Weaponizing Language: Linguistic Vectors of Ethnic Oppression

Abstract

AbstractAs part of a larger project studying language conflict, this paper documents ways in which the oppression of language use on the part of a dominant language/ethnic group is instrumentalized as a tool to inflict gratuitous societal pain and punishment upon nondominant ethnolinguistic groups and their individual members. Our arguments will be illustrated primarily by three contemporary cases: (1) the Uyghur minority in the PRC, (2) the Kurdish minority in Turkey, and (3) the Hungarian minority in Slovakia. This article also seeks to provide an example of ways in which important empirical questions in the political science/international relations literature might be more fully addressed with the help of linguistics, which is a focus of our ongoing language conflict project.