Language Policy and Linguistic Justice: Michele Gazzola Torsten Templin Bengt-Arne Wickström Editors

Michele
Gazzola · Torsten Templin
Bengt-Arne Wickström Editors
Language
Policy and
Linguistic
Justice
Economic, Philosophical and
Sociolinguistic Approaches
Language Policy and Linguistic Justice
Michele Gazzola • Torsten Templin •
Bengt-Arne Wickström
Editors
Language Policy and

Linguistic Justice
Economic, Philosophical and Sociolinguistic
Approaches
123
Editors
Michele Gazzola Torsten Templin
Forschungsgruppe “Ökonomie und Forschungsgruppe “Ökonomie und
Sprache” Sprache”
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Berlin, Germany Berlin, Germany
Bengt-Arne Wickström
Andrássy-Universität Budapest
Budapest, Hungary
ISBN 978-3-319-75261-7 ISBN 978-3-319-75263-1 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1
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Contents
Part I Introduction and Overview of Literature

An Economics Approach to Language Policy and Linguistic Justice . . . . . . 3
Bengt-Arne Wickström, Torsten Templin, and Michele Gazzola
Linguistic Justice: An Interdisciplinary Overview of the Literature .. . . . . . 65
Javier Alcalde
Part II Political and Philosophical Perspectives

on Linguistic Justice
Justice in the Linguistic Environment: Narrow or Wide? .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Andrew Shorten
Toward an Adaptive Approach to Linguistic Justice: Three Paradoxes . . . 173
Yael Peled
Language Proficiency and Migration: An Argument Against Testing . . . . . 189
Astrid von Busekist and Benjamin Boudou
The Myth of English as a Common Language in the European
Union (EU) and Some of Its Political Consequences . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Jean-Claude Barbier
Part III Economic Approaches to Language Policy and Linguistic

Justice
Linguistic Justice in a Federal Setting: The Case of Canadian
Provinces . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
François Vaillancourt
Language Policy and Social Segmentation: Evidence from Catalonia . . . . . 259
Ramon Caminal and Antonio Di Paolo
v
vi Contents
Languages, Human Capital, and Well-Being in Sub-Saharan Africa .. . . . . 287

Katalin Buzási and Péter Földvári
Linguistic Disenfranchisement and Labour Mobility in Europe . . . . . . . . . . . 313
Till Burckhardt
Choosing Working Languages in a Multilingual Organization:
A Statistical Analysis with a Particular View on the European Union .. . . . 337
Dietrich Voslamber
Part IV Sociolinguistic Views and Applications

The Assessment of Sociolinguistic Justice: Parameters and Models
of Analysis . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
Gabriele Iannàccaro, Federico Gobbo, and Vittorio Dell’Aquila
Regulatory Environment, Linguistic Inequalities, and New
Opportunities for Hungarian Minority Interest Representation
in Romania ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
Zsombor Csata and László Marácz
The Economic Value of Mastering Languages: The Case
of Ethnically Mixed Areas in Slovenia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
David Limon, Mojca Medvešek, and Sonja Novak Lukanovič
Language and Translation Policies in Context of Urban
Super-Diversity .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
Reine Meylaerts
Language Policies for Migrants in Italy: The Tension Between
Democracy, Decision-Making, and Linguistic Diversity .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
Sabrina Machetti, Monica Barni, and Carla Bagna
Esperanto and Linguistic Justice: An Empirical Response to Sceptics . . . . 499
Cyril Brosch and Sabine Fiedler
Index . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537
Part I
Introduction and Overview of Literature
An Economics Approach to Language
Policy and Linguistic Justice
Bengt-Arne Wickström, Torsten Templin, and Michele Gazzola
1 Setting the Stage: Why We Need More Economics

in Language Policy and Planning
The goal of this introductory chapter is to present and thoroughly discuss some
fundamental concepts used in economics and policy analysis, and to clarify how
such concepts can enrich research on language policy and planning (LPP), both
The work on this chapter has been carried out in the Research group “Economics and language”
in Berlin, with which all three authors are associated. The group is receiving funding from the
European Union’s Seventh Framework Program (Project MIME—grant agreement 613344). This
support is gratefully acknowledged. We are very grateful to François Grin and Andrew Shorten who
read the manuscript and gave us many constructive comments considerably improving both content
and presentation. We also thank Judith Wickström for bringing our English closer to accepted
norms. All remaining errors and idiolectal usages are the full responsibility of the authors.
B.-A. Wickström ()
Andrássy-Universität Budapest, Budapest, Hungary
Research Group “Economics and Language” (REAL), Berlin, Germany
e-mail: bengt-arne.wickstroem@andrassyuni.hu
T. Templin
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Research Group “Economics and Language” (REAL),
Berlin, Germany
e-mail: templito@hu-berlin.de
M. Gazzola
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Research Group “Economics and Language” (REAL),
Berlin, Germany
Inštitut za narodnostna vprašanja, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland
e-mail: gazzola@hu-berlin.de
© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 3

M. Gazzola et al. (eds.), Language Policy and Linguistic Justice,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1_1
4 B.-A. Wickström et al.
from a positive and a normative perspective. Particular importance is given to

issues dealing with the distributive implications of language policies (sometimes
subsumed under the label “linguistic justice”), in addition to efficiency issues.
The use of terms such as “economic rationality”, “resource allocation”, “economic
value of languages”, “benefits of language policies”, “public good”, and “network
externality” is not entirely new in language policy and planning.1
These terms still tend to be used mostly by economists involved in LPP research,
although the chapters of this book show that also different contributions based on
the philosophical and sociolinguistic tradition employ and apply economic concepts
and theories to language-policy issues (a brief summary of all chapters of the book is
presented in Sect. 8 below). These notions have enriched the set of conceptual tools
at our disposal that are relevant for the study of language policies. In addition, the
interdisciplinary dialogue among social scientists and applied linguists has unveiled
various weaknesses of economic metaphors and analogies sometimes used in
sociolinguistics, such as “language as currency”, or misleading juxtapositions such
as “language planning versus linguistic free market” and “linguistic protectionism
versus linguistic laisser-faire”.2 In some quarters of sociolinguistics that follow the
critical approach to language issues developed by Rossi-Landi (1968) and Bourdieu
(1982), the terms “linguistic market”, “commodity”, and “linguistic exchange” are
sometimes used. Nevertheless, as Grin notes:
Bourdieu’s text makes constant reference to ‘markets’, ‘profit’ and ‘capital’, thereby
creating with some readers the impression that his is an economic theory of language
use. It would be more appropriate to describe his contribution as a sociological one in
which standard economic terms are given another, somewhat idiosyncratic interpretation.
Bourdieu’s analysis certainly amounts to excellent sociology of language – but from an
economic standpoint, his use of economic terminology is no less metaphorical than Rossi
Landi’s [sic], and does not amount to ‘economics of language’. (Grin 2003, p. 27, italics in
the original, endnote omitted)
In spite of the occasional use of concepts imported from economics, what has
not been widely discussed so far are the implications of using these concepts
and economic theory in general for research on language planning and linguistic
justice, the underlying theme of this book. This is not simply an academic
exercise of interdisciplinary research. This book starts from the observation that
the employment of concepts and analytic tools from economics and policy analysis
in the study of language policy and planning has become not only desirable but
perhaps also unavoidable for at least three interrelated reasons.
1 Foran overview, see Vaillancourt (1983) and Grin (2003).

2 Forexample, the analogy between currency and language is employed by Calvet (2002), the
notion of “linguistic market”, among others, by Ehlich (2007) and Inoue (2007), and the term
“linguistic protectionism” by Schulzke (2014). For a critical discussion of these metaphors from
an economics point of view, see, among others, Grin (2005a) and Gazzola (2014b).
An Economics Approach to Language Policy and Linguistic Justice 5
First, a certain level of involvement of the State in the linguistic environment is

necessary. As De Schutter, among others, notes:
[I]n making policies on, among other things, education or simply courtroom practices, states
unavoidably have to make linguistic decisions: fully a-linguistic state policies simply do not
exist. The correct opposition is therefore not one between linguistic freedom and linguistic
regulation but rather between different forms of linguistic regulation. In other words, there
is no zero-option in the field of language policy. We cannot not intervene. (De Schutter
2007, p. 17)
In other words, a situation of pure linguistic laisser-faire does not (and cannot)
exist in practice. In addition, even if linguistic laisser-faire existed, its outcomes
would not necessarily be better than those resulting from language planning. As
Crystal notes,
Many linguists have held the view that language change is a natural, spontaneous phe-
nomenon, the result of underlying social and/or linguistic forces that it is impossible or
undesirable to tamper with. We should ‘leave our language alone’ [. . .]. However, language
planning studies have shown that is quite possible for social groups to alter the course of
a language, and that the question of desirability is a highly controversial one. It is still
unclear how far languages can be permanently influenced by social manipulation, but there
is now strong evidence that such factors must be taken seriously when considering historical
linguistic matters. (Crystal 2010, p. 366)
The “question of desirability” to which Crystal refers, can be addressed also from
the point of view of economic theory. The fact that some language-related goods,
such as bilingual road signs and information contained in official documents and
institutional websites of an organization in different languages, have the typical
properties of collective goods would in general justify state intervention in the
linguistic environment both for efficiency reasons (this question is thoroughly
discussed below) and out of equity concerns. In other words, some degree of
intervention of the State in the linguistic environment is not only unavoidable
for the reasons already explained, but in many circumstances also desirable for
both efficiency and equity reasons. Insights from economics, however, have not
been widely used for the study of the normative, especially distributive, aspects
of language policies. Further, language spread and language decline are often
associated with the typical problem of free-riding arising from the presence of
positive or negative externalities; this raises interesting and important normative
(efficiency as well as equity) concerns that might require state interventions in order
to be properly addressed.3
Second, economic arguments may have a value in the normative debate and
discourse on language-policy choices. In many circumstances, policy makers
employ economic arguments to justify their language-policy choices and/or rec-
ommendations. A good example is provided by the working document Language
competences for employability, mobility and growth published by the European
Commission in 2012. It is well-known that the EU recommends its Member States
to teach two foreign languages in addition to the mother tongue or first language of
3 See, for example, Van Parijs (2003) and Robichaud (2011, 2017).
the children beginning in early childhood education (this is known as the “Mother
Tongue + 2” formula). In the aforementioned document, the Commission writes:
Europe’s vision for 2020 is to become a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy.
Therefore, improving the outcomes of education and training and investing in skills in
general – and language skills in particular – are important prerequisites to achieve the
EU goal of increasing growth, creating jobs, promoting employability and increasing
competitiveness. The ambition is to achieve better functioning of EU labour markets, to
provide the right skills for the right jobs and to improve the quality of work and working
conditions. In this context, foreign language proficiency is one of the main determinants of
learning and professional mobility, as well as of domestic and international employability.
Poor language skills thus constitute a major obstacle to free movement of workers and to the
international competitiveness of EU enterprises. [. . .] it is clear, however, that the benefits
of improved language learning go well beyond the immediate economic advantages,
encompassing a range of cultural, cognitive, social, civic, academic and security aspects.
(European Commission 2012, p. 4, italics added)
Another example is provided by a “Position Statement” of the British Academy

titled Language matters more and more:
Languages for competitiveness, trade and emerging markets: the UK’s social and economic
future relies on our ability to compete on the international stage. It is not coincidental that
within months of entering office the coalition government has organised very large and
high profile teams led by the Prime Minister to visit India and China. Within the European
context too, our neighbours are important trading partners yet we are rapidly becoming
a nation of monolinguals. With an increasing number of companies having international
dealings, mobility and language skills are being viewed as vital by employers. The
proficiency that graduates with language and international experience bring goes beyond
just the acquisition of a single language, demonstrating in addition initiative, motivation,
independence and an ability to engage with those who have different backgrounds and
experience. (British Academy 2011, p. 5, italics added)
Knowledge of quintessentially economic concepts such as “competitiveness”

and “employability”, therefore, are necessary to properly understand and interpret
discourses on language policy like those just presented, and even more importantly,
to critically analyze them in the light of theoretical and empirical results available
in the language-economics literature. For example, is it true that foreign language
proficiency is one of the main determinants of learning in general and professional
mobility? If so, in comparison to what other determinants? Do poor language
skills actually constitute a major obstacle to free movement of workers and to
the international competitiveness of EU enterprises? If yes, to what extent?4 Do
language skills really have an impact on employability? If yes, is this impact
significant? What differences can be observed among countries in this respect?
Theoretical and empirical research in language economics aims at addressing such
questions.5
Third, “the fundamentally economic approach enshrined in policy analysis is
relevant to decision-making in LPP just as it is in other public policies in areas such
4 Cf. Till Burckhardt’s contribution in this book (chapter “Linguistic Disenfranchisement and
Labour Mobility in Europe”).

5 Academic literature in language economics currently includes some 500 titles. A recent bibliog-
raphy is provided by Gazzola et al. (2016).

as health, transportation, or the environment” (Grin 20016, p. 37). Just like any other
public policy, language policies must be designed, implemented, managed, and
finally evaluated. The design and the execution of any policy necessarily involves
the investment of human, financial and material resources that must be measured
or estimated; the implementation of any policy may (or may not) entail effects and
tangible results that have to be evaluated and quantified. Surprisingly, the literature
on LPP has been mostly silent on this topic. Although the need for evaluation in LPP
was already clear at the time of the origins of the field in the 1970s,6 little attention
(if any) has been paid to the evaluation of language polices in most LPP handbooks,
no matter to which national tradition they belong.7 This does not mean, of course,
that no evaluation of language policies has been carried out in the last decades.8
Nevertheless, theories and methods from economics and policy analysis are still not
common among LPP scholars and practitioners. As Johnson notes,
a lot of language policy analysis is, essentially, discourse analysis since it involves
looking at various texts (both spoken and written) and analyzing policy discourse that are
instantiated within or engendered by policy texts. As well, language policy processes are
essentially discursive – generated, sustained, and manipulated in spoken interaction and
policy documents that, in turn, interact with each other – and may appropriate, resist, and/or
possible change dominant and alternative discourses about language and language policy.
(Johnson 2013, p. 152)9
Yet, this is not likely to be enough. There is an increasing need for expertise in the
area of the evaluation of the allocative and distributive effects of language policies,10
their benefits and their costs. In the last decade, new international networks of
language policy makers and practitioners have been established. In 2013, for
example, the International Association of Language Commissioners was founded
in order to facilitate the international exchange of experiences and models of policy
interventions in officially multilingual countries such as Canada, Switzerland, and
Finland. One of the central concerns of language commissioners is to make sure
that multilingualism at the administrative level be respected in order for citizens
to feel included, and that language policies be effectively enforced. In 2009, the
European Network to Promote of Linguistic Diversity was established. This network
6 The papers of Thorburn (1971) and Jernudd (1971) are illuminating examples. For a brief history
of LPP, see Jernudd and Nekvapil (2012).

7 E.g. Beacco (2016), Calvet (1996), Dell’Aquila and Iannàccaro (2004), Spolsky (2004, 2012),
Johnson (2013), Marten (20016), or Tollefson and Pérez-Milans (2017). The books edited by
Ricento (2006a) and by Hult and Johnson (2015) are partial exceptions.
8 See Gazzola and Grin (2017) for an overview.
9 The literature in discourse analysis is vast and cannot be summarized here. For an introduction,
see, among others, Gee and Handford (2012).

10 The term allocation refers to how goods are used in individual consumption and in the production
of individual firms. The goal of efficient allocation basically means that no resources are wasted;
they are on the margin employed where they provide the highest benefits. This is independent of
who is reaping the benefits. Distribution, on the other hand, is concerned with who benefits from
economic activities in comparison to other individuals. We return to this distinction in Sect. 1.1
where the concept of allocative efficiency is discussed in some detail. Distributive issues are
discussed in Sect. 6.
consists of language policy agencies and bodies at the regional level (e.g., the
Catalan Government, or the Regional Agency for the Friulian language), and it
aims, among other things, at promoting the exchange of practices and policy models
regarding the support of minority languages. Language policy agencies and decision
makers involved in such networks seek to improve the understanding of multilingual
language policies from a practical point of view, and to explore new strategies to
evaluate the effectiveness and the fairness of policies promoting and protecting
language rights. In other words, the central question is how to get things done,
at what cost and for which group of people. Consider that provisions concerning
languages are contained in the Constitutions of 125 of some 200 sovereign states in
the world (Marten 20016, p. 76), and therefore the potential need for evaluation is
very large.
The dominant research methods in LPP satisfy this need only to a certain extent.
As Ricento appropriately notes,
what has not been much discussed is the practice of language planning, that is, the
development, implementation, and evaluation of specific language policies. To be sure, this
is an understudied facet of LPP research, a legacy no doubt of the focus on theory from
earliest days of the field [. . .]. Another reason for the lack of attention to the mechanisms of
language planning is that most sociolinguists and applied linguists have little or no training
in the policy sciences. (Ricento 2006b, p. 18)
Hence, perhaps more attention should be paid to inputs from the social sciences,
policy analysis, and economics in particular. Ultimately,
in order to advocate specific policies or policy direction, scholars need to demonstrate
empirically – as well as conceptually – the societal benefits, costs, of such policies. (Ricento
2006b, p. 11, italics in the original)
Although this book aims at giving attention to the importance of an approach

to language policy among researchers and practitioners based on economics, we
are, of course, aware of the decades-long tradition of reasoning, centered in the
field of political philosophy, about the rôle of language in a democratic society and
the significance of cultural diversity for the liberal state.11 An influential political-
science orientation within this normative tradition has been the defense of a theory
of language rights within a liberal multicultural framework.12
11 See, for instance, Kymlicka (1995), Kymlicka and Patten (2003), Van Parijs (2011), Ricento et al.
(2015), or De Schutter and Robichaud (2016).
12 Kymlicka (1995) and Patten (2009) reflect this tradition very well. Patten (2009), for instance,
lists five basic approaches. First, toleration basically implies that prohibitions on language use
are absent; individuals in their private lives can use whatever language they desire. Second,
accommodation is a minimal right; an individual should in certain situations receive assistance,
if he/she is severely disadvantaged because of language. Third, context of choice signifies that
the individual should be able to live a “full” life in his or her “own” culture. Fourth, the end-
state argument attributes an intrinsic value to linguistic diversity, drawing parallels to biological
diversity. Fifth, the fairness argument is used to argue for equality of opportunities of members
of all groups; a minority should not be disadvantaged in comparison to a dominant majority.
Our approach in this essay comes close to the fairness argument. See also Patten (2014) and the
extensive discussions by Alcalde (chapter “Linguistic Justice: An Interdisciplinary Overview of
It has been argued, however, that these approaches from political and social
sciences rely too heavily on a vision of languages as discrete and geographically
defined phenomena, ignoring important everyday facts in today’s globalized world
about the ways in which languages co-exist and influence one another.13 In response,
a variety of theorists have been attempting to develop a more inclusive concept or
framework of linguistic justice, as a way of capturing the notion of an overall social
good related to the political economy of language in a given society.14 Especially
research in the area of sociolinguistics illustrates linguistic diversity on the ground,
analyzes real-life linguistic practices as well as discourses, etc.15 This also applies
to several chapters in this book, especially in part IV. Without rejecting such efforts,
we see a need to connect language policy more closely with the evaluation and
comparison of its actual effects in today’s world. To this end, the fiction of languages
being discrete phenomena and groups of speakers being located in defined regions is
both a sensible and a fruitful abstraction, which allows us to develop implementable
models analyzing and guiding language policy and planning.
In doing so, we claim that applied public economics provides us with very useful
tools for the analysis of language policy and language planning. In the literature on
language policy, as we noted above, concepts from economics such as “public”—
or “collective”—good, “external effects”, “laisser-faire”, “efficiency”, “invisible
hand”, “language market”, and many more are employed by various authors, often
without clear definitions and at times in a contradictory manner. We first of all see
a need to clarify and systematize the use of these and similar concepts with respect
to language, language use, language policy, and the evaluation thereof.
We will argue that spontaneous interactions, laisser-faire, rarely lead to efficient
results and an involvement of the public sector is required to improve situations of
classic market failure, this holding is true in general and especially in language-
related issues. We will note that the benefit side of language policies is difficult
to estimate, in many cases necessitating a cost-effectiveness analysis. The benefits
will then be replaced by policy goals fixed by a planner. The goals of the planner
will in general be politically determined and reflect the political situation in society.
We will also claim that the cost side has not been given sufficient attention in the
literature and argue that a sensible language policy has to take costs into account
to a much higher degree than what has generally been the case until now. We show
that normalization to per-person costs of different planning measures allows us to
categorize language-planning measures into a small number of categories based on
the cost structures and that practical decision criteria for language policy can be
reduced to a relatively small number of decision rules for the different kinds of
the Literature”) and Shorten (chapter “Justice in the Linguistic Environment: Narrow or Wide?”)
in this book.
13 See De Schutter (2007), Peled (2010), Ricento (2014), and Schmidt (2014).
14 See De Schutter (2007), Mowbray (2012), Peled (2010), and Van Parijs (2011).
15 Two representative collections of papers in this area are Skutnabb-Kangas et al. (2009) as well
as May and Hornberger (2008).

cost categories. This allows for flexibility in the policy leading to a higher level of
welfare. Finally, we point to the necessity of introducing distributional issues into
the analysis. The focus in this essay is, hence, on conceptual tools which form a
solid background for empirical and applied evaluation of language policy.
1.1 Economic Concepts and Language Policy
In the tradition of Western liberalism, any public or collective interference in the

spontaneous order of individual life needs a justification, be it a correction of a
“market failure”,16 a desire to make society more “fair” based on some system
of individual or collective ethics, or simply “we-know-better” paternalism. As
a consequence, the raison d’être for government intervention from the point of
view of economics is generally to be found in a desire to improve distributional
“justice” (affecting the distribution of resources or access to resources, such as equal
opportunities) and/or allocative “efficiency” (such as correcting market failures) in
a society.17
Many aspects of language policy, as we noted above, can be seen as a form
of public policy,18 and—when selecting policies—it is necessary to compare the
advantages and the drawbacks of different alternatives with respect to stated goal
(or “welfare”).19 Public economics provides relevant frameworks to guide such
choices.20 Concepts such as efficiency and fairness are central in this respect. The
analytical tool that suggests itself is cost-benefit (or cost-effectiveness) analysis.
This requires us to define a benefit, “demand”, and a cost, “supply”, side for
the analysis of language policy. In the literature, the analysis of the demand
side—the benefits of language policy—including distributional aspects is well
16 That is, a situation where the spontaneous interaction in the market leads to undesirable
consequences. Common examples are environmental problems or monopolistic structures. The

various concepts used will be explained in detail, as we go along.
17 The separation of the normative analysis of distribution (fairness or justice) and of allocation
(efficiency) generally goes back the work of Richard Musgrave, see Musgrave (1956/1957).
18 This includes actions taken by any public authority in order to influence the functioning of
society with the goal of increasing efficiency or improving justice, for instance by providing equal
opportunities in the access to various functions of society to people speaking different languages.
19 It is important to understand that optimality or maximization only makes sense with respect to
well-defined goals. The definition of the goals is basically a political issue outside the realm of
rational analysis. The analysis can only try to find and compare the ways leading toward the given
goal.
20 There are numerous introductory texts giving an overview of the field. Hindriks and Myles (2006)
is a good example, theoretically stringent without losing the contact to empirical reality.
developed.21 The supply side—the costs of language policy—on the other hand is
often neglected.22
Allocative efficiency has a very clear definition in the concept of Pareto
efficiency, which is closely related to unanimity and the so called equivalence
principle of taxation. It simply states that an allocation is efficient if all other
theoretically possible allocations in the economy would make the situation of at
least one individual worse. That is, one cannot find an alternative allocation that
would not be blocked by a popular vote if unanimity is required.23 Pareto efficiency,
hence, describes a given situation of society.
Clearly, in general there is no unique efficient allocation, and one would have
to choose among several ones.24 Here various concepts of distributive justice
enter. The choice between possible efficient allocations can be made in a manner
to minimize inequality (in some well-defined sense).25 However, the distribution
problem is more complex. It might well be that equitable allocations are inefficient
and that all feasible efficient allocations are rather inequitable and unacceptable
to the policy maker.26 Then the question arises, should one accept non-equitable
efficient allocations or more equitable, but inefficient ones? That is, the choice can
involve a trade-off between efficiency and equity.
The problem facing a policy maker, however, is to find out if a change is
beneficial for society or not. We are interested in whether a certain policy leads
to a Pareto improvement or not. A Pareto improvement simply means that everyone
in society would at least not be in a worse situation than before and at least some
individual would be in a better situation (in their own evaluation of their situation).
It is obvious that in practice hardly any policy would lead to a Pareto improvement;
there are always losers.
This problem becomes more realistic if we abandon Pareto efficiency strictly
defined for potential Pareto efficiency, comparing aggregated benefits with aggre-
gated costs (in some well-defined fashion) of a policy measure. The idea is that
21 See, for instance, Gazzola (2014b), Gazzola and Grin (2017), Grin (2003), or Wickström
(2016b).
22 For a notable exception, see the work of François Vaillancourt and coauthors, for instance,
Vaillancourt (1997), Desgagné and Vaillancourt (2016), or chapter “Linguistic Justice in a Federal
Setting: The Case of Canadian Provinces” in this book.
23 Generally, it is assumed that people only care about their own well-being and ignore inter-
dependencies such as altruism and envy. Conceptually, there is no problem introducing such
elements into the preferences. However, this might make an efficiency analysis very opaque and
render it useless. A more fruitful approach might be to introduce distributional issues exogenously,
see below.
24 Consider the trivial example of two cookie monsters dividing a cake. All divisions of the cake
giving a bigger piece to one monster when the other one receives less is (Pareto) efficient.
25 In our cake example, we could choose an equal division of the cake between the two cake-eaters.
26 A drastic example can be found in the Talmud, see Hillman (2009): two men are in the desert far
away from a water source and have only enough water for one of them reaching the source. There
are three possible outcomes: one equitable one, both die; and two efficient ones, only one of them
dies.
winners would in principle be able to compensate losers and still be better off than
before the introduction of the measure.27 This is the basis for cost-benefit analysis.
In cost-benefit analysis, comparing the sum of all individual propensities to pay28
for a given policy with its implementation costs, the policy is called a (potential)
efficiency gain if the sum of the propensities to pay—the total benefits—exceeds
the costs.29
In reality, transfer payments converting a potential Pareto improvement into a
real Pareto improvement are not practically feasible and we again have a trade-off
between efficiency and equity. On the one hand, we have the difference between
aggregated benefits and aggregated costs (potential Pareto efficiency) and, on the
other hand, the distribution of the differences between individual benefits and
individual costs (fairness or justice). In a complete analysis of a policy measure we
would have to consider both aspects.30 This can be done, however, by incorporating
distributional arguments into the cost-benefit analysis, introducing an additional
benefit term reflecting the degree of equity (or justice) of the allocation resulting
from the public policy. The relative importance of the two terms reflects the
preferences of the policy maker for efficiency versus equity.
In order to apply the economic concepts to the analysis of language policy,
we first have to know what type of goods results from the policy and how this
affects the individuals in society. In the following, we will first look at what type of
good language is, or, more specifically, how language, language use, and language
27 The concepts, known as the Kaldor-Hicks criteria, go back to Kaldor (1939) and Hicks (1939).
See also Ng (2004).

28 Basically, what the policy is worth to the individual. The concept and its drawbacks are further
discussed in some detail in Sect. 4.

29 The underlying idea is that if transfers of resources between individuals were freely feasible, one
should ask the question whether the gain of the winners due to some policy measure is high enough
for the winners to fully compensate the losers and still have a net gain. If the policy issue changes
the utility distribution (expressed in money terms and net of costs for the policy measure) between
two individuals from (5, 4) to (7, 3), the two individuals would not agree upon which is the better
one; both are Pareto efficient. However, if income transfers were possible, the first individual could
transfer 1.5 money units to the second person if the policy is enacted. This would lead to the
income distribution (5.5, 4.5) which is Pareto superior to (5, 4). Hence the policy measure leads
to a potential Pareto improvement. In a cost-benefit analysis, one would simply compare the sums
5 + 4 = 9 and 7 + 3 = 10 and conclude that the aggregated net benefits increase due to the policy.
30 This is a standard problem in economic policy analysis. See, for instance, the theory of optimal
taxation. We can apply this to our cake example from footnote 24, if the original distribution of the
cake is very unequal. Assume that the monster on the losing side has to struggle harder and harder,
that is, using up more and more of his slice of cake, in order to introduce a policy measure forcing
the monster with the bigger slice to transfer some more cake to him. Part of the cake is then lost in
the process of dividing it more equally—its size decreases with increasingly just distributions. Is it
better for the monster on the losing side to have a small slice of a big cake or a big slice of a small
cake, and should we only consider the size of the slice of the losing monster, or also the size of the
slice of the stronger monster in making an evaluation?
rights can be incorporated into an economic analysis.31 Then, we will relate this to
the concepts of “linguistic repertoire” and “linguistic environment”. From this we
can discuss language policy and language rights as (partial) determinants of these
concepts, considering both the benefit and cost sides of the policy. Finally, we will
ask how to evaluate the distributional consequences of language policy, attempting
possible definitions of linguistic justice in this framework. First, however, we will
illustrate the efficiency-equity trade-off with an example.
1.2 An Illustrative Example
That language policy can lead to very different outcomes, both in relation to
efficiency and distribution, can be seen in the following stylized example with a
linguistic majority and a linguistic minority in a given society. Efficiency is defined
in Sect. 1.1 as the realization of potential Pareto improvements, and distributional
fairness is here seen as equal treatment of a member of the majority and of the
minority. Reducing the problem to one of communication in a bilingual society,
language policy can lead to several communicative outcomes. We characterize and
analyze several stylized situations32:
• If without policy intervention33
– the members of the majority do not learn the language of the minority
· and the members of the minority also do not learn the idiom of the
majority, communication will only take place within the two separate
subcommunities. (I)
· and all members of the minority learn the majority language, an individual
of the majority can communicate with all individuals in his or her own
language, whereas a person from the minority can communicate with other
minority members in her or his own language and with a member of the
majority only in the majority language. (II)
• With policy intervention
– forcing the teaching of both languages on all individuals, everyone will be
enabled to use his or her own language actively and the other one actively or
passively. (III)
– forcing the teaching of the majority language to all individuals of the minority,
an individual of the majority can communicate with all individuals in his or
31 This has, of course, been done by a number of authors. See the bibliography by Gazzola et al.
(2016) for references.

32 We are only considering a few of all logically possible situations.
33 No policy intervention means that the school system is totally privatized and each set of parents
freely chooses how to educate their own offspring.

her own language, whereas a person from the minority can communicate with
other minority members in her or his own language and with a member of the
majority only in the majority language. (IIa)
– forcing a lingua franca that is neither the majority nor minority language on
both communities, communication would be enabled between individuals of
the two groups in the lingua franca. (IV)
There are four possible stable short-term34 outcomes in this example; which of
them will be realized depends both on individual choice (which can depend on an
individual cost-benefit calculation) and on public policy.35 In modeling individual
choice we assume that there are some learning costs of the non-native language and
that the benefits are given by the number of potential interlocutors. In our, for the
sake of argument, rather stylized world with rational decision-makers, the parents in
each family weigh the learning costs against the perceived communicative benefits
in deciding on whether the children are to learn the other language or not.
We can analyze the different outcomes from the point of view of fairness (or
justice) as well as efficiency. Situation I could, depending on learning costs, be
either efficient or inefficient because of the network-externality property of language
learning. That is, since a member of the minority neglects the value to the members
of the majority of being able to communicate with him or her after he or she learns
the majority language, the minority individual creates benefits for the members of
the majority that are not taken into account when the learning decision is being
made.36 If the learning costs are lower than the benefits to the majority speakers,
the latter could in principle successfully bribe the members of the minority to learn
the majority language. Without the bribe the members of the minority acting in
their self-interest would not learn the majority language and the potential Pareto
improvement would not be realized. The situation is inefficient. If, on the other hand,
the learning costs exceed the benefits to the majority population of the minority
members learning the majority language, their not learning it is efficient. Situation I
is unfair in the sense that a member of the minority has fewer possible interlocutors
than a member of the majority.
Situation II is efficient from the communication viewpoint but unfair since a
minority member has to communicate with a majority member in the language of the
latter, whereas a majority individual can communicate with everyone in his or her
own language; a disadvantage for the minority individual. In addition, the minority
speakers have learning costs that the majority speakers do not have. Situation IIa
34 The dynamics, involving language shift, is not being considered. For a short discussion of
language dynamics, see Sect. 4.3.

35 Compare the situation involving traffic congestion in a city with some people owning cars
and others only bicycles. In laisser-faire the cars might dominate and bicyclists will suffer many
accidents. A government policy taxing driving and constructing bicycle paths will lead to a totally
different transport equilibrium.
36 For a more detailed discussion of the concept of a network externality, see Church and King
(1993) or Dalmazzone (1999) as well as the discussion in Sect. 3.2 below.

is unfair because of the asymmetric communication situation, even if the learning

costs are equally distributed in society (the members of the majority paying part of
the learning costs of the minority). It would be inefficient if I or IV is efficient and
efficient if I and IV are inefficient. In the latter case, the policy intervention would
increase efficiency.
Situation III is fair (assuming that learning costs are equally distributed), but
inefficient since resources could be saved by implementing situation IIa.37 Situation
IV is fair (neglecting the fact that majority speakers can communicate in their own
language with more people than minority speakers since there are more majority
speakers than minority speakers) but could be inefficient, depending on learning
costs, in which case situation IIa is efficient. If it is efficient, the public intervention
would be efficiency increasing.
That is, the spontaneous order (language policy: “doing nothing”) could produce
a result that is unfair and efficient (II, and under certain circumstances, I) as well as
unfair and inefficient (I under certain conditions). Also interventionist policies can
have similar results: III is fair and inefficient, IV is fair but can be both efficient and
inefficient depending on learning costs. IIa is unfair and could be both efficient and
inefficient.38
1.3 A Vade Nobiscum Through This Chapter
First, in Sect. 2, we discuss how the values individuals attribute to language can
be structured in an economic analysis. The concepts of human and social capital
are used to explain value creation. Then, in Sect. 3, we look at how this value is
reflected in different types of language-related goods over which the individual
has preferences. The different properties of goods, such as rivalry, exclusion,
and shielding, lead to different outcomes of spontaneous interactions between
individuals. We will show that these outcomes are not always desirable from the
point of view of efficiency and/or fair distributions (however defined), and that
the properties of the language-related goods are, as a consequence, important
determinants of the need for public interventions in the spontaneous order and,
hence, a raison d’être for language planning. It is then discussed how language
planning measures can improve the efficiency of the economy, but also can have
37 The individuals in this example are only interested in communicating. However, if people gain
extra utility from using their mother tongue in communication with others, and if this utility is high
compared to learning costs, then III might be fair and efficient. Compare chapter “Language Policy
and Social Segmentation: Evidence from Catalonia” by Ramon Caminal and Antonio di Paolo in
this book.
38 We stress that we have assumed that the costs in the intervention cases are covered over the
general government budget, to which everyone contributes in a fashion that is independent of

language use. If compensation payments were possible, the unfair allocations could be made
fair(er) with the help of such compensations.
both desirable and undesirable distributional implications. For an evaluation of

language policy, it is necessary to attach values both to the benefits and the costs of
the policy. This is addressed in Sects. 4 and 5, respectively. While it is conceptually
relatively easy to measure the costs, the value of the benefits often relies on indirect
methods and lacks a solid foundation. How to evaluate the distributional effects of
language planning measures is the topic of Sect. 6. The analytic part of the chapter
closes in Sect. 7 with some general inferences for practical language policy that can
be drawn from the economic framework. In Sect. 8, the different chapters of this
book are briefly introduced.
2 The Economic Value of Language
Language per se as a collection of utterances and rules describing how to combine

those utterances as well as relating them to the real world, is not what directly
benefits an individual.39 One of the main—if not the main—benefits is the ability
and possibility to function in society with the help of the language(s) one is able
and likes to use, the tangible value. One might also see the language as a carrier of
cultural values that one wants to be known and adopted by other individuals as well
as by future generations. Some people also see languages as stores of knowledge
about the possible varieties in and of human societies.
The communication function of language as a good is then the possibility or
desire to use the language in different situations such as communicating with other
now living individuals, with historical ones through existing historical sources, or
future ones through media being presently created. In that way, one could say that
language is an intermediate good or a tool that opens up various possibilities for
those mastering the language, be it the ability to read Plato in the original or the
knowledge that our grandchildren will be able to appreciate the culture we are
creating today. The “good” is then the access to Plato or the knowledge that the
grandchildren will consume something we find valuable.
That is, the concept of economic value of language includes the immaterial and
symbolic aspects of languages, and it is in no way limited to the productive value of
language skills.
39 Of course, one could look at language as a piece of art just like a beautiful painting, a
mathematical theorem, or a poem and admire its structure sui generis. This seems, at least partially,
to be one of the main motivations of the online “conlang” community.
2.1 Language, Abilities, Human, and Social Capital
Economists talk about abilities and human-capital creation. Individuals are born
with certain desirable attributes, like a beautiful voice, and acquire different skills,
like using the voice in producing an aria. Knowledge of a certain language is such an
acquired skill.40 The skills, or abilities, form the human capital of the individuals.41
That is, learning a language (or training the voice if you are a singer) is an investment
in human capital, thereby developing the abilities (or capabilities) of the individual.
We can distinguish between potential human capital—the beautiful voice or the
ability to acquire a foreign language—and realized human capital—the trained
voice or the knowledge of the foreign language. An individual’s (realized) human
capital can then be seen as an input in two “production processes”: First, it is an
important determinant of the formation and ranking of consumption possibilities,
that is, the behavior (or preferences) of the individual—an “internal” production
process. Second, it influences the individual’s skills in the production of goods and
services in the market place—an “external” production process.
If I learn Spanish, I can read the poems of Federico García Lorca in the original
and might be willing to pay a certain amount of money42 for a book containing a
collection of his poems; had I not learned Spanish, this amount would probably be
lower: the ability to read and understand Spanish has an influence on my demand
for books in Spanish (as well as for holiday trips to Buenos Aires and many other
goods). The ability to speak Spanish, hence, influences my preferences and my
demand in the market place. Knowing Spanish, however, also makes me more useful
as an employee in a firm dealing with Guatemala, say. My knowledge of Spanish
alters my supply of labor and its value in the market place.
The extent to which various goods can be consumed and have a value for an
individual depends on his or her abilities to use different languages. We will talk
about the “linguistic repertoire” of the individual. On the other hand, we also
have the constraints facing the individual. If I invest in learning Volapük, thereby
changing my human capital by adding this new ability, and as a consequence
develop a taste for modern drama performed in Volapük, this is of little use to me if
there are no theaters performing in Volapük in my city. This part of the constraints
facing an individual that are directly related to language we call the “linguistic
environment”. The linguistic environment is part of the social capital.43 The ability
40 The ability to learn a language is probably an attribute with which the individual is born. This is,
however, controversially discussed among some linguists.
41 The concept of human capital from knowing languages plays a very central rôle in chapter “Lan-
guages, Human Capital and Well-Being in Sub-Saharan Africa” of Katalin Buzási and Péter
Földvári in this book.
42 Economists talk about the propensity—or willingness—to pay; see Sect. 4.
43 Social capital is made up of norms and trust between individuals, which can be fostered through
interactions. Here, the connection to the linguistic environment is close. In a seminal article on the
concept, James S. Coleman writes:
to communicate easily with other individuals certainly belongs to social capital,

influencing not only physical production possibilities, but also trust and cohesion in
society. The linguistic environment also has an influence on preferences for certain
language-related goods. The fact that there are no theaters playing in Volapük (part
of the linguistic environment) will decrease the demand for learning Volapük (the
individual preferences).
Your linguistic repertoire will depend on your upbringing and on your own
choices. But it will also strongly depend on public policy. The language learning
taking place in schools is to a large extent determined by curricula fixed by gov-
ernment authorities—acquisition planning. Additionally, the linguistic environment
is to a considerable degree determined by public authorities. Through acquisition
planning not only your linguistic repertoire is influenced, but that of your potential
interlocutors who are subjected to the same acquisition planning, as well. Changes
in the distribution of language skills in society in turn can have an influence on
the demand and supply of language-related goods. This, in turn, influences your
linguistic environment. Also status planning—rules as to which language(s) has
(have) to/can be used in different situations (such as in contact with public offices)—
strongly influences your linguistic environment.44
The actual consumption of goods related to language then depends both on your
linguistic repertoire and on the linguistic environment. The first, as noted above, is
a function of your upbringing, of public policy, and of your own conscious choice.
The latter depends on the behavior of other individuals (which directly or indirectly
might depend on public policy) as well as directly on public policy. That is, public
policy has an effect both on the linguistic repertoires (the preferences and productive
Social capital, however, comes about through changes in the relations among persons
that facilitate action. If physical capital is wholly tangible, being embodied in observable
material form, and human capital is less tangible, being embodied in the skills and
knowledge acquired by an individual, social capital is less tangible yet, for it exists in the
relation among persons. Just as physical capital and human capital facilitate productive
activity, social capital does as well. For example, a group within which there is extensive
trustworthiness and extensive trust is able to accomplish much more than a comparable
group without that trustworthiness and trust. (Coleman 1988, pp. S100–S101, italics in the
original)
44 Compare the situation in the EU labor market with its free movement of labor between the
member states. The possibility of realizing this freedom depends to a large extent on the linguistic
repertoire of the workers in different countries, see also Till Burckhardt’s paper, chapter “Linguistic
Disenfranchisement and Labour Mobility in Europe”, in this book or Aparicio-Fenoll and Kuehn
(2016). For a critical discussion of the actual language skills in the EU, see also chapter “The
Myth of English as a Common Language in the European Union (EU) and Some of Its Political
Consequences” by Barbier in this book. One may speculate over the extent to which acquisition
planning—the teaching of English in almost all European schools—contributed to Brexit: Due to
the facts that English is spoken in the United Kingdom and that English is the best-known foreign
language in other EU countries, the transaction costs for most workers, who want to take advantage
of the free movement of labor, are the lowest if they go to Britain. The considerable presence of
workers from other EU countries in Great Britain was one of the main arguments for Brexit used
by the Brexit proponants.
Table 1 Determination of language-related individual preferences

Preference formation
Linguistic repertoire → human capital Linguistic environment → social capital
Idiosyncratic influence on preferences Common influence on preferences
Individual preferences
Table 2 Determination of language-related individual productivity

Productivity formation
Linguistic repertoire → human capital Linguistic environment → social capital
Individual skills Production possibilities
Individual productivity
abilities) of the individuals, on the one side, and on the linguistic environment (the
restrictions on individual behavior), on the other side. The actual observed outcome
in terms of language usage is a result of the interaction of the linguistic repertoires
with the linguistic environment and is, hence, influenced by the language policy.
The formation of preferences, as we see it, is schematically illustrated in Table 1,
and the formation of productive abilities in Table 2. The light rules in the tables
indicate that what is above the rule influences what is below the rule. In Table 1,
for instance, human capital is part of the idiosyncratic influence on preferences,
but not of the common one, and both the idiosyncratic and common influences
determine (partially)45 the individual preferences. We model individual behavior
as being influenced by the conditions under which the individual is socialized
into society—the social surroundings or social capital—as well as by the realized
individual human capital. That is, we distinguish between a socially determined
general formation of preferences and norms, on the one hand, which—although to
a large extent being unexplained, individual, and different for different individuals
in a random fashion—is influenced by the collective conditions in society, and an
additional specific preference formation, on the other hand, which is the result of the
acquired human capital of the individual. The collective factor, the social capital, is
common to all individuals and the individual factor, the human capital, is specific to
each person.46
On the productive side, we see a similar structure. The general production
possibilities are, on the one hand, given by technological restrictions with the basis
in the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, etc. that are the same in the whole world,
but, on the other hand, production possibilities are also—in addition to the physical
and climatic surroundings—influenced by the social conditions in each specific
45 We assume that a large part of individual preferences is determined by chance, just like many
talents.
46 Compare the analysis in Stiegler and Becker (1977).
society—the social capital. The individual productivity and individual skills are
strongly influenced by the individual human capital.
We can hence conclude that the linguistic behavior of an individual, at least
partially, is determined by his or her linguistic repertoire—operating through
the individual’s preferences—under the constraints laid down by the linguistic
environment. The problem in the evaluation of a policy measure is then that the
policy does not only change the linguistic environment but could also change
the linguistic repertoire—and, hence, the preferences—of the individual. In other
words, not only the constraints on linguistic behavior, but also the individual’s
evaluation of the results of the given policy measure can be different before and
after the realization of the policy. Since the individual evaluations—the propensities
to pay—are given by the individual preferences and determine the benefit side of
a cost-benefit analysis, the benefits and, hence, the result of the analysis can be
radically different ex ante and ex post, making the cost-benefit analysis to a certain
extent impotent. We will return to this in Sect. 4.1 below.
The individual productivity illustrated in Table 2 is seen in a similar fashion.
Language skills are part of an individual’s human capital and strongly influence
individual production skills. However, the linguistic environment is important for
the cohesion and general norms of society—its social capital. This, in turn, will
influence how smoothly production processes function. Of course, social capital
has no direct influence on the technological side of the production process which
is given by the state of knowledge in physics, chemistry, biology, etc.47 However,
the “softer” side of the production process, how well people work together, can be
strongly dependent on social capital in society, of which the linguistic environment
is an important component. The resulting social production possibilities then
determine individual productivity, given the individual skills.
2.2 A Classification of the Economic Value of Language
In addition to most people agreeing that learning languages is a worthwhile activity

and that sharing a common language is useful for many practical reasons, most
people also attach a positive value to the existence and general use of at least their
first language (usually, the mother tongue). The value of a language could then be
broadly divided into two major classes: use and nonuse values.48 In Tables 3 and 4,
that we have partially adapted from Grin and Vaillancourt (1998) and Gorter et al.
(2007), we have tried to systematize the various aspects of the value of language
existence, knowledge, and use from the point of view of an individual, using the
47 It
could, however, influence the rate of innovation, thereby altering the state of knowledge.
48 We could also talk about direct and indirect values of language instead of use and nonuse value.
In communication, language plays a crucial rôle but in the provision of cultural identity, many
other factors are important such as religion, traditions, etc.
Table 3 Consumption values attached to languages

Value structure I
Individual preferences
Use value Nonuse value
Autocentric Ecocentric Autocentric Ecocentric
Present Future Present Future Present Future
Tangible value Option value Identity value Bequest value Vitality value Precaution value
Table 4 Production values Value structure II

attached to languages
Individual productivity
Use value
Autocentric
Present Future
Production value Speculation value
traditional economic division between tastes, Table 3, and productive abilities,

