Language advocacy in times of securitization and neoliberalization: The Network LanguageRights

Abstract

In this contribution, we aim to address the following questions: What does it mean to do language advocacy in 2022? Under which conditions does it operate? What are the fights, aims, and challenges? On the one hand, answering these questions heavily depends on the political, social, cultural and linguistic context, as well as on the interests, stakes and positions of the advocacy actors. On the other, we argue that recent political economic transformations are conditioning language advocacy more than ever. In the following, we will outline two transformations we consider particularly prevalent, i.e. neoliberalization and securitization, discuss what language advocacy actually means, and exemplify this with the case of the Network LanguageRights (NLR), a language advocacy group based in Vienna, dedicated to language rights of minorities and minoritized speakers in the Austrian context, and with a focus on language policies. We will further zoom into one particular discussion occurring at the heart of the NLR, which will lead us to a concluding discussion of possible ways of rethinking language advocacy, in particular in paying attention to the notion of linguistic citizenship.