Protection Of Minority Languages Research Articles

Minority Language Protection in Italy: Linguistic Minorities and the Media

This article deals with the Italian case of minority language protection in the media. After providing a general introduction to the development of the protection of minority languages in Europe in general and of minority language broadcast media in Italy in particular, the article focuses on the role that mass media can play in the preservation or weakening of minority languages. By comparing different measures of protection adopted by national and regional authorities in Italy, the article aims to illustrate how these measures can be translated into different levels of development of broadcast media provisions for linguistic minorities. The article explores some of the effects different protective measures can have on the survival, status and economic conditions of the linguistic minority on the one hand, and the relationship with the state and the majority group on the other.

Economic Opportunities and the Protection of Minority Languages

In this Article, Professor Suk defends the moral legitimacy of liberal states’ legal protection of minority languages. Many opponents of minority language protection have argued or assumed that legal intervention denies individuals the right to choose the majority language and the economic opportunities often attached to the dominant language. This Article argues that such arguments overlook another category of goods that are necessary to individual autonomy: relational resources. Individuals have an interest in maintaining their ancestral languages because doing so is essential to maintaining one’s relationship to one’s family and community. The relational interest cannot easily be compared with economic opportunities, because these two dimensions of autonomy are incommensurable. As a result, a liberal state should avoid forcing its citizens to choose between these incommensurable goods. By adopting policies that protect minority languages, while also ensuring individuals’ access to economic and political participation in the majority language, a liberal state can manage and balance the conflict between these important competing aspects of autonomy.

Economic Opportunities and the Protection of Minority Languages

In this Article, Professor Suk defends the moral legitimacy of liberal states’ legal protection of minority languages. Many opponents of minority language protection have argued or assumed that legal intervention denies individuals the right to choose the majority language and the economic opportunities often attached to the dominant language. This Article argues that such arguments overlook another category of goods that are necessary to individual autonomy: relational resources. Individuals have an interest in maintaining their ancestral languages because doing so is essential to maintaining one’s relationship to one’s family and community. The relational interest cannot easily be compared with economic opportunities, because these two dimensions of autonomy are incommensurable. As a result, a liberal state should avoid forcing its citizens to choose between these incommensurable goods. By adopting policies that protect minority languages, while also ensuring individuals’ access to economic and political participation in the majority language, a liberal state can manage and balance the conflict between these important competing aspects of autonomy.

The right to minority language public school education as a function of the equality guarantee: a reanalysis of theGosselinSupreme Court of Canada Charter case

This paper concerns a recent Supreme Court of Canada decision dealing ostensibly with the protection of language minority rights. The case, in fact, however, concerns the Court imposing statutory limits on constitutionally guaranteed equality and liberty rights. The Court in the instant case held as constitutional Quebec legislation permitting access to English language schools only to children who have received, or are receiving the majority of their instruction in English in Canada, or whose parents received the majority of their instruction in English in Canada at the primary school level. The appellants, members of the French majority in Quebec, could not meet those eligibility criteria. Therefore, they were held to have no right to access English language public schools for their children. The ruling, as discussed, is inconsistent with the equality and liberty guarantees as well as the minority language protection clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Minority Language Rights Before and After the 2004 EU Enlargement: The Copenhagen Criteria in the Baltic States

This paper examines the effect of the recent European Union (EU) enlargement on minority language policies in the Baltic states, and in particular in Latvia and Estonia. I first look at the so-called Copenhagen political criteria conditioning EU accession and at the European Commission's monitoring system for assessing applicant countries' compliance with such criteria. Focusing on changing language policies in Latvia and Estonia in the post-Soviet era, I then investigate whether accession negotiations between these countries and the Commission have resulted in defining new thresholds of minority language protection both domestically and in the EU. If so, have such minority rights standards become an acquis communautaire and could they then be applied to ‘older’ member states in retrospect?

Emerging language and education policies in Lithuania

Against a historical background, this paper explores language-related challenges that have arisen in Lithuania since the cessation of Soviet hegemony. The reinstatement in 1990 of the official status of Lithuanian led to the gradual replacement of Russian in public life. Provisions were made for public-sector employees and other members from the ethnic communities to become proficient in the state language, and laws were introduced for the protection of minority languages and cultures.Lithuania's two major ethnic groups, the Russians and the Poles, have responded differently to integration, requiring different educational measures to support the diverse needs of a society in transition. In contrast to the other Baltic states, where the proportion of Russians and other non-indigenous minorities is greater, Lithuanian language and education policies have been successful in promoting social integration whilst at the same time safeguarding cultural and linguistic diversity.

The World Came to Sweden – But Did Language Rights?

This article sets the language policy scene in Sweden in the broader perspective of the ongoing restructuring of global and local linguistic hierarchies. It analyses myths about global English, myths about the equality of the 11 official languages in the European Union, and myths about the extent to which linguistic human rights are guaranteed in international and European human rights documents. Trends in each of these language policy fields impact on the management of multilingualism in Sweden. Sweden's ratification of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages serves as an example of how only very few of the languages spoken or signed in Sweden benefit, and how the provisions identified in the Swedish ratification have accorded very limited entitlements to support for these languages. Comparison with other states shows that Sweden's liberal rhetoric in relation to human rights and minority language protection is more sophisticated but equally hollow, and therefore unlikely to contribute to the maintenance of linguistic diversity.