Table 4.
The possibility of using a language to communicate with an international
institution, say, clearly has a direct use value, the precondition for the realization of
which is acquiring skills in the language. If a person knows the language in question,
he or she may be willing to pay for making certain services of the organization
available in it. Since this is often realized by giving the language a certain official
status, the value of the services would be reflected in propensities to pay for status-
planning measures. However, nonuse values are often at least equally important.
Assume that the citizens of a given country are bilingual in a minority language
and the official language of the state. These persons may assign a value to making
the minority language official even if they do not need to use it in day-to-day
communication with public authorities.49
The value of language existence, knowledge, and use to an individual can, in
addition to use and nonuse value, be categorized in values that are directly related
to the individual (autocentric) and to the individual’s altruistic concerns for others
(ecocentric).50 The practical communication usage as well as the productive skills
49 Compare the situation of the Welsh-speaking community in Wales or of the Basque speakers
in Spain. There is hardly any Welsh speaker in today’s Wales who is not competent in English or
Basque speaker in Spain who does not master Castilliano on a very high level. In spite of this, there
seems to be a considerable demand for services in Welsh and Basque in the respective countries.
50 The distinction between autocentric and ecocentric values is not very clear-cut. There is no
fundamental difference between “egoistic” and “altruistic” preferences. If I derive the same
pleasure from making my friend enjoying my bottle of the 1961 Château Palmer as if I had drunk it
myself my pleasure is equally “egoistic” in both cases. The distinction has more to do with who has
the control over the action and if the action produces positive externalities (presuming my friend
enjoys the wine).
are clear examples of autocentric values. Language as a determinant of a person’s

identity is also an autocentric value, whereas the pure vitality value of linguistic
diversity can be seen as an ecocentric value. One justification for the latter is that it
could also be an indirect determinant of future productivity (precaution value).
More specifically, we see two aspects of the communication value of language.
The autocentric one, the tangible value, is the ability to use the language to
communicate directly and indirectly with the rest of the world by reading books,
going to the theater, talking to the grandchildren, etc. The option value is the
continued existence of the communication possibilities for future generations like
reading and appreciating texts, produced today, in 200 years. The identity value
of language focuses on language as a vehicle for the own culture and conveys a
sense of belonging to the individual. The social and cultural identity has a value
to most people and insofar as language plays a rôle here; this is the identity
value. The importance of language in preserving the own cultural traditions for
future generations is the basis of the bequest value. The autocentric identity and
bequest values have their ecocentric equivalents in the vitality and precaution values.
Nothing excludes the possibility that people attach value also to other languages
being used in society and not only to their mother tongue (vitality value), but
some people could also consider the existence of other idioms a nuisance or a
source of costs. Finally, in considerations similar to the arguments for preserving
biological variety, there are arguments that human knowledge is transported through
languages, and that beneficial discoveries for humanity might be made in the future
(precaution value).
Production value is in comparison with consumption value relatively simple. One
can acquire a language today, in order to be more productive in the present job
(production value) or one might hope to find a better job in a few years due to the
language knowledge (speculation value). Of course, behind the speculation value
one finds a certain amount of insurance against future changes in the condition on
the labor market, too. That is, speculation value cannot always be clearly separated
from precaution value.
3 Language-Related Goods and the Justification

for Language Planning
In an economic analysis, the benefits of a certain policy have to be traced to

individual benefits. The types of value discussed in the previous section can be
realized in the form of different goods consumed by the individuals. The goods
can be provided by language policy measures. The values of the goods provided
differ between the individuals, and each individual evaluates them with the help of
his or her preferences. The goods can take the form of physical commodities or
can be largely immaterial and symbolic; they can also be the enabling of services.
A relevant question, then, is how to classify the goods from the side of individual
Table 5 Classification of Dimension Individual Collective

goods
R Rivalry Non-rivalry
E Exclusion Non-exclusion
S Shielding Non-shielding
preferences and costs. For the latter, see also Sect. 5 below. A sensible classification
of relevance both to the preference and cost sides builds on three dimensions and
is given in Table 5. Dimension R describes to what extent a good can be consumed
by several individuals simultaneously without reducing the quality of any person’s
consumption. A language policy providing radio transmissions in a given language
is perfectly non-rival, since one person’s listening to the radio program in the chosen
language does not in any way interfere with other individuals’ access to the same
program. Dimension E describes the extent to which it is technically possible to
exclude someone from the consumption of a given good, once it has been produced.
If the radio program is coded and one needs to acquire a password to listen to it, we
have perfect exclusion; if it is freely transmitted over the ether, we have perfect non-
exclusion. Finally, dimension S is an indication of the extent one can exclude oneself
from consuming a good. If the radio program is distributed over loudspeakers in
a department store or a restaurant, anyone shopping in the store or eating in the
restaurant is perfectly unshielded. In your home, where you can turn the radio on
and off, you are perfectly shielded.
A “pure individual (or private) good” is generally defined as being characterized
by rivalry, exclusion, and shielding, and one defines a “pure collective good” or
“pure public good” as a good characterized by non-rivalry, non-exclusion, and non-
shielding.51 Any degree of rivalry, exclusion, or shielding between the extremes is
possible. If I smoke a fine Habano, the people around me also get to consume part
of the exquisite aroma of the puro but cannot enjoy it fully—the smoking is partially
rival, economists talk about an externality. Similarly, taking the bus at rush hour an
additional passenger is not fully crowding out another passenger, but nevertheless
decreasing the value of the transport for the fellow passengers. The transport service
is not fully non-rival—one talks about an impure (or adjacently) collective good.
On a scale from zero to one, with zero characterizing pure rivalry and one pure non-
rivalry, the two examples above would receive values somewhere between zero and
one.
The type of good determines the need for public action and planning from a
purely allocative perspective. Generally speaking, for a pure individual good the
individual demand will lead to optimal usage through spontaneous interaction—
laisser-faire—of independent individuals. In other cases, the spontaneous inter-
action generally leads to suboptimal results, and public policy can improve the
51 Athird type of good, a common, can also be found in the literature. A common is a rival non-
excludable good. Common examples are fish in the sea or our environment in general.
allocation. From a distributional perspective, there can also be a justification for

public action in the case of individual goods, see Sects. 3.1 and 6.52
3.1 Language-Related Individual Goods
Learning a language on your own only in order to read the avant-garde poetry
written in it would be a good example. It is rival, if you need your own individual
teacher. You acquiring the language competence does not lead to anyone else
acquiring it.53 It is excludable, if you meet with the teacher at your and her
convenience. Since it is optional, it is shielding.
By the same token, a language planning measure forcing a minority to learn the
majority language (or forcing the majority to learn the minority language) would not
produce a pure individual good: The learning process, although basically rival, could
involve both positive and negative externalities in the classroom. It is compulsory
and, hence, non-shielding. It is also, by default, non-excludable. The good leads to
an important network externality, though: It enables the members of the majority to
communicate with the minority. The latter is the important reason for the good not
being a pure individual good.
If a good is fully rival, there is generally no good reason, on efficiency grounds,
for the public sector to provide it. There might be distributional grounds, however,
if the consumption of the good that is realized through voluntary interactions
is judged to be too unevenly distributed and, hence, unjust.54 Public education,
including the teaching of one or two important languages, can probably be justified
on distributional grounds.55
There are also a number of individual goods that become available through
learning a language, such as vacation trips to places where the language is spoken,
literature or films in the language, living and working where the language is used,
52 For a further principal discussion of these issues, the reader is referred to any of the many
standard texts on public economics, for instance Hindriks and Myles (2006).
53 If we are dealing with a group of people learning a given language, the situation is more
complicated. Take the case of providing education in an immigrant language in a school district.
After a class in the language in question has been set up, the quality of education can vary with
the number of pupils; our hypothesis (which can be tested) is that if an additional pupil comes to a
class with only one or two pupils, the quality of the education of the first pupils probably increases,
that is, the new pupil constitutes a positive externality. However, if there are already 15 pupils in
the class, an additional one could reduce the attention the teacher can give to the other pupils and,
hence, cause a reduction in the quality of education; we have a negative externality due to the new
pupil.
54 This argument seems to apply to the distribution of health care in most societies, basically an
individual good, but not to the distribution of Porsche cars, another individual good.
55 We are here neglecting the network-externality property, see below. There are, of course, also
arguments of the type that universal education increases the social capital, hence creating a
collective good.
and many more. This does not—generally—justify a public policy in favor of

teaching the languages in question. Such a policy could, however, possibly be
justified on grounds that learning languages in the youth is a merit good; see
Sect. 4.2.
3.2 Network and Other Externalities
The concept “externality” designates degrees of rivalry of goods whose consump-

tion as a rule is decided upon by individual people (or firms).56
The most important externality related to language is probably the “network
externality”. When one person decides to learn a language, this alters the linguistic
environment of all other people using the language: they now have one more person
with whom they can communicate. In other words, the individual, who on the basis
of an individual calculation decides to invest in his human capital, learning Bislama,
say, reaps some individual benefits that exceed the learning costs, else he or she
would not go through the trouble of learning Bislama. Some benefits to the person
considered here are that he or she can now communicate with more people and
they can communicate with him or her. However, he or she also provides benefits
to the other speakers of Bislama who now can, if they so desire, communicate with
him or her in that language; these benefits for the other people did not enter our
individual’s cost-benefit calculation.57 This is the network externality of language
learning.58 Since the individual calculus here differs from the social one, a planning
measure through the public sector is called for. The compulsory teaching of a lingua
franca in all schools would be such a planning measure.
However, the concentration on one language, like English in European schools,
although sensible from the communication point of view due to the associated
network externality, might carry other, negative, externalities such as the reduction
in the knowledge of other languages and, hence, in the knowledge of other cultures
than the ones using English as the medium of expression.59 Here, a policy directed
at compulsory teaching of several different languages is called for.
Another possible externality due to learning only one foreign language was
addressed in footnote 44. In this case, the policy goal of the European Union of a free
and mobile labor market in the entire Union is hampered by the limited language
56 Generally, externality also has to do with non-shielding, the impossibility to exclude oneself, in
the case of a negative externality and with non-exclusion, the impossibility to exclude someone, in
the case of a positive externality.
57 We are implicitly assuming that the individuals are not altruistic. Altruism could internalize the
network externality.
58 See Church and King (1993) as well as Dalmazzone (1999) for interesting analyses of the
consequences for language policy of this property. In de Swaan (2001) a good displaying network
externality is referred to as a “hypercollective” good.
59 Cf. Wickström (2016a).
knowledge of the potential migrants. The compulsory teaching of many different

languages would again be the best policy to neutralize this externality, assuming
that the benefits of the increased mobility exceed the learning costs.60
3.3 Language-Related Collective Goods
Collective goods are rarely provided through individual initiatives. Intermediate

goods between pure individual and pure collective goods are often referred to as
impure (or adjacently) collective (or public) goods as mentioned above.
It is well-known that spontaneous interactions only in exceptional cases lead to
an optimal provision of collective goods. Generally, we have a market failure due
to the incentives to “free ride”, that is, enjoy the good without contributing to its
provision. Hence, an intervention through the public sector is in general needed.
Also, since the financing of public goods comes from general taxes, more or less
evenly distributed in the population, whereas the individual evaluations can vary
considerably from one individual to another, benefits as a rule differ from the costs
at the individual level even if they are balanced at the aggregated societal level.
That is, there are substantial distributional implications of the provision of collective
goods. A good example of a pure collective good is our environment. There is little
hope for a reduction in global warming without organized collective action.
Many aspects of language usage have the characteristics of a pure collective
good, and government intervention is therefore called for.61 Several policies
influencing or determining the linguistic environment clearly create such goods.62
The fact that a person lives in and enjoys a certain multilingual environment,
that is, the fact that he or she can carry out activities in several languages such
60 One might speculate about which policy would be the best to meet this goal. Given that it is
illusory to teach all major languages in the schools of all countries, a second-best policy might
take its point of departure in the fact that, with few exceptions, the major European languages
belong to three big families and are relatively closely related within each family. A sensible policy
could then be to make all pupils competent in a Germanic, Romance, and Slavic language. A
migrant worker, having learned German, say, would relatively fast acquire a receptive knowledge
of Swedish if working in Sweden. The same would hold for someone having learned Polish and
working in Croatia, or for someone having learned Spanish and working in Romania. High costs
of mobility would then remain if working in countries like Hungary, Finland, Greece, or the Baltic
States. Of course, there are many alternative approaches that might reduce the language problem in
connection with mobility. A more direct one is combined investments in language skills pre- and
post-mobility, see Grin et al. (2002) as well as Chiswick and Miller (2015), or Gazzola (2016a).
61 This, of course, does not imply that government provision in all such cases is more efficient—or
egalitarian—than leaving the issue to individual initiatives. Public choice scholars have pointed
out that in many instances public action can be inefficient or even detrimental; see, for instance,
Buchanan and Tullock (1962) or Buchanan (1987). This shows the need for evaluation of language
policy.
62 See, for instance, Grin (1994) or Grin and Vaillancourt (1997).
as seeing bilingual advertisement posters, listening to radio programs in different

languages, does not detract from other people’s consumption of this good nor
exclude them from consuming it. Living in an environment characterized by a
certain degree of individual and societal multilingualism (rather than a strictly
monolingual environment) is a good to which people, for whatever reason, might
attach a certain value. Hence, policies aimed at preserving or increasing the degree
of linguistic diversity in a given context can have a social value. Related to this—
and in addition to the network-externality property discussed above—is a policy
guaranteeing the existence or provision of a lingua franca to people speaking
different languages. Also this would be a policy providing a pure collective good.63
The publication of documents in different languages is also pure public good and
part of the linguistic environment.64
Negative externalities, or less than full non-rivalry, are, for instance, to be
expected in most public services with given capacities, like health services, courts,
theaters, social aid, etc.65 If there are capacity limits (soft or strict), non-rivalry
characterizes situations with a low usage and perfect rivalry, on the other end,
situations when the capacity is exhausted. This, of course, holds for such services in
any language. We can also turn this around and ask what capacities are needed, and
as a consequence, what costs result, if a given level of service is to be provided for
everyone requesting it. This will be discussed in Sect. 5.
Of course, the appreciation of such policies, as noted above, varies between
different individuals. That is, the language policy can have, and usually has,
considerable distributional consequences. For instance, the value of the provision
of documents in a given language depends on whether a person understands the
language(s) in question or not.66 That is, the individual evaluations of a given
public good can vary considerably. Indeed, for some people it can even be negative
(a “public bad”). For some people, linguistic diversity per se is a public bad,
like pollution, giving people disutility instead of utility from being exposed to it.
63 See,for instance, de Briey and Van Parijs (2002) or de Swaan (2001).

64 See,for instance, Fidrmuc and Ginsburgh (2007).
65 The closer is one to the given capacity (the number of available physicians, say), the more
detracts an additional individual from the consumption of the other individuals. Note that the
good here is the availability of a physician with certain medical skills; it is not the availability
of the one and only Dr. Smith. The availability of the dermatologist Dr. Smith is an individual
good characterized by full rivalry, but the availability of a competent dermatologist, who can be
Dr. Smith or any of 15 other physicians, is a good with a certain degree of non-rivalry. Also, since
there are set-up or fixed costs that are independent of the number of individuals using the service
as well as variable costs directly dependent on the number of users, average costs will in general
exceed marginal costs. One often talks about “natural monopolies”. See also Sect. 5 below on the
structure of costs.
66 Cf. Gazzola (2014a, 2016b), who shows that language knowledge in the EU, and as a
consequence access to various documents and services of the EU, are strongly correlated with
citizens’ education and income. Note that the distributional consequences also depend on the
individual’s evaluation of this access. This is an additional dimension to consider in analyzing
the distributional consequences of the language policy in the EU.
Table 6 Examples of types of value created by language-related goods of various types

Language-related good determining the
Type of value “utility” of an individual R E S Type of good
Tangible Reading a poem by García Lorca in the 0 0 0 Individual
original language
Communicating in a foreign country after s 0 0 Adjacently individual
moving there for retirement
Being tried in court in a given language l 0 0 Adjacently collective
Reading street signs in a given language 1 1 0 Adjacently collective
Option Language economists reading this book 1 1 1 Collective
in 200 years and learning from it
Identity Possibility of communicating with my 1 0 1 Adjacently collective
children in my preferred language
Right to be tried in court in my preferred 1 0 1 Adjacently collective
language
Usage of my preferred language in the 1 1 1 Collective
linguistic environment
Bequest Possibility for future generations of using 1 1 1 Collective
my preferred language
Vitality The usage of more than 100 languages in 1 1 1 Collective
Vanuatu
Precaution Possibility of finding a cure for 1 1 1 Collective
Alzheimer’s by studying the structure of
Cherokee
Some people might agree that while the existence of a lingua franca is a public
good, the presence of several languages in a given linguistic environment could
be regarded as a nuisance, something hampering trade,67 or a factor that may
negatively affect economic solidarity between communities,68 or the mobility of
workforce, knowledge creation and diffusion across linguistic borders,69 or simply
as something that hinders the achievement of “the great collective benefits of
universal communicability”.70
In Table 6 we exemplify the connection between types of value and language-
related goods. We have here used the three dimensions from above as variables
R, E, and S. R being the degree of rivalry in consumption of the language-related
good has received the value zero if the good is perfectly rival and the value one
if it is perfectly non-rival. The presence of an externality (basically a non-rival
by-product of the good) has been given the value small, since the value to the
immigrant is generally higher than to his or her interlocutors. By the same token,
67 See Fidrmuc and Fidrmuc (2016).

68 See Desmet et al. (2009).
69 See Fidrmuc et al. (2005).
70 Van Parijs (2008, p. 27).
a good characterized by a certain degree of crowding has been given the value
large. Here, 0 < s < l < 1. Mutatis mutandis, the same holds for the other two
dimensions, exclusion (E) and shielding (S). In the last column, the type of good is
given which is relevant to the need for government involvement in the spontaneous
order of society.
The tangible value can easily be found in goods that span the full range from
individual to collective. The process of reading a book is individual, using a
language to communicate creates a positive network externality. Using a service
in a given language, like being tried in court, has both a non-rival part, the setup
of the institution and determination of its capacity, and a partially rival part, the
actual trial, where one might have to wait for a free slot. Reading street signs in
different languages is almost a pure collective good; the only departure from the
traditional conditions being that one can refuse to look at the signs. That is, shielding
is possible.
All goods leading to the other types of values have very strong collective
properties, all being non-rival. The access to literature written today for future
generations is a pure collective good for anyone alive today. Goods creating nonuse
values by their very nature are non-rival, as far as the values are autocentric there is
a possibility of exclusion. However, one can hardly imagine that they are shielding.
The right to be tried in court in a given language—as opposed to the actual trial—
is purely non-rival; my enjoying the right does not interfere with your enjoying it.
Exclusion is possible, however, but shielding not. Goods creating ecocentric values
are all pure collective ones; the fact that many languages are spoken in the world
today, and the prospect that some until now undiscovered properties of some of
them will teach us something useful, are goods, the enjoyment of which is clearly
non-rival and from which nobody can be excluded nor exclude him- or herself.
In Table 7, we have tried to illustrate how this is related to language planning. We
first describe the outcomes in society of spontaneous interaction by different types of
goods and then indicate what type of planning is necessary to improve efficiency as
well as its (re)distributional consequences.71 In the case of pure individual goods,
individual actions have no negative or positive effects on others and there is no
need for public intervention. The consumption of the good does not influence
the distributional situation in society, which, however, for other reasons could be
desirable or non-desirable.
As an example of a negative externality, we refer to the case of a minority
community losing speakers because of language shift (for instance, due to the fact
that some people move into urban areas)—a very frequent occurrence. The people
abandoning the minority language cause a negative network externality for the
remaining speakers who lose interlocutors. That is, the individual rational decision
to leave the community causes costs for others that are not taken into account
71 Recall that we use the word “distribution” as a terminus technicus referring to the distribution of
resources (or welfare) between individuals. See Sect. 1.1.

30
Table 7 Examples of efficiency-increasing policies and their (re)distributional effects

Type of Outcome of individually Efficient language policy/Effect on distribution of
language-related good Example rational behavior welfare between individuals
Individual Learning Icelandic for An optimal provision No public intervention/Distributionally neutral
vacation trips to Iceland
Adjacently individual (a Shifting to the majority A negative externality Acquisition and status planning increasing the
non-rival by-product of language in a bilingual teaching and use of the minority
the individual setting thereby reducing the language/Decrease in distributional disadvantage
decision-making—an opportunities for of members of the minority
externality) minority-language speakers
Learning a lingua franca for A positive externality Acquisition planning increasing the teaching and
communication, thereby use of the lingua franca/Redistribution in favor of
creating a network native speakers of the lingua franca and those in
externality need of interlingual communication
Adjacently collective Social services in a minority Free riding and Status planning providing the language-related
language under-provision goods/Redistribution in favor of individuals with
a high propensity to pay for the good
Collective Multilingual street signs and Free riding and strong Status planning providing the language-related
official publications under-provision goods/Redistribution in favor of individuals with
a high propensity to pay for the good
B.-A. Wickström et al.
in the individual calculus. The first-best reaction72 to counteract, or internalize,

these costs would be to tax the “language shifters”. That way the cost side in the
individual calculus of the potential language shifter would reflect both his or her
own individual costs and the costs the decision would levy on the rest of society,
the minority speakers remaining; the basis for the possible decision to leave would
include all relevant factors for making it socially rational. This not being practical—
or politically possible—other planning measures are called for, for instance, various
status or acquisition planning actions.73 The case of a positive network externality,
the learning of a lingua franca, is similar. The first best policy would be subsidizing
the learners of the lingua franca. That not being feasible, acquisition planning is
a good second-best policy. In both cases there can be considerable redistributional
effects in favor of the speakers of the minority language (which might be desired)
and to the advantage of the mother-tongue speakers of the lingua franca (which for
distributional reasons might be undesirable if this already is a privileged group).
For collective goods the individual incentives to contribute voluntarily are very
weak, indeed. The costs of a contribution are covered by the contributing individual,
and benefits are created for everyone. Spontaneous interaction will grossly under-
provide society with the good, and only collective provision through the public
sector can balance aggregated benefits and costs. The distributional effects can also
be massive depending upon how the costs are divided. If the costs are covered by
general revenues, everyone contributing more or less equally through the tax system,
the people who want services in a certain language will gain relative to people who
do not care.
3.4 The Language Policy
A set of language planning measures can be called a (public) language policy.

Typically, a language planning measure specifies for example in which languages
public documents should be made available, in which languages one can be tried
in court, which are the languages of the elementary education, in which languages
social services will be provided, or which languages are to be used for symbolic
purposes, like the name of the country on banknotes or the name of cities on street
signs, etc. Each such language-planning rule can be said to be applied to a certain
domain. For analytic purposes it is sensible to treat each domain as an independent
object of language policy. Of course, the propensity to pay for a right to use one
language in one domain can be strongly influenced by the realization of such a right
for another language in the same domain. See an example in the next section.
72 First-best reaction basically means that one looks for the optimal response under the assumption
that there are no binding institutional restrictions. A second-best reaction would be the optimal
response given that institutional constraints would have to be respected.
73 Compare the situation in the Spanish Basque area, as described by Cenoz (2008).
A language policy can then be defined as a specification of language rules applied

to a set of relevant domains and a set of languages. These rules influence both the
linguistic repertoire and the linguistic environment and, as a consequence, indirectly
the linguistic outcome in society.74
4 Evaluation of the Benefits of Language Policy
The theory of public economics provides a justification for public intervention in the
linguistic environment, but this does not mean that any concrete policy is equally
effective or efficient. In order to compare different public policies, we need to
employ tools from policy analysis and policy evaluation. In this section we will
discuss the evaluation of the benefit side of a policy. The cost side will be discussed
in Sect. 5.
The individual evaluation of the benefits of a given policy in a cost-benefit
analysis—the individual’s propensity to pay—can operationally be defined as the
amount of money an individual would be prepared to give up in order to enjoy
the fruits of a given policy. In economic theory, this builds on the concept of
“consumer surplus” and is an attempt to translate preferences into monetary units.
The concept is theoretically not well-defined because of income effects.75 An
individual’s propensity to pay for a good or a service in general depends on the
individual’s (implicit) income.76 That is, the propensity to pay can be different
before and after a policy has been enacted, since the policy might alter the implicit
income of the individual; there is an income effect of the provision of the enacted
service. This can lead to path dependencies and to what is known as the Scitovsky
paradox.77 Nevertheless, the propensity to pay is the only practical tool available for
the evaluation of most public policies.
If the good provided as a result of the policy is a pure public good, the aggregated
propensity to pay is simply the sum of the individual propensities to pay or
the number of beneficiaries multiplied by the average propensity to pay of the
74 Our definition, albeit analytically rather specific, is also quite “narrow”. That this can lead to
serious drawbacks is pointed out in chapter “Justice in the Linguistic Environment: Narrow or
Wide?” by Andrew Shorten in this book. On the other hand, in the evaluation of the outcomes we
are very close to Shorten’s “wide” definition of justice.
75 Its practical usefulness is also put in doubt by many economists; see, for instance, Ginsburgh’s
(2017) very critical assessment.

76 The implicit income also include intangibles available to the individual and to which he or she
attaches a certain value.

77 See de Scitovszky (1941). For a lucid discussion of the concept of consumer surplus, see Morey
(1984). Intuitively, the provision of a certain good or service alters the propensities to pay for this
and other goods due to a perceived change in implicit income. In that way, the evaluations ex post
and ex ante differ and the evaluation of a policy measure providing a certain good can be different
before and after it is implemented.
beneficiaries. If the result of the policy is an adjacently (or impure) public good
with less than perfect non-rivalry, the average propensity to pay can be expected
to diminish with a higher number of beneficiaries due to congestion effects.78 This
argument can be turned around, and we can ask for the costs of giving a certain
service at a given quality to everyone in a community. In the case of the pure public
good the cost will be constant and independent of the number of beneficiaries. In
the case of the adjacently (or impure) public good or a pure individual good with
fixed costs in the provision, the costs will increase with the number of beneficiaries,
but less than proportionally and in the case of pure individual goods without fixed
costs, the costs are proportional to the number of beneficiaries. This will be further
discussed in Sect. 5.
Of course, several factors may have an impact on an individual’s propensity to
pay. The most obvious one is the linguistic repertoire. If an individual does not
master Tok Pisin, he or she probably has a very limited interest in having official
publications appear in that language. By the same token, if a person masters Italian
and English equally well and official publications already appear in English, the
propensity to pay for translations into Italian might be limited (unless symbolic
values are important) and vice versa if the publications already exist in Italian. In the
language of the economists, publications in Italian and English would be substitutes
for this person.
4.1 Feedback Mechanisms and Other Endogenous Factors that

Hamper the Evaluation of the Benefits of Language Policy
As we have already noted, the determination of the propensities to pay for language
policy might depend on the linguistic environment. The status of a language might
influence pride in the language and this might in turn influence the propensities to
pay for rights for the language. This argument applies to a single individual as well
as to the transmission of preferences over generations. The linguistic environment
into which a young individual is socialized can have a strong influence on the
formation of his or her life-long preferences, but a changing environment might
also modify these individual preferences as time goes by.79
78 For example, in court one might have to wait a long time for a trial in the chosen language when
the number of cases increase. One observes the same effect in a swim club or golf club when it
becomes crowded.
79 Cf. also François Vaillancourt’s contribution to this book (chapter “Linguistic Justice in a Federal
Setting: The Case of Canadian Provinces”), where he, among other things, discusses the ex ante/ex
post problematic.
4.1.1 Positive Indirect Effects
We can distinguish two positive indirect effects of a supportive language policy in

favor of a given language. First, the preferences and, consequently, the propensities
to pay of a given individual are affected by the policy, and, second, the number of
users of the language in the next generation is also affected by the policy.
Individual Status Effect
An individual’s propensity to pay for rights for a language might depend directly on
the status this language enjoys in society, which in turn depends on the rights already
in effect. From an ex ante point of view the realization of additional rights for the
language in question then carries a positive external effect in that it leads to higher
propensities to pay, hence modifying the cost-benefit calculation. The implication
is that the simple analysis leads to an inefficient result and recommends giving too
few rights to a minority language.
Cohort Status Effects
A similar argument applies if we consider the socialization of young individuals.
If the status of a minority language increases as a result of a supportive language
policy, parents are more likely to socialize their offspring into the minority language,
and the young generation of adherents to the language will increase as a result of the
favorable policy. In addition, by the argument above, the propensity to pay of each
and every adherents might also increase.80 The implication above is strengthened.
Negative Indirect Effects
The arguments above, however, can easily be turned around. A discriminatory policy
leads to less support for the minority language and fewer adherents. This would
strengthen arguments for a discriminatory policy.
4.1.2 Multiple Solutions and “Paradoxes”
Due to the symmetry of the endogeneity of the preferences, the existence of path
dependencies and multiple solutions, as well as “paradoxes”, cannot be excluded.
Imagine two states of the world, I and I I , and the corresponding allocation of
rights, R I (e.g. no rights for a minority language) and R I I (e.g. extensive rights
for the minority language). The difference in the propensities to pay for R I I in
comparison to R I , P , depends on the state of the world, due to the status effects:
0 < P I < P I I . P I is the difference in the propensities to pay if state
I is in effect (the minority language has no rights and, hence, low status) and
P I I the corresponding difference if we are in state I I (the minority language has
extensive rights and consequently a high status among ist speakers). The difference
80 This is a frequent argument in dynamic models. See Templin et al. (2016) for a review of the
literature and an example.

in the implementation costs is state independent and given by C. Several possible
orderings of the costs and propensities to pay are possible:
P I I > P I > C (1)

C > P I I > P I (2)
P I I > C > P I (3)
In case 1, the analysis tells us that state I I is to be preferred since the cost
difference between rights allocation R I I and R I is less than the perceived benefits
independently of the actual state of the world; in case 2, the answer is also clear: state
I is preferable since the costs exceed the benefits in both states of the world. Case 3,
however, is not as clear-cut: If we are in state I —rights allocation R I prevailing—
the costs of introducing rights allocation R I I exceed the perceived benefits of this
policy and the naïve analysis, ignoring the externality on the preferences, tells us
that state I is preferable. If we are in state I I , the result is similar. Ignoring the
externality on the preferences, we come to the conclusion that state I I is preferred.
In other words, the analysis does not lead to any conclusion as to the preferred
policy. However, a more sophisticated analysis, taking the externality due to the
status effects into account, tells us to change to the other state, independently of the
state we are in. Again, the analysis is inconclusive.81
4.2 Merit-Good, Ex Post, and End-State Arguments
Closely related to the discussion in Sect. 4.1.2 are the merit-good and ex post
arguments.82 Both types of arguments are based on a kind of paternalism. This
in turn can be justified by a lack of information about future preferences in which
case an ex post evaluation is the only sensible one; a policy decision should then be
based on the expected evaluation ex post. This could justify both a harsh assimilation
policy and a generous support for minority rights. On the one side, educating the
young in a little-used language limits their opportunities on the labor market and
is an argument for limiting the opportunities of using minority languages, forcing
assimilation into the majority community. At the end, the minority language is dead,
81 This “paradox” has the same structure as the original Scitovsky paradox (de Scitovszky 1941).
Their income effects in the different states of the world influence individual preferences, here the
“status effects” in different states of the world do the same thing.
82 The concept of merit good was introduced by Musgrave (1956/1957) in order to justify
public intervention when evaluation is not strictly based on individual preferences. The departure
from individual preferences could be justified by individuals’ uncertainty or limited access to
information, as well as differences between ex post and ex ante evaluation. An example of the
latter could be education. After having received an education, I value it more than before I received
it.
and there is nobody around to mourn it.83 After the complete assimilation everyone
is happy being assimilated and nobody looks back with nostalgia to the society
of their forefathers. On the other side, generously supporting a minority language
causes its community to survive as a socially active minority, and everyone in the
minority community is happy ex post being part of such a rich flourishing culture.
The argument that the use of only one language minimizes both communication and
administrative costs also belongs in this category.
The end-state argument that linguistic and cultural diversity per se is desirable
is related to our precaution value, which due to imperfect information might not be
expressed clearly enough by the individuals.84 The merit-good analysis can again
be applied.
In conclusion, these arguments imply more extensive linguistic rights in two
cases and less extensive rights in one case. However, as we have seen, they are
also at times contradictory and then of limited value.
4.3 Dynamics and the Survival of Linguistic Minorities
For the long-term survival of a linguistic minority, the family structure and the
choices made in the family are of crucial importance. The family structure, which
in this essay is taken to mean the linguistic repertoires of the parents, is determined
by the “matching market” and typically will depend on the strength of the ethnicity
in the various language groups as well as on the relative sizes of the groups. The
behavior of the families, that is, in which language(s) the children are brought up,
can broadly be assumed to depend on the use value of the languages (with whom
one can communicate) and the identity value (how proud one is of the language).
Language policy can influence both; the second one comes through the status effect
discussed above in Sect. 4.1.1.
There are a number of models of language dynamics that consider the status
effect but do not consider family behavior and inevitably conclude that language
dynamics leads to the death of minority languages.85 Other models consider family
behavior and the status effect and show that the long-term survival of linguistic
minorities is indeed possible.86 Language policy influencing the status effect is
explicitly analyzed in some models, showing how the planning measures can govern
the dynamics of the use of minority languages.87 Some empirical evidence of
83 Compare, however, the efforts to revive languages like Cornish or Manx, which seems to
contradict this conclusion.

84 The end-state argument can be found in Patten (2009), among others.
85 See, for instance, Abrams and Strogatz (2003).
86 See Wickström (2005).
87 See Minett and Wang (2008), Fernando et al. (2010), or Templin et al. (2016).
language policy influencing the development of minority-language use can also be

found in the literature.88
4.4 Second-Best Evaluation
Although economists have developed more or less exact methods to estimate

propensities to pay, often such methods are rather cumbersome and not very
practical.89 An alternative is to specify the desired outcomes and not their value.
That is, the cost-benefit analysis is replaced by a cost-effectiveness analysis.
Different policies can have different effects that have to be compared and measured
by nonmonetary methods. It is important to emphasize that cost-effectiveness
analysis is based on a comparison of the costs of a policy with the outcome
achieved, measured in a nonmonetary form (e.g., the number of students who
successfully complete a language training). Outcomes, therefore, are measured
through quantitative nonmonetary indicators. The most efficient policy is the
alternative in which the ratio of costs to the desired outcome (for instance, costs
per successful student) is the lowest.90 The analysis of the costs and the structure of
the costs is the same in a cost-benefit and a cost-effectiveness analysis, though.
The cost-effectiveness analysis helps us find the most efficient measures to
realize different goals. It, however, does not tell us if the goals are worthwhile or
not. In the decision whether to enact a given policy or not, there has to be some
type of evaluation of the benefits of the policy and comparison of costs and those
benefits. If the benefits cannot be estimated on the basis of individual preferences,
some other method has to be used. In practice the “benefits” are fixed by the policy
maker.91 We could say that the measurement of the benefits has been moved from a
simulated market to the political sphere. In the determination of the budget for policy
measures, we can distinguish two polar cases: Either a certain budget per individual
beneficiary is decided upon, or a general budget for each language planning measure
is set.92 In the first case, the individual average propensity to pay based on individual
preferences is simply replaced by the planner’s politically determined propensity
88 See, for instance, Cenoz (2008).

89 Compare chapter “Linguistic Justice in a Federal Setting: The Case of Canadian Provinces” by
François Vaillancourt in this book. He finds a lower limit for the propensity to pay by considering
the necessary costs that are imposed on an individual in the absence of a given right (for instance,
the cost of translation). See also the critical assessment of Ginsburgh (2017).
90 For a detailed presentation of cost-effectiveness analysis, see Levin and MacEwan (2001).
91 The policy makers’ decisions are part of the political process and the political pressure from
the voters presumably has an influence. In this way, one could say that the propensity to provide
language planning measures is indirectly based on the voters politically expressed propensities to
pay.
92 Also intermediate cases are, of course, possible: a fixed sum per measure plus a certain sum per
individual beneficiary.
to provide different benefits. This does not alter the economic analysis per se; it
only removes the estimation of benefits from individual preferences and substitutes
instead administratively determined values for the benefits. These values can, of
course, vary between different language planning measures, permitting the setting of
analytically sensible priorities in the language policy. In the second case, priorities
can also be set between language planning measures, but the resulting policy
might give non-intuitive results. If the budget is the same for different minority
languages and thereby independent of the number of beneficiaries, we would end
up with more rights for speakers of small minority languages than of big ones if the
implementation costs depend on the number of beneficiaries.93
In the sections above, we argued from the point of view of average propensities to
pay. The arguments would also be valid if the politically determined budgets more
or less directly reflect the preferences of the voters in society. It is a matter of how
sensitive the political system is to changes in the opinions of the voters.
5 Costs of Language Policy
As in any situation involving choices and the use of resources, the implementation
of language policy causes (opportunity) costs.94 We can differentiate between fixed
and variable costs. Variable costs can vary according to the size of the territory in
which the rights are implemented, but also according to the number of individuals
enjoying the rights. The latter is, of course, closely related to the demand side
discussed in Sect. 3. From the point of view of production processes and associated
costs, there is really no principal difference between producing street signs and
individual social services. The crucial difference is found on the demand side with
street signs being non-rival and social services to a considerable extent rival.95
Hence, the cost of the policy in the first case is independent of the number of
beneficiaries and in the second case more or less proportional to the number of
beneficiaries. One could also say that in the first case the costs in relation to the
number of beneficiaries are fixed and in the second case mainly variable.
93 Imagine that there are two minority languages in a country, one spoken by a fairly big community
and the other one by a rather small group. If the budget for social services is the same for both
language groups, the quality of the services for the speakers of the smaller language would be
higher than for the speakers of the larger one.
94 Opportunity costs is the value of the best alternative we give up in order to realize the policy
adopted.
95 One might think of the example of public signs in a certain language in a given region. Here all
costs are fixed and independent of the number of users but vary with the size of the territory. Less
clear-cut examples are services of a public office or public education in a given language. Here one
part of the costs, like those for producing printed documents or textbooks, are more or less fixed
and one part, like the time of the public servants or school teachers, are almost proportional to the
number of users of the language. In each case, the cost structure can be assumed to be concave, see
below.
Table 8 A classification of The costs of the Do not depend on Increase

language policy measures implementation the size of the proportionally
according to the realized of a measure territory with the size of the
good territory
Do not depend on Nonspatial and Spatial and
the number of non-rival good non-rival good
individuals
Increase Nonspatial and Spatial and rival
proportionally rival good good
with the number
of individuals
5.1 Different Cost Structures
For cost-benefit analysis, and especially for cost-effectiveness analysis, it is con-

venient to focus on the costs as a function of the number of beneficiaries. Instead
of looking at the reduced quality of a good or service displaying less than perfect
rivalry when the number of users increase, for our purposes it makes more sense to
study how costs change with the size of the territory and the number of beneficiaries
under the condition that the quality of the service for each beneficiary be constant
and given. If the fruits of the policy implementation display less than perfect rivalry
and there are economies of scale in the spatial dimension, this implies that the costs
are a concave function in both variables96; if the function relating the costs to the
number of beneficiaries and to the size of the relevant area of implementation is
maximally concave (namely, constant) we talk of a nonspatial and non-rival good
and if, at the other extreme, it is minimally concave (namely, proportional) we talk
of a spatial and rival implementation. In Table 8, we illustrate this and attempt to
classify language-policy measures according to the cost structure of the resulting
goods.97
We illustrate the different cost structures in five diagrams. In Fig. 1—the nonspa-
tial and non-rival case—the costs are constant. An example might be the use of the
name of the country in a minority language on banknotes. At the opposite extreme,
96 For our purposes, a concave function can be defined as a function whose value divided by the
value of any of the variables decreases, as the value of the variable increases. Put in other terms:
the costs per person—the average costs with respect to beneficiaries—decrease when the number
of individuals increases and mutatis mutandis for the size of the territory.
97 The table gives only the extreme cases. All intermediate cases are possible, and each policy
implementation could be seen as a point in a two-dimensional space. The formalization of this

requires normalization of the degrees of rivalry. Here a number of choices are possible. A sensible
one is to use the partial elasticities of costs with respect to the number of beneficiaries and with
respect to the size of the territory, respectively. If the costs are independent of the number of
individuals, the respective elasticity would be zero, and if the costs are proportional to the number
of individuals, the elasticity would be one. Mutatis mutandis the same holds for the elasticity with
respect to territorial size. However, since the elasticities are not necessarily constant, one would
have to work with a local definition. That goes beyond the scope of this chapter, though.
Fig. 1 The cost structure of a

nonspatial and non-rival good
ory
Costs
rrit
f te
eo
Siz
0 !"
Number of beneficiaries

spatial and rival good
ory
Costs
e rrit
of t
e
Siz
0
Fig. 2—spatial and rival policies—the costs are proportional in both variables.
Public schools in a minority language might come close to this case.98 There are
some locally fixed costs, such as setup costs. The totality of these costs will then be
98 Of course, the costs here are the additional costs of providing education in the minority language
compared to providing the same education to the minority pupils in the majority language. That
is, a part of the costs of the minority school system is offset by the cost reduction in the majority
school system.
proportional to the number of schools, which is more or less proportional to the size
of the area offering schools in the minority language. With a given class size the
costs of teachers and classrooms will be approximately proportional to the number
of classes and, hence, the number of pupils, which, in turn, will be proportional to
the size of the minority population. The two mixed cases—spatial and non-rival as
well as nonspatial and rival goods, respectively—leading to proportionality in one
of the variables and no dependency on the other one, are depicted in Figs. 3 and 4. A
good example of the first case is the provision of street signs in a minority language,

spatial and non-rival good
ory
Costs
rrit
f te
eo
Siz
0

nonspatial and rival good
ory
Costs
rrit
f te
eo
Siz
0

partially spatial and partially
rival good
ory
Costs
rrit
f te
eo
Siz
0
and simultaneous interpretation services from a minority language in the national

parliament belong to the second one.99 Finally, an example of a partially rival and
partially spatial good is depicted in Fig. 5. Here, one might think of social services
in a minority language.100 In contrast to the school example, use will vary over time
and a certain extra capacity, which can also be shared between different locations,
has to be available to cover periods with local top demand. If there is not a high
positive correlation between the individual demands, we would find a concave cost
structure in both variables.
The increased use of the Internet has in many cases altered the cost structures,
reducing or eliminating the dependence on both the size of the territory and the
number of beneficiaries. A broadcasting service provided in a given language,
for instance, whose costs were strongly dependent on the territory covered when
broadcasts were relayed over the ether, now, due to the use of the Internet, reaches
the whole world at virtually no additional cost.
5.2 Choice of Formal Rules for Different Categories

of Planning Measures
Any responsible language policy would have to weigh costs against benefits. Since
benefits of a certain allocation of rights in favor of a given language are largely
99 We are assuming that no translations from the majority language into the minority language
occur.
100 Again, we are here talking of additional costs of a parallel system. See footnote 98.
proportional to the number of beneficiaries, whereas the costs of implementing the

allocation are normally represented by a concave function of the number of users,
the cost-benefit argument, as a rule, leads to a critical-mass decision rule in the
case of nonspatial goods. That is, the larger is a language community in absolute
numbers in the relevant area, the more extensive should be the rights allocated to
the language in question.101 On the other hand, the size of the territory where the
right is implemented can vary. The consequence of this is that a minority-population
density rule makes sense in most cases involving spatial goods. In other cases, a
mixed rule—a combination of a population-density and a critical-mass rule—might
be the best choice.
Of course, not every language-planning measure brings the same level of
benefits, nor are all effects in a cost-effectiveness analysis equally attractive in
the eyes of the policy maker.102 Here, however, we only want to stress that the
qualitative part of the decision rules (like requiring a critical mass of beneficiaries
or a certain population density of beneficiaries) has to suit the type of good being
considered, and that the cost structure is very important for the choice of qualitative
decision criteria. The next step that is choosing the quantitative part of the rule (the
actual size of the critical mass or the minority-population density) is, of course,
more difficult. Our discussion in this section only sheds light on the simple types
of rules to be used depending of the cost structure in evaluating different planning
measures, which in turn make up the language policy.
The cost structure, then, has clear implications for the general implementation
of a language policy. Since one cannot have a different formal policy rule for each
conceivable domain of language planning, an efficient organization of the language
policy requires that sets of domains be collected into categories. A different set of
policy rules can then be applied to each such category. Our classification of cost
structures is a good point of departure for the definition of such categories.
There could be domains where policies result in nonspatial non-rival goods, for
instance mostly symbolic uses of a language such as in the official name of a country
on banknotes, in the names of public institutions, etc. Language policies in such
domains, as a rule, cause low costs and could be implemented for many minority
languages with a relatively small number of speakers, thereby increasing the status
of the languages. At the other extreme, we have the category providing spatial
and rival goods. This would include various social services in a certain language.
The language policy here requires a minimal concentration of the speakers of the
language in order to be sensible. The category of domains resulting in spatial and
non-rival goods would include street signs in different languages, and an example
from the category of policy domains dealing with nonspatial and rival goods could
be various uses of different languages in national political institutions.
101 Fora more detailed discussion, see Wickström (2016b).

102 See, for instance, Grin and Vaillancourt (1999) for a comparison of the effects of different
policies.
For each category one would have to find a different formal rule for the
implementation of planning measures, such as a minimal density of beneficiaries
in the area considered or a certain minimal number of speakers of a language. For
the categories “nonspatial non-rival” and “nonspatial rival”, the spatial dimension
is absent and we have seen above that a critical-mass decision rule would be the
natural choice if the costs are concave in the number of beneficiaries. For the spatial
cases, a density rule, sometimes combined with a critical-mass rule, would make
sense. In no case a percentage rule would be appropriate.
6 Evaluation of Linguistic Justice
In discussing evaluation criteria for linguistic justice, we basically take an accom-

modation approach structuring the problem to deal with the presence or absence of
legal rights for an individual to be accommodated in a certain language in given
(public) domains as well as the implementation of such rights. This captures the
possibility that language policies can have several distributive consequences for
different groups of people, thereby creating “winners” and “losers”. The right to use
a certain minority language in a given domain is modeled to apply to all individuals,
independently of the “need” for accommodation of the specific individual. That
is, the right to use a minority language in court, say, applies to all individuals
equally and is a matter of individual choice. Since the right is independent of
whether the person masters the majority language or not, the individual value of
the right can be very high for the person not knowing the majority language, and
the right might not be particularly valuable for a fully bilingual individual.103 The
prohibition on the use of a language would then simply be a negative right with, in
fact, symmetrical distributive consequences. Most language-planning measures will
indeed have distributional consequences as noted above in Sect. 3.3 in Table 7.
Here the discipline of economics, in particular public economics and policy
analysis, can make an essential contribution. The individual propensities to pay for
different language policies vary, as we have argued above. The policies, hence, have
distributional effects and can be viewed as means for distributing resources as well
as opportunities among the members of a diverse population.104 A general analysis
of language policies, of course, is not only a static or short-term analysis, but these
policies also shape the long-term distribution of language use.105
103 Patten’s(2009) accommodation argument is hence extended to cover all individuals who want
to take advantage of the right.
104 See Grin and Vaillancourt (1999), Grin (2003, 2005b), and Grin and Gazzola (2013).
105 Compare Wickström (2005), Fernando et al. (2010), Wickström (2014), as well as Templin et al.
(2016).
6.1 Benchmark
We can analyze the distributional consequences of language-planning measures

by looking at winners and losers from the measure. This, however, does not say
anything about whether the policy leads to more or less justice. To address such a
question, we need a definition of “justice” allowing us to discuss degrees of justice.
This is possible by defining a benchmark as just and looking at deviations from this
benchmark.
As a benchmark, we take a situation characterized by strict equality of all
individuals.106 All individuals should have the right to express themselves (and
to be understood) in any language of their choice in any situation in society.107
In reality this is, of course, not implementable and the interesting problem is to
analyze the trade-offs and modifications of this mirage that become necessary and
desirable.108 The necessary modifications and departures from the benchmark can
be separated into two categories: one free of any institutional restrictions and one
due to institutional restriction in the real world. In the first type of modifications, it is
basically assumed that all different theoretically possible reallocations of resources
between individuals are also feasible. In the second type, there are institutional
limits due to the real existing institutions in society on what is feasible. These
limits are often given by political power structures. The two categories are of course
intimately related, but from an analytic point of view the separation is useful. We,
hence, discuss them in turn.
6.2 Arguments Without Institutional Restrictions
As we have suggested above, the welfare-economics approach can be based on

cost-benefit or cost-effectiveness analysis. The benefits of the language policies are
measured as the aggregated propensities to pay of the individuals in society for the
goods provided as a result of the policy measures. These benefits are then compared
106 To us equality means that speakers of different languages are treated equally. In the literature
other definitions of equality can be found, for instance, equality of languages, that is, treating all
languages equally independently of the number of speakers. This comes close to Patten’s (2009)
end-state argument. See Pool (1987) for a further discussion of this issue.
107 This is related to Patten’s (2009) context-of-choice and fairness criteria.
108 One could define the benchmark in a diametrically opposite way. In this case, no rights are
inherently in effect, and all provisions of specific rights have to be consciously decided upon. With
our chosen benchmark, all individuals are provided with all possible rights to use their language
of choice in any social situation, and restrictions have to be motivated. We call this approach
“liberalism”. The opposite one could then be labeled “absolutism”. Compare also the basic legal
philosophy behind the Anglo-Saxon common-law tradition and the continental one associated with
the Code Napoléon. Of course, the two benchmarks are distributionally very different. See also
Wickström (2007).
to the implementation costs of the policy.109 In a cost-effectiveness analysis, the

policy maker decides on the priorities of the effects resulting from different planning
measures selecting the measure giving the effect at lowest cost.
The most obvious problem with the benchmark is that the resulting costs can be
prohibitively high. It is simply not economically feasible to provide equal individual
language rights to all people. If one deviates from the situation characterized
by equality between all individuals, one can often achieve a considerable gain
in efficiency, defined as the difference between aggregate benefits (defined as
aggregated propensities to pay or aggregated, administratively assigned benefit
values) and implementation costs, by not considering policy measures leading
to a strongly negative benefit-cost difference.110 By not implementing measures
with high costs relative to the benefits, some individuals will be disadvantaged.
The efficient policy will lead to inequities, and we will have a trade-off between
equity and efficiency. The benchmark case above hence has to be abandoned due
to implementation costs. How far we move away from the benchmark will depend
on the decision criterion adopted. With a given criterion, the policy chosen could
also be influenced by the fact that preference distributions in a population as well as
the planner’s priorities might be endogenous and consequently not expected to be
stationary and stable over time.
The straightforward way to deal with the trade-off between equity and efficiency
would be to combine the efficiency-increasing policy with individual transfers. This
first-best policy would lead to an egalitarian and efficient society. However, due to
incentive problems and other restrictions, this is, as a rule, not possible.111 Only
limited compensation payments are possible and the trade-off remains. We discuss
this in Sect. 6.2.2.
6.2.1 Trade-Off Between Equity and Efficiency
The trade-off can be broken up, though, into distributional effects on two levels.
On one level, it is the difference between language groups, where one group
can be advantaged relative to another. On another level, there are distributional
effects within a language group, where individuals attach different values to a given
planning measure. If, for instance, the European Union were to introduce Russian
(a language that has more first-language speakers among the citizens of the EU
than some languages with an official status) as an official language,112 this would
109 For a more detailed discussion, see Wickström (2016b) and the references therein.
110 Using the difference between aggregated benefits and implementation costs is an example of
potential Pareto efficiency, see Sect. 1.1. Were all types of compensation payments possible, this
could bring us to Pareto efficiency.
111 Compare this situation with the optimal-taxation problem; see, for instance, Hindriks and Myles
(2006).
112 Cf. Haselhuber (2012).
be a redistribution in favor of the group of Russian-speaking citizens of the EU

who would be able to use the language of their own choice in communication with
Brussels, and a possible cost for speakers of other languages, depending on how
the implementation costs are divided. At the same time, within the group of Russian
speakers some individuals will value the possibility of communicating with Brussels
in their mother tongue very highly, whereas for others it has no value at all. There
would be considerable distributional effects, and the consequence of the measure for
linguistic equity could go in both directions depending on the individual propensities
to pay of the Russian-speaking citizens of the EU (although there would probably
be an increase in efficiency). A different language-planning measure, like making
Russian an official language in countries like Latvia, might increase both the level
of linguistic justice and efficiency, due to a stronger “need” of the members of the
Russian-speaking community in Latvia to communicate with the local authorities in
Riga than with the Brussels bureaucracy.
In Sect. 5 we discussed selection criteria for language-planning measures based
on efficiency defined as the comparison of aggregated benefits and costs. In practice,
one has to evaluate and compare the effects on both efficiency and distribution of
a given policy measure and ask whether a distributional loss can be justified by an
increase in efficiency.113
6.2.2 Compensations
In discussing efficiency, we made a direct comparison between aggregated benefits

and costs or benefits per capita and costs per capita. When discussing distributional
effects between groups or between individuals, benefits and costs attributed to the
group or to the individual have to be compared with those attributed to other groups
or individuals. The policy maker could in principle achieve any distributional effect
through personalized taxes. For practical reasons individual taxes are, of course,
not possible, and taxes are at best correlated with some general characteristics of
the subjects, such as income, wealth, or age. The question to be asked then is if
the linguistic injustice due to language-planning measures or the absence thereof
can find compensation in the tax system, or if a minority speaker without extensive
rights for his or her language can receive compensation for this disadvantage in
some other manner. The simplest form of compensation would be direct transfers,
for instance in the form of tax breaks or subsidies.114
113 This trade-off is present in this book both in the contribution of Till Burckhardt (chapter “Lin-
guistic Disenfranchisement and Labour Mobility in Europe”), who looks at the unequal “mobility
disenfranchisement” that could be overcome with more resources invested in language-learning in
European schools at a certain cost, and in chapter “Choosing Working Languages in a Multilingual
Organization: A Statistical Analysis with a Particular View on the European Union” by Dietrich
Voslamber.
114 This type of argument can be found in the work of Van Parijs, who argues for the introduction
of English as the sole official language in the European Union. He argues that this could be fair if
Efficiency Costs Versus Distributional Injustice

