Language and Conflict

Abstract

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0192512110379489 ; Language divides are common components of group conflict, a phenomenon reflected widely in theories of nationalism.This article evaluates measures developed by David Laitin and James Fearon in the minorities at risk dataset claiming to quantify language difference and concludes they are deeply flawed.The introduction outlines language divides vis-a-vis conflict.A theoretical analysis in the second section argues against rational choice analyses of language politics; in the third section a sociolinguistic matrix shows that these fractional measures represent language ancestry but nothing else (morphology, syntax, lexicon, orthography, status). Theoretical implications and alternative methods are considered in the fourth section followed by a summary conclusion.