Uncommon Languages: The Challenges and Possibilities of Minority Language Rights

Abstract

This paper outlines some of the key complexities and controversies that surround the advocacy of minority language rights, most notably via the movement of Linguistic Human Rights (LHR). I argue that while the LHR movement has much to offer, particularly in articulating how minority languages might come to enjoy some of the privileges currently accorded to majority (national) languages, it must also address more adequately a number of key issues. The first is a widespread rejection of any intrinsic link between language and identity. The second concerns the difficulty of what actually constitutes a 'group' and whether, on that basis, any group-based rights (such as language rights)can be accorded. The third concerns the valorisation of individual over collective rights, particularly within modern, liberal-democratic nation-states. Finally, these issues are also framed within a wider discussion of the historical and contemporary construction of nation-states, and the attendant stigmatisation and marginalisation of minority languages that is one of its principal features. This, in turn, raises the vexed question of how minority language initiatives might gain sufficient support from majority language speakers in order successfully to change/contest the exclusive dominance of singular, national languages in most of the world's nation-states.