Often direct or indirect transfers are not politically feasible. That is, a disenfran-
chised115 person can for practical or administrative reasons not be compensated for
his or her disadvantage. Then a second-best solution would be to return to the trade-
off between efficiency and distribution. That is, one would compare the efficiency
loss if the right is implemented—the difference between implementation costs
and aggregated benefits to the members of the minority—with the distributional
consequences due to the non-implementation of the right—the perceived loss of
the individuals belonging to the minority in comparison to those belonging to the
majority due to the absence of the right. Depending on the planner’s preferences
for redistribution, the latter value will be given a positive weight in the comparison
with the former, and more minority rights will be realized than implied by the pure
cost-benefit analysis (with weight zero given to the distributional loss).116
In addition, the propensities to pay could be correlated with the income or edu-
cation of the individuals. Then the provision of language rights would redistribute
implicit income in favor of the rich and well-educated in the case of a positive
the speakers of other languages are adequately compensated for learning English; see, for instance,
Van Parijs (2011). See also Pool (1987, 1991) for the original discussion of the topic.
115 In the context of language policy, a person who because of insufficient language knowledge
cannot communicate with a public institution in one of its official languages. See, for instance,
Ginsburgh et al. (2005).
116 Consider the calculations in Fidrmuc and Ginsburgh (2007). One can look at the analysis here
as a cost-effectiveness analysis. The effect is that a given individual has the ability to communicate
with the institutions of the European Union (the authors use the expression “disenfranchisement”
for the inability to communicate with the EU; other values of language use for the individual, like
boosting his or her identity, are ignored in the analysis). This can be achieved by giving various
languages an official status. The data are based on EU25 with then 20 official languages. By adding
Maltese to a policy with only English, French, and German as official languages, Maltese speakers
who do not master English, French, or German will be enabled to communicate directly with the
institutions in Brussels. This would, according to the authors, come at an annual cost of 831.30
euros per disenfranchised speaker of Maltese in the absence of official status for Maltese. If we
consider a situation where the alternatives are 19 languages (excluding Maltese) or 20 (including
Maltese), this sum would increase somewhat, but probably not very much. Assuming that the
language planner attaches a value of less than 800 euros to enable the direct communication with
Brussels of an average European citizen, it would be efficient not to give Maltese an official status.
This situation is, of course, not just, and we have the trade-off between efficiency (no official status
for Maltese) and justice (official status for Maltese). The fact that Maltese is an official language in
the EU can be interpreted in such a way that the rational planner gives a weight greater than zero
to justice in the trade-off between efficiency and justice. (Whether the language policy in the EU
is based on rational arguments or not is a different question.)
correlation and in favor of the poor and uneducated in the case of a negative
correlation.117
The analysis of linguistic justice justifying a deviation from absolute equality
of all individuals with respect to their linguistic preferences necessitates a general
analysis to weigh many arguments one against the other. Ideally it should reflect the
judgment of an impartial external observer.118 Here ends the input of the economist
concerning linguistic justice.119
The relative weights between the alternatives in the various trade-offs between
justice and efficiency in the real world have to be fixed exogenously. Making
such choices is a political issue reflecting the preferences, not of an impartial
observer, but of a policy maker. Policy makers are politically appointed agents and
respond to voters through the political system. In that way they are partial. However,
identifying the trade-offs between, for instance, efficiency and distributional justice
(or equity, see Sect. 6.2.2) or between current and future generations (see Sect. 4.1.1)
is an empirical issue, and the empirical investigation can be based on transparent
theoretical arguments. The choice of specific positions in those trade-offs is a policy
issue for which there is no scientific basis. It is a matter of political ideology that
can be a reflection of political power, which in turn depends on the number of voters
in the different groups. What our analysis can do is to compare various policies and
their outcomes for each ideological approach adopted by a policy maker.
6.3 Arguments from an Institutional Viewpoint
Language policy is not conducted in a vacuum. Geographical facts and spatial

population structure are important determinants of the federal structure of a country
117 In the European Union, the knowledge of languages other than the mother tongue, especially the
knowledge of English, is as a rule positively correlated with income and education, see Gazzola
(2016b). Note that this does not necessarily imply that propensities to pay for an official status
of the non-English mother tongues are negatively correlated with income and education; it might
be much more important for the rich to communicate with Brussels than for the poor, and, hence,
the rich might have a higher propensity to pay for the right to use their mother tongue in such
communication in spite of the fact that they could use English at a sufficiently high level. The
rich might also have higher propensities to pay in general, because their income is higher and the
demand for communication ease is a “normal” good (a good with a positive income elasticity of
demand; that is, the demand for the good increases with increasing income).
118 The intuitive argument that one should “put oneself in the shoes of others” to make fair and
impartial decisions—to decide behind a veil of ignorance—goes back at least to Plato (1888,
1980) and has its most prominent modern exponent in Rawls (1971). For a critique of the veil-
of-ignorance approach, see chapter “Towards an Adaptive Approach to Linguistic Justice: Three
Paradoxes” by Yael Peled in this book.
119 In chapter “Linguistic Justice in a Federal Setting: The Case of Canadian Provinces” in this
book, François Vaillancourt in his conclusions discusses the limits of the possible input of the
economist. See also Cardinal and Sonntag (2015).
or region. This, in turn, influences a sensible language policy. In addition, a very

detailed set of rules is costlier to administer than a few general rules. Therefore,
a long catalog of specific rights is not practical to implement, but rather a few
categories like official state language, national language, working language, local
official language, etc. See also the discussion in Sect. 5.
6.3.1 Formal Rules
For the implementation of policies, the state needs some simple general rules. In
the implementation of language policy, such rules can depend on the absolute size
of a language group or on its population density. In Sect. 5 above it was argued
that costs depend both on the number of beneficiaries of a planning measure and
the size of the relevant geographic area. This leads to formal rules based on the
two indicators, namely, absolute size of the minority population and its density. In
practice, however, one generally finds a percentage rule, sometimes combined with
a critical-mass rule.120 A percentage rule, however, is not sensible; a density rule,
that is the number of speakers of the language per unit of land, is the result of
the analysis. Migration of members of the majority population to mixed areas will
lower the percentage of the minority population, and if a percentage rule is in effect,
minority rights will be lost, although nothing has changed in the cost-benefit or
cost-effectiveness analysis; a rather unfortunate situation from the point of view of
welfare economics. A combination of a critical mass and a density (or percentage)
rule is also less prone to political manipulation through changes in the jurisdiction
borders.121
6.3.2 Federal Structure
The theoretically oriented literature on federalism brings important arguments both

for federal structures and for centralized structures of a state. These arguments
should be weighed against one another when writing a constitution.122 One
important argument speaking in favor of a federal structure is the possibility to
arrange jurisdictions such that the preference structure within a jurisdiction is
fairly homogeneous, and rather heterogeneous between jurisdictions. This way it is
everywhere easier to provide (public) services locally and closer to what the citizens
demand than in the case of centralized identical services in the whole state. The main
120 The combination is found in Finland, for example. There, a critical mass of 3000 people or a
fraction of at least 8% of the population in the community is required for giving rights to the local
language minority. Romania and Slovakia, in comparison, require 20% of the population for local
language rights.
121 See, for instance, Wickström (2015).
122 See, for instance, Boadway and Shah (2009).
argument for centralization is that in the case of economies of scale, the per-person
costs are smaller the bigger the jurisdiction.
The argument above can easily be applied to language policy. If a minority
population of a given size is concentrated in a specific geographic area, this is an
argument for a federal structure with the areas with a high concentration of the
minority forming their own jurisdictions.123
If the minority population is concentrated, the implementation costs, being more
or less proportional to the size of the jurisdiction, will be lower than if the same
population is spread over a larger area. The immediate conclusion is that more
extensive rights should be present in the case when the minority is concentrated
than in the case when it is spread over the whole country.
Of course, there can be a political argument against making jurisdictions
ethnically homogeneous, as it can lead to secession movements and a disintegration
of the state. On the other hand, a happy minority population might be more inclined
to support the existing political structures than a population whose members feel
discriminated against. If the unity of the state is important, such arguments have to
be taken seriously.
7 Inferences and Conclusions
Four main points made in this chapter are worth stressing.

To start with, we have attempted to justify an approach to language planning and
policy that builds on economic theory. This is based on the observation that most
language-related goods have properties that differ from those of pure individual
goods: rivalry, exclusion, and shielding. We can hence infer that spontaneous
interactions, laisser-faire, do not lead to efficient results. Hence, an involvement
of the public sector is required. We have a number of situations of classic market
failure. This justifies government involvement and provides a solid basis for a public
language policy.
Second, the benefit side of language policies is difficult to estimate. This calls for
a cost-effectiveness analysis and, as a consequence, the effectiveness of different
planning measures for achieving some desired effect has to be compared with
the cost of the measures. The cost side then becomes more important. We have
argued that normalization to per-person costs allows us to categorize language-
planning measures into a small number of categories based on the cost structures.
Each category has similar properties, and the main decision criteria for language-
planning decisions are closely related. These decision criteria can be reduced to a
relatively small number of decision rules for the different kinds of cost categories.
123 Currentlydiscussed reforms of the jurisdictions in Finland and Norway seem to distance these
countries from this ideal.
These rules are based on population densities, a critical number of beneficiaries, or

a combination of both.
Third, language policy can be differentiated and in each category different rules
can be used to reach optimal decisions. By differentiating the language policy
according to these categories, more flexibility is introduced and a higher level of
welfare could be reached. The level of welfare that can be reached with an optimal
uniform rule being applied to all planning measures can, of course, also be reached
with separate rules. One simply has to use the same rule in each separate case.
By making the separate rules different and optimal with respect to the measures to
which they are applied (and taking possible externalities on benefits and costs of
other measures into account), welfare is bound to increase if the separate optimal
rules differ from the uniform optimal rule.
Fourth, distributional issues can be incorporated into the cost-benefit or cost-
effectiveness analysis by making the efficiency-equity trade-off operational. The
relative weights of efficiency and equity, however, are a political issue.
8 How the Book Is Organized
The book is organized in four parts. In addition to this introductory chapter, part I
offers an overview of the literature on linguistic justice with a focus on political
science and economics. This is followed by four different, basically philosophical,
perspectives on and definitions of linguistic justice in part II. Applications to
language policy from an economic(s) viewpoint are presented in part III, and in
part IV more (socio)linguistic approaches are discussed.
8.1 Part I: Introduction and Overview of Literature
In the second chapter in part I, Javier Alcalde offers a comprehensive inter-

disciplinary overview of the literature on linguistic justice. The focus of this
overview is on political philosophy dealing with linguistic justice and fairness in
multilingual contexts. Clustered into the two broad categories multiculturalism and
egalitarian liberalism, the main arguments of the philosophical linguistic justice
debate are presented in depth. Special attention is paid to the debate on the
territoriality and personality principles. Strong and weak points of the different
theories are examined. Furthermore, policy recommendations that can be derived
from the different approaches are outlined. In addition to political philosophy,
the chapter also discusses contributions from economics, law, sociolinguistics, and
interlinguistics.
8.2 Part II: Political and Philosophical Perspectives

The chapters in part II address philosophical and political questions related to

linguistic justice in multilingual environments. In the introduction, we concentrated
on language policies, defined as a set of rights to use certain languages in certain
public domains. Language policies contribute to shaping the linguistic environment
and have diverse effects on different groups of people. Therefore, language regimes
are relevant for considerations of linguistic justice. At the same time, there are other
aspects of the linguistic environment which are not so much the result of explicit
policies but stem from free and uncoordinated decisions of individuals. This leads
to the question of which aspects of the linguistic environment are actually relevant
for the examination of linguistic justice. For example, can language policies in favor
of disappearing minority languages be justified from a liberal point of view, despite
the fact that individuals are freely switching to majority languages?
Furthermore, we have seen that the linguistic environment is by no means static.
The only constancy is its dynamic nature. Therefore, another question addressed
in part II is how a theory of linguistic justice can be designed to account for
the complexity and variability of the linguistic environment. A third aspect is
that language policies are often justified by certain assumptions about the policies
themselves, about the effects they might have, and about the linguistic environment.
If these assumptions are flawed, biased or only true for certain places and times,
then the respective policies can entail ineffective, unjust, and/or unintended effects.
In every linguistic environment, the restrictions and opportunities implied by the
environment do not equally affect individuals with different linguistic repertoires.
With respect to linguistic justice, this raises the question of the features of the
linguistic environment that are relevant for a normative analysis and that should
be addressed by language policies in order to improve the situation of certain
groups of individuals. In a wide approach, all features are assessed, while in a
more narrow approach only some parts of the environment are taken into account.
In chapter “Justice in the Linguistic Environment: Narrow or Wide?”, Andrew
Shorten examines two arguments in support of the narrow approach but brings
two examples where unjust effects can hardly be addressed by this approach.
Hence, wider approaches might be more appropriate to account for demographic
and sociolinguistic characteristics of the environment affecting individuals’ self-
respect and freedom.
All healthy human beings share the capacity for language and moral reasoning.
At the same time, humans are divided along those lines. While some share languages
and moral beliefs, others only share beliefs or languages, and some share neither.
This might be illustrated by a 2 × 2 matrix resembling a prisoner’s dilemma
situation. Describing the issue of linguistic justice as an issue of cooperative
justice, we are dealing with cooperation games. Various features of human reality
complicate these games: moral beliefs and language repertoires are constantly
changing, individuals and collectives show bounded rationality, and the world is
becoming increasingly complex. In chapter “Towards an Adaptive Approach to

Linguistic Justice: Three Paradoxes”, Yael Peled argues that an adaptive approach
to justice, as the one proposed by Ian Shapiro, is able to incorporate these features
into a theory of linguistic justice. With this contextual and adaptive approach, Peled
challenges universal and procedural theories of linguistic justice, emphasizing the
open-endedness of the complex cooperation game and rejecting ahistorical solutions
identified behind a veil of ignorance.
Immigration and citizenship tests are widespread tools for states to control
migration and naturalization processes. Most of the time, evaluating the immigrants’
or would-be citizens’ skills in the language(s) of the host-country is an integral part
of such tests. They should ideally assess—objectively and neutrally—the willing-
ness and (linguistic) ability of the newcomers to become members of the political
community. Since sharing a common language is often seen as a prerequisite for a
functioning democracy, there is also a certain consensus in the literature on linguistic
justice that language proficiency is a legitimate criterion for granting citizenship.
In chapter “Language Proficiency and Migration: An Argument Against Testing”,
Astrid von Busekist and Benjamin Boudou challenge this view. Also, questioning
the claimed objectivity, neutrality, and purpose of language tests, they argue that the
wish that all citizens speak a common language is not a sufficient justification for the
coercion that linguistic tests represent. Instead of coercive testing, the authors put
forward an argument in favor of “language training as a right”, relying on individual
incentives leading to the integration of newcomers.
Communication between different language groups is a prerequisite for cooper-
ation among them. One way to enable such communication is the development of
skills in a shared language or lingua franca. Supporting the acquisition of common
languages can be seen as an investment in a public good. Within the European Union
and especially in EU politics, English has become the most dominant language
and is often seen as the (future) lingua franca of the EU. In chapter “The Myth
of English as a Common Language in the European Union (EU) and Some of
Its Political Consequences”, Jean Claude Barbier first recalls the actual English
language competences today across the European Union. He shows that those
proficient in English are still a numerical minority and that there are big differences
in English language skills among people with different qualifications, income levels,
and occupations (elite bias). These differences are unlikely to change in the near
future. The second part of the chapter deals with the consequences of the dominant
use of English for transnational and supranational politics in the European Union.
Considering France, Denmark, and the Netherlands, the author shows that distrust
in and hostility toward European integration is not only associated with levels of
education, income, and class, but also with foreign language skills, and hence sheds
light on an under-explored phenomenon.
8.3 Part III: Economic Approaches to Language Policy

and Linguistic Justice
Part III comprises five chapters addressing different aspects of the costs and
benefits of multilingual language policies. Since benefits normally come with costs,
both have to be weighed against each other. In this introduction, we propose an
application of cost-benefit analysis or—if benefits are difficult to quantify—cost-
effectiveness analysis. One necessary ingredient for every cost-benefit or cost-
effectiveness analysis is an estimation of the actual costs of different policy options.
To obtain appropriate estimates, public accounts and government reports can be
analyzed. A second necessary ingredient is the definition and operationalization of
benefits or desired outcomes.
Since language is more than just a simple tool for communication, individuals
might gain utility from being able to use their first or preferred language in
communication with public institutions or other society members. Therefore, lan-
guage policies that enable citizens to interact with the authorities in their preferred
language or policies that support the acquisition of a minority language by members
of the majority-language group can increase the overall welfare. Furthermore,
because language is a form of human capital, adequate acquisition planning that
extends the language repertoires of individuals can have a positive impact on the
overall performance of an economy. So, for example, for multilingual individuals it
is easier to overcome linguistic barriers and to work in regions or countries where
other languages than their L1 are dominant. If the mobility of workers within a
multilingual territory is a desired outcome, then a lack of adequate language policies
can disenfranchise certain linguistic and/or social groups.
Evaluating language policies and comparing different policy options in practice
requires detailed information on the cost as well as on the benefit side. In
chapter “Linguistic Justice in a Federal Setting: The Case of Canadian Provinces”,
François Vaillancourt exemplifies for the Canadian case how estimates of costs
and benefits of providing public services in a minority language can be obtained
from public accounts and government reports. The author adopts a simulated
costs approach: instead of just looking at the costs for a service in the minority
language, he considers the extra costs for providing the service in that language in
addition to providing it in the majority language. The main benefit of a bilingual
policy is that minority language speakers are able to use their preferred language
when accessing services of the provincial government. Since estimating monetary
values (propensities to pay) for that is fraught with methodological and practical
difficulties, Vaillancourt offers an alternative approach. He estimates the costs that
individuals who only speak the minority language must bear if a monolingual policy
is adopted, for example, of translation services. At the end of the chapter, the author
compares the costs of current minority language programs in different Canadian
provinces.
Although communication between different language groups is a necessary
condition for cooperation, one might ask whether a shared language is already
sufficient for cooperation. In chapter “Language Policy and Social Segmentation:

Evidence from Catalonia”, Ramon Caminal and Antonio Di Paolo argue that this
would only be the case if languages were only seen as neutral communication
devices, that is, if bilingual individuals were indifferent toward the language they
use in various circumstances. Considering the case of Catalonia, the authors study
the rôle of languages beyond their communication function. In Catalonia, language
policies in the post-Franco era achieved a vast improvement of Catalan skills
among native Spanish speakers, although these skills are redundant from a purely
communicative perspective, since there are no monolingual Catalan speakers. In
the theoretical part of their chapter, the authors illustrate how the acquisition of the
minority language by speakers of the majority language increases the propensity
for cooperation and hence generates aggregate social gains. In the empirical part
of the chapter, the authors analyze the formation of couples. Their results indicate
that a higher level of proficiency in Catalan by Spanish natives is associated with a
lower level of endogamy, that is, more cooperation between individuals of the two
language communities.
As part of an individual’s human capital, language skills affect individual
productivity and hence income. Since language policies—especially those directed
at acquisition planning—shape the distribution of language skills among the
population subject to such policies, they can have substantial impacts on the overall
economic performance and the welfare of the population. In chapter “Languages,
Human Capital and Well-Being in Sub-Saharan Africa”, Katalin Buzási and Péter
Földvári analyze quantitative empirical data to investigate the relationships between
certain aspects of language policies and the linguistic environment on the one hand
and per capita gross national income (GNI) on the other hand. Their study covers
about 40 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, a region characterized by high linguistic
diversity and relatively poor economic performance. The statistical analysis reveals
that the share of people speaking the official language—in many cases, the former
colonial language—and the intensity of local language use in education have
positive effects on income and human-capital accumulation. At the end of the
chapter, policy implications are discussed.
The free movement of workers is a fundamental principle of the treaties of the
European Union and considered an important tool for the efficient functioning of the
integrated market, hence promoting economic development and equal opportunities.
EU citizens are entitled to work and reside in other EU member states without any
permits. In reality, though, only a small number of EU citizens actually do so. One
reason for that is that the right to move is not the same as the capability to move, and
this capability has a linguistic dimension. To be more precise, language barriers and
insufficient language skills can hinder mobility. Hence, with respect to freedom of
movement, workers can be disenfranchised due to linguistic skills and requirements.
The distribution of language skills throughout the member states is a result of
language policies, predominantly at the national level. In chapter “Linguistic
Disenfranchisement and Labour Mobility in Europe”, Till Burckhardt proposes a
new approach to measure mobility-related linguistic disenfranchisement. Building
on the work of Ginsburgh and Weber (2016), the author develops a number of
indicators for linguistic disenfranchisement and applies them to empirical data on

enrollment in formal language education. He shows that disenfranchisement rates
strongly differ throughout the European Union and that disenfranchisement appears
to be correlated with mobility of labor.
In the institutions of the European Union, as in other inter- and supranational
organizations, people with differing language repertoires have to be able to commu-
nicate with each other. In chapter “Choosing Working Languages in a Multilingual
Organization: A Statistical Analysis with a Particular View on the European Union”,
Dietrich Voslamber argues that two conflicting requirements have to be weighed
against each other when choosing a set of working languages. On the one hand,
the number of working languages should be maximized to minimize linguistic
discrimination and disenfranchisement. On the other hand, the number should
be minimized to guarantee administrative efficiency and minimal costs. This is
exactly the trade-off between efficiency and justice. Voslamber suggests a statistical
approach to compare the effects of various selections of working languages, that is,
of different language regimes. This approach is applied to the case of the European
Commission, whose predominant working language today is English. Based on his
analysis, Voslamber argues for a less restrictive language regime and considers a
change in the Commission’s staff regulations.
8.4 Part IV: Sociolinguistic Views and Applications
The chapters in part IV offer sociolinguistic perspectives on a variety of issues

related to linguistic justice and language policies in multilingual settings. Mostly
based on case studies, the chapters illustrate that in designing appropriate language
policies an assessment of the actual linguistic environment is of considerable
importance. Which linguistic varieties are currently present or brought in by
immigrants? Which languages are used for what purposes? Which languages can
be used in which domains? Questions like these have to be answered to identify
and address linguistic inequalities. The chapters in this part of the book improve our
understanding of how language policy can contribute to a more fair management of
linguistic diversity and to deal with prejudices about multilingualism.
Another aspect addressed in part IV is the effectiveness of language policies.
For example, granting formal rights to minority language groups is only a first
step in building a fair linguistic environment. The actual implementation of those
rights is the second step. To enable communication with state authorities in
minority languages, multilingual staff or adequate translation services are needed.
Accordingly, incentives for the linguistic majority to learn additional languages have
to be established and barriers to jobs in the public sector for minority language
speakers have to be reduced. Last, the chapters show that language policies should
not only be thought of as top-down strategies but should take into account bottom-up
inputs.
In chapter “The Assessment of Sociolinguistic Justice: Parameters and Models
of Analysis”, Gabriele Iannàccaro, Federico Gobbo, and Vittorio Dell’Aquila
argue for an interpretation of linguistic justice based on the concept of linguistic

unease, which is defined as the set of situations in which the speaker’s linguistic
knowledge is not adequate for the linguistic needs of the moment. This relational
and situational concept is thus connected to gaps between individual linguistic
repertoires and the linguistic regime. It is argued that linguistic unease cannot be
seen as linguistic injustice per se, but that the lower the level of linguistic unease,
the higher the level of linguistic justice. A first step in analyzing linguistic justice
is to identify the whole range of linguistic varieties that are present within a given
linguistic community at multiple levels. For that purpose, the authors introduce a
number of sociolinguistic parameters that were originally designed for the study
of language vitality. Moreover, the authors present a set of dimensions, which can
be used to identify the language characteristics of mobile speakers, and, hence, to
identify potential unease for newcomers within a given linguistic community.
In chapter “Regulatory Environment, Linguistic Inequalities and New Oppor-
tunities for Hungarian Minority Interest Representation in Romania”, Zsombor
Csata and László Marácz analyze the situation of the Hungarian-speaking minority
in the ethno-linguistically mixed area of Transylvania in the northwestern part of
Romania. After the collapse of communism, the Hungarian-speaking minority has
gained more recognition and received more rights, as well as a certain degree of self-
government. As a consequence and due to international regulation, the legal position
of the minority has improved and the personality principle has been implemented
in administration and education. Nonetheless, several activists raised the issue of
territorial autonomy for regions with an absolute majority of ethnic Hungarians,
however, without much success. Such striving for autonomy, the authors see as an
old, or traditional, strategy. After joining the European Union in 2007, new strategies
have been adopted to support Hungarian language and minority rights. The authors
argue that these new strategies, comprising civic activism and the commercialization
of Hungarian brands, are more promising for achieving the aim of preserving the
Hungarian cultural identity and language than the old ones striving for territorial
autonomy.
Minority language rights do not only need to be granted formally, but also to be
implemented in order to achieve linguistic justice and language vitality in practice.
For an efficient provision of public services in more than one language, among
other things, bilingual staff is important. In two ethnically mixed areas of Slovenia,
Prekmurje (Slovene-Hungarian) and Slovene Istria (Slovene-Italian), bilingualism
is formally guaranteed at the institutional level. Regarding the implementation
side, knowledge of the majority as well as of the minority language is often a
prerequisite for employment in the public sector and a “bilingualism bonus” is paid
to staff having contact with the public. This policy not only fosters the provision
of bilingual public services, but also creates economic incentives for individuals to
acquire competences in the other language. Looking at both bilingual regions in
Slovenia, David Limon, Mojca Medvešek, and Sonja Novak Lukanovič question
the effectiveness of bilingualism-bonus policies in chapter “The Economic Value of
Mastering Languages: The Case of Ethnically Mixed Areas in Slovenia”.
In chapter “Language and Translation Policies in Context of Urban Super-

Diversity”, Reine Meylaerts builds on Bernard Spolsky’s concept of language
policy, which, in his view, encompasses language practices as well as beliefs
about language and language management, to look at translation policies. The
basic argument underlying this chapter is that in today’s complex, multilingual
democracies, translation policy is an essential part of every language policy.
Especially in today’s increasingly diverse urban centers, translation policies play a
crucial rôle for political and social inclusion of numerous allophone minorities. As
a case study, Meylaerts analyzes translation practices, beliefs about translation, and
translation management in the region of Flanders, Belgium, with a special focus
on the highly multilingual city of Antwerp. It is argued that due to the focus on
language acquisition by newcomers and a non-translation policy, the authorities are
not investing enough in translation services, which could help the inclusion of non-
Dutch-speaking newcomers.
In many European countries, the opportunities for language contact are steadily
increasing, mainly caused by an increase in international mobility. On the one
hand, EU citizens can work in other EU countries without a work permit. On
the other hand, the number of non-EU residents has been growing during the
last decade, not least due to the high number of refugees and asylum seekers
in recent years. The resulting outcomes poses questions about language policies,
which traditionally are often oriented toward monolingualism. In chapter “Language
Policies for Migrants in Italy: The Tension Between Democracy, Decision-Making
and Linguistic Diversity”, Sabrina Machetti, Monica Barni, and Carla Bagna
provide a critical overview of language policies recently adopted in Italy with a
particular focus on those directed at migrants. Building on applied linguistics and
sociolinguistics of migration, they consider three phenomena: education, the lack
of attention paid to scientific research on linguistic diversity by policy makers, and
proficiency tests for long-term residence permits. The authors find a widespread
monolingual attitude in political discourse and a negligence of linguistic diversity
in many policies. The exclusive focus on protecting and promoting Italian as the
national language as well as the perception of diversity as a problem inhibit a view
of languages as a factor promoting social inclusion, and do not facilitate migrants’
participation in activities in the public sphere in the host country.
Some scholars propose Esperanto—or some other planned language—as a can-
didate for a European or global lingua franca instead of English, especially because
of its neutrality and simplicity. Opponents of planned languages use arguments such
as a generally negative image, a limited communicative use until now, and—in the
case of Esperanto—its eurocentrism. In addition to that, some scholars predict that
Esperanto would massively import words and other characteristics from English,
were it more widely used. Guided by the historical trajectories of ethnic languages,
such predictions question the future validity of Esperanto’s neutrality and simplicity.
In chapter “Esperanto and Linguistic Justice: An Empirical Response to Sceptics”,
Cyril Brosch and Sabine Fiedler challenge these objections and predictions. Based
on case studies and corpus analysis, they show that native Esperanto speakers are
not comparable to native speakers of ethnic languages concerning status issues
and linguistic advantages over L2 speakers. Furthermore, data on code-switching

and terminology planning in Esperanto suggest that the influence of English on
Esperanto is less than on other languages and, hence, less than the predictions of
its critics.
Acknowledgements The editors and two anonymous referees—an author of another chapter and a
totally external one—reviewed each contribution to this book. We would like to thank all referees
for considerably contributing to the quality of the individual chapters and as a consequence of
the entire book: Javier Alcalde, Alisher Aldashev, Jean Claude Barbier, Astrid von Busekist,
Katalin Buzási, Ramon Caminal, Douglas Chalmers, Helder De Schutter, Antonio Di Paolo,
Victor A. Ginsburgh, Federico Gobbo, Gilles Grenier, Hartmut Haberland, Gabriele Iannàccaro,
Peter A. Kraus, Walter Krämer, David Limon, Georges Lüdi, Roberta Medda-Windischer, Reine
Meylaerts, Yael Peled, Dorrit Posel, Denise Réaume, Thomas Ricento, David Robichaud, Andrew
Shorten, Selma K. Sonntag, Nenad Stojanović, Jan ten Thije, José Ramón Uriarte Ayo, François
Vaillancourt, Dietrich Voslamber, and Shlomo Weber.
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Linguistic Justice: An Interdisciplinary
Overview of the Literature
Javier Alcalde
1 Introduction
This chapter aims at offering an interdisciplinary analytical overview of the different

approaches provided by the academic literature to the study of linguistic justice.
It deliberately focuses the biggest part of its attention on political philosophy.
Therefore, it presents in depth most of the arguments within this area of research,
divided into two broad categories (multiculturalism and equalitarian liberalism),
with an added emphasis in the territoriality vs personality debate. Although the
authors referenced are many, particular detail is given to the work of De Schutter,
Kymlicka, Laitin, May, Patten, Peled, and Van Parijs.
Regarding the economics perspective, the text tackles its most influential authors,
such as Pool, Selten, Grin, Wickström, or Gazzola, and their policy analysis on the
different issues related to resource allocation (efficiency) and resource distribution
(fairness) of language policy. Afterward, the chapter deals with a broad field that
includes sociolinguistics and other subfields of linguistics, such as ecolinguistics,
applied linguistics, but also education studies. Here the main authors are Phillipson
This chapter is based on a research funded by Esperantic Studies Foundation (ESF), whose support
is gratefully acknowledged, and supervised by Michele Gazzola and Bengt-Arne Wickström
(Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany), Mark Fettes (Simon Fraser University, Canada),
Sabine Fiedler (Universität Leipzig, Germany), Goro Christoph Kimura (上智大学—Sophia
University, Japan), and Renato Corsetti (Università Sapienza, Italy). See also Alcalde (2015b, c,
2016a).
J. Alcalde ()
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
e-mail: jalcaldevi@uoc.edu

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1_2
66 J. Alcalde
and Skutnabb-Kangas. Several of the most influential Catalan and Spanish authors
are also included, such as Bastardas or Moreno Cabrera. Related to this discipline,
many experts in interlinguistics and esperantology are also presented. Among them,
Fettes, Tonkin, and Fiedler are the ones reviewed more in depth. The last theoretical
section is the one on law, and here the only two major authors are Mowbray and
Pupavac. As this chapter focuses on the emerging interdisciplinary research area of
linguistic justice, it deliberately departs from the notion of “linguistic rights.” There
are different overlaps between the two research areas, but the concept of linguistic
rights is the object of a distinct and vast literature, mainly anchored in law, which is
not possible to present here.
The text does not aim at exhaustiveness, but it offers examples of the different
theories and approaches related to the concept. Therefore, despite not discussing
every work from every relevant author, as a whole, it offers a broad panorama of the
state of the art in the field. When possible, the focus is on the criteria proposed to
decide how a fair society should be organized from a language policy perspective.
Given that this is a field characterized by an interdisciplinary approach, it is not
infrequent to find philosophers who write about economy, for example, or who
incorporate sociolinguistic insights. Therefore, some of the authors presented in
this chapter can be found in more than one section, whereas others are located in a
section which is different from their academic affiliation.
2 Political Philosophy
2.1 Constitutivism vs. Instrumentalism
Political philosophers have only recently become interested in language policy.

In the 1990s, language policy was often considered as an implicit subset of
more general theories on multiculturalism and cultural recognition, as presented in
different works by authors such as Charles Taylor, Jürgen Habermas, Will Kymlicka,
and Seyla Benhabib. Many theorists who now turn to language are, in fact, applying
their larger theories to this field.
Such authors are not concerned with the study of actual language policies or with
empirical research on linguistic diversity. They deal specifically with the normative
political reaction toward languages. For this reason, Helder De Schutter (2007)
suggests that an appropriate way to refer to this field is linguistic justice, similar
to debates about socioeconomic or environmental justice. Therefore, in order to
study linguistic justice, they begin by setting specific normative principles of justice.
Afterward, they use language as one of the dimensions or applications of their
theories.
Linguistic Justice: An Interdisciplinary Overview of the Literature 67
This debate has its origins in the liberalism-communitarianism tension of the

1980s. Communitarians (e.g., Sandel 1982; Taylor 1992) questioned the individual-
ism of Rawls and answered by emphasizing a more culturally embedded picture of
the self where identity is one of its essential elements.
De Schutter (2007) reviews the literature by constructing a typology through two
different dimensions. The first is between an instrumental, i.e., language is a tool to
communicate thought (as presented in different works by authors such as John Stuart
Mill), and a constitutive understanding of the nature of membership in a linguistic
community, i.e., language constitutes who I am, my identity (as defended in several
works by authors such as Johann G. von Herder and Johann G. Fichte). The second
is between a transparent and a hybrid concept of language.
As we will see, among those who will try to bridge both traditions there is Will
Kymlicka, who will argue that individual autonomy requires a cultural context of
choices. Liberal nationalists (including different works by David Miller, Yael Tamir,
and Margaret Moore) and liberal multiculturalists (among others, several works by
Joseph Raz, Joseph H. Carens, and Amy Gutmann) will agree on defending the
moral and political importance of cultural membership. In language policy terms,
this means granting cultural minority groups language (and other cultural) rights.
Both ideas are contested by those who deny the idea of minority rights, such as
Brian Barry (2001) or Chandran Kukathas (2003). They argue that the state should
remain neutral in this issue, as it remains neutral in other similar issues, such as
religion. And then most authors will respond that language is a different issue in
which being neutral is simply not possible.
To a large extent, contemporary debates over language policy still follow this
distinction. On the one hand, constitutivists argue that language groups are entitled
to receive language rights and language protection, either from an objectivist way
(the language is important for the constitution of the self) or from a subjectivist
one (if a group claims language rights, these should be granted). De Schutter says
that both approaches need each other: objectivism without subjectivism would be
undemocratic; subjectivism without objectivism would be illegitimate. According to
most of these authors (e.g., Réaume 2003), a just theory of language policy should
accommodate linguistic groups and grant language rights to linguistic minorities to
remedy the injustice that arises when they are forced to live their life in the language
of majorities. On the other hand, instrumentalists see languages as tools to perform
nonlinguistically defined things. They normally accept the constitutive element of
language, but they think that nonidentity-related policy aims are more important
than the identity issues.
In sum, political philosophy is one of the most fruitful (and promising) disci-
plines in the study of linguistic justice. In this section, after examining the weak
points and the main subdomains of the field, two schools of thought are presented:
multiculturalism and equalitarian liberalism. Both of them share the same unit of
analysis, which is the individual—plus his/her (linguistic) rights and the fairness
68 J. Alcalde
of his/her relationships with other individuals—not the language per se.1 Different
authors agree on this division focusing on different aspects.2
2.2 Alternative Views
According to De Schutter, Peled, and others, the main flaw in the debate is an
inappropriate reliance on a very Westphalian and outdated empirical understanding
of the concept of language itself, which takes the world to be a set of separate
monolingual geographical areas populated by monolingual speakers. Therefore,
three are the main mistaken assumptions, which sociolinguists (among others) have
extensively proven wrong:
(a) Monolingual speakers
(b) Transparent boundaries
(c) Non-variable linguistic identity
For example, both Van Parijs and Kymlicka—to mention two of the most
influential authors in this field—recommend similar language policies, which
recognize a single official language to each territory. Van Parijs does so by following
the linguistic territoriality principle. Kymlicka argues for self-government rights
to each community to enable its members to maintain their own language and
culture. In other words, they try to make political and territorial boundaries coincide
with cultural and linguistic ones. But this concept of language and culture is
unrealistically homogeneous. In fact, such convergence is in the real world an
exception.
In this literature cases that do not fit very well into the frame of monocultural and
monolingual situations are treated as insignificant and vague details.3 However, they
include a vast number of diverse phenomena, such as cultural overlap, bilingualism,
cultural diffusion, diglossia, minorities within minorities, etc. Some examples are
the following:
(a) Two or more ethnic groups claim the same land.
(b) Two or more language groups live intermixed in a way that drawing consistent
borders around monolingual groups is not possible.
1 It has to be noted that some multiculturalists, the so-called communitarians (e.g., Sandel), would
not necessarily agree, because they understand the community as the subject of the analysis.
2 For example, De Schutter (2007) speaks about the constitutive nature of the speakers (or
linguistically embodied subjects) to characterize multiculturalism and the instrumental nature of

the speakers to characterize liberal equalitarians. On another front, Archibugi (2005a, b, 2008),
among others, argues that multiculturalism is concerned with a close relationship between language
and identity, whereas liberal equalitarians (particularly in their cosmopolitan version) understand
language mainly as means of communication.
3 A remarkable exception is Riera (2016), who focuses on linguistic justice for mixed societies. See
Sect. 2.5 of this chapter.

(c) Situations of linguistic pluralism and linguistic hybridity such as bicultural

bilinguals who do not consider themselves to be rooted in one group or another.
Moreover, such understanding of language makes certain linguistic preferences
less legitimate than others. In concrete, those with a cosmopolitan linguistic attitude
(or simply bilingual speakers) will be less taken into account than monolinguals.
2.3 Subdomains of Research
When it comes to the target or the context of application of the language policies,
linguistic justice theories can be divided into three (interdependent) subdomains:
(a) Multilingual settings: regions with more than one language. However, authors
still disagree in a range of questions, such as if “immigrant languages” should
be treated like “native languages” or if it matters the fact that minorities are
concentrated in a region or dispersed through the country.
According to Patten (2001), the dominant language policies in the literature
are those who aim at:
1. Guaranteeing equality along linguistic lines, by promoting the equal success
of each of the languages. This kind of language policies often end up
encouraging language diversity.
2. Guaranteeing equality along nonlinguistic lines, by promoting, e.g., socioe-
conomic equality of opportunities. This kind of language policies often end
up encouraging language homogenization.
3. Giving equal support to all languages with a per capita prorating: bigger
language groups get more support than smaller groups.
4. Giving equal support to all languages with an inverse per capita rating:
smaller and weaker languages get more support than the bigger and stronger
ones.
(b) Interlingual settings: transnational constellations, such as the EU or the UN. On
one side of the spectrum, some scholars argue for linguistic pluralism, “politics
in the vernacular,” where each member speaks his or her own language. From
this perspective, translation will play a major role in these settings. On the other
side, the proposal is linguistic homogenization, i.e., each member switches to
a lingua franca (increasingly English), with or without compensation for those
people for whom that lingua franca is a second language.
(c) International linguistic settings: This deals with diversity as a moral value,
language death, and linguistic globalization. Some scholars think that every
language loss calls for urgent political action. The opposite view says that
there is nothing wrong with language death. Intermediate positions will call
for political action only when the causes for the loss are unjust.
70 J. Alcalde
(d) Global cities. A fourth emerging subdomain is the local level. For example,
a recent contribution by Fettes (2015) argues that in today’s highly urbanized
world, language planning should shift toward policies centered at the cities,
often more multilingual and cosmopolitan than their national or regional
counterparts.4
Among the whole universe of cases, some of them are particularly studied in
this field. Catalonia, the Basque Country, Belgium, and Quebec, to name a few,
are among those that account for many references in the literature, especially from
the perspective of minority rights.5 However, when it comes to thinking about
the possibility of applying a common international language, then the European
integration takes the lead, together with the UN and even the League of Nations, to
test the implementation of different theories of linguistic justice. In fact, one of the
better articulated proposals in the whole field of linguistic justice (Van Parijs 2011a)
takes precisely Europe as a point of departure.6
2.4 Schools of Thought

2.4.1 Multiculturalism
Within the discipline of (liberal) political theory, some of the most relevant pieces
of research on linguistic justice have come from theorists of multiculturalism (also
known as liberal culturalism, politics of recognition or politics of difference), as
part of their understanding of justice. In concrete, they have focused on linguistic
rights of minority groups. Among the main authors, Kymlicka and Taylor tend to
be the most cited ones. In this section I will also present other authors that, without
being explicitly multiculturalists, do share with them the criticisms to the liberal
equalitarian theories represented by Van Parijs.
From this perspective, linguistic justice means protecting the linguistic rights of
minority groups. The aim is to allow these minorities to use their language in the
public sphere to balance the injustice and inequality that would happen if they had
to shift to another language. And this is so even if the other language is majoritarian
in the society and it could, therefore, allow communication with a higher number
of human beings. Being able to maintain their own language and to use it in every
aspect of life is understood as part of their equality of opportunity. This way the
4 In this regard, also Tonkin (2016) considers the city as the center of the (language policy) analysis.
He draws parallels between building a city and building a language, with Esperanto being a
cosmopolitan identity across cities. About linguistic justice in the cities, see also Alcalde (2016b).
5 A relevant exception is Bjørhusdal (2016), who studies the case of Norway.
6 For an in-depth analysis of the linguistic justice proposals for international organizations,
including see Fettes and Bolduc (1998), Fiedler (2010), Barbier (2012), and Fettes (2015), see
Sect. 7 in Alcalde (2015b).
context of choice is protected to the extent that every individual has freedom of
choice. Obviously, a first criticism of multiculturalism is feasibility. In other words,
in its purest version, this theory is not applicable because our societies are too
multilingual and they are made up with thousands of individuals speaking dozens of
different languages; therefore, it would not be possible to design a language policy
that effectively uses all of them in the public sphere. That is why multiculturalists
tend to recommend language policies that protect (some) established minorities (not
all of them), through language recognition (i.e., official status) for the minority
language and its use in the public education system. Typical examples of such
minorities who deserve language rights include the case of the Catalans in Spain
and the case of Quebec in Canada. In the next pages, I will review the most relevant
arguments related to this school of thought.
Kymlicka, Will. A famous quote by him (1995: 111) is useful to remind us that
the state cannot be neutral when dealing with language issues: “Many liberals say
that just as the state should not recognize, endorse, or support any particular church,
so it should not recognize, endorse, or support any particular cultural group or
identity. But the analogy does not work. It is quite possible for a state not to have an
established church. But the state cannot help but give at least partial establishment
to a culture when it decides which language is to be used in public schooling, or in
the provision of state services. The state can (and should) replace religious oaths in
courts with secular oaths, but it cannot replace the use of English in courts with no
language.”
He criticizes Rawls’ (1971) conception of equality, i.e., “whatever interest
individuals have in cultural membership is subordinated to their interest in securing
the liberties of equal citizenship” (Kymlicka 1989: 162).
In his different works, Kymlicka (e.g. 1995, 2001 and 2004) explains that our
life choices are always made from within a specific context which we cannot
choose. And this context is determined by our (language and) culture. Therefore,
people will have an interest in having granted access to their culture because it is
their culture which constitutes their context of choice. For this reason, all national
minorities should have the opportunity to maintain themselves as distinct cultures,
and language policies should be designed accordingly.
As far as immigrants are concerned, two goals need to be considered. In order
to achieve integration, they should learn the dominant language of their new state,
but in order to grant equality of life choices, there should be no requirement for
them to abandon their mother tongue. And a similar idea could be applied to those
international students who study abroad.
His distinction between national minorities and ethnic (or immigrant) minorities
has been very influential in the literature, but also criticized by authors such as
Meital Pinto or Iris Young. They show that such distinction is often blurred in reality,
and therefore, it could establish a normative bias and prejudice regarding the type
of rights every group should be entitled to.
Patten, Alan (2001), was one of the first political theorists to raise specific
research questions about linguistic justice:
72 J. Alcalde
– To what extent is language protection a requirement of justice?

– To what extent is language loss a moral loss?
– Under which circumstances would language loss demand political action?
– What does “language equality” mean as a normative goal?
In another work (Patten 2003a), he offers a number of arguments for multilin-
gualism. In each case, he tries to discern what sort of language regime (territorial
vs. personality-based) the argument tends to favor.7 For example, an understanding
of language rights based on access to public institutions will favor the personality
principle rather than regionalist language policies based on the territory. On the
contrary, the social mobility argument favors a territorial principle, provided that the
language community is big enough. Therefore, in places where millions of speakers
of the same language live in close proximity, it is possible to have a (reasonably
complete) set of social institutions in that language, which ensures that members of
the language community do not face diminished opportunities; however, in places
where the language community has not enough numbers, there is no prospect of
equal opportunity unless they acquire a more dominant language.
The language policy that makes most sense is then to promote minority languages
where they are viable and to promote integration (i.e., assimilation) elsewhere.
Patten also thinks that social cohesion and democratic participation arguments
support the principle of territoriality. On the contrary, (intrinsic) identity would
support a personality-based language policy. And this is so because language is
constitutive of identity, and therefore people should have the right to the identity
they prefer, without considering (the geographical place) where they are.
To sum up, Patten supports a constitutive procedural approach, which treats
all languages equally by giving them equal recognition, based on a per capita
distribution of resources. This way, bigger languages should receive more resources.
Eventually, only viable languages will survive, and in the rest assimilation will have
to be promoted.
Patten and Kymlicka (2003) have the first collection of works within political
theory directly tackling language justice, though not always using this term. Most
of these authors share a Rawlsian liberal framework. Empirically they mainly
focus on four cases: Canada, the United States, Belgium, and Spain. This book
has been criticized because most of the authors lack an accurate knowledge of
both postcolonial language policy literature and sociolinguistics. The first matters
because in the postcolonial era, waves of mass immigration have transformed some
states, which are no longer associated with a single national language. Similarly,
the second inform us that the world is far more complex than (individual and state)
monolingualism.
The introduction of the book is a relevant contribution to the field for different
reasons. One of the insights is the fact, already mentioned in Kymlicka (1995), that,
as outlined by the introductory chapter, language cannot be handled by analogy with
7 See Sect. 2.5 of this chapter for an explanation of the differences between the principle of
territoriality and the principle of personality.
other “liberal” areas, such as race, class, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.
Thus, whereas we can easily imagine institutions which are neutral to those issues,
we cannot do the same with institutions which do not favor a language (or a small
set of languages) over others.
A general controversy is the issue of individual vs. collective rights: are language
rights essentially collective rights, or are they rights that individuals can exercise
independently of their community? In general, these authors support the idea that
language rights are individual rights.
Finally, the book also describes the different policy fields subject to linguistic
prescription: access to government services, participation in public and political
debates, employment rights, access to education and health, the situation of
indigenous and immigrant minorities, historical oppression, and language polices
as a tool to promote nationalist policies.
In another work, Patten (2009) surveys the different reasons authors have
provided to justify minority language rights.8 They are normative arguments
based on the premise that “the case for state monolingualism is widely accepted
and fairly compelling.” In fact, he starts by listing the advantages of having a
common language—in other words, the reasons for the state to privilege a single
particular language. Among the bad reasons, there are those linked to the particular
circumstances and interests of the dominant groups and, also, outdated assumptions
about the intrinsic superiority of particular languages, which would contradict
today’s accepted idea that all languages are sufficiently elastic and versatile to
express all sorts of pattern of thought.
However, there are other good reasons (related to the common good), to argue
for state monolingualism. We find most of them in authors such as Van Parijs,
Archibugi, or Barry.
First, to integrate all of its citizens into a common national framework based on a
common language and a common identity
Second, to guarantee equal opportunities to work in the modern economy
Third, to facilitate a deliberative dimension of democracy in the communities
Fourth, to have more efficient institutions which do not spend time or money on
translations nor on simultaneous interpretation
Fifth, to help promoting the welfare state, by generating the necessary solidarity and
social cohesion to provide public goods effectively and reliably
Most of these arguments have been challenged. For example, even if certain
minority language rights are recognized, it is possible (and likely) that the speakers
of that language will be able to speak the majority language as proficiently as to
participate in the society; therefore, a multilingual system could actually be more
efficient (from the perspective of Pareto efficiency) than a monolingual one. On
another front, a common language is not always related to socioeconomic and
8 See also Patten (2014).

