. Drawing upon a large body of literature and research concerning minority-majority language relationships and language planning, this paper will, first, interrogate the relationship between bilingualism and proposed policies of inclusive education in the context of current struggles for linguistic minority ‘rights' by sign language users. The ‘minority rights' agenda is contrasted with disabled people's struggles for the legitimation of ‘new’ disability discourses within a framework of citizenship, as contextualised by issues of social exclusion. It is argued that language use, language development and their relationship to disability, cannot be adequately addressed within localised interpretations of ‘special needs' policy. The paper concludes with the view that in the face of New Labour's rhetoric of ‘modernisation’, disabled people must address the hegemony implicit to language planning, by acknowledging the centrality of language rights and practices to social policy, political expression, citizenship and the mobilisation for social change.