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Only a few hundred of the world's languages have any kind of official status, and it is only speakers of official languages (speakers of dominant majority languages) who enjoy all linguistic human rights. As many of the collected papers in this book document, most linguistic minorities are deprived of these rights. This volume describes what linguistic human rights are, who has and who does not have them and why and suggests which linguistic rights should be regarded as basic human rights. ""Linguistic Human Rights"" introduces an area that combines sociolinguistics, educational and minority c

Abstract
The notion of linguistic justice should be related to the concept of linguistic ease, by which we mean the full social and communicative freedom of concern of the speaker in a given social interaction involving the use of language(s) present in the society, according to the social norms of use. To acquire an acceptable degree of linguistic ease, the knowledge of at least one L2 is considered important. But the acquisition of a L2 is interfered by the previous linguistic skills of the learner/speaker who, in many cases, does not have a suitable competence even of the languages of the society in which he/she lives.

Linguistic Anthropology. Alessandro Duranti. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.398 pp.

This paper introduces the concept of linguistic hijacking, the phenomenon wherein politically significant terminology is co-opted by dominant groups in ways that further their dominance over marginalized groups. Here I focus on hijackings of the words "racist" and "racism." The model of linguistic hijacking developed here, called the semantic corruption model, is inspired by Burge's social externalism, in which deference plays a key role in determining the semantic properties of expressions. The model describes networks of deference relations, which support competing meanings of, for example, "racist," and postulates the existence of deference magnets that influence those networks over time. Linguistic hijacking functions to shift the semantic properties of crucial political terminology by causing changes in deference networks, spreading semantics that serve the interests of dominant groups, and weakening the influence of resistant deference networks. I consider an objection alleging the semantic corruption model gets the semantic data wrong because it entails those who hijack terms like "racist" speak truly, whereas it's natural to see such hijacking misuses as false speech about racism. I then respond to this objection by invoking the framework of metalinguistic negotiation proposed by Plunkett and Sundell.

Linguistic Fieldwork. Paul Newman and Martha Ratliff. eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 288 pp.

The world is full of situations of asymmetric bilingualism: the members of one linguistic group learn the language of another without the latter reciprocating. In such a situation, the cost of learning is borne by one group, whereas the benefit is enjoyed by both. This paper first argues that, in the absence of any cost-sharing device, such situations are unjust. Next, it critically examines four potential criteria of linguistic justice, each of which offers a distinct answer to the question of how to allocate between two linguistic groups the cost of one of them learning a second language. Criteria suggested by Church and King, Jonathan Pool and David Gauthier are spelled out and rejected in favour of a criterion of equal ratios of benefit to cost. Lastly, the paper sketches some policy implications concerning what is owed by English natives to the rest of mankind as a result of English being adopted as a worldwide lingua franca.

The linguistic relativity hypothesis, the proposal that the particular language we speak influences the way we think about reality, forms one part of the broader question of how language influences thought. Despite long-standing historical interest in the hypothesis, there is relatively little empirical research directly addressing it. Existing empirical approaches are classified into three types. 1. Structure-centered approaches begin with language differences and ask about their implications for thought. 2. Domain-centered approaches begin with experienced reality and ask how different languages encode it. 3. Behavior-centered approaches begin with some practical concern and seek an explanation in language. These approaches are compared, and recent methodological improvements highlighted. Despite empirical advances, a theoretical account needs to articulate exactly how languages interpret experiences and how those interpretations influence thought. This will entail integrating theory and data concerning both the general relation of language and thought and the shaping influence of specific discursive structures and practices.

AbstractAs an object of philosophical study, language is typically considered as an abstract object rather than a lived phenomenon that comes with rich and varied phenomenology. And yet our modes of engaging with language are complex and many. The first goal of this paper is to illustrate this variety by looking at some of the linguistic modalities and forms of communication. The second goal is to suggest that at least in some specific philosophical debates, language and communication should be investigated in the context of the various linguistic modalities and forms of communication. This will be done by considering how attention to some of the linguistic modalities and forms of communication may affect philosophical debates concerning: the nature of words, language and linguistic understanding, as well as the relation between linguistic utterances and their sources.

This book is a collection of original essays on the practice of linguistic fieldwork and language documentation. Twelve of the leading field linguists in the world have written personal essays about the study of languages in a natural setting. Drawing on extensive research experience, they pass on the lessons they have learnt, review the techniques that they found worked best in practice, and discuss a variety of relevant topics, including the attitude of the linguist, the structure and content of the work session, the varied roles of native speakers, and the practical and personal challenges of doing research in an unfamiliar environment. Covering a wide range of field areas, and written in an accessible manner, the book will be indispensable to fieldworkers in linguistics, anthropology, folklore and oral history.

This paper investigates the diversity issue in business contexts in Switzerland from a linguistic perspective and reports the results of field activities in two multinational enterprises. Using a qualitative-empirical approach, the paper analyses two interviews with Heads of Communication in charge of the development and implementation of communication strategies for a culturally and linguistically diverse workforce. Particular attention is paid to the role of English as the corporate language, and to attitudes towards language. A methodological agenda will be proposed which is intended as a contribution to the field of Linguistic Diversity Management. ; Dieser Beitrag untersucht den Problembereich der sprachlich-kulturellen Diversität in multinationalen Unternehmen der Schweiz aus einer pragmatischen Perspektive. Ausgehend von Interviews mit Entscheidungsträgern aus den Kommunikationsabteilungen zweier multinationaler Firmen geht der Beitrag der Frage nach, wie und in welchen Zusammenhängen die kulturelle und sprachliche Diversität der Belegschaft in die Kommunikationspraxis solcher Entscheidungsträger einfliesst und die Sprachpolitik des Unternehmens bestimmt. Die Ergebnisse der Analyse werden von methodologischen Fragestellungen gerahmt, die aus der pragmatischen Betrachtungsweise hervorgehen. ; This paper investigates the diversity issue in business contexts in Switzerland from a linguistic perspective and reports the results of field activities in two multinational enterprises. Using a qualitative-empirical approach, the paper analyses two interviews with Heads of Communication in charge of the development and implementation of communication strategies for a culturally and linguistically diverse workforce. Particular attention is paid to the role of English as the corporate language, and to attitudes towards language. A methodological agenda will be proposed which is intended as a contribution to the field of Linguistic Diversity Management.

This paper distinguishes three phases in the popularization of linguistic relativity: the phase initiated by Benjamin Lee Whorf himself; a second phase during which linguistic relativity was formulated and tested as a research hypothesis; and the current phase during which language-relativistic assumptions have penetrated the mass media. To diagnose the spread of relativistic assumptions, 560 articles in both English and Greek print and electronic media were considered. The articles were published over the period 2010–2019. They fall, roughly, into eighteen categories. Some of the articles report explicitly on linguistic relativity research, while others presuppose language-relativistic ideas in handling issues as disparate as the effectiveness of managerial discourse, the appropriateness of political correctness, or the possibility of communicating with aliens. The large number of article categories as well as the tacit assumption of linguistic relativity in a growing number of articles are indicators of how popular linguistic relativity has become in folk-linguistic discourse.