Another recent a survey of the normative literature on language policy and
planning is Léger and Lewis (2017).
74 J. Alcalde
political equality. In fact, there are many examples in which convergence on a

common language has done little to improve the socioeconomic opportunities and
political participation of minorities, which often depend on deeper causes than the
state’s language policy.9
Regarding the core part of the article, Patten distinguishes between five different
kinds of language rights:
1. Toleration rights are those protections citizens have against government interfer-
ence with their private language choices in environments, such as their homes,
the realms of civil society, the workplace, etc. According to Patten, it is easy
to justify this kind of language rights because they are normally linked to other
(more accepted) ones, such as freedom of expression, right to privacy, or parental
autonomy.
2. Accommodation rights are designed for people who lack sufficient proficiency
in the dominant language. They mandate positive state action but conditional
on an inability to speak the dominant language. For example, they might imply
the provision of interpreters in a court. This kind of rights is linked to other
entitlements. In the example above, the right to a fair trial.
3. Context-of-choice rights. According to Kymlicka (1995), to be autonomous, a
person needs access to an adequate range of options from which to make choices.
This context of choice will depend on the individual’s societal culture. Due to
the moral interest, all individuals have in the security of their societal culture,
the members of minority cultures are entitled to a set of cultural (and language)
rights to protect (the character of) their societal culture.
As for criticisms to this kind of rights, cosmopolitan authors have questioned
that autonomy depends on access to a societal culture, by arguing that people find
options to choose from a number of cultural materials, even in those which are
not part of their societal culture (and language). Probably, Kymlicka is thinking
in terms of monolingual individuals, and this is an assumption which has been
effectively challenged by authors such as De Schutter or Peled.
Patten argues that the context of choice argument only applies to cases of
vulnerable societal cultures, the ones which offer an adequate range of options
for autonomy, but which are deteriorating. In these cases, minority language
rights for the vulnerable language can help to protect it from deterioration.
Therefore, and relevant from a linguistic justice point of view, the argument does
not recommend minority rights for languages not corresponding to a vulnerable
societal culture, because there is no adequate context of choice present to protect,
in other words, cases of a non-vulnerable societal culture and cases without a
societal culture.
And this is a big limitation, because many minority language communities in
the world do not correspond to societal cultures (e.g., most immigrant groups).
9 See,e.g., Ricento (2015), who presents a collection of (mainly) non-western case studies on
developing countries, where English tends to increase wealth inequality, because it is related to
more opportunities only for the local elite.
The main reasons not to have a societal culture are low numbers, territorial
dispersion, and low socioeconomic status. In these cases, Kymlicka’s argument
would actually defend state monolingualism to encourage minority language
speakers to learn the majority language to improve their context of choice.
4. The end-state argument states that if a particular language is not flourishing,
a language policy should be designed in order to protect that language. That
language needs to be valued by some people, e.g., because it is regarded
as an identity-constituting value, because there is concern with maintaining
intergenerational continuity, etc. Patten is not a big supporter of this argument,
and in general, he follows Rawls to argue that citizens should, in an otherwise
fair context, bear the costs of their own commitments and attachments.
5. Regarding the fairness argumentation, language rights should be determined by
an independently specified conception of fairness. Without them, there would
be unfairness in the social process that determines the availability of minority
language options. According to Pattern, this is the most promising line of
justification for minority language rights. In this subset of fairness arguments,
the author mentions three different positions:
The first one is characterized by authors such as Blake (2003), Barry (2001),
and, in a limited way, even Patten (2003b). They consider that in any society,
language options depend ultimately on millions of uncoordinated choices about
language use that individuals make every day in going about their lives. This
perspective is skeptical about language policies designed to protect vulnerable
languages and would support instead the status quo, as this is what individuals
have chosen. In my opinion, these authors neglect the role of historical processes
of language contact and language shift (including the existence of repression and
violence) in the current configuration of language use. Therefore, sociolinguistic
concepts such as “minorized languages” could not be understood by taking into
consideration only individual choices.
Other authors (e.g., Réaume 2003; Green 1991; Rubio-Marin 2003a, b, or
Peled 2010) argue that language choices are deeply influenced by the incentives
and opportunities offered by social practices and institutions. Particularly rele-
vant is the role of state and government decisions, as they raise the symbolic
and practical value of learning and using some languages and lower the value of
others. From this perspective, a language policy which privileges the use of the
majoritarian language for public communication would be unfair to the speakers
of a minority language who also value their language and would like to use it in
every context of their everyday life to see it survive and flourish. The authors who
support this line of argumentation would prefer instead to implement language
policies that ensure language minority rights aimed at the protection and the
security of their languages.
The third one is the argument advanced by Kymlicka (2001). According to
Patten, this is the most promising line of argumentation, the highest justification
in the scale of language rights (so far), and the last stage in the theorization of
minority rights. The argument is that when engaging in a nation-building process
(i.e., to support a series of policies designed to promote the integration of all
76 J. Alcalde
citizens into a societal culture based on its national culture and identity), the
majority needs to grant extensive minority cultural rights to prevent situations of
injustice. In fact, national minorities should be given the same opportunity than
the majority to engage in minority nation-building.
In the last section, Patten deals with several challenges faced by Kymlicka’s
theory when defining its relationship with fundamental principles of liberal justice
or with the principle of territoriality (in Kymlicka’s view, language rights are always
associated with a territory) or, most importantly, the need for concrete principles to
decide which groups are legitimately entitled to a right to nation-build. According
to Kymlicka, long-established national groups are the ones who deserve such right,
whereas immigrants do not. However, many authors have responded with specific
criteria based on general characteristics, such as size or territorial concentration to
allocate fair rights. Following them, some (large) immigrant groups could be entitled
to more rights than some (tiny) native ones.
To sum up, part of Patten’s (2009) classification of the five kinds of language
rights is derived from the pioneering work by Kloss (1977), who introduced the
distinction between toleration-oriented and promotion-oriented language rights.10
According to Patten, the first includes both toleration and accommodation rights,
whereas the second includes the rest of the categories he identifies: context-of-
choice, end-state, and fairness rights. As Patten says, many disputes about language
rights raise questions that concern promotion-oriented rights.
Musschenga, Albert W. (1998), in a non-frequent view, says that languages have
rights, because they are morally valuable in themselves. Therefore, there is an
intrinsic value in preserving all languages and cultures. The response of the majority
of scholars is that languages and cultures will only matter if they are desired by
individuals, who are the unique bearers of rights. Nevertheless, a language policy
inspired by Musschenga would try to preserve as many languages of as possible.
In fact, he uses the case of the Netherlands to conclude that “the dominant cultural
group should preserve clearly deviant minority cultures which have considerable
intrinsic value.”11
Another relevant typology in this field is the one suggested by Bourhis (e.g.,
Bourhis 2001). Social psychologist Richard Bourhis analyzes what happens in the
society in terms of the language policies which exist in different countries. In a
way, his typology can also be understood as responding to four different theories of
language justice. He situates them in a continuum, which includes pluralism, civism,
assimilationism, and ethnicism. These ideologies are not mutually exclusionary,
and, therefore, it is possible to find the same (liberal democratic) state in different
places of the continuum in each policy issue, such as education or public services.
10 We will talk again about Kloss (1977) when presenting the influential article by Pool (1987) in
the economics section.

11 From a different perspective, other authors that have stressed that language diversity matters per
se are Grin (2011) and Morales-Gálvez.

The Bourhis team has been primarily concerned with western countries. Orig-
inally designed to examine ideologies (and state policies) toward immigrants, it
has also been used in a broader sense to include all minorities. These ideologies
exist as a combination of the state policies and the surrounding public support that
it is deemed were the basis of these policies, which are usually not codified into
constitutional form and are modified over time to reflect the changing circumstances
and attitudes of both the people and the government.
Following pluralism, language minorities should adopt public values of the
dominant majority. This might include the responsibility of all citizens to learn one
(or more) official language(s). However, minorities are free to maintain (private)
individual and native cultural values as long as they are within the wide confines
and boundaries of host laws. Private values include freedom of association in the
linguistic (and cultural and political) spheres but also the freedom for linguistic
minorities to learn and transmit their language. In general, there is a positive view of
minorities, which are considered richness for the society, and therefore, they should
maintain their diverse cultures to the extent that the government would support these
differences financially. Theoretically, this ideology supposes that both (majority and
minority) will transform themselves reciprocally due to sustained contact. However,
sociolinguistics has shown us that the majority language tends to transform (or even
assimilate) more the minority than the other way around (e.g., Laponce 2001). For
example, state policies toward immigrant groups in some Scandinavian countries
would follow this model.
According to civism, different cultural identities and values are allowed, but
not promoted by the host nation in a government policy of nonintervention. This
ideology is similar to pluralism, but here the government does not support them
financially. Actually, in multilingual states, it is translated into the support of the
cultural and linguistic interests of the majority, usually represented by the “neutral”
language of the (unique) nation. From this perspective, survival of the minority
language will depend on the market (i.e., offer and demand), which tends to favor
the dominant language. As an example, the author mentions that in many European
countries and various Latin American ones, the state tends to identify with a
“neutral” language policy.
Assimilationism supports both the adoption of public values by the immigrant
population and some private values of the host nation dominant culture. It normally
dictates a single language in the school system. It encourages voluntary (and
sometimes compulsory) cultural integration. This is expected to happen over time.
By using the (myth of) national unity, assimilationist policies have been designed to
reinforce the loss of minority languages. Examples of this ideology would include
the United States or France.12
12 Dasgupta (2017) suggests that minorities may be more open to assimilation if this includes
measures to secularize or deracialize the public sphere, mitigating this way the ethno-religious
or racial contestation.
78 J. Alcalde
Finally, the ethnicist traditions can be understood as a particular subset of the

assimilationist ideologies. They argue that the state can mandate the whole of public
and private values (including language issues) and make them a precondition to full
citizenship. This ideology makes more difficult for members of language minorities
to be accepted as members of the society, even if they assimilate linguistically
and culturally to the dominant group. In this sense, governments may enact blood
relations requirement or parentage to conditions for citizenship. For example, in
countries like Switzerland, Israel, and Japan, immigrants are not accepted if they
lack the ethnic blood to become full members of the citizenry, and so they can only
be allowed to a lesser status, such as guest worker or second-class citizen.
From this perspective, the state is not pluralist in itself, but only because it is
democratic and responsive to the pressures by the minority groups. Therefore, the
analysis of language policies should evaluate the degree of pluralism (or, in our
vocabulary, language justice)13 of the state in the acceptance of the development
of such language minorities. According to Bourhis, only from a plural vision of
democracy can coexistence and cooperation of all languages be achieved and,
consequently, the self-performance of individuals and groups, which affect the
happiness of mankind. In other words, only through more linguistic justice will
human happiness be achieved. However, as said before, even pluralism may not be
enough to guarantee the ethnolinguistic vitality of the different language groups.
As an attempt to situate some of the main authors in this typology, we could
say that probably Kymlicka would be mostly pluralist, whereas Van Parijs could be
close to civism, with some elements from pluralism and voluntary assimilationism.
In fact, by using the territorial principle, both Kymlicka and Van Parijs would also
argue for language policies not far from certain kind of assimilationism on a small
scale. Maybe Yael Peled, Helder De Schutter, David Robichaud, and such new kind
of proposals would go beyond the pluralist perspective as defined by Bourhis, by
granting language rights even in cases in which there are no significant pressure
from the minority groups.
Réaume, Denise (2003). For this author, language rights are justified on the basis
of collective, rather than individual, rights; in other words, the individual should not
be the unit of the analysis, but the group. In her view, it is the community which is
the subjected to rights and that makes hers an exceptional perspective in a debate
dominated by liberals who argue that it is the individual who is the one entitled to
rights. This would present an added challenge for indicator design because it would
need to establish clearly the boundaries and composition of every particular group.
According to Réaume, collective rights do not depend on the territorial principle.
On the contrary, she tries to use the personality principle, which guarantees
language rights without respect to location, to advocate policies designed to promote
minority languages. Therefore, a personality principle may justify no more (nor less)
protection for a language than any other kind of social division, like religion.
13 Even if he does not use the term linguistic justice, I believe his understanding of the term
pluralism is close to the meaning of linguistic justice by authors such as Kymlicka.

A language policy designed following Réaume’s insights would promote minor-

ity languages, even if they are not geographically concentrated. Therefore, depend-
ing on each empirical case, it would have severe problems of feasibility.
Another author who defends the existence of collective rights is the Canadian
Michel Seymour (e.g., 1994). He justifies the notion of collective rights by using
an anti-individualism perspective; in other words, the premise that the content of a
state policy is, at least in part, determined by the social environment. From this
perspective, he argues that the promotion and protection of certain fundamental
individual rights must require the promotion and protection of community rights.
And one way of doing that is through the constitution, particularly of multinational
states, which should include a charter in which an explicit reference is made to the
collective rights of their founding nations. His final point is the confirmation that
such a charter is not compatible with a policy of (liberal) neutrality by the state. In
other words, and for the purposes of this chapter, linguistic policies that are fair (in
the sense of respect for collective rights) rely on the state playing an active role to
promote and protect such community rights.
A similar perspective, though from law, is presented by Pierre Foucher (e.g.,
2008). In this work, he reviews language rights provided by the Canadian federal
government to its official language minorities, comparing those rights to so-called
traditional human rights as enshrined in the Canadian Constitution. The aim is to
propose ways to improve the collective language rights of Quebec Anglophones in
key domains including the Quebec legislature and the courts, education, government
services, designated institutions, and the private sector. The chapter closes with
key recommendations for improving the judicial status of the English-speaking
communities of Quebec. One of the main ideas is that emphasis should be placed
upon collective rights for the community rather than individual freedom of choice
of language, because it is the collectivity, not the language, which could be at risk.
A second one focuses on the importance of institutions (for the English-speaking
community) to defend its interests and where culture should flourish in all its
diversity.
Rubio-Marin, Ruth (2003a), distinguishes between instrumental and non-
instrumental language rights. The first would be those language rights that are
granted to individuals in order to enable them to enjoy political liberties. An
example of instrumental rights could be the right of people being judged in a trial to
be able to understand the charges against them and to be able to defend themselves,
even if this means employing the services of interpreters and translators. On the
contrary, non-instrumental language rights are those rights designed to offer security
to language communities, ensuring that their language is able to continue to exist,
such as the right to have schools in your language of choice, even if this is not the
dominant language in your community. Rubio-Marín also investigates the different
kinds of measures this distinction entails and advances the idea that language
policies should be placed in a global framework of legal rights, rather than as a
mere regulation.
In another work (2003b), she uses a useful analytical distinction between
immigrants and their descendants, which in my opinion creates an intriguing moral
80 J. Alcalde
puzzle. In her view, even if immigrants have decided to keep their language despite
the fact that it could disadvantage them from a socioeconomic perspective, it should
not be assumed that their children have made the same choice.
May, Stephen. Despite not being a political scientist nor a philosopher, I think
Stephen May deserves a place in this section, as he has closely dialogued within
the political philosophy school. He is a sociolinguist critical of the popular belief
that the nation-state is always linked with the identification of a single official
language. In May (2003b) he argues that the idea that a common citizenship and
a common political space need a common language has been (and still is) used to
justify national monolingualism.
Building from historical sociolinguistics, he shows how, in the era before the
modern nation-state, multilingual communities persisted for generations. Even
today, in large parts of the world, universal or near-universal bilingualism as a
stable situation is the norm and not the exception, including European cases – such
as the Balkans or the most Anglophile nations of Europe: the Netherlands and the
Scandinavian countries. This empirical evidence contradicts most of the authors that
write in the volume edited by Kymlicka and Patten (2003), who seem to think that
bilingualism is either impossible or a step toward assimilation into the dominant
language.
May also criticizes the constitutivist notion that “language must define identity”
as an essentialist and reductionist view. Yael Peled and Helder de Schutter, among
others, will tackle most of these points and develop them further.
In another work (May 2003a), he presents inspiring ideas to strengthen the
arguments for advocating for minority language rights, either from the disciplines
of language ecology or from linguistic human rights. And he does so by addressing
three criticisms to these ideas, which he partially supports. The first one is a
tendency toward essentialism in articulations of language rights. Critics say that
language does not necessarily define who people are and so they are not always
related to their identities. That would mean that language loss is not so bad, because
the persons can adapt to a new language. In this sense, there has been argued
that individuals may well make their language choices on the basis of social class
rather than ethnicity. These are examples of methodological individualism, normally
through rational choice, which cannot capture the collective element of language
use. May’s answer is to understand the complexities of the debates on individual
and collective identities and their associated rights claims. That means accepting
the contingency of language and identity. Thus, while a specific language may
be identified as a significant cultural marker of a particular ethnic group, there is
no inevitable correspondence between language and ethnicity, and there are many
examples of mixed and blurred situations in the real world. However, even if in
theory language may be just one of many markers of identity, in practice, it is often
much more than that. May quotes Bourdieu to conclude that the habitus, including
linguistic habitus, is both a product of early socialization and is also continually
modified by individuals’ perspective. And following Bourdieu he proposes this
concept to explore inequalities in power between dominant and subordinate groups
and finds it useful to understand the language continuum, a dialogical relationship
between linguistic continuity and change, rather than a dichotomous one, presented
by authors from language ecology and linguistic human rights.
The second one is the apparent utopianism and artificiality of “reversing language
shifts” in the face of wider social and political “realities.” Critics say that as much
as the process of language shift and loss is regrettable, there is little that can be
done about it. In fact, May agrees that biological/ecological metaphors can reinforce
such a view. According to him a change of perspective can help to overcome
such criticisms, in other words, to use a sociohistorical/sociopolitical point of view,
rather than a biological/ecological analysis of minority language rights. That means
speaking of the social and political power relations that underlie the question of
language loss (that Skutnabb-Kangas names linguistic genocide). This perspective
provides a counter-argument to criticisms of advocacy of minority language rights.
For example, the idea that such advocacy includes a moral component does not take
into account that all positions that are taken on language and minority rights involve
a moral dimension, reflecting the particular values and ideologies of their exponents.
And the third one is that the individual mobility of minority language speakers
is far better served by shifting to a majority language. This implies that the most
important aspect of language is its instrumental value and so, a rational individual
will end up choosing the majority language in order to have greater economic and
social mobility. This obviously does not take into account the identity dimension of
languages. And all languages include both dimensions: identity and instrumentality.
Also, their respective values change over time (e.g., in Catalonia the minority
language has increased its instrumental value in the recent decades). May goes on by
convincingly pointing to many inconsistencies of the arguments used by the critics
to minority language rights, such as Laitin and Reich (2003).
These ideas have implications for language policy and planning. Therefore, a
fair language policy should address the wider social and political conditions that
have framed most discriminatory language policies. He argues that this perspective
resonates with related research on the ideological influences of language policy,
which should mean a potential for collaboration between different academic
disciplines.
Drawing on political theory approaches, such as Barry (2001) and Van Parijs
(2011a), he argues in a more recent work (May 2014) against opposition to
multilingualism and the related privileging of English as global lingua franca. His
defense of both individual and public multilingualism is grounded in reasons of
linguistic justice, but also because it facilitates wider inclusion. In fact, empirical
evidence by Caminal and Di Paolo (2015) seems to support this idea.14
Pinto, Meital (2007), has an interesting interdisciplinary work, with insights
from three different disciplines: law, political theory, and sociolinguistics. By using
sociolinguistic (and anthropological sources), she presents a constitutivist approach
and argues that culture (and language) is a marker of identity. Culture and identity
14 See the economics Sect. 3.3 of this chapter below.

82 J. Alcalde
are intimately connected to the point that, following the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,
people can only experience and express their identity in their own language.
Based on philosopher Joseph Raz’s interest theory of rights, she claims that in
order to decide which minorities should have their language rights granted, the
interests of the different linguistic minorities in protecting their languages should be
comparatively evaluated. Due to the fact that, in general, resources are not unlimited,
the author concludes that the minority that possesses the strongest interest in its
languages should receive the strongest protection.
To present her theory, she examines the case of Israel, which shows the flaws of
Kymlicka’s distinction between immigrant and national minorities. “In the specific
Israeli context, in which the Russian minority constitutes a linguistic minority
that forms a semi-societal culture and has a strong connection to its language,
Kymlicka’s distinction is not relevant.” She uses instead the criteria based on the
strength of the interest in the language. Therefore, because Arabic constitutes an
exclusive marker of the cultural identity of Arab citizens in Israel, they will have
a stronger interest in their language than the Russian immigrants. Accordingly,
more extensive language rights (i.e., support for their language from the Israeli
government) should be granted to the Arabic-speaking minority than to the Russian-
speaking one. However, given the specificities of the Israeli case, even if her main
idea is original and suggestive, I think the potential of this contribution to analyze
other empirical situations could be overestimated.
From a supporting view of linguistic diversity, Ronald Schmidt Sr. (2014)
examines its implications for participatory political theory. According to him,
this implies clear advantages—named as the legitimation advantage, the common
good advantage, and the human-flourishing advantage—but also challenges regard-
ing communication effectiveness, social capital, and socioeconomic and political
inequalities. The essay also offers several suggestions to explore how to address
these challenges.
Rubin (2017) argues that identity-based normative justifications have little
leverage in the political arena and that is why despite normative theorists defend
policies of multilingualism, states remain reluctant to grant recognition and insti-
tutional accommodations to minority languages. For this reason, he presents three
nonidentity justifications of policies of multilingualism: the instrumental dimension
of language (access to multidimensional spaces in the political, social, and economic
spheres), utilitarian aspects about democratic performance, and (liberal) moral
values of equality, empowerment, and access. Concerning policy implications, the
author concludes that the state should only grant recognition to the languages of
substantial minorities (in terms of size or proportion) and regardless of their history
and legacy. Additionally, he defends that the number of official languages should be
expanded while requiring every citizen (including new immigrants) to comprehend
at least one of them. As far as small groups (historic or immigrant) are considered,
and given that the state cannot bear the cost of granting official status to their
minority language, they would not need to abandon their original culture, but their
members would have to learn an official language.
2.4.2 Equalitarian Liberalism
A second relevant school of thought, represented by authors such as Brian Barry or

Philippe Van Parijs, has been sometimes named equalitarian liberalism. They try
to relate language to equality in several ways. Among the different nuances to be
found within this approach, some authors consider that the benefits derived from
maintaining linguistic diversity are higher than those related to achieving linguistic
homogeneity, whereas others think that the opposite is true.
In this perspective language is a hazardous local convention. Following De
Schutter (2007: 4), language is mainly a tool to achieve certain goals, including
allowing communication between individuals and others such as15 :
– Equality of opportunity (Brian Barry and Thomas Pogge)
– Social mobility (Laitin and Reich)
– Absence of violence (Jacob Levy)
– A democratic deliberation process through a common language (John Stuart Mill,
Brian Barry, and Philippe Van Parijs)
This literature also mentions other objectives, such as reducing spatial mobility
of individuals, increasing cohesion and social solidarity, or increasing efficiency. In
fact, one of the first liberal accounts of fairness is closely connected to efficiency.
Utilitarianism says, in simple terms, that “a fair society is a happy society”
(Arnsperger and Van Parijs 2002: 27). From this perspective, we should implement
language policies that maximize aggregate welfare, i.e., the highest utility for the
highest number of individuals. Most of these authors are interested in the effects of
the policy and not in the principles that could have inspired it.
Indeed, those who have focused instead on principles, from Rawls to Dworkin,
from Sen to Nussbaum, have all insisted on the difficulties in measuring the different
utilities that each individual assign to each preference. And this is true in general but
also in the case of language policy in particular. Moreover, we know that even if this
assignment could be done, agreement on the decision is a complex task, which faces
many problems and paradoxes well studied by the scholars of public choice, starting
from the voting paradox of Condorcet.
And even if we assume the feasibility of the assignment of preferences and
the public decision which derives from it, critics have argued that the idea of
maximizing aggregate welfare would need to have some limits regarding our moral
intuitions. For example, it should not be fair to prosecute linguistic minorities, even
if this maximizes the welfare of the society.
As it will be shown, this approach has several strong points. First, it includes
ideas that resonate with other theories of social justice. Second, there is an
emphasis in equalitarianism from a multidimensional perspective. Also, most of
the recommendations can be translated into concrete policies. Therefore, a range of
different goals can potentially be achieved.
15 Most of these authors will be explained in depth in the following pages.

84 J. Alcalde
Liberal equalitarian authors follow Rawls (1971) and his principles of justice
to consider language as an asset, an instrument to achieve a society with higher
socioeconomic and political equality but also with higher equality of opportunities.
This concept of equality was first understood as having civil and political rights.
Later, authors like Barry and others will add socioeconomic rights. From this
perspective, equality is shared by all citizens, and so citizenship needs to be
universal and not multicultural.
One of the current authors who follow Rawls’ theory is Andrew Williams. In
Williams (2011) he deals with the following question: “if a state had to choose
between making its poorest citizens as rich as possible or protecting a particular
language as a primary means of communication in public life . . . would this be a
moral conflict?” He assumes that resources are limited and that linguistic protection
has economic costs, including the greater difficulty for firms to induce highly skilled
foreign workers to relocate there and the lower economies of scale involved in
teaching a minority language. He also assumes that under some conditions there
can be solid reasons to use political means to protect a threatened language, such as
a historical background based on rights violations or distributive injustice.
Following Rawls, Williams argues that in absence of such background, if the
wealth maximinimizing requirement needs to be granted, linguistic protection
cannot be a fair policy. For this reason, those interested in protecting languages
should renounce the maximinimizing requirements that according to Rawls are
necessary to achieve (socioeconomic distributive) justice. Therefore, Williams’ line
of thought is close to those authors who think that socioeconomic equality should
have preference over language equality. From this perspective, a policy designed to
protect a language will most likely be unfair to the least advantaged members of the
society.
According to Bonotti (2017), a Rawlsian perspective on language and linguistic
diversity should include the principle of equal basic rights and liberties, the value of
self-respect, and the principle of fair equality of opportunity. In his view, only the
third one can justify policies of multilingualism, because it is related to democratic
deliberation to identify people’s linguistic identities and preferences about language
policies. As far as these deliberations result in demands for multilingual policies, the
state will have to fulfill them, including various forms of official multilingualism,
such as bilingual education.
Based on Amartya Sen’s capability perspective, Lewis (2017) proposes a
“capability-based approach” to fair and just linguistic conditions. He argues that
certain personal and environmental factors (e.g., implicit social norms and conven-
tions) prevent people from effectively converting their formal resources (e.g., rights,
goods, and services) into opportunities. Accordingly, the effects of such factors
should be tackled through indirect and long-term policy programs rather than direct
and formally administrable remedies. Also Shorten (2017) considers that linguistic
environments can deprive people of capabilities even when they equip them with a
fair share of resources. As an example, he mentions an immigrant worker with only
limited fluency in the majority language, which is enough to securing employment,
but not to participating in politics, accessing medical services, etc. The author is
aware that in order to be applied, this approach needs that a satisfactory list of
capabilities can be agreed upon.
Barry, Brian (2001), presents an (infrequent) pure instrumental view of language.
He believes that linguistic equality is not a positive aim per se. In fact, linguistic
inequality and assimilation could end up in greater equality of opportunity. He
denies the concept of (collective) minority rights and argues that language should
not be a political issue. Therefore, the state should remain neutral, as it remains
neutral in other similar issues, such as religion. By including language issues in
the political agenda, nationalist (conservative) politicians are able to keep social
equality out of it.
According to Barry, our language is a mere local convention, an arbitrary tool
for communication, and so it is not a constitutive aspect of who we are. From
this (pragmatic) perspective, “democratic states have every reason for pursuing
the course that leads to linguistically homogenous polity,” and so, he does not
recommend a language policy that promotes the teaching of minority languages for
(in)efficiency reasons, because they do not have as practical use as other subjects.
Therefore, language policy should aim only at achieving nonidentity-related goals,
such as equality of opportunity or democratic deliberation.
Laitin, David, has studied different aspects of the relationship between language
and conflict, using formal models, statistics, and also extensive qualitative research.
Some of his researches could also be placed in the economics section of this chapter.
In general, he says, “cultural diversity is exciting and beautiful. At the same time,
diversity comes along with all sorts of political difficulties. So, I want to know how
you can sustain diversity and make it politically peaceful” (quoted in Gupta 2011:
20303).
He maintains that, to a certain extent, geography explains multilingualism. In
concrete, data show that there are more languages spoken per square kilometer; the
closer we are to the equator, the higher up we are in the mountains and the longer the
growing season. However, due to the fact that there are no clear causal hypotheses,
this could be a case of correlation without causation. On another front, if we would
like to design a language policy that promotes multilingualism, these findings could
be useful.
When it comes to the decision of learning a language, Laitin has proposed four
different factors:
(a) The main incentive is the expectation of the number of people who are going
to make the same choice, i.e., learning the language. He mentions the failure of
Esperanto, as learning the international auxiliary language only makes sense as
long as there are other people who decide to learn it.
(b) There are also the economic returns for language: the son of (Spanish) non-
Catalan parents realizes that if he learns Catalan he can get a better job, because
Catalans (the out-group) are extremely welcoming of people who made the
effort to learnt Catalan. This would be an incentive.
(c) A third one is called “jungle fever,” and it is related to the possibility of
diminishing your in-group status, within the minority group you are a member
86 J. Alcalde
of: some African Americans may feel that African Americans dating whites are
traitors to their own community. This would be a disincentive.
(d) The last one is status in the out-group, or majority. Even if a member of a
minority group learns the majority language, if people can know that he is not
from the majority group, there will not be any economic return. This would also
be a disincentive.
Accordingly, language policies aiming at encouraging the learning of a language
should take into account these four mechanisms that may become positive or
negative incentives.
Similarly, in other works (Laitin 1997, 2007), he finds that language shift serves
as a compelling measure for cultural assimilation or separation. For example, after
studying the Russians living in the new ex-Soviet republics, he found that the main
reason they decided to learn the (new) national language was (out-group) status.
Thus, they were more likely to learn a language associated with high status (e.g.,
Estonian and Latvian) and less likely to learn the language of other nations, e.g.,
Kazakhstan or Ukraine, which are not associated with high status. From this fact,
we could conclude that in order to promote the learning of a language, we should
implement policies that increase the perceived status associated to the speakers of
that language.
In Laitin (2004) Language Policy and Civil War, he maintains that the decision
of recognizing minority languages does not depend on the degree of attentiveness
of the country toward the ethnic minorities, but on the fact that these countries are
particularly weak. This has direct implications for the concept of linguistic justice,
because, according to him, “the steady increase in state recognition of languages
cannot be interpreted as a trend toward justice; rather it appears to signal a trend
toward state weakness.”
The introduction in the analysis of the variable weak/strong state leads him to
conclude that the official recognition of language diversity has different implications
depending on the country that performs it. For weak states, such recognition is very
risky and might be connected to armed conflict and even civil war. For more stable
states (e.g., West Europe and North America), it will only mean cultural concessions
to powerful minority groups. According to Latin (2004: 183), “states that are weak
(especially those coming out of colonial rule) and groups that can undermine state
power conjoin to yield linguistic recognition and this would explain the correlation
between language concessions and civil war.”
This idea is further developed by taking into consideration the existence of a
strong ethnic group:
(a) In case of weak groups and strong states, there are no civil wars and no linguistic
concessions.
(b) In case of strong groups and weak states, it seems to be both linguistic
concessions and high probabilities of civil war.
(c) In case of strong states beginning to weaken, we might see linguistic conces-
sions but no civil war.
Despite the fact that this work does not include any normative concern, from a
language policy perspective, it nevertheless can be useful. Indeed, these findings
suggest that weak states should be very careful when implementing linguistic
concessions, because in some cases (when there are strong ethnic minorities), this
could lead to violence.
In another work, he accepts linguistic concessions, as long as there is enough
political or social mobilization that demands it. Together with Laitin and Reigh
(2003), Laitin begins by attacking language rights-based conceptions. They divide
liberal normative approaches to language policy in three categories: compensatory
justice, liberal nationalism, and liberal culturalism:
(a) Using the Catalan case as an example, compensatory justice is identified with
the idea that linguistic minority communities are (or have been) the victims
of unjust policies. For this reason, language rights would be justified with the
aim of compensation. However, it could be argued that the number of minority
language speakers that are willing to accept compensation in order to integrate
into the majority community is not clear. If they envision their language as
something of intrinsic value, this undermines claims for compensatory justice.
(b) (Liberal) nationalist scholars understand language policy as a mechanism for
(re)claiming cultural sovereignty or national territorial rights. Language, thus,
is the proof of the existence of a unified nation and its desire to promote its
language. Latin and Reich regard this position as incompatible with liberalism,
since it entails a state authority over people’s freedom to live in the language
they choose.
(c) Liberal culturalism is the position Laitin and Reich associate with Will Kym-
licka, which considers those groups which share an identity as a single entity,
whose rights deserve protection. They point out the difficulties this presents for
the individualistic approach of liberal theory, due to the fact that these groups
do not have a common view about what they want or need.
Having seen the problems of the three liberal approaches to language policy, they
offer a fourth alternative: the prospect of politically negotiated language rights. In
this perspective, language rights depend on the social/political mobilization behind
them. In other words, if a language community is able to mobilize (e.g., electorally)
within a system of democratic decision-making to secure its language rights, then
these rights should be secured. Otherwise (even if criticizing practices such as
the beating of children for using their own language in school), they do not see
any particular liberal contradiction with monolingualist policies. By doing so, they
explicitly advocate for the politicization of language issues, which would be only
limited by general liberal principles of fair behavior toward individuals.
Laitin and Reich use the (positive) examples of Quebec and Spain as places
where political negotiation has secured language rights to the regional minorities.
However, in another work (Laitin 2011), David Laitin has criticized such politiciza-
tion in several cases, including the case of Catalonia. Following William Riker’s
concept of heresthetics, he affirms that politicians use nationalism as a second
dimension of political contestation in order to split the votes of the poor.
88 J. Alcalde
The language policy that follows from Laitin and Reich’s political theory is more
interested at explaining reality (i.e., justifying the status quo) than at changing it
(i.e., improving situations of language injustices).
In another work (Laitin 2013), he mentions a previous research in which he
argued that the language policy of the EU should follow the Indian model, the so-
called 3+/−1 language system. This is said to be a multicultural and multilingual
equilibrium: English as the language for business, Hindi as the Indian (so-called
cultural) language, and a third one depending on the state you are from. Then, you
might need a fourth one if you are from an ethnic minority, or it may also be the
case that the official language in your state is Hindi. In that case you will only
need two languages: English and Hindi. In my opinion, this approach improves
from other political theory analysis because it admits (and even is based on) the
fact (extensively shown in sociolinguistics) that an individual can be bilingual
and trilingual and it implicitly recognizes that this fact is more the norm than
the exception.16 On the negative side, it does not address the fundamental justice
question presented by a situation in which some people need to learn two languages
to be fully integrated in society, whereas others need three and others four.
In the European Union, the application of this logic gives us a 2+/−1 language
system. According to Laitin, “the language of Europe is English.” Then, if you are
not a native English speaker, you will need to learn the official language of your
country, e.g., Spanish in Spain. If you are a member of an ethnic minority, you
might need a third one, e.g., Catalan in the Catalan region of Spain. He simply
says that this is what it is increasingly happening now (and so eventually will be
the future) in the EU, a system or language repertoire “which everybody shares
and everybody understands.”17 Implicitly, he seems to say: “and this is the right
(and most efficient) way of dealing with the language issue.” From this perspective
language policy in the EU should promote English in every country plus the national
language. In cases where a minority (concentrated in a territory) has a language of
its own, this language should also be protected and promoted. To sum up, these
recommendations are not very different from Van Parijs’ proposals.
When it comes to the economic side of his work, in an interview in 2009, Laitin
explained his research on whether multilingualism at the state level was associated
with poverty (Tordera 2009). In particular his research question was “if in a well-
established state you give linguistic autonomy to a region, what is the expected
loss on GDP?” Since the empirical evidence he found was negative (there was
no expected loss on GDP associated to linguistic concessions), he does not longer
believe that multilingualism is necessarily associated with lower economic growth.
This finding could support language policies designed to promote multilingualism
in a community or in a state.
16 “Language has special appeal”—he says—“because unlike religion or race, it is cumulative. You
do not have to give up Somali to learn English, but you must give up Christianity to become a
Muslim” (quoted in Gupta 2011: 20301).
17 See Peled (2015) for a more developed concept of language repertoire.
Another of Laitin’s works related to linguistic justice and language diversity is

Laitin (2011), a presentation given in Barcelona, based mainly on his research about
the case of Catalonia and on a formal model which uses the case of Norway. In
this work, he reminds us that sociolinguists have modeled the rapid decline in the
number of world languages, fearing the loss of linguistic diversity in the world. At
the same time, other scholars have shown how globalization has made English the
focal language of economic mobility. This, in turn, is provoking the improvement of
the socioeconomic conditions of educated people in many countries, who will learn
English precisely to take advantage of the economic returns of learning English.
Laitin’s model argues that as long as this process goes on, i.e., wealth increases
in a globalized world, whereas highly educated people have consumption choices,
these highly educated people will invest in such education for their children that
will sustain their own language, and therefore, they will sustain world linguistic
diversity. His statistical findings show a bigger support for his hypothesis in small
countries, such as Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg, or Israel, than in big countries,
such as Germany, Poland, Spain, or Turkey. In conclusion, from a language policy
point of view, a good way of ensuring (some degree of) linguistic diversity is to
promote the teaching/learning of English. Indirectly, through the creation of wealth
for those (highly educated) native speakers of other language different from English,
an incentive to promote linguistic diversity will also be created, together with the
necessary resources to implement it.
After exploring the situation of the Spanish language in the United States,
Thomas Pogge (2003) criticizes Kymlicka’s advocacy of minority language rights
and defends a strong monolingual national policy. In his view, historical injustices
are irrelevant to Spanish language policy, because it is impossible to differentiate
between those who we could name newcomers (recent immigrants from the
Hispanic community) and oldcomers (people who descend from those present in
the United States at the time when its borders were extended).
He also claims that linguistic inequality does not entail an injustice from a liberal
point of view, because it is based on different choices that different individuals have
made. Thus, such inequality ends up in a greater equality along a more important
(nonlinguistic) dimension, which is equality of opportunity. For example, when
thinking about education, what matters to him is to offer the best education for each
child. In the US context, this leads him to believe that the English-only education,
and therefore monolingual English policies should be pursued, particularly in the
field of education.
Similar to Blake, Jacob Levy (2003) contends that the death of a language is not
necessarily related to an injustice. His argument has to do with the costs associated
with acquiring literacy. Different from other authors trained in political theory, Jacob
Levy is aware that multilingualism is a feature of many language communities.
Building from this fact, he claims that linguistic assimilation occurs because the
cost of becoming literate in multiple languages is higher than the cost of becoming
fluent in a single foreign language.
According to Levy, many modern languages were constructed as unions of
diverse dialects, in order to have access to a wider society. Therefore, this way
90 J. Alcalde
of building a competitive linguistic community would be a form of cultural self-

defense, which has occurred in history spontaneously. However, it could be argued
that phenomena of language construction by merging dialects are the result of a
designed policy and not as spontaneous as Levy claims.
For him, living the entire life in a language of limited scope is expensive,
because it limits its speakers from opportunities for personal advancement. From
this perspective, language should not be a prison, and children should not be tools
in the maintenance of unsustainable sociological divisions. Linguistic diversity,
therefore, will decrease naturally. Some of these arguments resemble Patten (2003a)
when he tries to distinguish between the lost causes and the languages which are
viable.
In a previous work (Levy 2000), this author analyzes the relationship between
language and conflict by suggesting a certain type of multiculturalism. First of
all, he accepts that language is connected to the identity of a person. However,
when designing a language policy, nonidentity aims should be more important
than identity issues. Particularly, according to him, we should design cultural and
linguistic policies in such a way as to avoid violence, cruelty, or humiliation. And
these policies should be based in providing minorities those language rights that will
contribute to the formation of intercultural frameworks that can mitigate interethnic
conflicts (i.e., those conflicts which result from interactions between minority and
majority groups in multilingual societies).
Some of the most original contributions to this field have been proposed by
Philippe Van Parijs.18 This author sees linguistic justice as part of a necessary
global solidarity, which would be built with the help of a universal basic income.19
In concrete (and among other purposes), this instrument would serve to correct
the inequality of opportunity. Based on two controversial assumptions, his main
language policy recommendation combines the promotion of English internationally
and the protection of certain languages through the territoriality principle: (a)
assuming that English is already de facto the global lingua franca, it should be
further promoted; and (b) assuming that the world is characterized by linguistically
unified territories, the territoriality principle should guarantee language rights to
dominant groups in homogeneous territories.
In Van Parijs (2011a), this author offers three different interpretations of linguis-
tic justice.
(a) As a fair cooperation, language is considered as a public good. The problem
is the unfair sharing of the burden of producing such a public good (i.e.,
English). Among the solutions the philosopher suggests poaching on the web
as compensatory free riding. In other words, to counterbalance the economic
advantage of the English natives, those with a different mother tongue will
have free access to English content in the Internet. Moreover, English natives
18 See, e.g., Van Parijs (2000a, b, 2003a, b, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2011a, 2013, 2015, 2016).
19 For the idea of linguistic justice connected to EU-wide institutionalized social policy, see Van
Parijs (2016).
will remain monoglots as opposed to the rest of the world, and that is also
a disadvantage. With the expansion of English in the long term, however, the
problem would wither away. As everyone would be able to speak fluently the
language, there would be no advantages for the English natives.
(b) As equality of opportunities, language is considered as capital, an asset, a
productive skill. The problem is the native English-based multidimensional
advantage. The author creates a new category of people, the linguistically
handicapped, who face an inequality of opportunity due to the fact that
their mother tongue is not English. Among the solutions, Van Parijs (who in
other works had suggested a specific tax to compensate those linguistically
handicapped) uses his idea of a universal basic income. He also proposes a ban
on dubbing and the virtuous circle of dissemination (i.e., language immersion
in the school, etc.), so that in the long term, the disadvantage is reversed.
(c) As equal dignity, language has symbolic value. The problem is that those
who are not proficient in English will suffer from an absence of recognition
of their dignity. As far as the solution is concerned, we should apply the
linguistic territoriality principle (which somehow contradicts his big support
toward fostering a lingua franca). According to Van Parijs, we would then
achieve respect for every language which is official in each territory by the
principle of reciprocity, ensuring the survival (at least in the short term) of those
languages and also the pacification of linguistic conflicts. This solution faces
other challenges when it comes to setting the (necessarily arbitrary) borders
of the territories, but also in terms of its implementation. Nevertheless, the
long term again minimizes this problem, because we are heading toward the
vanishing of linguistic identities.
According to Van Parijs, linguistic diversity based on the principle of territoriality
is “the firmest and increasingly the only serious” protection for cultural diversity.
First, it is a stabilizer of the population. Second, it avoids disruption of little
communities, and by doing that it stops socioeconomic solidarity, given that the
self-identification with the language of the territory favors social cohesion. Third,
it avoids linguistic conflicts in multilingual territories, such as segregation in
education or the inequalities derived from the different linguistic uses in a territory.
Finally, the most important benefit is the fact that in each territory, there would be
an adequate language for the process of democratic deliberation in equal conditions.
However, it can be argued that frequently we find territories where different
languages are spoken. In multilingual territories, those linguistic minorities, which
do not feel the official language of their territory is their language, would not have
linguistic recognition.
In Van Parijs’ theory, a big cost for the citizens (in the short term) is the
learning of the lingua franca, necessary to achieve a better communication outside
the territory. And this is the main basis for the economic inequality in the
communications with the natives of the territory where the lingua franca is spoken.
That is why such inequality should be compensated by the speakers of the lingua
franca in order not to act as free riders, because they would also benefit from
92 J. Alcalde
communications with the rest of the citizens from other territories without effort
nor cost to learn the language.
With the extension of the global lingua franca, high-skilled workers (those who
are proficient in the lingua franca) would tend to migrate toward territories where
the lingua franca is spoken. In different works, Van Parijs has faced this issue
through different mechanisms, including a fiscal system favorable to those high-
skilled workers, a language tax to be paid by the territories where the lingua franca
is spoken but also by poaching the web (e.g., Jstor). However, we have to keep in
mind that this would be a temporary situation, because in the long run, learning
the lingua franca would have a much-reduced cost and so it would be available for
everyone.
As we will see when examining authors such as De Schutter or Peled, this
perspective has been highly criticized. For example, recent compilations of articles
have also challenged Van Parijs’ ideas, such as De Schutter and Robichaud (2015),
to which he has responded by clarifying his claims and making some concessions
(Van Parijs 2015). In the first place, several authors, such as Sue Wright and
Stephen May, emphasize sociolinguistic complexities which are absent in Van
Parijs’ analysis. Van Parijs accepts the criticism, but he argues that even if he accepts
most of them, this does not invalidate the main points of his analysis.
Wright (2015) considers that in the era of globalization and linguistic superdi-
versity, current theoretical tools do not allow us to grasp transnational language
practices and patterns of contact, which are more function driven than in the past.20
In order to understand them, a new linguistic paradigm is needed, one beyond
the conception of language as a system related to national monolingualism and its
divisions.
May (2015), like Bauböck (2015), emphasizes the symbolic and identity func-
tions of language. Moreover, in the same line than Laponce (2015), May argues
that Van Parijs ignores issues of power and inequality, including those related to
the different English language varieties. He also affirms that Van Parijs’ conception
of linguistic territoriality does not face linguistic hierarchies already taking place.
Most importantly, May stresses the idea that Van Parijs’ monolithic view of English
does not correspond with a world where many different Englishes coexist. Due to
each of them has a different status and communicative uses, access to them cannot
be linked to social and economic mobility, as Van Parijs has suggested.
On another front, Robichaud (2015) refines the cooperative justice argument by
pointing out that if we accept English as the inevitable global lingua franca, the
contribution by native Anglophones is not needed and so they are free to benefit
from the system without paying any cost. Otherwise, if the configuration of the
(future) global linguistic regime is unclear, he proposes particular benefits that
would only be accessible to native Anglophones through cooperation, i.e., through
contributing to the creation of English as a global lingua franca. This way the
20 About superdiversity, see also Marácz (2014).

