Language and Minority Rights

Stephen May is Professor of Education in the School of Critical Studies in Education, Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, New Zealand

"This is a masterful book—perhaps the most comprehensive, nuanced, and detailed treatment of minority language rights on an international scale in recent years. Clear, balanced, cogently argued, and remarkable in its depth and scope, Stephen May’s Language and Minority Rights represents a major contribution to both scholarship and practice in the field."– Teresa McCarty, Alice Wiley Snell Professor of Education Policy Studies, Arizona State University"This interdisciplinary volume presents a provocative, comprehensive analysis of issues related to linguistic pluralism…. May addresses arguments about ethnicity and nationalism, social and political theory, education, law, and history as well as the sociology of language and sociolinguistics. A wealth of examples drawn from communities world-wide illustrates his points. Accessibly written and extensively referenced, Language and Minority Rights is an excellent resource for students, teachers and researchers in the fields of anthropology, sociology, sociolinguistics, political science and education."– Erica McClure Anthropology & Education Quarterly 2003

• CONTENTSPreface to the 2nd Edition Preface to the 1st edition INTRODUCTION Language ecology The politics of language The nation-state model Linguistic human rights Critical sociolinguistics Overview Prospects for change Chapter 1: THE DENUNCIATION OF ETHNICITY Academic denunciations of ethnicity Resituating ethnicity in the era of globalization Ethnicity and modernity Ethnicity as primordial Ethnicity as constructed Ethnicity as intentional Hybridity: the postmodernist politics of identity Limits to the social construction of ethnicity Finding common ground – ethnicity, habitus, and field Ethnies Chapter 2: NATIONALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS Linguistic nationalism The will to nationhood The modern (nation-)state The modernists Limits of the modernist account Ethno-symbolic accounts of nationalism Dominant ethnies The construction of sociological minorities Chapter 3: LIBERALISM AND MULTICULTURALISM The pluralist dilemma Defending liberal democracy Critiquing liberal democracy The cosmopolitan alternative Rethinking liberal democracy Chapter 4: LANGUAGE, IDENTITY, RIGHTS, AND REPRESENTATION Language and identity Identity in language Language and culture Language, culture and politics Language decline: the death of Irish? ‘Resigned language realism’: is language revival just flogging a dead horse? Re-evaluating language shift Linguistic markets and symbolic violence Vive la France: the construction of la langue légitime Legitimating and institutionalizing minority languages Chapter 5: LANGUAGE, EDUCATION AND MINORITY RIGHTS Educating for the majority Educating for the minority Minority group responses to language education policies Bridging the gap between policy and practice Minority language and education rights in international law Chapter 6: MONOLINGUALISM, MOBILITY AND THE PRE-EMINENCE OF ENGLISH English as global lingua franca The normative power of monolingualism The problem with history The problem with instrumentalism The problem with bilingual education ‘Doesn’t anyone speak English around here?’ The US ‘English Only’ movement Chapter 7: THE RISE OF REGIONALISM: RE-INSTANTIATING MINORITY LANGUAGES Québec: safeguarding French in a sea of English Catalonia: the quest for political and linguistic autonomy Wales: the development of a bilingual state in a ‘forgotten’ nation Chapter 8: INDIGENOUS RIGHTS: SELF-DETERMINATION, LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION Indigenous peoples, self-determination, and international law Indigenous peoples and national law Indigenous language and education rights Aotearoa/New Zealand: a tale of two ethnicities Chapter 9: RE-IMAGINING THE NATION-STATE Addressing constructivism Tolerability and the crux of majority opinion Polyethnic language and education rights: Pasifika in Aotearoa/New Zealand The challenge of multiculturalism Towards a more pluralist conception of language rights BIBLIOGRAPHY Notes