cooperative justice argument is amended so that native Anglophones share the cost
of those deciding to learn English to improve their social and economic chances.
As it might be difficult to objectively determine individual interests in languages,
the same author in another work (Robichaud 2017) builds on the notion of market
failures—both insufficient information and externalities—to justify coercive and
state language policies to make speakers equal. In his view, allowing individuals to
choose which language to learn, speak, and transmit is bound to produce suboptimal
results, whereas choosing a collective strategy democratically about the medium of
instruction, language in the workplace and other social domains, could help solve
such market failures.
Van Parijs’ petition to accelerate the dissemination of the lingua franca is
challenged by Réaume (2015). From a theoretical point of view, she criticizes the
understanding of equality by rational choice approaches based on the democratic
benefits of linguistic uniformity. On the one hand, a focus on equality of opportunity
and social mobility through lingua franca competence does not take into consider-
ation the long-term consequences for nonnative communities. On the other hand,
even if the idea of compensating the losers of the competition between languages
can increase the level of equal opportunity for individuals, this will happen at the
expense of increasing the inequality among language communities.
Stilz (2015) affirms that Van Parijs lacks a convincing account of why global
English poses a threat to parity of esteem for other linguistic communities. She
offers the argument that it does so only because background power inequalities
are driving its adoption. She also argues that official multilingualism provides a
superior approach than linguistic territoriality to managing linguistic heterogeneity.
In a similar vein, Weinstock (2015) challenges Van Parijs’ assumption that most sit-
uations in which smaller languages are threatened by larger ones can be assimilated
to “colonial cases,” in which there is a clear injustice as between the two linguistic
groups. Moreover, he argues that the amount of coercion that would have to be
applied even within linguistically defined territories in order to avoid the erosion
of the smaller language has been underestimated. Van Parijs (2015) responds that
in his view even in cases without political or economic oppression, the fact that
speakers of the stronger language do not learn (and use) the language of the local
community can be considered as a deviation from justice as parity of esteem. And
he complements this idea by aligning himself with Patten’s (2014: 225) “hybrid
thesis,” i.e., a position that tries to combine both the recognition of every (native)
language present in a territory and the (coercitive) support of the locally dominant
language.
Laponce (2015) agrees with the two main arguments by Van Parijs in favor of
English as the global lingua franca and in favor of the territorial protection of the
languages of minority nations, but for different reasons. About the first one, he does
not think that English as a lingua franca will be a matter of justice; however, it has
to be done for reasons of convenience. So, for the purposes of this chapter, despite
his coincidental agreement with Van Parijs, Laponce acknowledges that this mean
being unfair to nonnatives. About the second one, he grounds territorial protection
as a fundamental right of national self-determination. Similarly, Bauböck (2015)
94 J. Alcalde
argues that Van Parijs’ theory does not take into account the value of language as
an instrument for political self-government. According to him, a universal right of
individuals to membership self-governing polities would increase egalitarian global
justice, which would help to defend coercive territorial language regimes.
According to Wickström (2016a), the solution by Van Parijs is connected to
domain losses in other languages and the development of diglossia, as well as to
unintended welfare effects of changes in language use due to changed perceptions
and possibilities. The other languages will no longer serve to discuss themes related
to the lost domains.
According to García (2016), Van Parijs misses to address the legitimacy issue.
That is, any language regime needs to be acceptable to and be supported by a
majority of the citizens. From this perspective, it is relevant to decide the boundaries
of the political community at which the expression of citizens’ preferences should
be measured. In her view, there is not enough empirical data available on citizens’
language regime preferences, so we cannot know if a particular language regime is
accepted or not by the citizens.
Contrary to Van Parijs, Marácz (2016) argues that languages and multilingual
communication are relevant for the development of Social Europe. Thus, in the
current unfair situation, there is a European elite who speaks a European variety
of global English, whereas half of the EU citizens do not have any knowledge of
English at all. On the one hand, decontextualized English cannot mediate between
the different political cultures in Europe that are rooted in language, as defended by
Barbier (2013, 2014). On the other hand, an English-only policy would privilege
those higher educated and better-off in Europe (as argued by Gazzola 2014b),
challenging this way a more equalitarian Social Europe. Marácz concludes that
in order to overcome this situation, we need a neutral, transparent, and accessible
lingua franca. Probably Van Parijs would agree with that conclusion and add that this
needed lingua franca is precisely the English that we already have. And probably
Marácz would respond that his argument is actually that English is not neutral,
transparent, and accessible enough.
Morales-Gálvez (2016) considers that a fast expansion of English is connected
to the globalization of an Anglo-American life-world that impoverishes global
democracy. From this perspective, language diversity matters (as argued by Grin
2011), as it helps to preserve different moral opinions, something needed in a
meaningful democratic-deliberative process. If the solution proposed by Van Parijs
is implemented, the author concludes it might be that more voices could be heard,
but with less substantial diversity of opinions.
Using the example of the Catalan case, Castaño (2006) has proposed a modified
version of Van Parijs’ theory, by suggesting a territorial multilingualism based
on a non-pure application of the territorial principle. The idea is that we do not
need to limit the official languages in a territory to a just one because linguistic
substitution can be avoided in other ways. The aim has to be to find an equilibrium
between (some of) the languages in a territory, not all of them, because this would
be impossible in practice. This theory argues for a multilingualism of the whole
population based on the territorial principle: the inhabitants of a territory should
know the minority language of that territory (e.g., Catalan) the “local” lingua franca
(also understood as the majoritarian language, i.e., Spanish) and the global lingua
franca as a third language, i.e., English.
Stojanovic, Nenad (2011), defends the proposal of a single federal electoral
district for Belgium, first suggested by Deschouwer and Van Parijs (2009)21
and which also mentions Dave Sinardet (2011). Stojanovic’ chapter deals with a
particular aspect of the proposal: the linguistic quota system (i.e., reserved seats for
language groups).22 According to Deschouwer and Van Parijs, “in the absence of
quota many voters will be reluctant to support a politician from the other language
group for fear of contributing to a reduction in the representation of their own group
in the Parliament.”
For Stojanovic, this aspect of the proposal creates two problems: one is related
to legitimacy and the other one to non-territorial quotas. The first one is illustrated
by the fact that, potentially, French speakers alone could decide who would occupy
the Flemish quota and vice versa. About the second one, his research has shown
that, as a general rule, such quotas should be avoided in free and democratic
liberal societies, which attribute individual rights on the basis of territorially linked
citizenship and of membership in non-territorially defined groups.23
Inspired by the Swiss case, Stojanovic proposes three amendments to the Pavia
Group proposal. In order to solve the legitimacy problem, he suggests using a
formula of geometric mean to fill the seats reserved for each region. Secondly, he
advocates for linguistic balance by introducing territorial (instead of linguistic non-
territorial) quotas on the basis of the three existing regions. Finally, he proposes
the use of a majoritarian instead of a proportional electoral system, which would
complement the other two suggestions.
From a language policy perspective, these suggestions follow Van Parijs’ main
ideas. For example, it reflects a clear belief in the linguistic territorial principle
for Belgium (and potentially for the EU), which has been criticized by Helder de
Schutter (2008) and David Robichaud (2011) among others.
Sinardet, Dave, starts from Habermas’ democratic theory and his concept of
public sphere as a prerequisite for democratic legitimacy. Sinardet quotes Fraser
to explain this idea: “Democracy requires the generation, through territorially
bounded processes of public communication, conducted in the national language
and relayed through the national media, of a body of national public opinion”
(Fraser 2007:7). The challenge is to apply the concept of public sphere to a
21 This text is also known as the Pavia Group proposal. The Pavia Group is made up by a group of
intellectuals, who aim at providing concrete solutions for linguistically heterogeneous polities such
as Belgium or the European Union. The group is coordinated by Philippe van Parijs, and its name
stems from the place where its members gather: Van Parijs’ house in the Pavia Street in Brussels.
See www.paviagroup.be.
22 In a book originally written in the form of nine philosophical dialogues, this author has studied
extensively the possibility of using quotes in public policies dealing with linguistic diversity. See
Stojanovic (2013).
23 See Stojanovic (2008).
96 J. Alcalde
multilingual democracy, such as Belgium or the EU, both composed of linguistically

differentiated communities. Sinardet has done research on the media’s role in the
Belgian federal system, showing that there are no pan-Belgian media, but only
those aiming at the Flemish-speaking population and those aiming at the French-
speaking one. Moreover, Belgian politicians tend to focus on topics that matter to
the members of the language group they belong to. Similarly, at the EU level, media
are national-based, and politicians tend to focus on their national constituencies. In
fact, this absence of a European public sphere is frequently linked to the democratic
deficit of the EU.
According to Sinardet there are two ways of solving this problem. One would
be to have a pan-European media available across the entire EU territory, but this is
unrealistic in the absence of a common language—he says that “English cannot (yet)
be considered the lingua franca of all of its social classes and geographical areas”
(p. 312). The second way would be through the Europeanization of national public
spheres and accordingly of national media reporting. In order to do so, and given
that “media need politicians that are relevant to their audience, whereas politicians
need media that are relevant to their electorate” (p. 318), he argues for an electoral
reform to create a European-wide constituency as a necessary condition for the
development of a genuine public sphere. This is basically an application to the EU
of his own solution originally thought for the Belgian case.24
In sum, given the unfeasibility of having a common language, he proposes an
indirect way to achieve a public sphere: an electoral reform. From a language policy
point of view, he seems to suggest keeping doing politics in the vernacular—at least
until English becomes the European lingua franca—but promoting a change in its
content toward a more European approach.
An unorthodox criticism of English as a lingua franca comes from Peter Ives
(2010). He has written extensively about Gramsci’s approach to the politics of
language. More recently he has analyzed the phenomenon of English as a global
language from a Gramscian perspective. As it is known, the Italian philosopher
wrote several articles in which he criticized Esperanto. According to Ives, the
criticism was not about the language per se, but about the idea of (the need of)
a universal or world language. Therefore, the same criticism could be applied
to English today and the theoretical perspectives by authors, such as De Swaan,
Archibugi, or Van Parijs, who recommend the use of English as a lingua franca,
as the fairest solution to the language problem. Following Gramsci, Ives criticizes
them because they have forgotten that “the communicative function of language is
inextricable from the cultural questions.” According to Gramsci (and to Ives), the
need for a world language presupposes class and cultural inequalities. In Gramsci’s
words: “The advocates of a single language are worried by the fact that while the
world contains a number of people who would like to communicate directly with
24 Sinardet is a member of the Pavia Group, chaired by Van Parijs, who has developed several
proposals to reform Belgium from an institutional point of view. One of these proposals includes
the introduction of a federal electoral district to elect part of the federal representatives.
one another, there is an endless number of different languages which restrict the
ability to communicate. This is a cosmopolitan, not an international anxiety, that of
the bourgeois who travels for business or pleasure, of nomads more than of stable
productive citizens. They would like artificially to create consequences which as yet
lack the necessary conditions . . . (Gramsci 1987: 27).” From this, Ives constructs
the notion of linguistic hegemony to contribute to the debate about English as an
international language by claiming such hegemony is not neutral, but has cultural
(and socioeconomic) effects: “When and where English as a second language was
taught primarily in private schools or is limited to children of the middle-class and
wealthy, it becomes a crucial element of an international business class structure.
It facilitates the growth and spread of multinational corporations and trade” (Ives
2006: 136–137).
In a recent work (Ives 2014), he argues that dominant approaches within political
theory to language justice and language rights assume individualistic and instru-
mentalist conceptions of language, related to liberal authors such as John Locke. He
suggests scholars should explore other theoretical perspectives, including Antonio
Gramsci, Valentin Voloshinov, and Mikhail Bakhtin. In a similar vein, Thomas
Ricento (2014) explores the underlying linguistic conceptions of (liberal) political
theorists. In particular, he argues that most of the views on the terms “language” and
“culture” from normative political theorist are connected to particular conceptions
of the nation-state that consider language as something stable and mainly used for
communicative purposes while ignoring several facts about language inequalities.
For example, he stresses that speakers of nonstandard varieties of languages
(including English as a lingua franca) are socially marginalized because of their
speech variety, which has consequences on their employment perspectives and
citizenship rights. Ricento advocates for multidisciplinary approaches that include
awareness and acknowledgment of the different disciplines to develop common
ways of rethinking concepts such as language rights.
Fleurbaey, Marc (2011), argues that the replacement of English by Esperanto as
a lingua franca would have two negative effects: First, the distribution of individual
well-being would have higher costs than gains. According to him, an artificial
language needs to be learnt by all,25 and despite some people would gain in the
operation because Esperanto is simpler than English and because access to the labor
market would be more equal, the gains would be small compared to the cost endured
by the Anglophones who must learn Esperanto. For this reason, he will end up his
text by recommending the promotion of English as the international language.
However, the whole chapter revolves around a second effect of adopting
Esperanto as the international language. According to Fleurbaey, English would
have its status reduced, and no other natural language would increase its own. This
is what Fleurbaey calls levelling down: “the special pride of being a native speaker
25 Most likely this author is not aware of the sociolinguistics of Esperanto, such as the existence of
Esperanto speakers.
98 J. Alcalde
of the lingua franca disappears without being replaced by a new pride for the
others” (p. 231).
Fleurbaey’s philosophical argument is that levelling down can be good in some
respect. And he claims that he can prove it by admitting that Esperanto would be
fairer than English in terms of neutrality. Therefore, Esperanto could be a case
for levelling down. The logic is the following: equality of status is desirable and
can only be obtained by levelling down.26 However, he argues that this is a small
advantage overridden by efficiency considerations and that is why English should
still be chosen over Esperanto.27
In my opinion, apart from other minor flaws, the main problem of this chapter is
that it is based on a wrong assumption: adopting Esperanto would not be a case of
levelling down, but the opposite. If Esperanto was adopted, there would be language
equality at the international level between all natural languages of the world. In that
situation, language status would increase, especially among minority languages.
In fact, and considering the easiness of Esperanto, it could be argued that global
efficiency would increase immensely, given that potentially every person of the
world would have a chance of feeling such pride of being able to speak (proficiently)
the lingua franca. Therefore, this would actually be an argument for Esperanto, not
only from a fairness sense of neutrality but also from a Pareto efficiency point of
view.
Archibugi, Daniele, is a political theorist who has written extensively about
cosmopolitan democracy. Within this perspective he argues for linguistic cosmopoli-
tanism which in practice means to promote the use of English at a global scale. He
criticizes Kymlicka’s notion that democratic politics has to be carried out in the
vernacular by arguing that instead democratic politics must be in Esperanto. It is
worth to mention that he uses “Esperanto” as a metaphor for a universal language.
He seems to like the Esperanto ideal, but he considers it to be unrealistic: “Of
course I do not advocate the use of Esperanto, but rather the idea that it is the
responsibility of individuals and governments to remove the language barriers that
obstruct communication” (Archibugi 2005b: 545). So in his view, today’s Esperanto
would actually be English.
26 In his view, it is harder to defend an inequality-generating Pareto improvement in the case of
symbolic status, such as language status, than in the case of (individual) well-being. To make his
point, he uses the example of a situation in which Esperanto is the lingua franca and is the mother
tongue of no particular people of the world. In that situation, it would make no sense to replace
Esperanto by Flemish on the grounds that it would give the people in Flanders a special symbolic
status and a unique pride, without changing anything to the status and lack of pride of any other
people.
27 According to the author, there are other (minor) aspects to consider. One is the fact that if
Esperanto was chosen, the Esperanto community would take great pride. Fleurbaey says that
this effect would be limited to the generation that defended Esperanto and by the possibility of
creating another language more neutral than the one initiated by Zamenhof. Another one takes into
consideration the interactions between native speakers and nonnative speakers of the lingua franca.
Fleurbaey thinks that with an artificial language, inequalities in proficiency may be more reflective
of unequal talents.
For him, democracy is composed by two phases: in the first one, dialogue and
persuasion, is the basis of a deliberative, discursive, or communicative dimension
of democracy; in the second one, an aggregation of preferences takes place, in
which the competitive arguments of political parties prevail. From this perspective,
communication is essential to democracy. Interestingly, other authors who favor
English as an international language, such as Patten (2003b) or Lacey (2015), do
not think that a common public language is necessary for deliberative democracy.
In a couple of articles and in a chapter of his book, Archibugi analyzes four
different situations where language political choices are needed: First, the case
of the Spanish-speaking students in state schools in California. In this case, he
recommends teaching everything in English because this is the “dominant language
in the country in which they live and also the dominant lingua franca worldwide.”
At the same time, he mentions that other policies should also be included, which
we could label as symbolic, such as having some courses of Spanish to English-
speaking students or adopting baseball as the sport to play in such schools. In
general, it seems a very similar perspective to Van Parijs’.
Second, he presents Zamenhof’s own case of Białystok. After considering
unfeasible the most cosmopolitan of all solutions, i.e., Esperanto—designed to place
the various communities on the same plane and to enable them to communicate
with all the citizens of the world—he suggests creating bilingualism in Russian and
German, allowing and developing the private use of other vernacular languages.
According to him, Zamenhof would have agreed to Van Parijs’ proposal to
institute compensations from the linguistic communities not required to study other
languages.28 Third, when it comes to the case of India’s language policies, he
suggests investing more in education in English alongside local languages to make
English the intranational and international lingua franca, even if this means that
many of the local languages are probably lost. And fourth, about the European
Parliament, he suggests leaving just two languages, English and French, and placing
all members on the same plane, asking the English to speak in French and the French
(and most likely everyone else) to speak in English.
In general, he recommends the implementation of compulsory education pro-
grams in the countries of the “civilized world” (including the EU), which enable
students to learn properly (in) English and (in) their own mother tongue. According
28 “The fact that Zamenhof’s solution was unworkable should not prevent us from admiring its
grandiose ambition, whereby a local problem was intended to provide the thrust for a universal
language” (Archibugi 2005: 549). In this regard, Esther Schor (2015) argues that Zamenhof bridged
the gap between liberal and communitarian political philosophy. Building from the classical
typology by Tönnies between Gemeinschaft (i.e., community) and Gesellschaft (i.e., society) and
from Mark Fettes’ observation that what Zamenhof had in mind was to create “Gemeinschaft on
a global scale,” Shor analyzes Zamenhof’s project in terms of creating an ethical community by
choice, as individuals of conscience. This would entail a liberal element, as long as he situated
Esperanto within the realm of human rights, something the whole movement has embraced. But
also a communitarian one, captured by the so-called inner idea of his international neutral language,
which has given Esperantists a cosmopolitan collective identity. On Esperanto’s cosmopolitanism,
see also Kim (1999), Nagai (2010), and Tonkin (2016).
100 J. Alcalde
to him, “an enlightened social policy must attempt to make the illiterate polyglot”
(2005b: 553).
Weinstock, Daniel (2003). According to this author, a fair language policy should
be composed of three principles:
(a) Minimalism. Language policy should have one main objective: effective com-
munication. All the other possible goals (nation-building, cultural preservation,
political unity) are subordinated to this one. In case of interference, what matters
is communication.
(b) Anti-symbolism. The selection of a particular language by the state should not
have a symbolic significance. In other words, it should be neutral and not
attached to a particular identity.
(c) Revisability. The state should be prepared for modifying its language policies,
particularly in cases of demographic change.
This set of policy prescriptions will generally favor the dominant language,
and it will do so for reasons of pragmatism and linguistic justice, as justice
here is understood as the maximization of communication. Therefore, linguistic
inequality ends up in greater equality along a nonlinguistic dimension, which is
communication. Thus, a language policy designed following Weinstock’s principles
will tend to support (and justify) the status quo in a similar way to Van Parijs’ theory.
In a recent work (Weinstock 2014), he argues that liberal states should have
language policies that adequately manage language conflicts which arise from a
context of state neutrality and multiple and conflicting sets of interests in our
societies: (a) the individuals instrumental and identity dimensions, (b) the state’s
need to (certain) homogeneity to carry out its functions, and (c) the human wish
of preserving diversity. In his view, even if there are reasons of justice to conduct
coercive policies in situations where a clear injustice is present, the justification of
such policies in other cases should be related to solving collective action problems.
Mainly developed as a critique to Van Parijs (2011a), Joseph Lacey (2015) argues
that it is not clear that English will inevitably become a global lingua franca—
although he says that if one day there is a common universal language, the only
possibility would be English. One of the reasons is that in poorer parts of the
world, the spread of English may find an obstacle when confronted with a large
portion of the population which is not well educated or professionally employed.
Also, the intensity of the interaction between individuals without competence in
English and those who speak it could be so low that the maxi-min dynamic would
not work. Moreover, protected national borders could represent labor restrictions
which would complicate the opportunities of people to learn English. Furthermore,
there are sociological impediments to language learning, including lack of time,
motivation, or the cost. The last of Van Parijs’ proposals is the ban on dubbing and
also presents complexities which means that in the end, the assumption that most of
the world’s poor will have regular access to English language media is questionable
and, in fact, questioned.
Interesting is the fact that, according to him, the absence of a lingua franca is not
an insurmountable obstacle to the achievement of transnational justice. Taking as an
example the case of Switzerland, he argues that a multilingual demos can function
well. In fact, he says that the EU as a political entity has achieved significant
cross-border identifications despite its linguistic diversity, an argument which I find
fragile, as it could be that these “significant cross-border identifications” were not
too significant, after all.
Following these two ideas, he concludes by affirming that there is little justifica-
tion for artificially accelerating the universalization of English, because that would
imply implementing policies which are both unfair to the poor and disrespectful
to non-Anglophone cultures. As some languages would disappear, he wonders how
much loss of this kind is permissible from the point of view of justice. Moreover, the
possibility of an Anglophone cultural hegemony accompanying the universalization
of English also raises issues of justice. To sum up, a fair linguistic justice should not
promote such universalization of English.
In another work (Lacey 2014), he argues that a perceived problem for the
democratic legitimacy of the EU is that linguistic diversity across Europe makes
it difficult for there to be a viable European democratic community. In this sense,
he proposed to follow the Swiss model to implement a more radical form of
democracy and better accommodate the diversity. His proposals include the capacity
to hold EU-wide referendums, as well as making the European Commission
open to electoral competition via the European Parliament. According to him,
such measures would address Europe’s legitimacy gap by setting in motion a
process of discursive integration which would allow the synchronization of public
spheres so that a shared system of meaning may lead to a transnational democratic
community.29
2.5 The Principle of Territoriality and the Principle

of Personality
Following the main theories of political philosophy, there are two basic principles
that can guide a fair language policy: territoriality and personality.
Principle of Territoriality The linguistic regulation is established according to the
territory, so that every inhabitant will receive the same treatment. The division of
the territory in linguistic areas and the establishment of borders limit the linguistic
freedom of the citizen, who will have to use the language of the territory where
he is/lives in order to make valid and efficient acts in the public sphere. A linguistic
policy following this principle would mean the imposition of the weaker language as
the official language in a concrete territory, i.e., the language of the administration,
politics, judicial processes, public education, etc. The citizen here does not choose
29 See also Lacey (2017).

102 J. Alcalde
which language to use, but this decision is taken by the language planning of the
state.
This principle can work reasonably well in a homogeneous community com-
posed by monolingual individuals, where the language will be fully recognized.
In a heterogeneous community (and in homogeneous communities composed by
multilingual individuals), only one language is protected, and therefore existing
language diversity would probably need a different language policy to be managed
more fairly.
Principle of Personality The linguistic regulation is established to guarantee that
each citizen will receive services in his/her mother tongue, independently from
the territory where he/she lives. In a linguistic policy based on the principle of
personality (normally following a multicultural theory), the state has to respect the
personal right of each citizen to use the official language chosen by the citizen. Here
it is the citizen who chooses which language to use.
Other authors think that following the principle of personality, it is not clear
that the individual will always choose his/her mother tongue. He could also decide
to choose the majoritarian language in order to maximize his utility (e.g., Brian
Barry). From this perspective, a future linguistic homogeneity would reduce most
of material inequality.
In general, multilingual language policies based on the principle of personality
will grant equal recognition to the existing linguistic identities of citizens. However,
in complex communities, not all languages can be granted official status (although
minorities should have at least special provisions).
De Schutter, Helder (2011), argues against the linguistic territoriality as defended
by Van Parijs (2011a, b). Both authors draw their proposals from real situations
in their country of origin, Belgium. On the one hand, Van Parijs suggests that
the EU (and the world) should follow the federal language system, based on
linguistic territoriality, in which each territory (Flanders and Wallonia) has one
official language.30 As De Schutter mentions, nothing prevents people from being
multilingual, but the territory only grants official status to one language. From a
linguistic justice perspective, Van Parijs’ approach means that each language group
should have a territory in which their language would be the only official language.
Based on Laponce (2001), he argues that this way languages would be protected
from language contact and language shift, which are produced in cases of peaceful
contact between languages, where the more powerful language tends to dominate
and assimilate the other(s).
On the other hand, De Schutter defends the case of Brussels as the model for
the world. In Brussels, both (French-speaking and Dutch-speaking) groups get full
30 However, there are some exceptions. One of them is Brussels, which is part of Flanders. Another
one is the 70,000 German speakers living in Wallonia, who are sometimes called the best protected
language minority in the world (De Schutter 2011: 199 fn. 1). At least, until a future independence
of Catalonia, this could officially recognize the 10,000 Occitan speakers in the Catalan region of
Val d’Aran.
linguistic recognition: Brussels has an officially bilingual status. From a linguistic

justice perspective, De Schutter’s proposal entails equal recognition: “Within certain
practical limits, all native language groups within a region should receive equal
status, so that individuals with the respective identities get language recognition”
(De Schutter 2011: 200).
The main criticism to Van Parijs’ proposal comes from a sociolinguistic fact:
the world is not characterized by linguistically unified territories. Often there is no
congruence between language and territory. In cases where two or more language
groups live intermingled, Van Parijs’ proposal faces important challenges, as only
one of the languages should be given the official recognition: minorities would
be then assimilated or they would move to another place, bilingual people would
not have recognized their mixed identity structure, and coexistence would be more
difficult in conflict situations where several language groups claim the same land.31
Therefore, De Schutter argues that the Brussels model should be adopted in cases
of linguistic diversity. He also adds that even in the (few) cases where there is no
significant diversity, no injustice would be committed by implementing his proposal.
In concrete terms, his proposal includes multilingual language policy granting
equal recognition to the existing linguistic identities of citizens: “Each of the native
language groups should enjoy equal language rights, and the territory’s institutions
become effectively bilingual” (p. 203). It is worth to mention that De Schutter is
talking specifically about native language groups. This way he seems to be drawing
a line between native groups and immigrant groups. About this second category of
language community, he does not mention any particular right.
De Schutter is aware that a full implementation of his model would not be
feasible in some cases. However, he argues that the ideas which lie behind it are
still useful. Therefore, if in a multilingual territory not all languages can be granted
official status, minorities should have at least special provisions.
A controversial aspect of this proposal is the fact that it does not include the
protection of weaker languages from gradually (naturally) eroding, except when
there is a threat to their existence. In that case, the interests of the remaining speakers
of the language (not those who left already or the interests of the language itself)
should be taken into consideration, and, accordingly, some priority in funding or
recognition should be established. In the end, both Van Parijs and De Schutter agree
that linguistic justice should not aim at preventing all language deaths. In other
words, language disappearance is always a loss, but it is not always unjust.
In another work (De Schutter 2007), he presents a review of the literature,
probably the most advanced and comprehensive so far. He constructs a typology
through two dimensions: (a) instrumental vs. constitutive (understanding of the
nature of membership in a linguistic community) and (b) transparent vs. hybrid
(concept of language).
According to him, a way to bridging the constitutive and the intrinsic perspectives
is by saying that individuals have intrinsic interests in their languages.
31 A similar criticism can be found in Robichaud (2011).

104 J. Alcalde
In order to improve the existing theories of justice, he (and similarly Yael

Peled) suggests that they should start from a situation of linguistic hybridity.
Together with Edwards (2003) and Grin (1994, 2003b), he calls for interdisciplinary
proposals.32 Interdisciplinary language policies will be useful, at least for the
following reasons:
1. Theories based on assumptions of monolingual regions and monolingual individ-
uals will be ill-founded.
2. The standard liberal reaction to issues of diversity (neutralism) is unworkable
with regard to linguistic diversity. The continuum freedom/regulation should be
replaced by the instrumental/constitutive one.
3. If language planners who apply survival policies take also into consideration
some instrumentalist views, they will make sure that a community is not
being locked up in an equality-reducing linguistic context. In order to do so,
underlying normative principles of each policy will need to be always visible
and transparent.
4. If language planners understand that linguistic minority rights are also derivative
individual rights, they will be able to avoid instances where the practice of
minority rights clashes with individual interests, recognizing that individual
interests should then be prioritized. At the same time, this insight may help
strengthen the argument for unequal differential treatment, granting therefore
more than an equal share of available resources to compensate for the unchosen
linguistic disadvantage they face.
Grin, François, has developed most of his work on the economics subfield of
linguistic justice. However, some of his works also tackle political theory aspects.
In Grin (2003b) he examines the logic and consequences of the support for social
diversity. He finds a paradox when it comes to the distinction between “indigenous”
and “immigrant” minorities. For example, in the United Kingdom, there are more
Gujarati speakers than Scots Gaelic speakers, but the second enjoys some legal
status, whereas Gujarati has none.
According to Grin, our natural sense of justice leads us to grant more support to
those (old) communities that have been in our country for a long time, as compared
to those (new) ones that just arrived. However, this distinction between oldcomers
and newcomers is problematic. For example, languages such as Spanish, French, or
German have been spoken in the United States for as long as (or even longer than)
English.
Also, the ethnic distribution in Europe is the product of millennia of processes of
migration and assimilation, where no particular dates can be used to identify the fair
distribution, as opposed to the present situation. Without concluding with specific
32 About the need of an interdisciplinary approach to linguistic justice analyses, see also Peled
et al. (2014). Similar perspectives can be found in Tonkin (2015b) concerning the relationship
between language and equality and in Agresti (2016) with regard to linguistic rights. For a practical
application of political science methods into the study of language policy, see Cardinal and Sonntag
(2015).
language policy recommendations, this work is nevertheless useful to remind us the

uncertainties we will always find in the real world.
In more recent works, such as Grin (2011), this author defends the territoriality
principle. Nevertheless, different from Van Parijs, he does with the aim of supporting
linguistic diversity.
Peled, Yael (2010), bases her proposal on the concept of “linguistic human
nature”: the linguistic component of human nature. Humans are, fundamentally, lin-
guistic beings. And our true linguistic human nature is connected to the possession
of several languages much more than to monolingualism. With a deep knowledge
of the sociolinguistic field, she makes such a claim based on the statistical fact that
polyglots surpass the monoglots. In other words, individual linguistic plurality is the
norm rather than the exception.
Without being specific enough to suggest a concrete path or language policy,
she argues that once individual linguistic plurality is perceived as a natural trait
of the human condition, such trait will be supported and nurtured by the political
community. From this, it follows that political communities should design language
policies to promote such a linguistic plurality within the individuals.
According to her, the monolingual political community in the state of society and
the monolingual human being are a prescriptive aspiration rather than a descriptive
observation. In fact, sociolinguistics proves exactly the opposite. Linguistic plurality
is a normal rather than an abnormal trait not just of humanity as a species but
also of the individual humans. The literature, however, has presented this fact in a
different way. The materializing process of this aspiration transformed it something
resembling a law of nature (Burke 2004), which was also a preferential position in
ethical terms (Van Parijs 2011a).
Interesting is also her critique of Pinker’s language instinct, because he never
quite discusses any language other than English. Pinker’s sociobiology says that a
richer conception of human nature can provide insight into language. Peled says
that a richer conception of language can provide us with an important insight into
linguistic human nature. And she concludes by recommending an integrated inter-
disciplinary approach, including sociobiology, the history of ideas and linguistic
ideologies, sociolinguistics, political theory, and philosophy of language. And we
could also add others, such as ecolinguistics, interlinguistics and several subdomains
of law and economics.
When it comes to her own contributions, her two main arguments are:
(a) A plurilingual community is more efficient than its monolingual counterpart in
terms of distribution of wealth and dignity.
(b) When it comes to redistribution, a plurilingual conception of democracy implies
a higher ability to acknowledge and process the complex relations between
language and the essentially nonlinguistic world, an increased sensitivity to the
contextual nature of one’s political community and its practical vocabulary, and
a preferable position for developing stronger skills for reflecting critically on
both.
106 J. Alcalde
From them and after a detailed historical reconstruction (and a solid critique of
Van Parijs’ proposals), she offers a set of tentative principles to build a plurilingual
theory of democracy, which are the following:
1. A shift from society to the individual linguistic plurality. The individual should
be the locus of linguistic plurality and not the state nor the community.
2. Cultural plurality and ethnic diversity are impossible to accommodate in full in
a world of finite resources. In other words, we should think in terms of feasible
proposals for a real world with limited resources.
3. Linguistic prioritization is still important. While reasons of justice compel the
state to acknowledge the existence of linguistic plurality in the civic sphere,
linguistic prioritization should still take place at the societal level in order to
promote linguistic egalitarianism.
4. Individual linguistic plurality does not contradict national identity; there is
commensurability. Human beings, however, often belong to more than one social
sphere. The concept of individual linguistic plurality responds to this challenge
by adopting a more flexible contextual approach to the question of linguistic
justice, which reasserts the preferential status of the national language without
imposing unjustified requirements on linguistic minorities.
5. Language rights do exist, but also language duties and they are applicable to
everybody. So, a new framework based on linguistic rights and duties should be
introduced and extended to all members of the political community, including a
mechanism to impose linguistic duties on the linguistic majority, as an offset of
their exercised right for instating their language as the national variant.
To sum up, language policies should be designed to promote linguistic plurality
within the individuals because a plurilingual community is more efficient than its
monolingual counterpart in terms of distribution of wealth and dignity.
This perspective broadens a debate dominated by the precise principles of
distribution underlying linguistic justice or the particular subset of historical
requirements which may legitimately grant a particular linguistic community its
claim for minority language rights. It also aims at developing sensitivity toward the
complicity between language and ideology through language ethics, ecolinguistics,
and the emergent field of ecolinguistic ethics in terms of resource management and
the long-term implications of language policies for questions of sustainability and
human development.
In my opinion, the biggest contribution of this work is a solid critique of the
monist approach, which has been dominant in history, but also in the contemporary
world, represented by authors such as Van Parijs. In Peled’s words, “the extension
of a monist approach to the realm of human language is increasingly found to be
insufficient at best and harmful at worst”:
(a) Normatively, its promise to ensure greater equality in the distribution of wealth
and dignity is fulfilled only to a very partial extent, which often results in the
justification of existing socioeconomic inequalities rather than in the attempt to
contest it.
(b) Epistemically, it produces a more limited perception of the world, reduced in

its capacities for creativity, empathy, and critical reflection over the complex
and subtle interrelations between language and the world. It does not reduce the
complexity of the world, but our ability to recognize such complexity.
In another work, Peled (2014) advocates for exploring interdisciplinary work
between sociolinguistics, political science, and philosophy beyond the subject
matters themselves, such as “politics” or “language.” This way, she suggests
different ways to combine the linguistic thinking with the political one in the domain
of normative language policy. Similarly, in a recent contribution (Peled 2015), she
sophisticates the analysis by proposing the notion of complex equality to capture
the existent “plurality of goods, spheres and principles that are involved in the
processes of (re)distribution” (p. 288). Similarly, she shows how in the debate of
linguistic justice different authors use different understandings of “language”: (a)
as an ideal, separated from any particular social or political circumstance (e.g., in
the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights); (b) as a standard language, which
frequently implies that standard languages are superior to nonstandards varieties; (c)
as a form of human communication system, which includes geography or ethnicity-
based varieties, pidgins and creoles, sign languages, etc.; and (d) as a linguistic
repertoire, which emphasizes the fact that individuals often speak a number of
languages.
After having refined the conceptual framework of the field, she advocates for
the combination of particular understandings of equality and language, showing a
multiplicity of possible permutations. For example, she shows the potential of her
notion of complex equality combined with the perspective of linguistic repertoires
to link particular spheres with particular linguistic variants. If we think in terms
of geographic spheres, this idea would not be far from those advocating for the
principle of territoriality.33 But Peled goes beyond that to include other contexts,
such as the workplace, the family, or religious life, providing this way a justification
for a much more powerful multilingualism. However, she does not specify which
principles should allow us to choose which language in which sphere.34
In order to achieve a wider and richer ethical discussion, the same author in
another work (Peled 2017) defends a more comprehensive core vocabulary of
language ethics, which goes beyond the (liberal) notion of linguistic justice and
which could include competing political traditions, as well as other significant
notions such as “legitimacy,” “obligation,” “friendship,” “care,” “empathy,” and
“hope.” Additionally, she explores an alternative approach based on the concept
of the dialogical self.
Riera, Elvira (2016), is a recent example of the potential for interdisciplinarity
in this field. Mainly framed within normative political philosophy, her research
33 In fact, Peled mentions as an example Van Parijs’ division between English in the global sphere
and other languages which are “queen of their domain.”

34 In the fourth section of this chapter, we will present several principles by Bastardas (2002), which
are worth exploring in this regard, and particularly his notion of subsidiarity.
108 J. Alcalde
includes sociolinguistic insights and a non-frequent empirical part on political

practices. Thus, she provides a comprehensive and systematic analysis of existing
language regulations in current western democracies, comparing the language acts
adopted in terms of their objectives and the restrictions they establish to protect the
use of certain languages vis à vis perceived internal or external threats. Additionally,
she explores in depth the Catalan case. Her extensive knowledge in this sense is
partly due to her professional career as language planner and policymaker at the
Catalan Government.
The author focuses her research on mixed societies, phenomena that challenge
traditional linguistic justice theories because language groups cannot be easily
delimited. She asserts that in these cases, language policies require pluralist
approaches based on the principle of personality. In her view, mixed demoi may
possess two or three common languages, which are both effective vehicles for the
exercise of citizenship and also part of the individuals’ collective identity. She
argues that in mixed societies, first languages spoken are the best variable for
identifying language groups, provided that this variable is open to include several
languages. As such language groups are porous and not monolithic in terms of
individual interests, their members are adaptable in terms of linguistic skills and
identifications. Therefore, their preferences and the choices they may make are
less predictable and particularly dependent on public policies to the extent that the
distinction between majorities and minorities may be blurred.
Over 96 cases analyzed, Riera identifies 16 mixed societies, where significant
numbers of the long-settled population belong to different language groups and live
intermingled. Eight of them are hybrid societies, where bilinguals belong to several
language groups. In most of them, there is a monolingual project of majority nation-
building in the center and plurilingual (competing nation-building) regimes in some
subunits, whose populations tend to be bilingual.
The author builds a comprehensive typology of valued ends for language policies,
which will be used in her empirical comparative analysis of the uses of such values
in the rationales of language acts adopted in western democracies. In order to
do so, she takes into account communicative values, identity-related values, and
other values which are both communicative and identity-related. In some cases, the
adscription to a concrete category is not consensual in the literature. For example,
despite acknowledging an implicit element of collective identity, she decides to
consider values such as social cohesion, coexistence and mutual understanding,
solidarity, and trust within the communicative function of language.
While Riera’s proposal is close to the pluralist approach that opposes the
principle of territoriality defending the equal recognition of all significant long-
settled language groups in a same territory, she uses different arguments. As we have
seen, authors such as De Schutter argue their defense of equal treatment of language
groups as equal recognition, that is, on the grounds of identity interests. By doing so,
they implicitly maintain the association between majority languages, communica-
tion, and social justice, on the one hand, and between minority languages, identity,
and ethno-cultural justice, on the other. On the contrary, Riera contends that all
individuals derive interest from languages both from communication and identity.
In her view, communicative interests rely on people’ linguistic abilities (most

times better in their first languages than in languages learnt after their childhood,
regardless of their condition of majority or minority languages) but also on people’s
linguistic choices in terms of communicative effectiveness, so that in local contexts
where authenticity works as a legitimating linguistic ideology, local languages may
be the best instrumental tools.
In the acts analyzed, both the promotion of majority and minority languages
tend to be sustained by identity-related arguments, which in practice legitimize
the promotion of these languages as effective tools of communication, in an
interdependency of communication and identity. That is, both are instrumental for
each other. According to the author, individual (and collective) identity interests are
better fulfilled when languages possess a certain degree of instrumental usefulness,
whereas communicative interests in a diverse society are better fulfilled if identity
is taken into account, although sometimes this is rather symbolic. Therefore, even
if individuals are perfectly bilingual, their linguistic preferences do matter; and
even when second languages learnt are local languages, individual bilingualism is a
relevant asset for equality of opportunity and social promotion.
In order to implement linguistic justice in mixed societies, Riera suggests
language policies intended to foster and maintain a stable reciprocal bilingualism.
Since this is linked both to individuals’ linguistic skills and to the provision of
fair background conditions for their linguistic choices, it can be seen as a by-
product of the equal treatment of their interests. From this perspective, linguistic
plurality is rather a means than an end, in the sense that it favors the existence
of fair conditions of language choice. The language policy that follows has three
main elements: (a) the public (or official) use of the long-settled population’s first
languages (societal languages), (b) the universal teaching of such societal languages
in public educational systems, and (c) the provision of nonlinguistically segregated
public services, especially relevant in the case of education.
As a critical remark, the selection of cases is questionable. The author labels
them as western democracies, with a peculiar understanding of “western” and
“democracy.” Thus, they include different regions, both geographically and politi-
cally: Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Russian Federation, Canada, and the United
States. Despite all of them are formally democratic regimes, according to several
indexes, their degree of substantive democracy varies greatly. Riera is aware of this,
but she decided not to use the degree of democracy as a variable because she did not
find significant correlations with linguistic regulations. Finally, she does not include
migrants in her analysis, leaving it to further research.
All things considered, this is a solid and original work, which makes several
contributions to the theoretical literature and which shows promising ways of
translating it into the empirical realm.
110 J. Alcalde
3 Economics
3.1 Introduction
François Grin has defined the economics of language as the field of research that
“refers to the paradigm of mainstream theoretical economics and uses the concepts
and tools of economics in the study of relationships featuring linguistic variables;
it focuses principally, but not exclusively, on those relationships in which economic
variables also play a part” (Grin 1996: 6; also 2003a). As Pool argued at the
beginning of the 1990s, the application of policy analysis tools to language policy
is more recent than in other fields, such as the environment. Grin and Gazzola
(2013) are among the ones who have taken these analyses to a more concrete
level by introducing more sophisticated indicators and measures of both fairness
and efficiency. In fact, this is likely the subfield of research where the greatest
innovation has been produced in recent years. Some of these authors have developed
mainly static analyses (as presented in different works by authors such as François
Grin, Michele Gazzola, Victor Ginsburgh, or Jonathan Pool), whereas others have
dealt with dynamic ones (including several works by authors such as Jonathan Pool,
Reinhard Selten, or Bengt-Arne Wickström).
In a recent survey of the field, Zhang and Grenier (2013, p. 204) explain that so
far it has not “genuinely integrated into the family of economic thought.” They
divide the field into three main schools.35 Whereas in all of them we can find
elements related to the linguistic justice debate, the third one would be the one closer
to our topic of interest. After briefly presenting these three schools, I will turn to the
static and dynamic analysis already mentioned, and I will review several examples
of such promising lines of research. As it will be shown, the strongest point of this
literature is that it has produced innovative, data-based, rigorous, and systematic
tools to describe and measure the present but also to have some insights about the
future. Also, their policy-oriented results are useful to realize the relevance of the
different policy choices. However, such results will always depend on the political
philosophy principles behind each model.
3.2 Language and Status
From the earliest studies, it is understood that language has economic characteris-
tics, such as value, utility, costs, and benefits. When countries had to make choices
about the official languages that they wanted to promote, this allowed the emergence
of a literature on language policy and the relationship between language and income
35 Anotherrelevant review of the literature on language economics is Gazzola et al. (2015). See
also Gazzola and Wickström (2016).
first in Canada and then in other (mainly multilingual and multinational) countries,
such as Spain, Belgium, or Switzerland (as shown in different works by Albert
Breton (1978, 2000), Chiswick and Miller (2007), Grenier and Vaillancourt (1983),
or Grenier and Nadeau (2011)). The objective was to explain the economic status of
different language groups.
Further development of the discipline included insights from human capital
theory by seeing language skills as a source of economic advantage (including
several works by François Grin and François Vaillancourt). Other things being
equal, the more fluent an employee, the higher the wage he can earn. In addition,
specific language skills have positive effects on income. Therefore, language
learning can take place under pure economic incentives to the extent that language
skills have an impact on the creation of value in the economy as a whole (Grin et al.
2011). Research has also shown that the relationship between language and earnings
is related to ethnicity. This also has to do with issues of discrimination of members
of minority language groups and, therefore, to injustice situations.
3.3 Language Convergence and the Survival of Minority

Languages
A second category of economic studies has studied the dynamic development of

languages: language convergence and the survival of minority languages. These
are two sides of the same coin, because minority languages are usually the ones
that are threatened by the lingua franca. As a tool for communication, a common
language reduces transaction costs so that an initial diversity of languages may
develop naturally toward a lingua franca. In this field, it is worth mentioning
the communication potential of languages measured through the Q-value theory
developed by De Swaan (2001). It is here where Zhang and Grenier (2013) include
the debates on linguistic justice we mentioned in the previous section, such as Van
Parijs (2011a).
This kind of economic analysis helps to explain the factors that affect people’s
choices of language. A popular model was developed by Grin (1992), who defined
thresholds for minority language survival as a function of different variables,
including (but not only) the proportion of the population speaking the minority
languages and others, such as language attitudes. In the era of globalization,
this literature shows that the future for minority and indigenous languages is not
particularly bright.
However, some researches challenge this pessimistic view. By studying the
Catalan case, Caminal and Di Paolo (2015 and their chapter in this book) show
that new language skills that appear redundant from a communicative viewpoint
can reduce social segmentation. In particular, the education reform of the 1980s,
by improving the Catalan oral skills among Spanish native speakers, raised the
frequency of mixed couples and the use of Catalan (i.e., the weak language in the
112 J. Alcalde
community) within the couple, despite universal knowledge of Spanish (i.e., the
strong language) already guaranteed communication.
Similarly, Di Paolo and Cappellari (2015) consider the wage impacts of intro-
ducing bilingualism in a bilingual labor market of a developed economy. By
focusing on the Catalan case, they find that returns to bilingual schooling are
positive, decreasing with years of exposure, and stemming mainly from exposure
at compulsory education. In fact, increased bilingual skills would be the main
mechanism through which compulsory reform’s exposure affects labor market
outcomes, especially among Spanish speakers.
3.4 Language Policy and Language Planning
Despite Zhang and Grenier located Van Parijs’ last book within the studies of
the dynamic development of languages (i.e., Section 3.2 of this chapter), from a
language justice perspective, it can also be in a different category, which is the
economic analysis of language policy and language planning (LPLP). Traditionally
left to sociolinguists, economists have introduced new tools and methods to answer
practical questions in the selection and design of LPLP, such as cost-benefit and
rational choice analysis, in other words, by providing criteria to determine how to
allocate resources and language rights.
About allocating resources, several examples include Grin and Vaillancourt
(1999), who suggested understanding language policies as public policies—
therefore, government spending on language policies should be funded from
taxation and be redistributed, as public health or public education are—and Pool
(1991a), who proposed that language planners should select the language that has
the minimum total cost, even if costs should be allocated proportionally to the
different language groups.
As far as language rights in multilingual societies are concerned, Grin (1996)
has proposed the geographical multilingual model and Wickström (2013, 2016b)
the welfare-maximizing model, and Ginsburgh and Weber (2005) have examined
language disenfranchisement (i.e., the failure of a language to be recognized
officially). Moreover, methodologically Zhang and Grenier (2013) mention the
benefits of applying game-theoretical analysis to this field, such as Selten and Pool
(1991), who examined the decision to study a foreign language, as well as the
equilibrium in an economy where several second languages are learned.
For example, Selten (1998) presents a theoretical model based on game theory,
in which people learn languages only for economic reasons. From this perspective,
two outcomes are possible. On the one hand, the national language of a wealthy
language community could potentially stabilize as a widely used second language.
In our current world, that would mean the domination of English, at least until the
growth of Asian economic powers. On the other hand, the second option is related to
the propaedeutic value of Esperanto. Therefore, given that Esperanto facilitates the
learning of other languages (including English), people could learn it extensively
to the point that it becomes a de facto internationally widespread language, making

this way learning English unnecessary.
Jonathan Pool (1987) proposed a model in which each individual has one native
language and tries to maximize his linguistic welfare, i.e., the number of native
speakers of his native language. From this perspective, it is advantageous to speak a
widely spoken language. Each country exhibits a distribution of linguistic welfares,
and the more similar in size a country’s speech communities, the more equal its
distribution of linguistic welfares. The author uses individuals and languages as
alternative units of analysis, based on the scale of language rights elaborated by
Heinz Kloss, whose work we already encountered in the context of political philos-
ophy and Alan Patten. This scale rates the language policies of the countries on the
dimension of supportiveness to linguistic minorities. He first divides pro-minority
language policies into those that confer “tolerance-oriented” and those that confer
“promotion-oriented” rights on linguistic minorities. Whereas tolerance-oriented
rights permit linguistic minorities to cultivate their own languages, promotion-
oriented rights obligate “public institutions” to use and cultivate minority languages.
This dichotomy is interpreted by Kloss into a seven-value scale of language rights,
being (1) the least pro-minority policy and (7) the most pro-minority policy.
1. Allowing linguistic minorities fundamental political rights
2. Allowing the use of minority languages
3. Allowing minorities to organize institutions in which they use their language
4. Allowing minorities to organize private schools in which they cultivate their
language
5. Allowing foreign states to intervene to help minorities carry out activities (3) and
(4)
6. Allowing state institutions to use minority languages when communicating with
minorities
7. Either (a) allowing minorities to organize public institutions of self-government
in which they use their language or (b) using minority languages in all state
communications
It is worth to mention that Pool also considers the possibility of extending the
scale downward to include more extreme anti-minority policies, such as denial of
political rights to linguistic minorities and even genocide, and upward to include
more extreme pro-minority policies, such as the exclusive state use of minority
languages.
Having reached this point, Pool turns to philosophical reflections. In his view,
even if the scale is useful from a measurement point of view, it is not enough
to illuminate on the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate linguistic
inequality, rights and privileges, etc. For this reason, he suggests a typology of five
kinds of language-associated inequality, which has been quite influential.36
36 These are: Unequal attributes of different languages, unequal privileges granted to the users of
different languages, unequal linguistic skills of different persons, unequal statuses conferred on
114 J. Alcalde
In a more recent work, Pool (2010) considers that massive linguistic extinction
may not be a necessary consequence of globalization, because several strategies are
available for making panlingual rather than unilingual globalization a reality. He
presents four of them, offering Panlex as an example of the fourth one.
According to Pool, globalization can promote, but also diminish, linguistic
diversity. However, most of the evidence available shows an inverse relationship.
One the one hand, linguistic diversity, maintenance, and revitalization are not
generally popular ideals. On the other hand, there is a collective action problem,
because benefits conferred by linguistic diversity tend to be dispersed, whereas its
costs are imposed on those who maintain low-density languages. When choosing
whether to learn and use low-density languages and assuming that individuals act
egoistically, they would choose defection and then the language would probably
atrophy and die. However, such massive linguistic extinction can be avoided by
several action strategies (Fettes 2003; Tonkin 2003).
The first one would be sociocultural: marketing multilingualism. Some authors,
such as Nettle and Romaine (2000), Crystal (2000), Abley (2003), and Harrison
(2007), argue that the existence of thousands of languages is positive for humanity.
For example, the loss of a language means the loss of irreplaceable knowledge of
medicine and nature, encoded in languages’ lexicons, as well as evidence for the
scientific understanding of language and the human mind, the diverse ideas arising
from languages’ differing systems of knowledge representation, but also the respect,
tolerance, and enjoyment built from people learning to live in a multilingual world.
Moreover, they say cultural and biological diversity depends on linguistic diversity.
For all these reasons, this has to be preserved, although it has also been argued
that efforts to preserve low-density languages could inadvertently devalue medium-
density ones (see, e.g., De Swaan 2004).
The second one comes from economics: ecolinguistic compensation. Authors
such as Van Parijs have analyzed compensation mechanisms as a means of making
dominant languages more equitable for those who do not speak them natively and
of making official language policies fair and efficient (Pool 1991a; Ammon 2006:
333–336). Inspired by already-existing ecological compensation mechanisms, these
authors design mechanisms to give financial support to those who keep their native
languages alive and vibrant, by treating them as service providers. This could be
complemented by analysis, documentation, and instruction of the languages, whose
costs would not be paid by them. The challenge would be to know who is eligible
for the payments and how much to pay each of them.
The political strategy is linguistic subsidiarity and, in my view, this is the more
utopian one. It is based on the reorganization of the world into linguistic communi-
ties which govern themselves and are socioeconomically autonomous. Nation-states
different persons by linguistic rules and customs, and inequalities co-varying with language but
not caused by language. I present them with some detail in the section on esperantology, taking
advantage of an article by Mark Fettes, who analyzes each of them from the point of view of the
Esperanto community.
would be replaced by internally cohesive low-density language communities who

would make their language official and treat it as the main medium of education, etc.
This would make jurisdictional and transactional boundaries more coincident with
language boundaries and would also transfer authority from world bodies to single-
language local units of government as much as is practical, i.e., the subsidiarity
principle proposed by Bastardas (2002).
The fourth one is technological: panlingual transparency. It focuses on mul-
tilingual automatic translation, so that anybody who knows any language could
understand thoughts and emotions expressed in any other language. As Pool argues,
in this situation, the incentives for assimilation to high-density languages would
be diminished, with the amount of diminution depending on the quality of the
translation. Probably the main criticism to this idea is the fact that, after half a
century of effort, the still laughable automatic translations between high-density
languages could mean that panlingual translation is simply too difficult.
Another useful distinction between efficiency and fairness is provided by Grin
(2008a). He compares seven models of language regimes (the six already introduced
by Pool 1991a and a seventh proposed by Gazzola 2006), comparing advantages
and disadvantages with the aim of finding the best way to ensure communication at
reasonable cost in the EU:
1. Monarchic: English.
2. Synarchic: Esperanto.
3. Oligarchic: English, German, and French.
4. Panarchic: All EU official languages (now 24).
5. Hegemonic: All EU official languages (now 24) and English the bridge language
in translation and interpretation.
6. Technocratic: All EU official languages (now 24) and Esperanto the bridge
language in translation and interpretation.
7. Triple symmetrical relay: All EU official languages (now 24) and three languages
are used as a bridge language in translation and interpretation.
The results show a sort of trade-off between translation and language learning.
The less translation a proposal needs, the more language learning it will need. The
comparative discussion between these different regimes does not go into much
detail, but the relevant point is that depending on the relative importance given
to different criteria such as communicative speed, organizational simplicity, or
inclusiveness, any of these models can be considered the best. This is not an intuitive
conclusion and suggests that perfect or obvious solutions do not exist and that we
must clarify policy goals in order to adequately design fair language policies.
One of the most relevant pieces from this perspective is Wickström (2010), which
applies several economic theories of justice to linguistic rights, defined in terms of
status planning in specific domains. In this piece, the author extends cost-benefit
analysis to include distributional issues. In a previous work (Wickström 2008), he
presents a sort of state of the art of the discipline. Like many current sociolinguists
and political philosophers, he begins by acknowledging that the most important
functions that language serves are as a means of communication and as a carrier
116 J. Alcalde
of cultural identity. From this perspective, he proposes both a descriptive and a

normative analysis of different aspects of language use.
The cost-benefit analysis is part of the descriptive analysis of the communicative
value of language use. Following pioneering works by Selten and Pool, the idea is
that the benefits of a language will grow as long as it grows the number of speakers
of that language, whereas the costs will grow if the speakers are difficult to reach.
Maybe the most innovative part of Wickström’s approach is a third relationship
which happens between the number of individuals within reach of any speaker
and the social structure. The results of applying such a model seem conclusive:
In general, it pays for an individual to learn the biggest language used in his or
her surroundings, and, as a consequence, the model predicts a reduction of the use
of smaller languages in the community. From this perspective, globalization will
lead to a strengthening of a few strong languages and the disappearance of other,
weaker, languages. However, the reduction of communication costs through new
technologies could strengthen smaller languages. If this is so for a communicative
understanding of language, the author shows how the introduction of the cultural
identity role of language changes the model, and given that individuals learn
languages also for identity reasons, multilingualism can permanently survive. As a
consequence, several injustices of language policies are identified, and proposals to
ensure the language rights of national minorities are presented as well as normative
suggestions to improve the linguistic justice of the EU.
Another promising (and already fruitful) line of research is developed by Michele
Gazzola (e.g., 2014b, c). This work analyzes the distributive consequences of
language policies by assessing the effects of language policies on the relative
position of citizens and stakeholders in terms of access to communication with
public authorities.37 In my opinion, the main contribution of this line of research
to the literature is that it allows empirical answers (by building indicators) to
different questions, such as what could be the distributive effects on European
citizens of a change of the current language policy of the EU? Which social groups
would be disadvantaged from a drastic reduction in the number of the official
languages of the EU? The results of the author show that a change in the current
language policy of the EU would have significant distributional consequences
among countries but also on social groups in a regressive direction. Therefore,
a drastic reduction in the number of official and working languages of the EU
would be significantly detrimental to EU citizens with a low level of education
and income and to the elderly. From a linguistic justice perspective, institutional
multilingual communication should be maintained because it contributes to social
cohesion in the EU. The alternative proposals, either an English-only language
37 Partially inspired by this approach, Alcalde (2015a) explores the possibility of applying the
notion of linguistic justice from a public policy perspective to historical phenomena, such as the
League of Nations. He also shows that several of the main elements of contemporary debates,
such as the idea of parity of esteem, were already present during the negotiation of the linguistic
regime of the League of Nations, which took place at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Another
historical application of linguistic justice is Sujoldžić (2016). See also Nitobe (1998).
policy or an oligarchic language regime, would create significant inequalities among

EU residents based on their socioeconomic status. In other words, they would be
unfair.
In an original article, Samuel Bowles (2011) does not define linguistic justice, but
he says that there is a relationship between keeping cultural diversity as something
positive and having a basic income grant as social policies that reduce economic
risk. Bowles says that if the basic income grant was big enough, people would not
have an incentive to learn the lingua franca.
This debate was started by Van Parijs when he asked “to what extent ethnic,
linguistic, religious and other differences among citizens might reduce support
for public policies that redistribute income?” (Van Parijs 2003a, b). D’Antoni and
Pagano (2002) answered that cultural diversity within a nation inhibits geographical,
occupational, and other forms of mobility when economic adversity requires a job
change or other relocation, thereby exposing citizens to greater economic risks and
inducing them to demand more adequate levels of economic insurance.
This builds from a previous work (Bowles and Pagano 2006) in which the
authors argued that an unconditional basic income grant would reduce the citizen’s
incentives to learn a lingua franca rather than investing in acquiring more culturally
specific skills. The reason is that learning the lingua franca is costly, but it reduces
the expected cost of losing one’s job. It substitutes a fixed transfer for a variable
flow of income. Because the degree of an individual’s risk aversion varies with the
level of risk exposure, the provision of a basic income grant reduces the citizen’s
risk aversion and hence limits her demand for the implicit insurance provided by a
lingua franca. Also, policies promoting learning the lingua franca will reduce the
demand for social insurance. Interestingly, those who invest in either more universal
skills or skills specific to more than one culture provide important benefits to their
fellow citizens and noncitizens alike.
According to this author, the lingua franca and the basic income grant are
substitutes: they both accomplish risk reduction. One may eliminate the incentive
to learn the lingua franca (if the basic income grant is big enough). A smaller basic
income grant would reduce the optimal acquisition of the lingua franca (compared
to the no-basic income grant situation), but not eliminate it. Therefore, in this model,
cultivating culturally diverse network ties could play a similar role to learning the
lingua franca.
A different perspective is suggested by Kimura (2007). The author establishes
a parallel between languages and money. According to Kimura, both language and
money share some characteristics: both are instruments of interchange and both can
be used as a symbol of identity. According to Kimura, there are different under-
standings of “rationality” and “efficiency.” Traditional scholars tend to consider the
coexistence of many languages is in a single territory as being inefficient. From this
perspective, the movements in support of minority languages have been traditionally
viewed as irrational. Nevertheless, recent research in the economics of language
has shown that different types of economic values are associated with languages
(Grin 2003b; Gazzola 2014a), and therefore a language policy designed to promote
minority languages could be not only fairer but also more efficient.
118 J. Alcalde
4 Sociolinguistics and Ecolinguistics
This is an area of research that resonates with other disciplines, such as applied
linguistics, education science, sociology, and biology. These authors possess a vast
knowledge about the language situation of the word and traditionally have been
working on documenting and describing language inequalities.
They have created relevant concepts, such as linguistic human rights, linguistic
subsidiarity, linguistic genocide, and linguistic imperialism.38 Nevertheless, they
have not provided concrete and feasible proposals to overcome such language
injustices. In general, they argue that linguistic diversity should be preserved and
mother tongue education should be provided for everyone in non-fee state schools.
In my opinion, most of the leading figures in this field have been instrumental in
providing evidence that have inspired other fields for the defense of minority rights,
including economics and policy analysis. However, most of research done in applied
linguistics (and education sciences) has focused on language teaching and language
use in multilingual settings. From this perspective, there is a potential for growth of
the sociolinguistic approach of linguistic justice in the coming years.
One of these leading figures is Robert Phillipson (see, e.g., 1992, 1998, 2003,
2016). According to him, most language policies in application today have little
to do with tolerance or equality of languages, including the unequal allocation of
funds to the different languages within a policy. He also criticizes the fact that
standard setting in the human rights field has been hypocritical (i.e., a contrast
between declarations and practice) while affirming that declarations still have a
value. However, language policies are often so vague and abstract that they cannot
be applied to ensure linguistic justice.
When talking about the consequences of such languages policies, he emphasizes
the formation of elites and the hierarchization of languages at different levels
(national but also international). For example, in postcolonial settings, there has
been a false imitation of western education and, therefore, a focus on European
languages. He maintains that, broadly speaking, there is a choice in language
ecology between allowing market forces a free run and attempting to manage
our linguistic resources along agreed and more democratic lines. Obviously, he
recommends the second way, even if in some countries, such as France and the
United Kingdom, this is more difficult, because there is the “illusion of monolingual
linguistic self-sufficiency.” In a more recent work, he argues that globalization
appears to be shrinking not only low-density languages but also the use of medium-
density languages in science, diplomacy, business, and other domains (Phillipson
2008).
Another one is Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (see, e.g., 1998), who has edited several
influential works together with Phillipson. She argues that languages are used
38 The notion of linguistic imperialism does not always relate to the English language. See, e.g.,
Moreno Cabrera (2015) for an analysis of the Spanish linguistic imperialism. See also Comellas
(2006). For an empirical application of linguistic imperialism, see Philipson (2016).
as vehicles of control by “colonizing the mind.” This way, those who “own”
the language also shape the content of the hegemonizing message. According to
her, this would explain why everybody worldwide is supposed to want to learn
English. Such a mechanism enables global hegemonic control, homogenization,
and even linguistic and cultural genocide for linguistic minorities and monolingual
reductionism for linguistic majorities. At the same time, there is inefficient foreign-
language teaching. In her view, a common factor in all these processes is the blaming
of the victims for the results. In order to improve the language situation, effective
and rational change strategies should include grassroots organization, analyzing
the messages transmitted through language, ending tolerance for monolingualism,
respecting linguistic and cultural human rights, and developing an ecological
paradigm for language policy.
In another work (2008), she speaks about the violation of the right to education
suffered by indigenous and minority children in most countries. She argues that
most disappearing languages are victims of linguistic genocides. In this sense,
educational systems and mass media are the most important direct agents in
linguistic and cultural genocide. According to her, one reason why linguistic human
rights in education and maintenance of all the world’s languages are necessary,
is to counteract crimes against humanity. By using international legal texts, she
claims that both concepts “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” are the ones
who better apply to the situation she is describing. Therefore, most indigenous and
minority education in the world participates in committing linguistic and cultural
genocide according to the definitions of the UN Convention. From the point of view
of linguistic justice, this probably constitutes the most extreme case of injustice.
She argues that linguistic human rights in education are a necessary but insuffi-
cient prerequisite in the struggle to prevent linguistic genocide and crimes against
humanity. As she has stated in many other publications, the most central linguistic
human right in education is mother tongue education in non-fee state schools. In
general, linguistic human rights consist of some language rights plus human rights.
She also mentions that in many human rights documents, language is one of the
most important human characteristics on the basis of which people are not allowed
to be discriminated against (as well as gender, race, and religion). Still language
often disappears from the educational paragraphs of binding instruments. She points
to the fact that frequently the language used is vague and ambiguous so that states
can interpret the texts as they like.
She also connects sociolinguistics with ecolinguistics when she says that lin-
guistic diversity and biodiversity are strongly interrelated. Thus, knowledge about
maintenance of biodiversity is encoded in small languages. The conclusion is that
variety and resilience are vital to survival and so biocultural diversity is essential for
long-term planetary survival as it enhances creativity, adaptability, and stability.
A critical view of such ecolinguistic perspective can be found in Pupavac
(2012: Chap. 9). According to this author, such proposals tend to romanticize the
hard socioeconomic conditions of families who work on subsistence agriculture.
In a previous chapter, she explains the tensions that exist between sustainable
120 J. Alcalde
development models and human rights strategies, which require state provisions
to protect minority languages (Pupavac 2012: Chap. 7).
Mauro La Torre (1998) focuses on the realm of education. Given that the
knowledge of certain languages breeds familiarity with the cultures associated with
those languages, three possible educational language policies exist: the localist,
the alienist, and the democratic one. Whereas the first emphasizes the compulsory
instruction in the national language (in monocultural societies) and the second
one is based on a selected foreign language (and culture), the author proposes
go beyond both of them, by promoting democratic solutions characterized by the
valorization of mother tongues and ancestral traditions while developing at the same
time effective intercultural means of communication.
Tonkin (e.g., 1998) presents several challenges faced by an ecological approach
to language policy. He begins by a sociolinguistic fact: The European notion which
clearly distinguishes between one language and another is linked to European
definitions of state, law, culture, and national borders. In the rest of the world,
the boundaries among languages only begin to exist when users acknowledge that
they are speaking a different language. In general, therefore, the use of a language
depends on the circumstance. This means that people use the same language
in different ways, normally for mixed reasons (i.e., both instrumental and those
connected to personal identity). As an instrument, then, a language will be used
when it is useful and so, it will not be always learnt to a proficient level; only to the
level it is needed.
A new order based on linguistic equality will need to acknowledge a growing
awareness of language rights on the part of weaker states, societies, and commu-
nities but also a growing awareness of language responsibilities on the part of the
powerful. When thinking about international communication, he considers that the
introduction of Esperanto in the UN should be done in different phases, beginning
with a passive knowledge of the language. According to him, the first to acquire an
active usage of the language should be the staff of the organization.
On another front, Bastardas-Boada (2010)—translating and updating a previous
book in Catalan—presents a current (and future) world in which languages do not
fight for supremacy, because they have found a sort of equilibrium in a duality
between the global and the local. The rise of English means that this is the global
lingua franca, whereas local language communities digitally connected coexist in
harmony. An example of such a change would be the role of today’s francophonie
movement, which seeks “the recognition of language diversity, contrary to the
classically uniformist postulates adopted by France (p. 37).” In part, this is due to the
fact that people attribute a secondary role to languages as identity markers, because
identity is not permanent any more, but something in evolution, continuously
negotiated. In different moments, the author mentions that the predominance of
English may be considered unfair or even imperialistic by some. However, he
maintains that this is a process that cannot be stopped and that it has more
advantages than disadvantages. Moreover, the disadvantages or challenges can be
controlled if every linguistic domain is specified so that it is clear which language
should be used in every case. Similarly, the evolution toward such a dual world
will need a long transition, which makes things easier, by preparing everyone for
the change. In a way, the analysis and the policies that result from these ideas
remind Van Parijs’ proposals, though here the perspective is mainly sociolinguistic
(though some sociologists and international relations authors are also used through
the book).
In the meantime, big languages such as Arabic, Mandarin, or Spanish will grow
to become a sort of regional languages. He speaks about people having multiple
identities and the possibility for the normal citizen of being multilingual. However,
when confronted with a likely situation of needing up to five languages to live in
a community in the age of globalization (e.g., a migrant in a place with a local
language which is different from national and the international, etc.), he fears that
people will have to make decisions about which of them prioritize, which makes the
future of many languages uncertain.
According to this author, the biggest trend in this era is related to migration.
One the one hand, a migrant has both rights and responsibilities. On the other
hand, they are one of the main driving forces toward more multilingualism within
the different countries. And this is so because they will have to learn the new
language(s), but they should also be allowed to keep theirs. In order to differentiate
the rights of regional minorities and those of immigrants, Bastardas mentions Van
Parijs (2004) when he says “locally-existing cultural diversity, usually a result of
immigration, does not deserve the same protection that we should afford to territory-
based diversity; the long standing (and especially linguistic) differences between
regions.”
In order to organize a multilingual world, Bastardas suggests building it from
four principles:
(a) (Official and symbolic) recognition of the different languages in an equalitarian
way.
(b) Communicability, in order to have a language to use across boundaries. A + b
would mean to recognize all languages equally in an official way (both at
the state and at the level of the EU, e.g.) and, at the same time, to ensure
communication by making clear which is the language shared by everybody
in an efficient way so that we keep the advantages of this solution.
(c) Sustainability is what protects us from the dangers of the common language. In
other words, communicability should not go against sustainability. And we will
achieve sustainability from having plural identities and from the subsidiarity
principle.
(d) Subsidiarity, i.e., everything that can be done through the local language should
be done this way and not in another more global one. This means that in some
cases, the governments will act to prevent that the lingua franca overacts in
dimensions where it should not. In fact, the author predicts an increase of such
areas of conflict with the English language. The result is then a more united, but
also more multilingual, world, in which several languages coexist in the same
space but in different levels or dimensions. Finally, the author tries to apply his
122 J. Alcalde
ideas to the case of Catalonia, which presumably is what he has in mind when
proposing his theory.39
Villa (2013) presents the situation of English in the Italian universities. Accord-
ing to her, English-only policies make more difficult to engage locals with science,
and this is a democratic deficit. She uses examples from Scandinavian countries,
such as Sweden, where a kind of diglossic situation (English having higher status
than Swedish) is analyzed as a problematic development. Moreover, due to the
positive trends of emerging countries in terms of job creation, such as Brazil, from
a student’s point of view, it seems irrational to study only English. However, her
main thesis is that English should be one of the languages of science in Italy, the
other being Italian. An interesting aspect of the book is that the author is not a
sociolinguist, but a professor of immunology in the University of Milan, which
indicates that this topic has become of general interest. The main criticism, in my
opinion, is the fact that after criticizing the Scandinavian policies, her proposal is
not that different from their results, with a language for high-level domains (i.e.,
communicating with the world) and the other one for lower-level domains (e.g., as
a mere language of knowledge dissemination to be used with the locals).
Also Rosemary Salomone (2015) discusses the case of Italian and French
universities adapting to the rise of global English. After examining the different
arguments for and against the use of English as the medium of instruction in higher
education, she proposes a balanced language policy that takes into account the need
of English—which should be taught to everyone beyond any discrimination—while
keeping in mind the linguistic rights of national, minority, and immigration language
speakers.
Beyond western realities, it is worth mentioning the study by Suzanne Romaine
(2015), who addresses the role of English in developing countries, showing how
a language policy favoring English at the cost of local languages can worsen the
economic chances of the majority of the population. On another front, Hamid and
Kirkpatrick (2016) are critical of the foreign-language policies in Asia and Australia
because they tend to be approached from an exclusively utilitarian perspective.
As a consequence, the teaching of English in Asian countries does not have a
similar counterpart in the teaching of Asian languages in Australia. This way,
both the humanistic and sociocultural dimensions of language learning are ignored,
but also the less utilitarian languages themselves, creating an unequal (linguistic)
relationship between the communities.40
Boran, Idil (2003). This author uses the existing similarities between language
diversity and biodiversity to advocate for language policies that promote language
diversity. For example, whereas protecting biodiversity usually implies protecting
ecosystems within small territories, from an ecolinguistics perspective, the world’s
39 For an application of this principle together with the principle of personality, see Alcalde
(2016b).
40 However, a recent study has shown that differences between multilingual and lingua franca
language regimes in Southern Asian countries could also depend on state traditions. See Lui (2015).
most common languages are spoken by 90% of the world’s population: whereas
thousands of other languages are only spoken by small communities.
Interestingly, the places with the richest biodiversity tend to be also the ones with
the richest linguistic diversity. Both types of diversity are normally greater in areas
that have not been fully colonized by agricultural civilizations and also in areas
delimited by geographical barriers. Similar mechanisms work in both cases, such as
the new organisms (and languages) that farmers bring with them to the detriment of
the local ones or the limitations of the movement of species (and cultures) posed by
the geographical terrain.
Probably the most relevant contribution of Boran’s piece is the idea that linguistic
diversity, like biodiversity, can be considered a public good. A public good is a good
in which individuals cannot be excluded from use and where use by one individual
does not reduce availability to others (see also the introduction of this book).
In this sense, there are several arguments to consider linguistic diversity as a
public good. The first one reminds the aesthetic value of language, which is not
only an instrument of communication but also a medium for artistic works. From
a linguistic perspective, losing a language means losing all the pieces of art in
that language. However, this is not an undisputed argument, as the recognition
of artistic ventures as public goods and the policy implications this entails is
controversial. Second, arguments related to scientific value. Thus, local cultures
include useful information about the world, often far less self-evident to western
scholars than to them. However, if we accept that the value of this knowledge could
be overestimated, this would also be a weak argument.
Third, she analyzes individual’s freedom of choice as grounds for supporting
language diversity. This line of thinking is also problematic, since language rights
have an essentially collective nature. In other words, different from what happens
in the fields of politics or religion, the individual’s freedom to live in a particular
language is conditioned to the access to a substantial community of speakers. David
Laitin will also make a similar claim.
Instead, she suggests a principle of fairness that resembles the logic of compen-
sation proposed in some of his works by Philippe van Parijs (e.g., Van Parijs 2003a,
b). In sum, if we accept that linguistic diversity is a public good, then the cost of its
maintenance should be shared by linguistic majorities.
In fact, some authors have argued that cultural diversity is also valuable to the
majority (Goodin 2006) and even for humanity (e.g., Crystal 2000). The parallels
between linguistic diversity and biodiversity can be understood along these lines.
Also Dworkin (1993) develops the idea of intrinsic value of preserving cultures.
However, intrinsic value-based arguments for language policy have been widely
criticized (e.g., Weinstock 2003).
Miquel Sigual was a Catalan psycholinguist with interest in political theory. He
did not mention the term “linguistic justice” in his main book (1996), but language
policy, mainly in the European Union. He criticized the current official policy of the
EU. From a democratic perspective, the fact that only national languages are used in
the institutions of the EU is controversial (and also very expensive and complicates
decision-making processes). At the same time, (a simplified) English performs its
124 J. Alcalde
role of lingua franca, which gives advantages to native speakers and puts in danger
the survival of other languages. In the conclusion, he says that the EU language
policy should be oriented to preserve its diversity.
On a side note, he is one of the fathers of the current language policy in Catalonia,
the so-called immersion, by which children at school learn math or history in
Catalan. It seems he brought the system from Quebec. He also defended in public
debate the importance of bilingualism (for Catalans, the need to learn Spanish),
which made him a controversial figure in both sides. He mentions Esperanto as a
good idea, but according to him the fact that after more than 100 years no state or
institution has adopted it as an official or auxiliary language does not allow us to
keep on considering this as a current project.
Moreno Cabrera, Juan Carlos. Without naming it as linguistic justice, Moreno
Cabrera presents an original definition of the concept based on language rights
(2006). He claims that it is easier to obtain a passive competence of a language than
an active one. According to him, every person has the right to express him/herself the
largest number of times in his/her own language(s), which is the one he/she speaks
best and the ones which allows him/her to express himself fully. The solution to
the language problem is then a passive or receptive plurilingualism, named here as
sesquilinguism or semi-bilingualism. This way we achieve both “the idiosyncrasy
of languages + intercomprehension.”
In my opinion, this author is right when he says that it is easier to understand half
a dozen of languages than to speak one of them perfectly. This way, by encouraging
every person to speak in their mother tongue fulfills the mission of ensuring a basic
right, while at the same time, by not requiring speaking to this person in the same
language, it also ensures the same right of his interlocutor. Accordingly, language
policies should promote the passive understanding of a quantity of languages,
possibly the ones the person will need in the future. For example, I would say it
makes more sense to learn to understand the languages which are geographically
(but also linguistically) closer than those more distant ones. Probably this proposal
is more feasible in contexts of languages of the same family (e.g., Slavic languages),
and it would present more problems for intercomprehension in cases of speakers of
languages which are very distant from each other.
From an interdisciplinary perspective (strongly influenced by sociolinguistics), it
is worth listing the recommendations from the concluding session of the first Nitobe
symposium of international organizations (Fettes and Bolduc 1998), as principles to
achieve a just, efficient, and sustainable world language order: (a) the conservation
of linguistic and cultural diversity; (b) the entrenchment of linguistic human
rights, including effective mother tongue and second language education; and
(c) high-quality, reciprocal, widely accessible linguistic communication between
different cultural and linguistic groups. Also from an interdisciplinary perspective,
sociolinguists Iannàcaro and Dell’Acquila (2016) defend that the idea of linguistic
justice developed in political philosophy should be related to their concept of
linguistic ease, by which they consider the freedom of concern of the speaker in
a given social interaction, according to the social norms of use.41
A remarkable recent contribution is Pillar (2016), arguably the first sociolinguis-
tics textbook from an interdisciplinary approach that includes many elements from
political philosophy, which aims at bringing the debates on justice closer to the
students of applied sociolinguistics.
From a critical perspective, Pupavac (2012: Chap. 4) argues that advocacy
over threatened languages is related to models of cultural linguistic conditioning
influenced by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis rather than Chomskian universalism. On
another front, she criticizes linguistic imperialist approaches because they do not
offer a comprehensive picture of contemporary global power relations to the extent
that their strategies may be understood as a form of legal multicultural imperialism,
which in a counterintuitive way ends up legitimizing global governance by western
powers over weaker societies.42
An original perspective in this field is the one by Martinez (2017), who analyzes
cases of linguicism (defined by Skutnabb-Kangas as the domination of one language
at the expense of others) and linguistic violence in a Californian school, particularly
against Black and Latinx youth. He criticizes the fact that they are labelled from
a deficit perspective by the educators as English learners or long-term English
learners, undervaluing this way their linguistic resources and stigmatizing them,
and suggests the creation of a language of solidarity for them that overcomes such
situation.
Finally, the language problem in science and in academia should also be
mentioned in this section. This has been studied by Blanke and Blanke (2015),
Fiedler (2014), Gazzola (2010, 2012), and Wandel (2011), among others, showing
that Anglo-Saxon native speakers enjoy an important privilege when writing
scientific articles participating in academic discussions, etc.43 Moreover, following
sociolinguists such as Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas, such privilege might have
broader effects than the usual challenges faced by nonnative speakers when building
their careers, which might include cultural and ideological biases associated with
the different political cultures and ways of understanding the world that brings each
particular language brings with it.
41 For a similar approach, see Gobbo and Alcalde (2016).

42 InPupavac’s view, such governance could change the character of indigenous communities and
indigenous languages. See below Sect. 6.2 on critical legal studies.
43 See also Gordin (2015) for the international role that other languages have played historically in
science, such as Russian or planned languages including Esperanto and Ido.

126 J. Alcalde
5 Interlinguistics and Esperantology
Traditionally, interlinguists were among the first who cared about linguistic jus-
tice and Esperanto speakers have naturally researched and documented linguistic
rights.44 Thus, they have brought to the debate the possibility of using a planned
language in language policies. Although they would need to overcome a coordina-
tion problem (Pool 1991b), potentially such solutions are the ones that combine best
the need for effective communication and the defense of language rights, including
the preservation of minority languages. These authors help to think outside the
box about the future and to consider tools that are frequently missing in analysis
from other disciplines. For example, Esperanto has shown during the last century its
possibilities as a neutral and easy-to-learn tool in all domains needed to become a
useful international auxiliary language.
As it will be shown, there has been an evolution, and current scholars do not
longer believe Esperanto is the solution to all language issues. Therefore, in order to
build fair linguistic regimes, the use of an international auxiliary language could be
a tool in a broader set of language policies, together with others, such as intercom-
prehension in particular cases. According to the Universal Esperanto Association, a
fair global linguistic regime should be based on democratic communication, global
education, effective language learning, multilingualism, language rights, language
diversity, and human emancipation.
As far as their weak points are concerned, most of the ideas have not been
properly tested yet. Additionally, some of the experiments that have been carried
out do not meet all the necessary research standards of quality. Moreover, this
subdiscipline still suffers from prejudices and ignorance from other scholars.
Finally, many authors consider that Esperanto missed its opportunity and that
English is today the global lingua franca.
If linguistic justice interested early advocates of international planned languages
such as Privat or Piron, it does so even more recent figures in this field. In fact, it
is not hazardous that several chapters of the book in homage of Humphrey Tonkin
(Blanke and Lins 2010) speak explicitly about lingva justeco. In fact, despite we
have already talked about Tonkin in the previous section, he is one of the major
figures of interlinguistics (e.g., Tonkin 2006, 2015a). Another one that we have
already encountered, but deserves to be mentioned again here, is Mauro La Torre.
Both Catalan pioneer Delfí Dalmau in his writings from the 1920s (see also
Solé i Camardons 1998) and Umberto Eco in his more recent search to the perfect
language (1993) dedicate good words to the most successful planned language so far
(Esperanto), which, combined with intercomprehension (or in the words of Dalmau,
“passive polyglotism”), could become the most efficient and fair language policy to
be applied in international relations.
44 See Fiedler (2015) for a recent survey of the topic of planned languages in the current specialist
literature.
More recently, also François Grin (2008b) considers this possibility. According
to him, if one promotes multilingualism and encourages mutual understanding, this
leads to a fairer situation and could prepare the way to a development in which
Esperanto can find its place. If we apply intercomprehension to the EU and taking
into account that there are 12 groups of related languages, this would reduce the
directions of translation and interpretation to 253, less than one half of today’s
number. Moreover, the savings could be distributed in a way that the countries which
made the most effort to learn other languages would receive more. Interestingly, he
mentions other similar projects, such as adopting a language in addition to those
needed in the EU, rotating the languages so that each is used in turn and strong
languages do not dominate the weaker ones, and the use of a bridge language
such as Esperanto. To sum up, intercomprehension encourages multilingualism and
promotes fair practices, leading to a new vision of communication in a multilingual
context in which Esperanto also has a role to play.
Similarly, Maat (2016) confronts the imbalances, disadvantages, and various
types of injustices caused by the adoption of a natural language as the lingua franca
of the world with a situation in which everybody keeps their own native tongue
for local use whereas for international communication uses a common (artificial)
language, owned by all mankind in equal measure.45
Other sophisticated analysis has concluded that the optimal language policy
alternative for the EU would be one employing a planned language as lingua franca
(e.g., Montagut 2004; Gobbo 2005). Other authors such as Fettes or Tonkin have
studied how a planned language could help the financial situation of the EU’s
language services (but also the UN language policy), improving at the same time
the quality of translation and interpretation. Also Christiansen (2006) sees the role
of Esperanto as a relay language and as an internal working language for the
EU institutions as the best solution in the long term. Interestingly enough, she
differentiates between the short and the long term, and in fact, her best solution in
the short term is a different one and includes the use of several working languages
(but no use of mother tongue), acknowledging this way that even if we accept
that Esperanto could help to solve the so-called language problem, a transition
period is nevertheless necessary, in which other language policy proposals need
to be considered. This idea also has to do with the fact that any language policy
based on Esperanto will have to face several disadvantages, being one of them the
transformation required by the educational system.
However, the main disadvantage facing this kind of proposals might be prejudice
and ignorance, which are often still deeply rooted in serious scholarship. For
example, Buchmüller-Codoni (2012) analyzes the relationships between language
policy and democracy in the European Union including the possibility of using
Esperanto, which is presented as a language very difficult to learn: “The major
drawback is probably the fact that the learning of Esperanto is very difficult, due
to the lack of books and other instruction material. It is not accessible for everyone
45 See also Gobbo (2016).

128 J. Alcalde
and it is highly questionable why we should learn a language for communication

within the EU that has no meaning at all outside Europe” (Buchmüller-Codoni 2012:
12). Likewise, Van Bendegem (2004) seems to understand that the sole purpose of
a universal common language would be to replace all existing languages, missing
therefore the main points behind the whole discipline of interlinguistics. Similarly,
the objection by Van Parijs to the lack of neutrality of Esperanto is quite surprising
keeping in mind his embracement of English as a global lingua franca. As Grin
(2003b) suggests, such criticisms are as absurd as saying that because democracy is
not a totally equalitarian system, that is a reason to prefer feudalism.
We also find critics of Esperanto in some scholars of the field of ecology of
language. In general, those who feel comfortable with the environmental analogies
are very skeptical when it comes to find a role for planned and “artificial” languages
in a world of natural languages. An important exception, as we have seen, is
Skutnabb-Kangas (e.g., 2000), who bases most of her arguments about linguistic
genocide precisely on the ecology of language perspective.
Nevertheless, many interlinguists believe so enthusiastically in the potential of a
planned language to solve the language problem that they keep on doing research
experiments to prove its advantages, including its propaedeutic advantage (see
Blanke 2001). Also Gobbo (2013) shows that planned languages “can be used to
teach important notions of general linguistics without requiring theorization, but
rather in an active way, when learners actually create their own language.”
Pool and Grofman (1989) study one of the biggest objections to the feasibility
of planned languages: their functional inadequacy. This is an important study,
because it is a pioneering attempt to link theory with empirical data. In order to
test the functional inadequacy hypothesis, a brief experiment was conducted at
a site where numerous speakers of Esperanto could be found: The 69th World
Esperanto Congress in British Columbia. The number of participants in the study
was 135 people. Despite several limitations, the study concludes that in the case
of Esperanto-English bilinguals, problem-solving behavior was not consistent with
the claim that an artificial or simplified language is pervasively inferior to a natural
language as a medium of thought and communication.
In fact, the results show contradictory evidence about the proposition that the use
of an artificial or simplified language will restrict reasoning ability in comparison
with use of a natural language: deductive reasoning question was better answered
in English, whereas resistance to presentation-induced bias was better answered in
Esperanto.46 Different explanations are offered to account for these results. Among
them, several methodological and epistemological problems are presented, such as
the nonrandomness of the sample or the nonexistence of conventional levels of
46 On a side note, the question of the study related to the consistency judgment under uncertainty
is adapted from one used by the seminal article on (psychological) framing effects (Tversky
and Kahneman 1981: 453), which is the basis for the whole of today’s discipline of behavioral
economics.
statistical differences. However, the methodological limitations imply that all the
findings in the experiment are merely suggestive.
For the purposes of this chapter, it is more relevant the fact that, as Mark Fettes
(1998) reminds us, ideas about linguistic justice are far from new and can be traced
back to the origins of Esperanto. In fact, Esperanto was developed as a practical
means of achieving universal linguistic equality. In this article, he shows how social
practices of the Esperanto community reveal an unconscious realization of the ideal
of linguistic equality, even if on a small scale. Thus, without having solved the
problem of unequal linguistic ability, the community has reduced it to a minimum
through linguistic and social means. Moreover, Esperanto speakers have naturally
researched and documented linguistic rights and developed a high level of awareness
and respect for small languages. Fettes also presents the five kinds of linguistic
inequalities identified by Pool (1987) and outlines how the community tries to solve
them through Esperanto:
1. Unequal attributes of different languages. This implies arguments about linguis-
tic rights and linguistic democracy. From this perspective, equal respect should
be granted to all languages, no matter if they are more or less widely spread.
2. Unequal privileges granted to the users of different languages. According to
Fettes, the Esperanto community is able to fight against this kind of linguistic
inequality because in international meetings Esperanto has priority over the other
languages.
3. Unequal linguistic skills of different persons, which also happens in the
Esperanto community. However, in this case, beginners feel safer than usual
because (a) in Esperanto there are no dialects; (2) people often speak clearer than
natives in any language; (c) and people tend to be more patient.
4. Unequal statuses conferred on different persons by linguistic rules and customs.
5. Inequalities co-varying with language but not caused by language. This has to
do with minoritized groups, poverty in countries that used to be colonies, etc.
According to Fettes, in the Esperanto community, this kind of inequality is also
lower than in other contexts, because here there is a (growing) sense of solidarity
among the members.
In the debates about English versus Esperanto as a global lingua franca, the
future of English is far from clear. And this is so because foreign-language
acquisition (including English) involves conscious decision-making and substantial
investments of limited personal and societal resources. According to a previous
work by Fettes (1991), if English becomes ever more identified with globalization,
the latter’s negative effects (including deepening social inequalities and the loss
of linguistic and cultural diversity) may fuel the political search for linguistic
alternatives.
In fact, for the majority of young Europeans, English is seen as the language
of McDonald’s and Hollywood. In other words, a language that provides a quick
and relatively cheap gratification with little substance behind it. And this is not
Shakespeare’s English, but simple English. In this sense, the influential federalist
130 J. Alcalde
and linguist Steiner speaks of a “thin wash, marvelously fluid, but without adequate
base” (1975a: 470).
On another front, Esperanto bases its arguments on matters of principle. Two
ideas: (a) within the optimistic rationalism of the Enlightenment, a planned language
is by its very nature more easily learned than an unplanned national language; and
(b) it offers the political advantage of neutrality. However, Esperanto advocates are
forced to base their arguments on potentialities rather than hard realities, a message
which inevitably has a limited audience.
To sum up, about the future, as Piron (1994) and others have argued, as long
as international communication continues to increase, the position of some world
languages will be strengthened, but there are unforeseeable factors involved so that
English enjoys no guarantee of permanent supremacy. Whereas the future of English
is largely about economics, the future of Esperanto might be more concerned
with culture and identity. That means that in order to better describe the future
trends in this sense, the use of quantitative models might be balanced with careful
ethnographic techniques.
And it is at the level of identity that psychological factors may play a role. In
this sense, Claude Piron (1988) argues that Esperanto awakens deep unconscious
anxieties in many monolinguals: many people cannot tolerate the idea that the
language might be, in certain respects, superior to their mother tongue. This
convinced Esperantist sees the success of Esperanto as a long-term issue. “We are
not talking of the short term or of an abrupt transition. Languages do not come or go
in a few years; their waxing and waning occurs on the time scale of generations.
English has obeyed this rule, and Esperanto, for all its planned characteristics,
inevitably will as well.” The reasons for this slow process are psychological (a
radical concept needs time to be assimilated in popular consciousness), political
(few politicians will support an idea without widespread popular support), and
practical (the difficulties of teaching the language following its acceptance).
Similar to Fettes, Piron argues that different from English, Spanish, or Chinese,
Esperanto’s position will depend on the conditions for international communication
but relatively little on the economic and political balance of power. In this sense, the
rise of a politics of equality on the European and the world scale makes it plausible
that a language which belongs to no particular group can find a wider role to play.47
According to him, language equality in social relations can only be consciously
achieved, by planning and not by accident. From this perspective, English, by its
nature, represents the forces of inertia and inevitably privileges some individuals
and groups above others.
47 About neutrality, Piron has a solid argument. Whereas lexically and historically, Esperanto is
undoubtedly European (the concept of planned language has been developed in Europe while
any a posteriori project seeking global recognition is obliged to base itself largely on Indo-
European roots, whose native speakers make up approximately one-half of the world population),
linguistically, this is counterbalanced by an a priori syntactic morphology, without analogy among
Indo-European languages, and culturally by a universalistic ideological base.
After showing that Esperanto is easier to learn than English and that Esperanto is
a better choice from a democratic perspective (i.e., no particular national language
or culture is imposed) and neutral point of view (i.e., every language retains its
status), Hans Erasmus (1998)—from the working group on the Language Problem
in the European Union—presents two proposals (including several pilot projects)
for the use of Esperanto:
(a) As a bridge language for the interpretation system within the EU, it could make
the system more efficient, enabling a wider use of minority languages; this
reminds the words by Probal Dasgupta (2008) that the main role of Esperanto
today involves people connecting to each other as an interregional language, a
role that English cannot fulfill because it suppresses regional specificities.
(b) As the first foreign language taught in schools, it could make multilingualism
attainable to many (which remind us the propaedeutic value of Esperanto),
while easing the burden on students.
From the perspective of those who work for the promotion of the least used
languages, a potential basis for cooperation with the Esperanto movement has also
been identified, based on a holistic view of linguistic and cultural diversity (Allan
Wynne Jones 1998). In fact, at least 50 million citizens of the EU use daily a
language which is not the language of the state in which they live. According to
Wynne Jones, it should be ensured that intercultural exchanges and the existence
of an international language need pose no threat to linguistic community. And this
seems easier to do through a planned language than through a national language
such as English. This author recommends the creation of a permanent unit for
language planning within an international organization and, interestingly, an advice
for the Esperanto movement: “they take time to develop a ‘business plan’ for the
next fifty or hundred years.”
Kobayashi Tsukasa (1998) offers a slightly different approach to the role of
Esperanto in international communication. Building from some experience in Japan
(in concrete, he mentions fellow Esperantists, such as Akita, Saito, and Hasegawa),
he proposes the use of Esperanto as a tool for global education. This idea is based
on the belief that foreign languages are too difficult to learn, “whether it is Asians
learning European languages or Europeans learning Chinese.” The characteristics
of Esperanto make it adequate for different purposes, such as educating seniors
(who form an ever-increasing part of the population in many parts of the world)
and helping psychiatric casualties to recover the meaning of their existence. He also
mentions the fact that books about Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Vietnam, or Yugoslavia
were first translated to Japanese from Esperanto editions.
The issue of linguistic justice has also achieved some attention from religious
studies. For example, Deguchi Kyotaro (1998) mentioned the relationship between
Esperanto and the Japanese religious organization Oomoto. According to him, a
fairer world will be characterized by “one god, one world, one interlanguage.”
Similarly, there have been several attempts to link Esperanto and the Baha’i faith.
For example, according to Farhad Pirmoradi (1998), as long as the language issue
can be linked to wider concerns, there is a role for the Esperanto movement
132 J. Alcalde
in building grassroots coalitions of NGOs and in working to improve education

worldwide. In his view, the Baha’i Esperanto-Ligo could work as a bridge between
both movements.48
From a sociolinguistic point of view, some authors, for example, Kadoja (2010),
have studied the relationship between linguistic rights and Esperanto. The fact is that
since the 1990s, the Esperanto movement has introduced the concept of language
rights into its theoretical framework. The objective is to abolish power relationships
in communication in order to achieve language equality. However, similar to Tonkin,
Fettes, and others, the author is also aware that language discrimination also takes
place in the Esperanto community.49 On the one hand, there is the discrimination
related to the level of language competence, i.e., beginner versus proficient speakers.
On the other hand, according to the author, the language itself contains a sexual
dualism which is associated with sex discrimination. In order to deal with the first
issue, he recommends not using idioms and difficult words or expressions and
metaphors associated with the culture of a certain part of the world, because they
might not be understood in other places. In general, the author argues for a different
teaching of the language based on language rights, so that Esperanto speakers will
be able to avoid unconscious discriminations in the ways they use the language.
In my view, there is an interesting debate about the linguistic rights of Esperanto
speakers. According to Wim de Smet in a debate during the Nitobe seminar, “if
languages do not have rights, but their speakers do, native Esperanto speakers could
claim such human linguistic rights” (see Fettes and Bolduc 1998). This would follow
the right of a child to have at least basic education through the medium of the
mother tongue, frequently advocated by Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and others. But
to Wim de Smet, even the rest of speakers who use it, not only native speakers,
could also claim them. This perspective is criticized by Yvo Peeters (1998), who
argues that Esperanto speakers have no linguistic rights, because Esperanto is not
a language which belongs to the human rights segment of the person, the people,
or the community. He thinks that Esperanto promoters wanting to prove that it
is a language like the others, and trying to give it the characteristics of a mother
tongue language, are actually doing harm to Esperanto, because they are harming
the fundamental, unique quality which the original Esperantists wanted it to have,
which is that it is a neutral, non-cultural, nonhistorical, non-political, noneconomic,
48 A detailed analysis of the linguistic perspective of the Baha’i can be found in Gregory Paul P.
Meyjes (2006). See also Nordenstorm (2015).

49 Similarly, in a debate during the Nitobe seminar (see Fettes and Bolduc 1998), Tonkin argued that
there is always a relationship between language and power, which is not necessarily a positive one.
While Esperanto speakers are well aware of this and they should emphasize the point, they should
also face criticisms. In this sense, if everybody spoke Esperanto, somebody would be making a
profit out of it. Moreover, it is possible to practice linguistic discrimination using Esperanto, just as
effectively as through the use of other languages. In other words, Esperanto grammar can be used
in many different ways. Moreover, the Esperanto speech community is very effective in excluding
those people who do not speak Esperanto. According to him, efforts should be made to make
Esperanto and the Esperanto movement better known outside their own circles.
non-state, no-nothing-linked language. However, it is worth to mention that in the

European Charter of Regional and Minority Rights, it is languages themselves that
have rights. On another front, Tonkin has also mentioned that language rights are
not simply possessions of threatened minorities, but they are in fact possessed
by everybody. Interesting enough, it seems that the debate on language rights in
association with Esperanto comes mainly from sociolinguistics and legal experts,
and not from Esperanto speakers.
One of the most well-known and influential documents produced by the
Esperanto movement is the Prague Manifesto (1996). According to this document,
a fair and effective language order should be based on the following principles:
– Democratic communication. Given that language inequality gives rise to com-
municative inequality, any system of communication which confers lifelong
privileges on some while requiring others to devote years of effort to achieving a
lesser degree of competence is fundamentally antidemocratic.
– Global education. Given that education in any language is bound to a certain
view of the world, the child who learns Esperanto learns that the world does not
have borders, where every country is home.
– Effective language learning. Given the difficulties in learning ethnic languages
for many students who would benefit from knowing a second language,
Esperanto can help because (a) it is easier, (b) it has propaedeutic value, and
(c) it is useful for language awareness.
– Multilingualism. Speakers of all languages should have a real chance of learning
a second language to a high communicative level. A valuable example is
the community of Esperanto speakers, because all of them are bilingual or
multilingual, without exception.
– Language rights. In the Esperanto community, the speakers of languages—large
and small and official and unofficial—meet on equal terms through a mutual
willingness to compromise. This balance of rights and responsibilities provides
a legitimate place from which assessing situations of language inequality and
conflict.
– Language diversity. Esperantists believe that language diversity is not a barrier
to communication and development, but a constant and indispensable source
of enrichment. Therefore, languages are inherently valuable and worthy of
protection and support.
– Human emancipation. Reliance on national languages should not be exclusive,
because this puts up barriers to the freedoms of expression, communication, and
association. On the contrary, every person should be able to participate fully in
the human community, securely rooted in his or her local cultural and language
identity, yet not limited by it.
In a debate among the participants at the Nitobe seminar (see Fettes and Bolduc
1998), Ralph Harry (p. 177–178) proposes the use of Esperanto as the diplomatic
language. For example, the original version of international treaties could be drafted
in Esperanto. In this sense, he argues that many international treaties have already
134 J. Alcalde
been (unofficially) translated into this language, including those of the European
Union.
From a pure philosophical perspective, Keohane (2016) is concerned by the
fact that linguistic hegemony is linked to unjust forms of influence that remain
undetected, even by philosophers, who are supposed to challenge all unjust forms
of influence. He stresses their responsibility to think beyond any given language,
including English, which also means thinking about translation more.50 In fact,
translation studies have tackled the situations of injustice in the linguistic domain
(e.g., Steiner 1975b; Derrida 1985). According to Pupavac (2012: Chap. 5), rights
to translation have been traditionally linked to language communication rights, but
recent scholarship has shifted to study the limits and violence of translation to the
extent that anti-translation theories have ended up endorsing linguistic governance
based on ethnolinguistic rights.51
6 Law
6.1 Language and International Law
Language rights as a subsector of human rights is a broad discipline of law research.

This approach usually examines the compatibility of national or regional legal
provisions with international instruments. In a way, legal questions aroused to give a
formal discourse to the norms and laws adopted within the design of public policies,
such as education legislation, often with mixed results in practice.52
Sometimes a legal perspective can be a relevant counterbalance to the perspective
of the linguistic market (Calvet 1998, de Swaan 2001) in so far as so-called
linguistic human rights could ensure protection for every linguistic community (e.g.,
De Varennes 1996; Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson 1994), although some of the
existing legal provisions such as the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights
are probably unfeasible. Generally speaking, the field of linguistic human rights
is dominated by sociologists. When academic works on language rights take a pure
50 On translation and linguistic justice, it is worth mentioning the recent collection Translation and
Public Policy: Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Case Studies, by González Núñez and Meylaerts
(2017).
51 From Pupavac’s perspective, such linguistic governance would have colluded with freedom of
speech. See below Sect. 6.2 on critical legal studies. For a more positive view on multilingualism
as a tool for multilingual democracy, see Pym (2013).
52 For example, from a detailed historical and legal perspective, Arias and Wiley (2015) address
the effects of language education legislation in the United States. They conclude that while it
recognizes that children who speak languages other than English require special resources to follow
instruction in English, this legislation has not established rights to promote minority languages in
education.
legal perspective, the result is not always necessarily of interest for the purposes of
this chapter.
One of the major authors is Jacqueline Mowbray. In a recent article (Mowbray
2011), she explores how international law, as a discourse, approaches questions of
language policy through two concepts: equality and culture. The conclusion is that
the language of international law can be used to advance (but also to limit) claims
by minority groups to use their own languages in different social contexts, claims
which are presented as of linguistic justice.
The same author expands this matter in a book (Mowbray 2012) by analyzing the
many disparate fields of international law which affect language use both directly
(e.g., human rights, minority rights, and cultural heritage laws) and indirectly (inter-
national trade law and international labor standards, among others). Of particular
interest are Sect. 4 (the politics of language) and Sect. 5 (language and participation
in public life), in which the author proposes a course of action to achieve greater
linguistic justice. In my opinion, the most relevant aspect for the purposes of this
chapter is the fact that it includes all the relevant legal provisions that can (legally)
justify a concrete language policy choice. In other words, it provides legal arguments
to many of the proposals that an analysis of public policy could find as the most
desirable ones from a language justice perspective.
Beyond domestic legislations, Vizi (2016) shows that the territoriality principle
also emerges in international documents, such as the European Charter for Regional
and Minority Languages and the Framework Convention for the Protection of
National Minorities. While states often use territorial requirements as a tool of
political control over minority language use, the interpretation of their obligations
under the two Council of Europe treaties would require a more practical and
technical approach to territorial limitations.
The issue of linguistic justice with regard to intellectual property rights has been
tackled by Falquet et al. (2008). In the same domain, Gazzola and Volpe (2014)
assess the fairness of the language regime of the European Patent Office. After
estimating the language-related costs of asymmetries among European applicants,
the authors explore two possible alternative language regimes based on introducing
a centralized system of financial compensation that covers translation costs borne
by European applicants whose first language is not one of the official languages of
the EPO. The conclusion is that “more multilingualism can be cheaper than less
multilingualism, provided that implicit costs are taken into account.”
Still in this field we can find several articles on linguistic justice for sign language
peoples, such as Batterbury (2012), which argues that a sign language policy (i.e.,
recognizing the minority language status of sign language peoples) is necessary
for language justice. The author affirms that the UN Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities, by employing a human rights approach, offers a regulatory
context that could allow a shift in policy discourse toward the eventual promulgation
of the minority sign language policy.53
53 For a recent research on sign language rights in Canada, see Paul and Snoddon (2017).
136 J. Alcalde
Finally, it is necessary to underline the existence of several law academic works

on “linguistic justice” that have nothing to do with the purposes of this chapter.54
6.2 Critical Legal Studies
Generally speaking, critical legal scholars are skeptical about legal multiculturalism,
because they think that official recognition of cultural rights may collide with
fundamental rights.55 In a recent work, Pupavac (2012) offers solid criticisms to
some of the main policies promoted by multiculturalists, language right advocates,
and ecolinguists. She takes an interdisciplinary approach to argue that the defense
of language rights is shifting from protecting freedom of speech—which should be
its main task—to expanding structures of linguistic governance, which essentially
represent a western community of states and NGOs. In her view, by using
international law against linguistic imperialism, linguistic human rights advocates
are legitimizing situations of legal imperialism.
She builds from the experience of the former Yugoslavia to claim that both
international security approaches and theories of justice based on cultural rights
may foster ethnolinguistic divisions. In Bosnia, assuming that identity-based groups
could be reconciled through recognition, people have been fixed into categories of
difference. This way, their potential to develop relationships beyond their group has
been undermined, and exclusionary projects have been promoted. According to her,
such policies based on ecolinguistic thinking have implied the social reproduction of
ethnic differences and the expansion of external governance of communities, with
negative consequences for civil and political freedoms of the citizens, including
the restriction of minorities’ freedom of speech and cultural expression under hate
speech (and counterterrorism) legislation.
On another front, Pupavac criticizes those sociolinguists who link language rights
violations with the notion of “genocide” or with “crimes against humanity,” because
by assuming the neutrality of international criminal law, they are in fact expanding
the reasons for western liberal military interventions.
Additionally, she points out that if the expansion of English as a lingua franca
represents a form of linguistic imperialism, also the expansion of international
tribunals—with a jurisprudence dominated by western powers and the English or
French languages—should be considered a form of legal linguistic imperialism.
Her criticisms also include the formal recognition of cultural rights. According to
Pupavac, championing such rights has taken place in places such as Bosnia in order
54 One example is Hotta (2012), with the appealing title “Linguistic Justice: A Linguistic Analysis
of Deliberation,” which studies the deliberation in criminal trials in Japan.

55 See Pupavac (2012: Chap. 2) for a discussion of the different generations of human rights and
the tensions that exist between them.

to increase the legitimacy of the state-building efforts and to help people identify
with the new state’s institutions, without providing real political self-determination.
To sum up, Pupavac’s view is critical with multiculturalists, language right
advocates, and ecolinguists, because in her view the legal multiculturalism that
follows from those approaches end up in situations of political injustice. By keeping
always in mind the great picture, this approach is useful to remind us that language
policies cannot be planned in isolation. However, whereas the critical perspective
within this approach is rigorously built, the constructive approach to improve the
current system of linguistic governance is less developed.
7 Conclusions
This chapter has presented most of the main theories about linguistic justice that
can be found in the literature. Although this is quite a new a topic, there are
already relevant and influential studies that have tackled it. And they are growing
exponentially.
In general, political philosophy seems to be the discipline with the highest
amount of proposals that have been made with the aim of influencing concrete poli-
cies. Whereas some link language justice with the promotion of language diversity,
others give more importance to other issues, such as equality of opportunities. In a
way, this is a more sophisticated version of the classic debate between the identity vs
the communicative dimension of languages. Also, the theories that defend language
diversity tend to criticize the role of English as a global lingua franca.
On another front, some of the most promising economic perspectives are the
ones that differentiate between efficiency and fairness, as well as between allocation
and distribution of resources. By creating more and more refined versions of public
policy analysis, they are able to show different preferred results, depending on the
objectives stated. A first potential for interdisciplinary collaboration is identified
here. In other words, economists can use philosophical theories to decide which
aims to prioritize and, therefore, which policy to pursue.
The relationship between philosophy and sociolinguistics also has a big poten-
tial for synergy. Therefore, detailed information about language diversity in the
world and its trends, the phenomena of bilingualism and multilingualism, or
the importance of mother tongue education can all illuminate political thinkers’
understanding of language and help to refine their theories. Also, collaboration with
the ecolinguistic paradigm can improve their analysis in various ways, such as by
taking into account language rights, but also the effects of the situations in which
different languages are in contact, and even the responsibilities of those who are
privileged by current language regimes.
We cannot forget the first authors that were interested in these kinds of issues.
From this perspective, interlinguistics is the discipline that has shown a genuine
sensibility for the topic, arguably from its birth. The research of such authors show
that they can add valuable and inspiring insights as complementary elements to
138 J. Alcalde
every possible solution to language injustice, which could include the use, for
certain purposes, of an auxiliary and neutral planned language.
Finally, the contributions of the legal scholars have already gone beyond the too-
vague category of linguistic human rights to present frameworks in which different
policies can be legally based. In this sense, when confronted with the choice of a
particular language policy that will maximize a particular understanding of language
justice, it should always be possible to use a legal text to make its legitimation
stronger.
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Part II
Political and Philosophical Perspectives
Justice in the Linguistic Environment:
Narrow or Wide?
Andrew Shorten
1 Introduction
This chapter constructs and compares two general methods for assessing linguistic
environments according to the standards of distributive justice. The wide approach
applies principles of justice directly to a given linguistic environment, assessing
any feature of (or change in) that environment which affects any person’s situation
in a morally relevant way. Contrastingly, the narrow approach says that only some
parts of a linguistic environment ought to be held to the standards of justice, such as
those which are created or sustained through coercive institutions or those which are
necessary to secure fair linguistic background conditions. Two arguments in support
of the narrow approach are proposed and examined, and two counter-examples are
discussed. The upshot of these examples is that we have at least some reasons to
adopt a wide approach when assessing the justice of a linguistic environment.
The term ‘linguistic environment’ has been used in language economics to
describe the ‘sum total’ of a given society’s ‘demolinguistic and sociolinguistic
features’ (Grin 2003a: 178). It is a theoretical construct, which subsumes ‘all the
relevant information about the status, in the broadest sense of the word, of the
various languages present in a given polity at a certain time’ (Grin and Vaillancourt
1997: 49). As such, the linguistic environment consists in things such as the range of
languages that are used in a place, the number of speakers they have, the respective
proficiencies of different speakers, the extent to which different languages are
recognised by official institutions and within civil society, the different statuses
A. Shorten ()
University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland
e-mail: andrew.shorten@ul.ie

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1_3
154 A. Shorten
they have, the different functions they are used for and social attitudes towards the
various languages spoken in their society.1
In this chapter I emphasise two characteristic features of linguistic environments,
both of which are especially relevant for normative political theory. First, they are
dynamic, changing over time. Alterations might be ‘bottom-up’, such as when an
influx of refugees changes the demolinguistic profile of a society, or they might be
the ‘top-down’ result of state-level policy interventions, such as when the learning
of a particular foreign language is promoted in the education system or when a
minority language is granted official recognition. Indeed, the aim of language policy
is to modify linguistic environments, as François Grin observes, when he suggests
that ‘[l]anguage policy, ultimately, proposes movement from one given, existing
“linguistic environment” to another, supposedly preferable linguistic environment’
(Grin 2006: 83). Second, linguistic environments partially explain the distribution
of important social goods, because they reward speakers of different languages
to greater and lesser extents. For example, a linguistic environment might offer
speakers of an autochthonous minority language comparatively few opportunities
to access cultural resources in their ancestral language. Or, it might offer recent
immigrants who lack proficiency in a locally dominant language only limited
opportunities to engage with social and political life. Or, members of both of these
groups (and others) might be disadvantaged in the employment market for reasons
related to their language skills.
Combined together, these features suggest a prima facie case for assessing both
linguistic environments and language policies according to principles of distributive
justice: linguistic environments because they partially explain how the benefits
and burdens of social co-operation are shared and language policies because
modifying the linguistic environment may have distributive effects. Of course, many
different criteria might be employed to assess whether one linguistic environment
is ‘preferable’ to another—and, accordingly, whether a particular language policy is
justified. For example, one linguistic environment might be more efficient or more
aesthetically pleasing than another, or it might better satisfy the preferences of those
living within it. Here I am concerned narrowly with how we might apply one such
standard, namely, distributive justice.
In order to assess a linguistic environment in this way, two things must be
specified: the content of the relevant principles (i.e. of justice) and the site to which
those principles are to apply. To date, political theorists writing about language and
language policy have mostly focussed on the content issue, and they have suggested
1 Because the demo- and sociolinguistic character of a society will be shaped by its legal and
political institutions and especially by the underlying scheme of language rights, these should
be understood as part of (but not identical to) the linguistic environment. The kinds of language
rights that constitute part of the linguistic environment might include, for example, negative rights
of non-interference to protect people’s private language choices, accommodation rights to enable
linguistic minorities to access services and institutions offered in the majority language as well as
positive rights to recognise, promote or protect a particular language (Kloss 1977; Kymlicka and
Patten 2003; Patten 2014).
Justice in the Linguistic Environment: Narrow or Wide? 155
a variety of candidate principles, such as equal recognition (Patten 2014), parity

of esteem (Van Parijs 2011), luck egalitarianism (De Schutter and Ypi 2012) and
linguistic freedom (Robichaud 2017). In this chapter I only indirectly address the
content issue and instead focus on the site issue. I do so by exploring two different
views about which objects principles of justice in the linguistic environment are
supposed to apply to.
The first view says that principles of justice ought to be applied directly to a given
linguistic environment. Correspondingly, it holds that any feature of (or change in)
a linguistic environment that affects any person’s situation in a morally relevant
way ought to be assessed at the bar of justice. One way to apply this approach
is to identify a particular outcome (or set of outcomes) and assess a linguistic
environment according to whether—and how closely—it has been realised. In turn,
language policies can be analysed derivatively, according to whether they are likely
to frustrate or promote the relevant outcome(s). The kinds of outcomes that a theory
might specify include things such as the protection of societal multilingualism,
the preservation of a vulnerable language, the dispersal of a common language
of citizenship, the availability of adequate employment prospects for speakers
of all languages, the absence of obstacles that frustrate the ability of linguistic
minorities to effectively exercise their political rights, or the supply of cultural
products in particular languages. Regardless of which outcomes are identified, what
distinguishes this view is that it treats all demo- and sociolinguistic changes as
potentially improving or worsening a linguistic environment from the perspective
of justice. Hence I describe it as a ‘wide’ approach to justice in the linguistic
environment.
Meanwhile, the second view is comparatively narrow, since it says that only
those parts of a linguistic environment which are created or sustained by coercive
institutions ought to be scrutinised according to the standards of justice. For the most
part, this has been the preferred option for liberal political theorists in recent years.
For example, in one defence of a ‘narrow’ approach, Alan Patten has suggested
that when assessing the justice of a linguistic environment, we should ask whether
the underlying scheme of (institutionally enforced) language rights is ‘consistent
with background conditions that are sufficient to legitimate whatever outcomes
should arise’ (Patten 2014: 197). In contrast to the ‘wide’ approach described above,
Patten treats demo- and sociolinguistic outcomes that arise through the free and
uncoordinated choices of individuals and groups as being neither just nor unjust,
since by his account principles of justice apply only to the institutional order and not
to linguistic outcomes. Thus, for Patten, people do not have a legitimate complaint in
justice against patterns of language shift that worsen their situation, if the relevant
change occurred against a justified scheme of language rights. Of course, as with
wide view, different versions of the narrow view can be constructed, depending on
the kinds of language rights and institutional arrangements that are understood to be
required by justice.
In this chapter I compare these two views, mostly by exploring the attractions
and possible shortcomings of the narrow view. One motivation for comparing
them arises from the observation that amongst liberal political theorists writing
156 A. Shorten
on language policy, the narrow view has been in the ascendency in recent years,
having been defended by Denise Réaume (1991), Alan Patten (2003, 2009, 2014)
and Helder De Schutter (2008), amongst others. This is a noteworthy and perhaps
surprising development, for at least two reasons. First, the narrow view is seemingly
at odds with the widely held normative assumption that language loss and decline,
as such, are morally bad things. For example, over 30 years ago, Leslie Green
observed that ensuring the preservation of vulnerable languages was ‘the implicit
value assumption of nearly every linguistic demographer and sociolinguist’ (Green
1987: 653). Whether this remains the case is beyond the remit of this chapter, but it
certainly seems conceivable that the permissive attitude of the narrow view towards
language loss is not shared by all who work in linguistics and sociolinguistics
(see, e.g. May 2005). Second, within the domain of political theory, the trajectory
towards the narrow view in debates about language policy has occurred almost
simultaneously with a move in the opposite direction when it comes to theorising
about justice more generally. For example, feminists (Okin 1989), socialists (Cohen
2008) and proponents of global justice (Caney 2005) have all recently questioned
the narrowness of mainstream theorising about justice. In different ways, they have
sought to displace the assumption that principles of justice apply only to the major
or basic institutions of a society and have proposed also scrutinising things like the
family and decisions of individuals according to the standards of justice.
The remainder of this chapter is organised as follows. First, I set out some
prima facie reasons in favour of normatively appraising linguistic environments.
In this section I argue only that linguistic environments are candidates for moral
assessment and not that they ought to be held to the standards of justice. Second, I
discuss the concept of justice and introduce a recent controversy about the ‘site’
to which it applies, which has bearing on the debate between narrow and wide
views. In particular, I introduce the idea that principles of justice apply only to the
basic structure of society—that is to say, to its major social, political and economic
institutions. Third, I examine two different rationales in support of this view, one
that appeals to coercion and another that appeals to background justice. I then
apply both rationales to the special case of linguistic environments, arguing that
each gives us reasons to prefer a narrow approach to their assessment. Finally, I
suggest that all plausible versions of the narrow approach neglect important demo-
and sociolinguistic inequalities. Consequently, we have grounds to prefer the wide
approach to assessing justice in a linguistic environment.
2 Linguistic Environments and Normative Political Theory
The case in support of morally appraising linguistic environments has two separate
parts. First, as noted already, alterations in a linguistic environment can improve or
worsen a person’s situation, for instance, by influencing her social and economic
opportunities, by symbolically recognising her identity or by satisfying more or
less of her preferences. This is because linguistic environments will tend to benefit
speakers of different languages unequally. For example, the languages spoken

and understood by workers will often be closely linked to their employment and
promotion prospects, the languages in which writers are able to publish their work
will influence the size of the audience available to them, and the languages spoken
by hospital patients can influence the quality of care they receive. Furthermore,
speakers of dominant languages may be able to more efficiently navigate complex
institutions, make more informed consumption decisions, experience fewer hurdles
when forming friendships and relationships and more effectively exercise their civil
and political rights (Shorten 2017). Thus, a person’s life prospects, and her effective
opportunities to achieve her purposes and ambitions, will always be partially defined
by how well her language repertoire ‘fits’ with the linguistic environment she
inhabits, and when a person’s language repertoire closely matches her linguistic
environment, she is likely to have better prospects and opportunities than if not.
Because linguistic environments influence our prospects and opportunities,
people have strong and normatively salient interests in the characters of those
environments. One way to give due recognition to those interests is to describe
people as having moral rights to a linguistic environment of a particular kind, such
as one that adequately recognises the value of their ancestral language or one that
secures for them an adequate range of cultural options or economic opportunities.
Conceptually speaking, to say that an individual or a group has a right concerning
the character of their linguistic environment is also to say that some other person,
group or institution has a corresponding duty to secure for them a linguistic
environment of a particular kind (Hohfeld 1919). This might strike us as strange, if
we think that linguistic environments are fixed or immutable, or part of the natural
order, or uncontrollable. Hence, the second part of the justification for applying
normative principles to evaluate linguistic environments is to emphasise that they are
malleable human artefacts. This can be observed by considering the ways in which
linguistic environments mutate over time. Often, changes to linguistic environments
are the result of complex interlocking causes. For example, a number of firms might
alter their language-related hiring criteria in response to developments in the global
economy, thereby also altering the incentives for language learning and language use
at the local level. In other cases these transformations are the intended outcome of
collective decisions. For instance, language planning, and most especially status and
acquisition planning, typically aims to alter a linguistic environment and to improve
it according to specified criteria, such as maximising aggregate welfare (Grin 2010:
83) or language preservation (Fishman 1991).
Consequently, linguistic environments—as such and both as a whole and in
their individual parts—significantly inform people’s prospects and opportunities.
Because they are neither fixed nor unalterable features of the social world, but
are instead produced by the actions and decisions of individuals and institutions,
they can (and ought to) be evaluated according to normative criteria. However, it
is one thing to say that linguistic environments can be morally better or worse or
that a particular alteration to a linguistic environment is morally desirable and quite
another to say that linguistic environments ought to be evaluated according to, or
perhaps even regulated by, principles of justice. To make sense of this second and
158 A. Shorten
stronger claim and to see why it might be controversial, we need first to look more
closely at the concept of justice itself.
3 Justice and Its ‘Site’
Justice describes that part of morality concerned with giving people what they are
due, and theories of social or distributive justice aim to explain how the benefits
and burdens of social life should be shared. Typically, this is done by specifying
principles that tell us how important social goods should be allocated. In turn, these
principles supply us with moral criteria from which existing and proposed actions,
rules or social arrangements can be assessed and compared. So, for example,
equality of opportunity can be understood as a principle of justice, because it tells
us how a range of specified goods ought to be distributed and because it provides a
basis for assessing existing arrangements.
Philosophers disagree not only about which principles are the correct or right
principles of justice but also about exactly what it is that principles of justice are
supposed to apply to.2 This second controversy is especially salient for our current
purposes, since it concerns the subject matter of justice, or what is sometimes
referred to as its ‘site’ (Abizadeh 2007). For instance, some political theorists
believe that their favoured principles ought to apply across all social domains,
including the constitution, the decisions of government, the regulation of voluntary
associations and the choices and actions of individuals. Thus, some utilitarians
believe that both governments and individuals have a general duty to maximise
aggregate or average utility (or welfare) and that when individuals fail to act in
accordance with this duty in their everyday lives, they compromise the attainment of
utilitarian justice. Meanwhile, a different view has been defended by the libertarian
Robert Nozick (1974), who believes that principles of justice apply only to the
conduct of individuals and governments. Thus, on his account, it is a mistake to
appeal to the concept of justice in order to evaluate things like the overall distribution
of wealth or opportunities. Instead, the question of justice arises only when we
consider whether or not an agent’s actions are in conformity with other people’s
negative rights of non-interference.
The most prominent view in recent political theory about the ‘site’ of justice was
proposed by the liberal political philosopher John Rawls, who identified the ‘basic
structure’ of society as the site of justice. Here, the basic structure is understood
to refer to ‘the arrangement of major social institutions into one scheme of co-
operation’ (Rawls 1999: 47), and it is composed of things like ‘the constitution,
the economic regime, the legal order and its specification of property and the like’
(Rawls 1996: 301). The distinguishing features of Rawls’s view can be drawn out
by contrasting it with the two alternatives summarised above. On the one hand, it
2 The material in this section draws upon Shorten (2016: 257–63).

is less encompassing than the first view, because it does not require that individual
people, in their private lives, act in accordance with the same principles of justice
that apply to the basic structure (see, e.g. Cohen 2008). Thus, although Rawls thinks
that broadly egalitarian principles ought to regulate society’s major institutions, he
does not think that these same principles should also regulate the internal life of
voluntary associations, such as religious groups, sports clubs or the family (Rawls
1996: 283, 2001: 10). On the other hand, Rawls’s view is more encompassing
than the second approach, defended by Nozick. Nozick believes that voluntary
economic activity, provided that it does not violate people’s property or self-
ownership rights, has a justice-preserving quality, regardless of its consequences
(Nozick 1974: 151). Meanwhile, Rawls thinks that social justice can be undermined
by the cumulative effects of apparently voluntary exchanges (Rawls 1996: 265–
9, 2001: 52–5) and allows for the possibility that maintaining justice over time
may require ongoing corrective action on the part of the state. The difference
between the pair is that Rawls has a much more demanding theory about what kinds
of background circumstances are necessary and sufficient to legitimate particular
distributive outcomes. For example, Rawls—but not Nozick—accepts that even
after we have established just social institutions, fair equality of opportunity might
become compromised across generations, if some individuals or groups amass
enough resources to enable them to purchase things like educational advantage for
their children. Hence, he argues in support of redistributive taxation. Contrastingly,
Nozick holds that provided the rich came about their wealth without violating
anyone else’s rights, then no injustice has arisen.
The Rawlsian view about the site of justice has inspired much criticism recently
(see, e.g. Abizadeh 2007; Cohen 2008; Julius 2003; Murphy 1998; Young 2006).
Although it is not the narrowest theoretical possibility available, it forms the basis
for what I am here describing as the narrow family of views about justice in the
linguistic environment.3 Importantly for our current purposes, Rawls’s argument in
support of the basic structure view has also been subject to considerable interpretive
controversy, since his writings contain at least two different rationales for restricting
the site to which principles of justice apply. One account says that principles of
justice apply only to those institutions which constitute the basic structure because
it is only they that are coercively maintained. Meanwhile, the other reaches a
similar conclusion about the site of justice by instead emphasising the essential
role the basic structure plays in sustaining ‘background justice’. As we shall see,
these two rationales deliver subtly different accounts about justice in the linguistic
environment, even though both fall squarely within the family I am describing as
the narrow approach. Thus, in the next section, I assess both of them by addressing
two questions: can coercion and/or background justice explain whether linguistic
environments ought to qualify as part of the ‘site’ to which principles of justice
apply, and if so, what parts of a linguistic environment ought to be evaluated
3 The minimalist Nozickian view about the site of justice, contrastingly, suggests a scheme of
negative language rights that extends only so far as Kloss’s toleration rights (see Kloss 1977).
160 A. Shorten
according to principles of justice? By proceeding in this way, two things ought

to become clear. First, what might a narrow approach to justice in the linguistic
environment consist in? Second, is a narrow approach satisfactory?
4 The Narrow Approach
4.1 Coercion
The first reason why Rawls and some of his followers believe that only the
institutions which constitute the basic structure ought to be assessed according to the
standards of justice is that they, unlike other social phenomena and institutions, are
maintained by coercive rules and institutions that are jointly authorised by citizens.
For example, in his A Theory of Justice, Rawls described his own project as trying
to answer the following question: ‘in the light of what reasons and values—of what
kind of conception of justice—can citizens legitimately exercise . . . coercive power
over one another?’ (Rawls 2001: 40–1). According to some of his followers, two
things follow from this statement, and other ones like it found in Rawls’s work:
principles of justice have the function of justifying coercion, and principles of justice
apply only to coercive institutions. Thus, Thomas Nagel argues that principles
of social justice apply only amongst people who are ‘fellow participants in a
collective enterprise of coercively imposed legal and political institutions’ (Nagel
2005: 128), whilst Michael Blake thinks that principles of liberal justice ought only
to be ‘applied to individuals who share liability to the coercive network of state
governance’ (Blake 2001: 258).
Whether or not Blake and Nagel’s interpretation of Rawls’s political theory is
sound, the implication of their view is that it is a conceptual error to apply principles
of justice to anything other than coercive rules and institutions and possibly only to
those coercive rules and institutions which are jointly authorised by citizens (Blake
defends the first view and Nagel the second). This view about the site of justice
proceeds from a particular understanding of the function of justice, associated with
the liberal tradition, which has come to be known as coercion theory. This theory
starts from the idea that the state is a coercive agent, since it has the effective ability
to impose sanctions as a deterrent against non-compliance. Proponents then argue
that since coercion frustrates individual autonomy, in order for it to be morally
defensible, or legitimate, it must be justifiable to those who are subject to it. Finally,
it is at this point that justice enters the story, since justice is the virtue that either
the state or its citizens ought to appeal to when justifying coercive institutional
arrangements. Justice matters, in short, because it can help us to discern whether
or not state coercion is morally defensible or legitimate.4
4 One result of coercion theory, emphasised by Blake and Nagel, is that it is a mistake, or at
least premature, to speak of global justice, since global society lacks an appropriate institutional
Coercion theory disallows what I am calling wide approaches to assessing justice

in linguistic environments, which say that linguistic environments as such ought to
be assessed according to principles of justice. This is because although legal and
political institutions constitute part of the linguistic environment, many of its other
component parts are not coercive (or, at least, are not coercive in the relevant sense).
For example, by the standards of coercion theory, it is simply a conceptual error to
complain about the injustice of many demo- and sociolinguistic facts and trends,
if they were not brought about directly through state intervention, since only those
parts of a linguistic environment that are directly established and maintained through
state coercion may be evaluated at the bar of justice.5
Nevertheless, since coercive rules do form part of the linguistic environment,
then coercion theory will require these to be assessed according to principles of
justice. Such rules include—amongst other things—the language policies of courts,
bureaucracies, schools and other public bodies. Consequently, a coercion theory of
justice in the linguistic environment will need to address a range of questions that
have attracted controversy in multilingual societies, such as the range of languages
citizens ought to be able to communicate with the state in, which languages ought
to be available in the public education system and whether firms ought to be legally
permitted to advertise in whatever languages they prefer. These issues might be
settled in different ways, by a variety of different principles, which will only be
partially determined by coercion theory itself. Importantly, there is no reason to
suppose that a coercion theorist must favour an especially parsimonious theory of
language rights.6
framework and is not currently regulated in a strict enough sense. For example, on Blake’s account,
neither practices, such as international trade, diplomacy and co-operation, nor international
institutions themselves amount to coercion, or at least do not qualify as coercive in the same way
that the state itself does (Blake 2001: 265). Thus, he concludes that it would be incoherent to hold
these things accountable to the standards of justice (though of course, this does not rule out morally
evaluating them altogether).
5 The causes of language shift are complex, and as I discuss below, linguistic outcomes are not
produced only by the voluntary decisions of language learners. However, it is relatively simple to
explain why larger language groups are more likely to attract new speakers. For the most part,
individuals will spend their time, resources and efforts learning a new language only if they can
reasonably anticipate benefitting by doing so. The main benefit of learning a new language is to
gain access to new potential communicative partners, such as monoglot speakers of the language
in question and bilinguals who have already learnt it but who cannot speak the individual’s
L1 (Gabszewich et al. (2011) refer to this as the ‘communicative benefit’ of learning a second
language). Since learning a widely known language will be more beneficial than learning a less
widely known language, more widely spoken languages will attract more new learners (Van Parijs
2011: 13; see also de Swaan 2001: 33–40; Van Parijs 2004: appendix).
6 Certainly, given its underlying concern with individual autonomy, any defensible version of
coercion theory will insist on protecting individual liberties, guaranteeing to each individual
substantial discretion over which language(s) they use and when. Beyond this, coercion theory
might also be compatible with a policy of official multilingualism, such as one in which the state
communicates with its citizens in a variety of languages and where citizens themselves have a
right to choose which language(s) to use when interacting with shared political institutions. Or, it
162 A. Shorten
Although a coercion theory of justice in the linguistic environment might contain

principles that are more or less likely to bring about particular outcomes—such
as societal multilingualism, language preservation or the dispersal of a common
language of citizenship—it cannot treat outcomes like these as goals, whose
attainment is to be assured as a matter of justice. This is because outcomes in
the linguistic environment are not determined by coercive rules, since demo- and
sociolinguistic facts and trends are always also shaped by the uncoordinated deci-
sions of individuals, such as the decisions of families about language acquisition and
the decisions of individuals about which language to use in particular settings. By
the standards of coercion theory, progress towards (or away from) these outcomes
cannot be a matter of justice, since the decisions of individuals about language use
and acquisition—along with their demo- and sociolinguistic implications—are not
part of the subject matter of a theory of justice.
In turn, there are at least two different kinds of reasons to be sceptical about
excluding the decisions of individuals and families from the site of justice, in
the way that coercion theory requires. First, such decisions, taken cumulatively,
might have justice-undermining effects, as when language shift leaves individuals
with less than they are entitled to. I discuss this possibility in greater detail in
the final section of this chapter. Second, the conditions under which decisions
about language choice are made might also be pertinent to assessing the justice
of a linguistic environment, especially when those conditions involve an unequal
distribution of power. For example, even when language shift appears to be the
result of a spontaneous, uncoordinated and bottom-up process, the multiple and
separate choices that brought it about might themselves only qualify as voluntary
in a formalistic and narrow sense. This point has been mostly emphasised by
Gramscian scholars of language politics (see, e.g. Ives 2010; Sonntag 2010), but
as we shall now see, liberals too have reasons to be concerned about it.
4.2 Background Justice
Not all Rawlsians accept coercion theory, and some have instead suggested that
the reason why a liberal theory of justice ought to focus only on the institutions
that constitute the basic structure has to do with the essential role played by
these institutions in securing ‘background justice’. Background justice concerns the
circumstances against which social co-operation takes place. Political theorists who
emphasise background justice do so because they believe that if these circumstances
are inadequate, then they will compromise the ideal of society understood as a fair
scheme of co-operation, tainting whatever exchanges and transactions the members
of society engage in. The point for them is not that past injustices will continue
might be compatible with allocating an extensive regime of accommodation rights to ensure that
people who do not speak an officially recognised language are given meaningful access to public
institutions.
to haunt subsequent transactions, in the sense that the legacies of great wrongs
like slavery or colonialism, for example, are sometimes said to do. Rather, as
Rawls himself emphasised, it is that background justice can be undermined ‘even
though nobody acts unfairly or is aware of how the overall result of many separate
exchanges affects the opportunities of others’ (Rawls 1996: 266). From this, it
seemingly follows that ‘[u]nless this [basic] structure is appropriately regulated and
adjusted, an initially just social process will eventually cease to be just, however
free and fair particular transactions may look when viewed by themselves’ (ibid.).
Consequently, if we want to maintain society as a fair co-operative venture, then
we will need principles of justice to regulate our shared institutions, since those
institutions will play a necessary role in preserving adequate background conditions
over time.
As we saw already, it is because Rawls emphasizes continually adjusting and
regulating the basic structure of society that his approach to the ‘site’ of justice
encompasses more than strictly minimal views like Nozick’s. For example, Rawls
suggests that background justice in capitalist societies will require institutions to
curb ‘excess market power’ to ensure that employers and employees can bargain
on fair terms (Rawls 1996: 266–7). In this instance, then, Rawls’s commitment
to an egalitarian conception of socio-economic justice requires a basic structure
that is capable of regulating not only individual economic transactions—e.g. to
eliminate force and fraud—but also the background circumstances against which
those transactions take place. However, as we shall now see, the ‘background
justice’ view encompasses less than it might, when considered against all of the
conceivable alternatives, since like the coercion view it excludes some parts of the
social world from the domain of justice (Murphy 1998: 288; see also Cohen 2008).
The background justice view relies on a distinction between, on the one hand,
the basic structure of society and, on the other hand, ‘the rules applying directly to
individuals and associations and to be followed by them in particular transactions’
(Rawls 1996: 268–9). Rawls describes this distinction as a ‘division of labour’,
such that principles of justice regulate the former but not the latter. As a result,
‘individuals and associations are . . . left free to advance their ends more effectively
within the framework of the basic structure, secure in the knowledge that elsewhere
in the social system the necessary corrections to preserve background justice are
being made’ (Rawls 1996: 269). This division of labour does not imply that
individuals and associations are not subject to any moral demands whatsoever in
their particular transactions, only that these demands are not part of the subject
matter of justice. As Murphy observes, the effect of this is to take ‘the business
of securing justice off people’s plates in their day-to-day lives’ (Murphy 1998:
258). Importantly, this rationale for relieving individuals of this particular burden
proceeds directly from the concern with background justice, since it is not that
it would be morally unacceptable to require individuals to submit their everyday
decisions to the demands of socio-economic justice but rather that doing so would be
self-defeating. It would be self-defeating because the accumulated effects of many
different transactions are so complex and difficult to predict that it would be an
‘impossible burden’ to expect individuals to take them into account in their everyday
164 A. Shorten
decision making. Instead, forestalling the destructive effects of individual decisions

on background justice is the role of the basic structure.
So whilst the coercion view says that the function of principles of justice is to
justify coercion, the background justice view says that it is to secure background
conditions that are sufficient to ensure that individual transactions are free and
fair, and will not cumulatively undermine the ideal of society understood as a
fair scheme of co-operation. When it comes to assessing linguistic environments,
an adherent of the background justice view must therefore ask whether the basic
structure of society is regulated in such a way that is consistent with upholding
fair co-operative terms amongst the speakers of different languages, such that
individual choices about language use and acquisition do not undermine justice.
As in the case of socio-economic justice, a satisfactory theory of background
justice in the linguistic environment will need to specify what kinds of institu-
tional arrangements are required if we are to be confident that transformations
in the linguistic environment, including ones arising out of apparently voluntary
individual decisions, are legitimate. Different normative possibilities are available
for satisfying this requirement, but any recognisably liberal theory will prefer legal
and political institutions that in their design, operation and effects will not unduly
favour or disfavour speakers of any particular language. Of course, since we might
give a variety of different explanations about how an institutional arrangement
could unduly favour or disfavour an individual or group, liberal proponents of
the background justice view have a correspondingly similar range of theoretical
possibilities available to them as can be illustrated by contrasting the following pair
of alternatives.
The first option is to say that the institutions comprising the basic structure do not
unduly favour or disfavour speakers of different languages provided that they secure
mutual toleration and guarantee the same range of basic liberties for everyone.
So, individuals ought not to be prohibited from using their favoured language in
particular settings or stigmatised as inferior by public institutions on the basis of
their linguistic identity. This is a minimalist position, and it can be described as
Rawlsian, even though Rawls himself did not explicitly address linguistic diversity
in his own writings. It can be so described because in his later writings, Rawls
came to a very similar conclusion about handling moral, philosophical and religious
diversity. In particular, in his Political Liberalism (1996), Rawls sought to explain
how a society containing a diversity of moral traditions and forms of life might
establish common institutions, which when taken as a whole would be consistent
with the ideal of society as a fair co-operative venture. His answer to this was to
argue that the basic structure ought not to promote any particular form or way of life
but should instead aim to secure background conditions ‘within which permissible
forms of life have a fair opportunity to maintain themselves and to gain adherents
over generations’ (Rawls 1996: 198). Thus, background justice does not guarantee
that any particular way of life will survive, never mind flourish, only that each person
has a ‘fair opportunity’ to attempt to maintain their way of life. Fair opportunity,
in this context, means two things. First, it prohibits throwing the power of the
state behind attempts to support or oppose a permissible way of life, since that
would be to rig the basic structure in favour of one or another tradition. Second,
it also requires establishing a fair baseline against which different ways of life can
compete with one another for adherents, and this baseline is to be secured through
the standard scheme of liberal rights. Applied to language policy, then, this version
of the background justice view will disallow the official recognition or promotion of
particular languages, whether those of the majority or a minority, and it will secure
for everyone a right that their private language choices be tolerated.
The second option is to complement the standard liberal rights with a policy of
equal recognition, as suggested by Alan Patten (2014). According to him, the basic
structure ought to secure mutual toleration, guarantee for everyone the same bundle
of rights and ‘extend equal recognition to majority and minority languages’ (Patten
2014: 200). This final criterion implies that the basic structure ought to be designed
so as to extend ‘roughly comparable forms of assistance’ to different language
groups (ibid.). Unlike the previous option, Patten’s proposal explicitly provides for
the use of state power to support particular languages, since it requires the public
institutions of multilingual societies to offer an equivalent range of services and
opportunities in the different languages spoken by its members. So, for example,
the members of two similarly sized language groups ought to have comparable
opportunities to use their language when voting and to use their language when
communicating with the bureaucracy, and for their children to be educated in their
L1. However, although this is a theory of equal recognition, it does not require that
all languages receive equal treatment. Instead, it is citizens themselves who are
recognised as equals. Consequently, this approach is consistent with offering more
services in one language than another, provided that everyone receives ‘services
in their own language equivalent in value to their fair claim on public resources’
(Patten 2014: 201).
Perhaps more satisfactory accounts of background justice in the linguistic
environment can be formulated.7 Notwithstanding this, any theory of background
justice must aim to do the same thing, namely, explain why particular background
circumstances are necessary to legitimate whatever linguistic outcomes arise. Thus,
any such normative theory must agree that if the background conditions really are
adequate, then speakers of languages that become marginalised over time do not
have a complaint in justice about their predicament. Accordingly, it may appear as
if any version of the background justice view is vulnerable to the same shortcoming
I associated with the coercion view, namely, that it disallows the evaluation of too
many demo- and sociolinguistic trends, including ones for which there is at least
a prima facie case for addressing at the bar of justice. Notice, however, that the
two different theories deliver different rationales for excluding such trends from the
site of justice. In the case of coercion theory, changes in a linguistic environment
produced by the voluntary choices of individuals are not a matter of justice because
they are not enforced by collective political institutions. Meanwhile, the background
7 A third alternative, which is a variant of Patten’s equal recognition proposal, is suggested by De
Schutter (2017).
166 A. Shorten
justice view is sceptical about the feasibility of regulating the linguistic environment
as a whole, since the accumulated effects of many different individual choices about
language use and acquisition are so complex and difficult to predict that it would be
unreasonable to expect individuals to act so as to promote or forestall particular
linguistic outcomes.
4.3 Gaps in the Narrow Approach
In this final section, I partially describe two linguistic environments. Whilst both
examples are highly stylised, they each refer to everyday linguistic phenomena—
one sociolinguistic and the other demolinguistic. I shall argue that both linguistic
environments can conceivably be described as unjust, for the reason that they
deprive individuals of something to which they are entitled. Moreover, this is
something which narrow approaches to justice in the linguistic environment are
likely to miss. To make this argument, I will first explore what different versions
of the narrow approach might say about these examples, and then I will describe
three plausible grounds that minority language speakers might have to complain
about them. Overall, the result of my discussion is that despite the attractions of the
coercion and background justice views, we nevertheless have reasons to favour a
wide approach when assessing justice in a linguistic environment.
Environment 1 (Status Inequality): The linguistic environment in this society is charac-
terised by diglossia, in the modified sense in which Fishman (1967) used the term, whereby
one language is perceived as high-status and another as low-status. Here, the pressure to
learn and use a language other than one’s own is distributed unequally, such that speakers
of the low-status language feel compelled to learn the other language, whose own speakers
experience no comparable pressure. Consequently, when speakers of different languages
meet and work together, they systematically favour the high-status language. Since the
different language communities interact with one another on a regular basis, speakers
of the low-status language protest that their compatriots are taking advantage of their
supplementary language learning efforts. They complain that although everyone benefits
from mutual intelligibility, only they contribute to the provision of this benefit. Moreover,
they also believe both themselves and their language to be denigrated by virtue of the fact
that their language is widely perceived to be less valuable.
Environment 2 (Stranded): Demographic changes in this society have, over time, radically
reduced the range and quality of opportunities available to monolingual speakers of a
minority language. This transformation was not caused by an injustice in the basic structure,
or through coercion, but was instead brought about by a series of separate decisions in
which speakers of the minority language gradually assimilated into the majority language
community. As a result, the number of people who are able or willing to use the minority
language has fallen rapidly, leaving monolinguals effectively ‘stranded’ in a linguistic
environment they struggle to navigate (Patten 2014: 217).
Neither of the narrow approaches considered earlier in this chapter treat the features
described in these examples as part of the ‘site’ of justice. Both are permissive about
language shift, and neither holds that diglossia, as such, is unjust. For coercion
theorists, justice can demand only that public institutions accommodate speakers of
the low-status or vulnerable language, either by offering services in their language
or by providing translation and interpretation services for its speakers. Provided

that speakers of those languages are not compelled to learn or use another language,
either in general or in particular specified settings, they cannot have a complaint in
justice. Similarly, as long as public institutions do not unduly favour any particular
language or languages, the background justice view also has no grounds to condemn
language loss or the unequal pressure to learn an additional language. By its
standards, justice will be satisfied if no particular language is allocated more than
its fair share of support from the basic structure itself.8
Meanwhile, there are at least three different reasons for believing that one or both
of these examples describe an injustice in the linguistic environment. Each reason
identifies something to which people are plausibly entitled—parity of esteem, self-
respect and freedom—and proceeds to suggest that individuals within the examples
are denied this. If any of these reasons is convincing, then we have prima facie
grounds for favouring the wide view about justice in the linguistic environment.
First, according to Philippe Van Parijs, ‘in a just society, people must not be
stigmatized, despised, disparaged, or humiliated because of their collective identity’
(2011: 119). He calls this a principle of ‘parity of esteem’ (Van Parijs 2011: 117–
32), and it is arguably violated in both examples. In status inequality, it is violated
because only speakers of the low-status language are required to learn another
language to facilitate mutual intelligibility, a phenomenon Van Parijs describes
as ‘linguistic bowing’ (2011: 119 and 141). In stranded, it is violated if it is
common knowledge that the state could prevent the minority language from being
marginalised, without violating anyone’s rights, but does not do so (Van Parijs 2011:
146). In both cases, arguably, official indifference about the plight of a vulnerable
language humiliates its speakers when it predictably stigmatises them and their
language as inferior.
Second, on one reading of John Rawls’s Theory of Justice, everyone has a prima
facie claim to social conditions that are adequate to secure their self-respect. In
turn, on Rawls’s account, self-respect can be undermined either when a person’s
sense of their own value is compromised or when their confidence to fulfil their
own intentions is undermined (Rawls 1999: 386). In stranded, the self-respect of
minority language speakers will be compromised if they justifiably lack confidence
in their ability to achieve their goals and ambitions. In status inequality, meanwhile,
the self-respect of speakers of a low-status language is likely to be compromised if
8 Although the background justice view is indifferent about status inequality outside the basic
structure, it may nevertheless disallow some of its most likely causes. For instance, status inequality
amongst languages can often be traced to a prior inequality in the distribution of wealth, whereby
high status attaches to the language perceived as a gateway to economic opportunity. If a theory of
background justice is concerned to eliminate unjust socio-economic inequalities, then a side effect
of doing so might be to counter the tendency to attach higher status to languages spoken by one
segment of the population. On similar grounds, background justice might also block other common
causes of status inequality, such as the failure to guarantee minority language speakers the right to
use their language in public institutions or prohibitions on the use of their language in particular
circumstances. However, it is the causes and not the effects of status inequality that background
justice is concerned with, and even some causes of status inequality will be ‘clean’ by its standards.
168 A. Shorten
their linguistic environment induces them to question their own value, for instance,
as a result of official indifference about the fate of their language.
Third, according to Will Kymlicka (1989, 1995), individual freedom depends on
the quality and range of options a person has available to them. Since language com-
munities provide their members with a ‘context of choice’—giving them different
options and making those options meaningful to them—then the marginalisation
of a language can have the effect of diminishing the freedom of its speakers and
thereby justice. In stranded, then, it is not only the dignity of monolinguals that is at
stake but also their ability to make meaningful decisions. By Kymlicka’s account,
their linguistic environment is inadequate to secure their freedom.9
So far, then, we have seen that applying a narrow approach to justice in the
linguistic environment might lead one to neglect some important justice-related
phenomena. Moreover, I have suggested that if the scenarios described in status
inequality and stranded are unjust, it is not by virtue of any properties within the
basic structure, but it is rather because people’s enjoyment of something to which
they are entitled as a matter of justice is jeopardised by the cumulative effects of
uncoordinated individual choices about language use and acquisition.
Although my two examples are both stylised, the linguistic phenomena they
pick out are commonplace, since people’s private language choices often have
unintended consequences for others. Economists refer to one important subset of
this phenomenon as network externalities (Church and King 1993). These arise
because language communities, like other networks, offer more benefits to members
as their size increases. For example, in choosing to learn an additional language, a
person confers a benefit, probably unwittingly, upon the current speakers of that
language, each of whom gains access to a new communicative partner. At the same
time, individual choices about language use and acquisition can also give rise to
negative network externalities. For example, if more people become bilingual, then
translators may face more competitive markets (Grin 2003a, b: 34), or monolinguals
may face greater hurdles on employment markets (Armstrong 2015).
It might be thought that the mere fact that individual decisions about language use
and acquisition impose costs and benefits upon others, which are non-consensual
and potentially inefficient, is a sufficient reason to warrant state intervention, for
example, in the form of acquisition planning or compensation schemes (see the
introduction to this volume for an argument to this effect). Indeed, I have already
argued that we ought to reach this kind of conclusion in cases like stranded, where
the monolinguals who were left behind suffered a negative network externality.
However, it would too hasty to infer that all, or even many, network externalities
ought to be corrected or compensated for as a matter of justice, since in at least
some cases, they do not seem to be morally troublesome.
9 Another argument to the same effect is that the ‘real’ or ‘substantive’ freedom of stranded
monolinguals is compromised because they lack the effective ability to achieve various outcomes
that are constitutive of well-being. Drawing on the work of Amartya Sen (1980, 1992, 2009) and
Martha Nussbaum (1990, 1992, 1999, 2011), I suggest the outlines of an argument to this effect in
Shorten (2017).
Consequently, a plausible wide approach to justice in the linguistic environment

must contain criteria that make it possible to distinguish private language choices
that are consistent with the demands of justice from those which are not. The diffi-
culty of this task should not be underestimated, as can be illustrated by considering
the positive network externalities that arise when someone benefits from someone
else’s language learning efforts, as happened in status inequality. Recently, political
philosophers have reached strikingly different conclusions about the benefits that
native English speakers accrue by virtue of being able to communicate with non-
native speakers who have acquired English as a supplementary language. On the one
hand, some believe that these benefits are morally unobjectionable if they arise from
the self-interested decisions of language learners themselves and if Anglophone
beneficiaries neither sought nor co-operated in their production (Robichaud 2015;
see also Nozick 1974: 90–95). On the other hand, others argue that since native
English speakers share in a (significant) benefit without contributing to the cost of
producing it, they free-ride upon the language learning efforts of others and in doing
so unjustly take advantage of those non-native speakers who have learnt English
(Van Parijs 2011: 50–82).
Now it is clear that the latter view will condemn a range of network externalities
that the former view will not, but notice that even the latter view does not condemn
all network externalities. Indeed, by Van Parijs’s account, Anglophone free riding is
not unjust simply because native speakers benefit from it, but rather because of its
scale, because supplementary language learning is ‘systematically one-sided’ and
because Anglophones ‘eagerly’ enjoy its benefits (Van Parijs 2011: 53; see also
Van Parijs 2015: 227). By implication, if the benefits to native English speakers
were more modest, or complemented by greater foreign-language learning efforts
on their part, or enjoyed less eagerly by them, then by Van Parijs’s standards, it
might not qualify as unjust. Although Van Parijs does not explain exactly what it
is that he thinks makes some network externalities unjust, a plausible suggestion—
consistent both with his view and with the argument developed in this chapter—
is that network externalities are unjust if and because they undermine someone’s
enjoyment of something to which they are entitled, such as parity of esteem, self-
respect or freedom.
5 Conclusion
Linguistic environments profoundly shape our situations and prospects and are
created by a complex combination of decisions, made by both individuals and
institutions. It is the linguistic environment itself that has a profound and pervasive
impact on our opportunities and well-being, and not only the legal and political
institutions that partially constitute it. Nevertheless, some political theorists believe
that it is either conceptually muddled or self-defeating to apply principles of justice
to those parts of the linguistic environment which cannot be coercively regulated.
In the final parts of this paper, I have tried to motivate scepticism about this view,
on the grounds that it disallows the analysis of significant demo- and sociolinguistic
characteristics and trends from the perspective of justice.
170 A. Shorten
Meanwhile, I have not defended any particular version of the wide approach—i.e.
any particular theory about the content of justice in the linguistic environment. Any
such theory is likely to be controversial, for the following three reasons. First, a wide
view may appear to be pointless, since linguistic environments are never fully under
the regulatory control of the state and particular demo- and sociolinguistic outcomes
cannot be guaranteed. However, it should be noted that this objection applies
most forcefully to a particular range of wide approaches, namely, those which
equate justice with the achievement of particular linguistic outcomes like language
maintenance or societal multilingualism. Another approach, which escapes this
objection, is to assess linguistic environments according to nonlinguistic criteria,
such as parity of esteem, self-respect and freedom.
Second, wide approaches are also controversial because it is widely believed that
some individual choices and decisions ought not to be coercively regulated, such
as responsible decisions about language acquisition made by parents on behalf of
their children. However, again, not all conceivable versions of a wide approach will
require regulation of this kind. For example, securing both parity of esteem in status
inequality and freedom and self-respect for the monolinguals in stranded might
both be achieved without coercively intervening in other people’s private language
choices, for instance, by expanding the range of services available in the vulnerable
language, by actively promoting it or even by subsidising majority language learning
programmes.
Third, wide approaches might also seem impossibly demanding, since they imply
that people have duties of justice to act in their private lives so as to forestall
the effects of demo- or sociolinguistic changes. To some extent, the force of this
objection depends on what kinds of duties of justice a particular version of the wide
approach envisages people to have. It would be unreasonable to expect people to
act so as to prevent demolinguistic change itself. For example, a duty to preserve
one’s ties to an ancestral language is unreasonable because it is incompatible with
saying that individuals ought to be free to make choices about their own language
repertoires. But, a wide approach need not insist that individuals ought to act so as to
prevent transformations in a linguistic environment, only that they ought to act so as
to ensure that the consequences of such changes are consistent with justice. So, for
example, on the kind of wide approach I have been sketching here, individuals might
have a duty to not knowingly worsen the circumstances of others or to contribute to
the elimination or reduction of status inequalities amongst the different languages
spoken in their society. Although these duties fall short of saying that individuals
must always act so as to bring about a particular linguistic environment, they are
nevertheless very demanding, since they require that individuals take into account
at least some of the demo- and sociolinguistic implications of their decisions and
actions. In that respect at least, a wide approach asks more of people than does a
narrow approach to justice in the linguistic environment.
Acknowledgements Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Annual Conference of the
Political Studies Association in Brighton (March 2016). I thank the audience and other panellists
for their helpful comments, as well as the anonymous referees and the editors for this collection.
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’s
Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement no. 613344 (Project MIME).
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Toward an Adaptive Approach
to Linguistic Justice: Three Paradoxes
Yael Peled
1 Introduction
Normative theorizing in language involves a reflective consideration on the social

and political life of language and, more specifically, on the role played by language
in the shaping and reshaping of the social and political order. This chapter proposes
and defends the argument that the social and political life of language is inextricably
related to three basic paradoxes arising from three fundamental realities of political
life more generally: (1) the constancy of change, (2) the irreducible tension between
difference and interdependence, and (3) the open-endedness of political decision-
making. Each of the three, and especially when taken together as a set, challenge
static, linear and atemporal conceptions of political life, including the political life
of language, both empirical and normative. More specifically, the chapter proposes
that theorizing linguistic justice, and its substance, structure, and nature, must be
conscious of these three realities and the paradoxes they generate, in order to avoid
the risk of producing normative accounts that rest on problematic grounds, political
and linguistic alike.
The chapter progresses as follows: it begins with an outline of the paradox
of the constancy of change in politics as a sphere of human activity, and the
challenge it poses to any attempt to reach finite conclusions concerning the complex
dynamics of political life. The following section explores more closely the manner
in which the irreducible tension between difference and interdependence, borne out
of the paradox of the common human capacity for language and moral reasoning
that is only realized in particularity, maps on the challenge of a difference that
is simultaneously moral and linguistic, and in the face of a growing need for
Y. Peled ()
Institute for Health and Social Policy, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada
e-mail: yael.peled@mcgill.ca

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1_4
174 Y. Peled
societal interdependence in order to successfully address common challenges (e.g.,

economic, environmental). The next section considers the unpredictable nature
of political life and the agentic implications of this unpredictability not only
for descriptive understandings of the political order but also for their normative
counterparts, such as linguistic justice theories. The final section proposes that, in
light of the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological issues raised by the three
paradoxes, a more promising approach lies in embracing an adaptive framework for
the normative theorizing of the political life of language.
2 The First Paradox: The Constancy of Change
Saying that we live in a dynamic world runs the risk of stating either a triviality
or a cliché. Social, political, economic, and technological developments seem to
make contemporary history run, for lack of a more suitable word, faster, and at
an increasingly intensive pace. The “feedback loop” provided by mass media,
and particularly social media, further reinforces the feeling that there is always
something happening on both local and global levels—economic crises, climate
change, political conflicts, social trends, scientific breakthroughs, or technological
innovations. Simply keeping track with daily news updates seems to becoming a
much more complex, time-consuming experience, in an attempt to piece together
an increasingly more kaleidoscopic perception of the highly dynamic nature of our
contemporary world.
The idea of the constancy of change, of course, is by no mean foreign or
unfamiliar to the theory and practice of politics as a human activity. If anything,
politics is perhaps best understood as “the struggle that occur on the never-ending
and deceptive road to conclusiveness . . . the attempts to establish a secure position,
in a pecking order, for collective values and preferences” (Freeden 2013: 24). The
irresolvable tension between the “never-ending [ . . . ] road to conclusiveness” on
one hand and “the attempts to establish a secure position” on the other situates
the constancy of change at the heart of politics and as a core structural feature
of the dynamics that govern it. Politics, on that view, is an open-ended endeavor,
whose most consistent feature is its refusal to lend itself to finite resolutions.
It is therefore fundamentally at odds with close-ended narratives embodied, for
example, in political ideologies (e.g., Communism, Nazism), eschatological visions
(the Jewish “end of days”), or teleological views of history (e.g., certain varieties of
the literature on democratization).
Situating the constancy of change at the heart of politics as a human activity is,
intriguingly, in a certain tension with some varieties of normative political theory,
itself a subfield of politics as an academic discipline. The argument concerning
politics as an open-ended process is an empirical one. Politics is, rather than ought to
be, a “never-ending road.” This assertion does not involve a value judgment of any
kind on that process—whether it is a good thing or a bad thing at its base, or whether
it could be made more ethical or not. Normative political theory, however, almost by
Toward an Adaptive Approach to Linguistic Justice: Three Paradoxes 175
definition, adopts a categorically different approach. Very broadly speaking, (classi-

cal) normative political theory “describes our situation and prescribes what ends or
purposes should be sought in political life and how we might attain them” (Vincent
2007: 20). In other words, if the constancy of change is at the heart of politics,
then the business of normative political theory is the demonstration that, ethically
speaking, not all changes are created equal. Some are good, some are less so.
Classical normative political theory exists, as Vincent notes, “when reflection
reaches a certain level of systematic sophistication and self-criticism. It focuses
on the coherence, internal and external relations, and ends of social or communal
existence, usually with a view to prescribing how we ought to live in the future”
(Vincent 2007: 20). Prescriptions for the future, however, require at least a tentative
vision of the future. Such vision may be grounded in putative knowledge, thought
experiments, public deliberation, or other modes of reasoning. What they have
in common, however, is the a systematic reflection on current wrongs and the
consequent prescription of measures designed for righting them. Visions of the
future, after all, are almost always reflections of—and on—the present and its
discontents.
The trouble with seeking future prescriptions for present maladies, however,
goes back to the tension between the empirical constancy of change (the “is”
of politics) and the normative quest for resolutions or for righting wrongs (the
“ought” of politics). Consider, for example, the issue of affirmative action or
“positive discrimination.” At its base, such policy aims at offering a more leveled
playing field for individuals who suffer discrimination due to being a member of
a particular disadvantaged group (e.g., gender-based, ethnicity or race-based, etc.).
It is therefore designated as a temporary measure of corrective justice, aimed to
achieve a nondiscriminatory access to employment, income, social status, and other
such resources. But how temporary is “temporary”? Where and when exactly does
it end? What constitutes a “phase transition” from a discriminatory phase to a
nondiscriminatory phase? If women comprise only ten percent of all seat holders
in a democratic parliament, there seems to be a good cause to think that the
situation could indeed be the result of gender-based discrimination of some sort.
The more interesting but much more difficult question, however, is when, precisely,
is affirmative action no longer required? Fifty percent (strict/formal equality)?
Forty-five percent? Would sixty percent be considered an excessive success, now
discriminatory toward men? (for an insightful discussion of discrimination and
proportional representation, including the question of temporality, see Lippert-
Rasmussen 2008).
The point of this exercise is not to dismiss affirmative action or any other type
of policy designed to equalize the distribution of resources, income, opportunities,
or status among individuals and groups. What it aims to demonstrate, rather, is that
even if it is (seemingly) easy to identify wrongs, it is not at all easy to identify when,
precisely, they are sufficiently righted. Such conclusions become exponentially
more complex when we move from a single category (e.g., race or gender) of
disadvantage to a disadvantage cluster (e.g., race and gender, ethnicity, health
etc.). Furthermore, competing claims for corrective justice are complex enough
176 Y. Peled
to evaluate between individuals and groups, but they become even more so when
considered across time. To be clear, the matter pertains not to the normative body
of work on historical justice, which considers ethical issues in the context of past
wrongdoing. Rather, it is related to the challenge of ethical reasoning in light of
uncertain futures. Such competing claims may quickly amount to an “argumentative
overload” which effectively hinders rather than advances any meaningful discussion
relevant to a complex world. As Freeden argues:
Say I am an egalitarian who favours greater equalization of wealth, from which I deduce a
scheme of public transfers such as graduated taxation, and then have to consider whether to
permit voluntary transfers from one member of a family to another, and then ask whether the
use of such transfers should be controlled in terms of the goods they purchase, all down to
the case of whether Mrs. Appleton of Hyacinth Avenue, Bolton, a widowed ex-terrorist
awaiting a hip replacement, whose neighbour is playing very loud music on Saturday
nights when she wants to sleep, is a disadvantaged individual who requires occasional
compensation from a cash-strapped municipality, even though in the not-distant future she
will inherit a large sum of money from her aged uncle, etc. There comes a point where, due
to argumentative overload, to the inability to conceptualize, to the inefficiency of policy-
producing results, or to sheer boredom, such a chain needs to be stopped (or, more likely, it
peters out) even though it can still produce endless variations. Those stoppage points may
be conditioned by moral paradigms, by conventions of argument, by demands of efficacy, or
by other cultural practices. Here the sequence and detailed path of an argument, rather than
the internal components of its parts, are curtailed by complexity and the limited resources
of mental and emotional energy in the face of infinity! (Freeden 2005: 119).
A complex world, whose most constant feature is, paradoxically, change, requires
a normative framework that is capable of responding to its continual flux. At the
same time, such a framework must retain a capacity for moral reasoning that is
not wholly context-dependent to the point of being entirely relativistic. Such a
framework has been recently proposed by Shapiro, in his Politics Against Dom-
ination, under the label of “adaptive political theory” (Shapiro 2016). Operating
on the premise that human affairs are fundamentally dynamic, open-ended, and
unpredictable, adaptive political theory as a normative framework sets out to move
from the search for a finite theory to a much more contextual endeavor, taking into
account that problems and proposed solutions maintain a dynamic and coevolving
equilibrium. In other words, no single normative solution comprises a permanent
“fix” in a world that is in a continuous process of transformation.
Adaptive political theory, as I argue more fully later in this paper, is particularly
suitable as a normative framework for theorizing linguistic justice. This is because
the two core entities in the nascent linguistic justice debate, namely, polity and
language, are essentially complex entities, whose features include open-endedness,
adaptive properties, emergent and unpredictable behaviors, and fuzzy boundaries
(Peled 2014: 307–310). Their dynamic nature, separately and when intertwined,
requires a certain degree of theoretical flexibility and context-sensitivity capacities.
In the following sections of the paper, I explore in more details the complex nature
of the linguistic justice debate and argue that it is precisely this very nature, borne
out of the paradox of the constancy of change, which makes the adaptive approach
a preferred framework for exploring the intricacies of an open-ended interaction
between ethics, power, and language, in a world that is in a continuous state of flux.
3 The Second Paradox: The Dividing Commonalities
Alongside the paradox of the constancy of change, the question of justice in

language emerges also from a second paradox: moral reasoning and language are
perhaps humanity’s two most distinctive features. The capacities for both are equally
shared by all individual humans, with only extreme exceptions (e.g. individuals
suffering from certain mental illnesses, feral children). The shared capacity for
moral reasoning and language, however, does not imply that the particular moralities
and languages generated from this common capacity are equally shared. Humans
are fundamentally and irresolvably divided along moral beliefs and linguistic
repertoires. This paradox of these “dividing commonalities” (Peled et al. 2014:
295) therefore gives rise to a basic 2 × 2 matrix, whose cells contain the following
possibilities: (1) individuals who share both moral outlook (i.e., a worldview, belief
system, etc.), broadly construed, for example, the form of a political ideology such
as liberalism, conservatism, radicalism, republicanism, etc., and language (e.g.,
liberals who are also English co-monolinguals); (2) and (3) individuals who share
either moral outlook or language (e.g., English and French monolinguals who are
radicals, or a liberal and a conservative who are English co-monolinguals); and
(4) individuals who share neither moral views nor language (e.g., a liberal English
monolingual and a monolingual French republican).
If the matrix generated from the paradox of the “dividing commonalities”
resembles, however faintly, a prisoner’s dilemma situation, it is because the issue
of linguistic justice, as Philippe Van Parijs has recently argued (Van Parijs 2011),
could be described as an issue of cooperative justice. Importantly, the matter of
cooperative linguistic justice in this instance pertains not only to the identity of
the specific language that is (or are) chosen as the “solution” to the challenge
of linguistic difference but also to the nature of the normative framework that is
chosen as a basis for the political ethics of the political community in question.
The fundamental cooperative nature of any real-world sensitive linguistic justice
theory stems from the irreducible tension between two facts of the human condition:
difference and interdependence (Schmidt 2006: 98). The “dividing commonalities”
paradox provides us with the “difference” side of the equation—individuals who
differ on what they consider the good life and in the language(s) that they speak.
At the same time, the increasingly global shape taken by current challenges, from
economic crises to climate change, means that perhaps more than ever before,
human societies are becoming increasingly more dependent for ensuring their
survival on cooperation between individuals who may not necessarily share a moral
outlook and/or a language.
The imperative of somehow reconciling this tension between difference and
interdependence therefore entails a more complex form of cooperation, namely, one
that necessitates not only cooperation with regard to the prioritization of a common
language but also with regard to a common normative framework. In the case of
the former, a lack of cooperation is likely to result in social disintegration along
linguistic lines, owing to an inability to meaningfully pursue joint decision-making,
178 Y. Peled
in the absence of sufficient communicative capacity to establish and consequently

to maintain a legitimate source of political authority. In the case of the latter, the
disintegration of the social and political order is likely to be rooted in the lack
of capacity—or willingness—to reconcile ideological differences. The challenge
of cooperative justice in multilingual political communities lies precisely in this
more complex necessity to jointly decide, simultaneously, both on the language
of the political conversation and the normative framework within which it takes
place. Neglecting either of the two—the language or the normative framework—
by considering either as largely a settled matter (and which therefore supposedly
requires no further cooperative effort) is therefore likely to result in a suboptimal
outcome for the social and political order of multilingual political communities.
(The undoubtedly important question of how culture is posed in relation to both
language and morality in this cooperative endeavor is understandably outside the
scope of this chapter.)
In this complex cooperation game, the mutability of moral beliefs and lan-
guage(s) poses yet another challenge. Individuals may change their moral views,
and likewise may elect (voluntarily or by coercion) to alter or expand their
linguistic repertoires. Indeed, the expectation that they do so in order to simplify the
cooperative endeavor (at least with regard to the linguistic side of the equation) has
been a major driving force behind historical language policies (e.g., standardization
of major languages and the repression of smaller ones) and continues to do today,
formally and informally. The mutability of the two dividing commonalities therefore
further complicates the basic matrix, since in a hypothetical world where no one
may change their moral beliefs or linguistic profile, the task of securing cooperation
would be a significantly easier endeavor, requiring merely the grouping together of
those who share a moral outlook, a language, or, optimally, both.
In the real world, however, in which people change their moral outlooks and
linguistic preferences, such a solution is not an option. In fact, in a world that
is governed by the paradoxical “constancy of change” principle, even a cursory
examination of the two dividing commonalities demonstrates how dynamic they
are even across fairly short time scales. Longitudinal snapshots of election results,
for example, demonstrate how dynamic political views are, between and within
generations, on issues such as income distribution, foreign relations, immigration,
and national security. In a similar vein, linguistic preferences are rarely stagnant and
are often modified in response to social and political developments. The prominence
of English as a global lingua franca, of course, stands out in particular in this context,
modifying in the process previous linguistic preferences and repertoires in national
and supranational contexts, as well as across spheres of life such as the family and
the workplace.
The challenge of linguistic justice as a cooperative game therefore stems from
the complex bundling of (1) the paradox of the common human capacity for
language and morality that is only realized in particularity, (2) the irreducible
tension between difference and interdependence, and (3) the mutability of moral and
linguistic preferences. Under these fairly demanding starting conditions, the task of
cooperative justice in language is to decide which solutions are morally preferable
to the others. Democratic cooperative linguistic justice, of course, imposes special

conditions on the range of conceivable solutions, constraining them to be compat-
ible with basic principles of liberty and equality. Importantly, “democracy” here
should not be seen as more or less interchangeable with “liberalism,” despite the
ascension of liberal theory to somewhat approximating an “ideological Esperanto”
in contemporary (analytic) normative political theory (Parekh 1999: 408). Rather,
“democracy” is understood here as the often uneasy interdependence between
liberty and equality, which suggests the existence of legitimate forms of democratic
coercion for managing that complex bundling. Indeed, Van Parijs’ own conception
of justice in language rests on what he himself labels “territoriality differentiated
coercive regime” (Van Parijs 2011: 133) and is openly distinguished by the author
from more liberal and accommodating solutions.
What range of solutions, therefore, is available to us? In a dynamic and complex
world, turning to the framework of complex justice seems natural. Complex justice,
originating from the notion of complex equality, essentially argues that the plurality
of human spheres of life implies that egalitarian debates should not be committed to
a single domain and/or principle and that they should aim to prevent spillover from
one domain to another (e.g., Walzer 1983; Walzer and Miller 1995). Consequently
developed into the notion of contextual justice within and among nations (e.g.,
Carens 2000), a context-sensitive approach to theorizing justice in language seems
like a preferable framework for approaching the dynamic complexities of justice
in language in a more nuanced and less abstract manner. It therefore foregoes the
commitment to a monist principle or domain of justice that is universally applicable
anywhere and everywhere. Intriguingly, in the context of the nascent linguistic
justice debate, such a proposition suggests a fundamental break with Van Parijs’
endorsement of a territoriality differentiated coercive regime as the key to achieving
linguistic justice “in Europe and [ . . . ] the world.”
Contextual justice, however, while arguably preferable to more monist and
universalist theories, lacks an important dimension which is pivotal to the linguistic
justice debate, namely, temporality. Context-sensitive justice is primarily engaged
with synchronic justice, that is, how different principles, domains, or conceptions
vary between nations concurrently rather than over time. It asks, for example, as
Joseph Carens does, to what extent do social justice debates taking place in the
liberal democratic world (and particularly in the Anglo-American tradition) are
applicable outside it, in places such as Quebec and Fiji (Carens 2000). Such analysis,
however, remains engaged with concurrent justice across polities rather than across
their own “phase transitions” or the way(s) in which they evolve, transmutate, self-
modify, and adapt to changing circumstances. Carens’ discussion of adaptation
focuses mainly on the (linguistic and otherwise) adaptation of immigrants to living
in Quebec and on the normative issues concerning the rights of the state to intervene
in their linguistic preferences and the limits to that intervention.
But, outside the formalized legal framework, adaptation is very rarely a one-
way street. Certainly, in addition to linguistic minorities, immigrants very often
adapt to their new environment, including their linguistic environment. But their
environment often responds in the same way. Contact linguistics provides a very
180 Y. Peled
useful empirical demonstration that strict separation between coexisting linguistic

groups, or complete assimilation, is not always the end result of group interaction.
Importantly, numbers play a significant role. A family of five Cherokee speakers
moving to Japan is unlikely to substantively transform the Japanese linguistic
landscape. But the situation is likely to be different in the case of more significant
population movement, such as Turkish speakers in Germany, Mandarin speakers in
Canada, or Russian speakers in Israel. The linguistic landscape, ethnic composition,
and political equilibrium of Germany, Canada, and Israel and a great number of
other polities have undergone certain changes in a period as short as a 100 years and
often shorter. This is especially the case in superdiverse societies, which are:
. . . characterised by a tremendous increase in the categories of migrants, not only in
terms of nationality, language and religion, but also in terms of motives, patterns and
itineraries of migration, processes of insertion into the labour and housing markets of the
host societies, and so on. The predictability of the category of ‘migrant’ and of his/her
sociocultural features has disappeared [...] Rather than working with homogeneity, stability
and boundedness as the starting assumptions, mobility, mixing and political dynamics and
historical embedding are now central concerns (Blommaert and Rampton 2012: 7).
The notion of superdiversity, and the linguistic and ethical issues that it raises
(Peled 2015), demonstrate the lived reality of the constancy of change and the need
to respond to such empirical realities with suitably responsive normative theorizing.
This means that “whereas in the past greater emphasis has been placed on examining
power disparities between linguistic majorities and (indigenous) linguistic minori-
ties, current demolinguistic transformations demand greater attention to the political
agency of a growingly heterogeneous population, including international students,
temporary workers, permanent residents, naturalised citizens, asylum seekers and
refugees” (Peled 2015: 4).
Thinking about justice in a world that is in a constant flux therefore requires
a theoretical framework with a temporal or diachronic dimension. It seems naïve,
after all, to assume that any normative solutions devised in this current day and
age will continue to hold in 50 years, 100 years, or 500 years, once both polities
and languages have undergone several “phase transitions.” In one such possible
future, Quebec may well become an independent nation, a reality that would likely
influence its conception of social justice, linguistic and otherwise. Similar eventu-
alities might occur in Scotland and Catalonia. The languages, too, would certainly
be different 500 years from now, the same way that contemporary English—and
not just Standard English—is different from the language of Shakespeare. Political
and linguistic boundaries, after all, are everything but laws of nature. The major
challenge facing a linguistic justice theory, therefore, is not simply the requirement
to factor in the constancy of change when developing normative accounts of
cooperative justice, but rather the admission that the trajectories of this change
cannot be easily predicted.
4 The Third Paradox: Hopeful Agency in an Unpredictable

World
The social sciences and the humanities are famously reluctant to engage in predic-
tions, certainly not very extensive or long-term ones. While the statistical modeling
of specific election results in a specific country (often one that is extensively studied,
such as the United States) is one thing, the modeling of large-scale political and
linguistic transformations is quite another. For every political scientist willing to
predict the identity of the next world superpower, there will likely be a linguist
willing to predict the identity of the next global language. Both, however, would
be in fairly short supply. If humanity indeed operates along some fundamental
logical, linear, teleological, and/or simple causal lines, then the social sciences and
the humanities are yet to fully discover them. Figuring out the future “is” of the
politics of language in order to explore its future “ought” remains, at least at this
stage, more of an art than a science.
The inability to predict the future could be attributed to lack of sufficiently
advanced knowledge. A somewhat different explanation, however, is that a “pre-
dictable” future does not actually (pre)exist. This is not because we cannot know
the rules that govern the world as such but rather because these rules keep
changing. Historical causal chains, on that view, are not easily replicable to the
present, let alone the future, because their initial conditions and circumstances are
not identical. The nineteenth-century-style nation- and language-building projects,
for example, seem to hardly suit today’s world, in which coercive top-bottom
linguistic convergence toward a single standardized national variant is often at
odds with existing legal framework (e.g., linguistic protection), unregulated chan-
nels of communication (e.g., social media), and economic rationales (e.g., the
downplaying of regional variants or the power of attraction of the global lingua
franca). Whichever language regime that seemed appropriate and successful in the
context of the eighteenth-century Spanish or nineteenth-century Hebrew, may not
necessarily work for twenty-first century Catalan or Irish. Furthermore, even within
the boundaries of the same polity, it seems problematic simply to assume that the
politics of language remains unchanged over time. The world in which Hebrew, for
example, has been reclaimed in the nineteenth century is very different from the
world in which Modern Hebrew functions today in the early twenty-first century
and will probably be quite different yet again in the twenty-fifth century. These
changing circumstances will naturally affect how the language is perceived, its range
of usages, and power relations with other regional and global languages. In other
words, in each of these iterations of the “game”, the changing circumstances are
bound to have at least some influence over the political regulation of the language.
In fact, games are highly useful metaphors in this context, because, unlike
real-world open-ended human politics and human language, they are most often
comprised of a set of close-ended rules. A closed-ended set of rules yields optimal
(and less optimal) strategies for winning. In monopoly, for example, one optimal
strategy is generally considered to be simply buying every possible property (with
182 Y. Peled
some preference, seemingly, for the railroads). In checkers, to give another example,
it is moving from defense to offense and prioritizing certain situated pieces above
others. Being in full possession of the full set of the rules of the game enables
the players to eventually work out which strategies work better than others. At no
stage of the game are the rules altered or modified. There is no likelihood of the
black pieces being significantly advantaged (or disadvantaged) simply by virtue of
their color, no possibility of unexpectedly having to accommodate 13 random chess
pieces who may only be played according to the rules of chess, and no option for
either player to suddenly impose a third and fourth dimensions on the board, or a
rule according to which every third move should be played with both eyes closed.
Such a Lewis Carrollesque version of checkers, however, comes much closer
to how the politics of language works in the real world, the much messier and
fuzzier one that does not operate along a closed set of rules. Human interactions
in politics and language, among other domains of human life, are in fact very
rarely closed-ended in any meaningful sense. Unexpected natural disasters, armed
conflicts, economic crises, environmental changes, and many other factors result
in the constant movement of individuals and groups, including linguistic groups.
The Westphalian worldview of neatly ordered discrete political units that is most
commonly associated with political atlases is only effective until it is time to print
the next edition, because the current one is so out-of-date in its description of the
world that it ceases to be a meaningful representation of it. If anything, maps, both
political and linguistic, wonderfully represent how contingent and temporary the
borders of their subject matters really are.
Thus far, this part of the discussion concentrated largely on the empirical side
of things, that is, on the descriptive aspect of the constancy of an unpredictable
social and political change. The picture becomes even more complex, however,
when we further incorporate moral issues into our analysis. Recall the basic matrix
of cooperative linguistic justice identified in the previous section of this paper, which
included individuals who share both moral outlook and language, either of the two
or none at all. The major challenge of a linguistic justice theory, therefore, is to
decide which normative solutions are better or worse in a world that is not only in
constant change but also whose transformations do not operate along simple causal
and linear lines. Justifiable solutions for the present may cease to be justifiable in the
future, once a “phase transition” occurs. Similar to the example of affirmative action
discussed in the first section, when, precisely, do existing justifiable solutions to that
basic matrix cease to be justifiable? Even when we accept that linguistic justice is
contextual not only in space but also over time, how can we know when and where,
exactly, is the tipping point between one phase of a justifiable linguistic regime and
the next one? And what implications does this uncertain state of affairs have for any
meaningful conception of agency, political and linguistic alike?
The matrix of cooperative linguistic justice may be solved in different ways.
Such matrix could be very well likened to different “political language games,”
taking place on the “boards,” as it were, of, within, and between national boundaries.
Whichever solutions we find for each board, however, the crucial thing to keep in
mind is that, in a world governed by the constancy of an unpredictable change,
solutions are never finite. In the case of open-ended games, unlike monopoly
or checkers, deducing optimal strategies, which ensure players’ definite success
or failure, is a much tougher challenge. Rather, these games are played in an
environment in which individual and group agents possess bounded rationality,
with goals and aims that are context-dependent, and on the basis of constantly and
unpredictably modified rules. The topic of linguistic justice therefore exemplifies
particularly well the strong tension between politics as a “never-ending [ . . . ] road
to conclusiveness” on one hand (e.g., the history of Belgian language politics) and
the search for normative prescriptions for the “ends or purposes [that] should be
sought in political life and how we might attain them” (e.g., a normative solution
that would ensure a permissible resolution to the Belgian setup of the basic matrix
and the nature of its meta-normative justification).
Tensions, however, as the first section argues, ought not to be viewed solely as
a problem that requires a permanent solution but rather as a structural feature of
human life and activity. Disagreements and conflicts, on that view, could also be
regarded as an opportunity to transform tensions into creative tensions. The realism
of bounded rationality and a world that operates along unpredictable trajectories
might seem discouraging to the point of either deep despair or apathy, since it
seems to imply that human agency is far more limited than presupposed by less
context- or time-sensitive approaches in political theory. Addressing this point, and
exploring the paradox of hope in uncertainty more fully, I turn in the final section
of this chapter to the emerging notion of adaptive linguistic justice, whose point
of departure is that of a world in constant flux. Such a framework, I argue below,
provides a particularly useful framework for the theorizing of linguistic justice in
a changing, unpredictable world, by providing a hopeful rather than dispiriting
conception of human agency in such circumstances.
5 From Paradoxes to Political Practice: Toward a Theory

of Adaptive Linguistic Justice
Thinking about justice in a changing world presently rests, as Shapiro argues,

on the understanding that “[t]he political institutions of the modern world might
be tried and tested, but their capacity to cope with present and future challenges
is at best debatable” (Shapiro 2016: 4) given the rapid population growth, the
industrialization-based ecological transformations, the proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction after the cold war, and “the widely unanticipated resurgence
of ethnic, national, and religious political affiliations across the world” (Shapiro
2016: 4). Such developments significantly challenge any attempt to impose a
Westphalian-based world order which regulates the borders of political and lin-
guistic communities (e.g., De Schutter 2008; Wee 2010; Peled 2014). Even when
these “messier” realities are recognized, however, for example, in the form of future
184 Y. Peled
generation commissions, “the imperative to adapt and reinvent inherited practices

and institutions is seldom accompanied by workable blueprints” (Shapiro 2016: 4).
Westphalian perceptions of the world neighbor utopian thinking in being
premised on closed-ended set of rules, from which optimal strategies—and theories
of justice—may be deduced. The Rawlsian veil of ignorance constitutes a useful
example of this tendency: for all the importance bestowed on deliberative practices
in the original position, Rawls’ “veil of ignorance” ruled out knowledge of
“particular facts” about people and their circumstances which could be used to
bias things in their favor, but not the “laws of psychology and economics” and
“general facts” about society. “This is hard distinction to make, however, because
general facts and uncontroversial laws are few and far between, and decisions about
which ones to work with have different implications for differently situated groups”
(Shapiro 2016: 10). Essentially, “most of the heavy lifting in Rawls’ argument is
done by contentious assumptions about how the world works and what motivates
people” (Shapiro 2016: 10).
In the context of a linguistic justice debate, the Rawlsian framework sidesteps
issues of language altogether. This is noteworthy for two major reasons: first,
because the mere fact of linguistic diversity, which is a fundamental feature of
the human condition, is not included in the list of “general facts” prioritized to be
considered by the deliberating parties.
And second, because the disregard of language—not in the abstract sense but
rather in terms of particular natural languages—seems to presuppose, paradoxically,
a nonlinguistic deliberation, that is, a conversation that somehow manages to
transcend linguistic barriers in the process of the original setup of the good
state of society. The implications of this disregard are not merely technical. The
neutralization of language implies the neutralization of contextualized political
semiotics, such as “freedom” or “justice.” Political and ethical vocabularies, just
like the semantics of social order or the environment, are never divorced from
local contexts. The temptation to mistake English and English moral (and other)
vocabulary as “the human norm” (Wierzbicka 2006: 12), even if understandable,
does not seem particularly helpful for a Rawlsian-inspired theory of linguistic
justice (Peled and Bonotti 2016).
The attempt to set up the “game board” of politics from the outset, therefore,
seems unhelpful for the needs of a world governed by the constancy of change that
is often unpredictable and therefore difficult to manage and respond to in any certain
manner. Importantly, however, imposing a closed-ended set of rules on an open-
ended world is not only empirically problematic but also poses considerable moral
challenges. The contextuality of normative solutions to situated wrongs necessarily
implies that once a “phase transition” has been completed, normative solutions
cease to be solutions. Worse, they run the risk of becoming new wrongs. Consider,
for example, the hypothetical case of a declining language whose speakers are
concerned for its prospects. In response to this worrying situation, they decide
to envisage and voluntarily impose a coercive linguistic regime that works to
standardize the language and requires all members of the polity to achieve a high
level of competence in the standard. Assuming that the policy is indeed successful
as hoped, at what point is the language no longer at risk, and therefore the coercive
measures no longer justified?
The moral challenge of locking future generations into contemporary political
arrangements and setups (ethical preferences, moral outlooks, social and political
institutions) is troubling. Paradoxically, while seemingly motivated by a progressive
position that is committed to moral betterment, it could be seen as resulting in a
conservative, if not regressive, political vision, one that is rooted in the “wisdom of
the ancients” rather than negotiated through the rational and moral agency of living
citizens. A better strategy to follow, therefore, might be to acknowledge that in a
world that is in a constant flux, injustices cannot be eliminated once and for all.
New forms of what we consider as injustice, like new forms of justice, are bound
to emerge as we go along. Here, too, going back in time is useful. Slavery and
patriarchy were once perfectly acceptable features of social life. Today, at least in
the democratic world, they are no longer so. In truth, no one is capable of predicting
which current legitimate practices may be condemned by future generations. Animal
activists, for example, often make the claim that future generations would condemn
us for eating meat in the same way that we condemn today past generations for
keeping slaves, discriminating against women or beating children. They may be
proven right. But they may also be proven wrong.
Operating in an environment of bounded rationality, in which the most certain
thing we can know about the future is that it would not be the same as the
present, might therefore seem discouraging and despairing. Normative political
theory, particularly its varieties that rest on the liberal foundations of rational agency
and human reasonableness, may not be entirely comfortable with such a line of
argument. However, the imperative to concentrate on “justice as we go along” rather
than on ahistorical ideal theorizing should be viewed as a hopeful endeavor rather
than a pessimistic predicament. This is because it refuses to chart an “end point”
that holds the claim for a finite theory and/or principles of justice. If justice—
and injustice—is not ideal or fixed, then the purpose of an adaptive approach to
normative theorizing is to articulate a notion of justice that is capable of responding
to injustice when and as it is encountered. Adaptive political theory therefore shifts
its attention from eliminating injustice to mitigating it, foregoing in the process
modes of idealized utopian thinking that are impractical as they are unethical.
An adaptive approach to justice, in language as in other areas, shifts its attention
from the particular solutions generated by the theory to the process of reaching that
solution. Rationality is being reinterpreted as “adaptive rationality” (Shapiro 2016:
18), in the process of negotiating “hopeful strategies” (Shapiro 2016: 5, 16–20)
for a world with open-ended possibilities. For Shapiro, “hope” is a pivotal concept
and is emphatically distinguished from both optimism (which he associates with
probability) and happiness. Hope implies a mental possibility and the willingness to
act upon it in a collaborative manner in uncertain circumstances. Hopeful actions,
he argues, are strongly allied with greater interpersonal trust. Resonating Axelrod’s
work on the evolution of cooperation, Shapiro argues that “people who act out of
hope show that they can be counted on to bear a cost even though its instrumental
benefits are uncertain. If putting my shoulder to the wheel or taking a risk means it
186 Y. Peled
obvious that I am not strategic or self-interested all the way down, perhaps you will
also feel less constrained to be utterly selfish than otherwise you might be” (Shapiro
2016: 14).
From an adaptive approach to linguistic justice, many instances of remedying
injustice in language indeed require putting one’s shoulder under the wheel, that
is, investing significant effort and energy in order to achieve a very difficult task,
even when the likelihood of success isn’t necessarily guaranteed or grounded in
any kind of strong certainty. Language revitalization projects clearly fall under this
category, by attempting to mobilize individuals to cooperate beyond their immediate
self-interest (i.e., individual economic preference-based language shift) and toward
a common goal that cannot be fully guaranteed from the outset (i.e., a sustainable
language). The main point here is that the focus of the moral and political action is
not the pursuing of a utopian end (e.g., realizing a particular language regime) but
rather in the joint and hopeful cooperation toward a better horizon (e.g., securing
the language for those who feel their dignity is presently threatened by its disap-
pearance, and strengthening the prospects of intergenerational transmission). The
adaptive approach therefore stands in tension with more universal and procedural
theories of linguistic justice, which are oriented from the outset toward a certain
solution that is largely atemporal.
Whereas such theories approach the “dividing commonalities” of language and
morality in a manner that seeks a certain solution (e.g., revitalizing the language
by giving it, for example, an official status), the adaptive approach by contrast
begins with the premise that any solution is better understood as a “re-solution”
(Oakes and Peled 2017: 148), namely, a result that is contingent not only upon
past events (e.g., the historical suppression of certain languages) but also present
views and efforts (e.g., community and individuals’ commitment and/or interest
in revitalization) and future uncertainties (i.e., the question of future generations’
linguistic preferences). So, rather than exploring the question of the nature of
a linguistically just society in the abstract and then attempting to apply it to
particular cases, an adaptive approach begins with the premise that the local and
especially temporal realities of language—and linguistic communities—necessarily
affect their normative theorizing and that such theorizing cannot exist outside history
or not be subjected to its forces of change.
The promise of an adaptive approach to linguistic justice may seem particularly
suitable for theorizing endangered languages, owing to the pivotal role it assigns
to hopeful cooperation in the face of an uncertain future. However, it is likewise
relevant for theorizing the political and linguistic realities in many other cases
where seemingly uncontested past solutions to the problem of the “dividing
commonalities” are coming under pressure from both increasing immigration
and the reality of English as a global lingua franca. Both transformations have
important implications for any linguistic justice theory. This is perhaps nowhere
more evident than in recent debates on linguistic integration, which are forced to
reconsider previously established notions and assumptions concerning, for example,
the nature of language and linguistic communication (e.g., the epistemic neutrality
of language), the meaning of linguistic equality (e.g., authority in linguistic norm
setting), and many others. An adaptive approach that is conscious of the inevitability
and often unpredictability of historical change, and therefore of the importance
of hopeful cooperation, seems particularly suitable for informing such debates in
contexts where language itself is a contested political issue (Oakes and Peled 2017).
Ultimately, the politics of language can be understood as “the struggle that
occur on the never-ending and deceptive road to conclusiveness” (Freeden 2013:
24) in the social and political life of language. It is precisely this unending search
for conclusiveness, on fundamentally contested questions concerning the nature
of democratic linguistic prioritization, that envisages the adaptive approach as a
preferable approach to theorizing linguistic justice. This is because, unlike more
procedural approaches, it perceives the impossibility of finite normative conclusions
and the need to consider them in terms of “resolutions” (rather than solutions) as
a feature of the political life of language rather than a dysfunction. Attempting
to provide justifiable normative solutions to the basic matrix of the dividing
commonalities therefore requires greater emphasis on the particular limitations
and biographies of these solutions, rather than on their endorsement as universally
applicable fixes.
6 Conclusion
H. L. Mencken famously stated that “there is always a well-known solution to every

human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” Theorizing linguistic justice poses
a complex problem, which tempts some neat answers. It is complex because it
combines significant difference across contexts with transformations within their
own iterations. Taken together, this combination gives rise to the three basic
realities—and paradoxes of political life: the constancy of change, the dividing
commonalities, and adaptive normative theorizing as a hopeful endeavor in unpre-
dictable circumstances. These paradoxes are further situated at the uneasy interface
between the empirical reality of the open-endedness of politics as the human activity
on one hand, and the normative attempt to chart particular visions of the good life,
general and broad as they may be, on the other.
Paradoxes, however, as seemingly contradictory statements that nevertheless
accurately capture certain realities, form an important part of the human experience,
reflecting life in a messy world that is in a process of constant flux. In an insightful
quote from Emile, Rousseau states that “I hope the everyday reader will excuse my
paradoxes; you cannot avoid paradoxes if you think for yourself, and whatever you
may say I would rather fall into paradox than into prejudice” (Rousseau 1974[1762]:
57). The paradox of the constancy of change seems more preferable to the prejudice
of a world that is supposedly decontextualized from any meaningfully contested
political and linguistic features. Similar argument is likewise extendable to the more
complex yet more real-world attuned basic matrix generated by the two dividing
commonalities of human capacity for moral reasoning and language that are only
realizable in particularity. Such a view, lastly, certainly seems more hopeful in
188 Y. Peled
comparison with normative solutions that risk, in the longer run, becoming the
originators of future linguistic injustices, while lacking the capacity to adapt in the
face of the restless interface between ethics, power, and language.
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Language Proficiency and Migration:
An Argument Against Testing
Astrid von Busekist and Benjamin Boudou
1 Introduction
Powered by the daily reports of drowning refugees or ill-managed camps, uncoor-

dinated or unfair border control, the issue of justice in immigration has become a
well-established field of research (Carens 2013; Fine and Ypi 2016; Miller 2016;
Sager 2016b). While almost every aspect of fairness is covered by the theory of
migration, civic integration programs in general, and the language expectations in
particular, have not yet received sufficient attention. In many democracies, the rules
of such programs have been designed to become the new architecture of immigration
policies, and the language requirement is used not only as part of the conditions
for naturalization but also as a “pre-entry barrier” (Goodman 2011) used against
migrants.1
1 We do not discuss the sovereign right of states to legalize or constitutionalize official or national
languages; that is part of another debate on language rights, for “new minorities” or “historical
nations” in particular Kymlicka (2001) and Kymlicka and Banting (2006). Our empirical starting
point is a “conventional view,” namely, the current situation in which most states have official
or national languages and legitimately control the access to public institutions, citizenship, and
territory. These are considered as “club goods,” e.g., excludable while not necessarily rivalrous
goods (Carens 2013; Buchanan 1965). We however question the legitimacy of states, when
languages are considered as excludable club goods. See n. 6.
A. von Busekist
Sciences Po, Paris, France
e-mail: astrid.vonbusekist@sciencespo.fr
B. Boudou ()
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, Germany
e-mail: boudou@mmg.mpg.de

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1_5
190 A. von Busekist and B. Boudou
We usually fail to see the conceptual continuum between immigration on the

one hand and application for citizenship on the other hand;2 the academic literature
therefore seems to be divided into two strands of research. A broad debate on
the legitimacy of boundaries on the one hand, exploring the rights and wrongs
of political states to restrict entrance and (full) participation in the democratic
polity,3 and another debate rather concerned with the content of pre-entry barriers
for denizens or civic integration programs on the other hand. Although they overlap
in important areas, namely, when they discuss the status of migrants compared to
citizens (the rights and duties of citizenship versus admittance or granting of long-
term residency); when they assess the fairness of rationing or selecting migrants;
or when they evaluate the type of compliance with domestic rules states require
before granting entrance, residency, or citizenship, the debates are led from different
perspectives. The former is concerned with the large picture (under what conditions
is a political state justified in restricting immigration?), whereas the latter rather
looks at the nature of the demands on behalf of the migrants and their compatibility
with liberal-democratic policies. Depending on the countries, the requirements
cover political, economic, cultural, and moral aspects of residency and citizenship.
This chapter deals with one item of these requirements, in our view a particularly
problematic one: language skills.
Pre-entry checklists as well as citizenship tests usually require immigrants or
would-be citizens to pass language tests or to undergo (verified) language training
in some form. Language testing has so far received poor attention in political
theory. Compared to the sophistication of the tools used to debate the fairness of
boundaries (Benhabib 2004; Abizadeh 2008; Pevnick 2011) or the legitimacy of
testing knowledge of national history, values, or political institutions (Brooks 2016),
the evaluation of language skills as a significant contribution to social cohesion,
stability, durability, and the democratic liveliness of the host society is either under-
conceptualized or non-explicit.
Our paper aims at questioning the rationale for language testing in immigration
policies. Although we consider knowledge of the host country’s language(s) useful
and meaningful for both the migrant and the host society in terms of autonomy,
social mobility, non-domination, and upward mobility (Bleakley and Chin 2010;
Adserà and Pytlikovà 2015; Grin and Gazzola 2013; Borjas 1999), we argue that
mandatory language testing cannot be justified. Our purpose in this chapter is to
offer justifications for rejecting language as a legitimate tool for controlling the
borders and to regulate citizenship of a liberal democracy.
In this chapter, we focus on fair immigration and naturalization policies, not
on fair language policies per se.4 Our working definition of language is min-
2 The most recent and convincing attempt to bridge the gap between immigration and citizenship
is De Schutter and Ypi (2015).
3 We are concerned only with democracies in this chapter.
4 Much has been written about the fairest balance between official and minority languages and
about the services immigrants, residents, and minorities can and should expect from the state.
Language Proficiency and Migration: An Argument Against Testing 191
imal and quite straightforward: we embrace a soft instrumentalist definition of

language (De Schutter 2007: 9), acknowledging its importance for identity as an
individual speaker or as a member of a community, while giving priority to the
political interests either not to be coerced into learning a language or to promote
a homogeneous speech community. If language is part of our cultural identity
(and consequently a sign of membership in particular speech communities), it is
also, maybe primarily, a tool to connect people and interact meaningfully within
political communities. We ask whether a common language, though useful for a
lively deliberative democracy and for self-government, is a necessary condition for
democratic debate, and whether it should be enforced through the control of access
to territory and citizenship.
We are interested in the reasons why the evaluation of linguistic skills is
used to regulate immigration and shape the degree of societal pluralism, and
we argue that testing the language skills of immigrants is generally unnecessary
because the tests fail to live up to their goals. They are inefficient in creating
linguistically homogeneous communities, unnecessary in terms of democratic
deliberation, and unfair because they aim at an additional “political” competence
that is not required for citizens. Following the distinction used by Carens (2013)
between requirements and incentives, we will argue against mandatory testing of
linguistic skills but in favor of educational incentives to learn the main (official
state) language(s).
We start by describing the political context and the normative justifications
for testing immigrants in European countries. We then question the rationale
for citizenship tests in general and contrast the criticism they inspire on the
one hand with the consensus that membership in a demos remains a substantive
commitment, which ought to be expressed through language proficiency on the
other hand. In Sect. 2, we look at the different types of immigrants who are
subjected to the tests and challenge the argument that language proficiency should
be mandatory. We argue that even if mastering the common language(s) is desirable
for the newcomers themselves, since they have a reasonable interest in social
mobility and employability, this does not per se justify the coercion linguistic tests
represent. We argue that neither nationalists nor liberals can justify this coercion
and explain why their arguments eventually conflate language proficiency and
political competence. In Sect. 3, we provide an argument in favor of free language
training as a democratic right. Admission should be granted without pre-entry
proficiency tests, but once admitted, immigrants and applicants for citizenship
should have a right to free language training, in order to take part in the self-
governing polity.
This is not the place to discuss these matters. For an overview of the literature, see Kymlicka and
Patten’s Introduction to their Language Rights and Political Theory (2003); more recently, see
Alcade (2015).
2 Citizenship Tests: E Pluribus Unum?
Given the “fact of pluralism” (Rawls 1996: 188) and what Ronald Schmidt
(2014: 396) has called “ontological multilingualism,” the general goal of liberal
democracies is to define a “common good” that encompasses the scope of an
acceptable, agreed upon form of pluralism. The problem of sustaining a fair
democratic community while remaining open to social, religious, and political
diversity and accommodating minorities has mainly been tackled from the inside,
namely, through the lens of cultural liberalism, multiculturalism, or status group
legal pluralism (Tamir 1993; Kymlicka 2001; Appiah 2005; Song 2007).5
Shifting the focus to admission of aliens and naturalization policies allows to get
a better picture of what kind of common good democracies really value and how
they set their priorities in defining whom to admit and whom to exclude. When
states issue specific requirements for newcomers (as they have been doing in the
last decades), they generally express distrust toward pluralism and immigration, but
they also explicitly spell out values or practices deemed important to be sustained,
protected, and agreed upon, namely, via citizenship tests and contracts (Barker
2015). The content of the common good varies among democracies but also vis-à-
vis the type of newcomer (states typically differentiate between refugees, asylum
seekers, and applicants for residency or citizenship). Lately liberal democracies
seem less concerned with defining their primordial, unique, or distinctive cultural
identity substantively and rather factor important political values into (immigration)
laws. These political values are not less cultural in a sense, but newcomers are not,
in principle, required to let go of their genuine identities to be considered “one of
us” but should instead express loyalty to a set of political values of the host country
and, among these, language.
For several years now, European countries run citizenship or immigration tests.
The aim is to clarify and to monitor the process immigrants have to undergo in
order to become (long-term) residents or for purposes of naturalization. They have
been used in the USA, Canada, and famously in Australia (Lövenheim and Gazit
2009) and have now been adopted by various EU countries (Van Oers et al. 2010).
The general distrust vis-à-vis religious and cultural diversity; the global anxiety
about religious fanaticism, cultural diversity, and anti-multiculturalism, alongside
with social and economic crises; and a general skepticism vis-à-vis our welfare
institutions probably contribute to explain the wave of testing throughout Europe
(Parekh 2006; Bigo 2009; Kymlicka 2012; Parkin 2013).6
5 And the literature on global justice of course; but again this is not the place to discuss this in a
more thorough fashion.

6 Languages are, in principle, non-excludable goods with positive network externalities (De
Swaan 2001), but citizens and members of political communities may view their (national,
official) language as excludable “club goods,” in other words restricted to a specific constituency
or accessible only via cost-sharing, in our case the material and symbolic efforts (language
acquisition) to be carried out by newcomers.
On the surface, these tests are designed, on behalf of the state, to assess the
willingness and the ability of residents or would-be citizens to become members of
the political community (of the citizenry in the case of the former, of the demos in
the case of the latter (Bauböck 2015a)). On behalf of the immigrant, taking the test
is supposed to be a proof of sincerity and good will, the desire to learn some basic
cultural and political facts about the host country, and/or more substantially a wish
to significantly participate and succeed in the community’s social, economic, and
political life (Mason 2014).
Given that democracies are ought to duly justify their practices to the affected or
subjected individuals,7 how do they justify testing citizenship?
The normative justifications range from selectiveness and skill sensitivity to
the legitimacy of evaluating compatibility with European values of democracy,
equality, and liberty. Politically, they are supposed to have positive side effects on
European public opinions, generally hostile to immigration from outside the EU
(European Commission 2014: 33). In order to satisfy these a priori goals of the
receiving state, immigrants supposedly need language skills. Language seems to be
the metonymy of a whole range of other qualities and values. The meritocratic or
egalitarian advantage of the tests, especially language tests, is the ability to evaluate
these skills objectively and neutrally. Although none of these expectations runs
against broadly defined liberal principles, the question whether language skills are
functional requirements or substantive prerequisites remains open.
Let us now try to disaggregate the justificatory arguments of the tests. If
citizenships tests are meant to objectively evaluate to what extent a newcomer
understands and complies with the state’s national values, citizenship is framed as
a reward based on objectified criteria. For several reasons, however, the neutrality
argument does not hold.
From a civic-democratic fairness point of view, citizenship tests indeed came
under attack from different sides. The consensus among critiques is that there is
something unfair about too “thick” requirements, e.g., citizenship tests that expect
thorough knowledge of domestic and sometimes parochial culture. “Cultural”
citizenship tests, enacted in the Netherlands targeting Muslims, for example, are
unfair by any standard (De Leeuw and Van Wichelen 2012); so are the German
tests when they expect familiarity with past victories of national soccer teams; and
the British version is unfair too when expected knowledge of “facts that are purely
trivial and lack practical significance” (Brooks 2013)8 is required as opposed to
“purely political” tests (Joppke 2007).
7 For various interpretations of this criterion of democratic legitimacy, see, for instance, Dahl
(1970), Shapiro (1999a), Lopez-Guerra (2005), Beckman (2006), Goodin (2007), Benhabib
(2011), and Näsström (2011).
8 For instance, as reported by Brooks (2013), the first test expected immigrants to know the birth
(1759) and death (1851) dates of Sake Dean Mahomet, credited with opening the UK’s first curry
house in 1810. Participants were also required to know the name and nationality of his wife (Jane
Daly, Irish) and the street where his restaurant was situated (George Street, London).
Furthermore, justifications for testing conceal a series of tacit ideologies, despite

the claim for a new, neutral tool of evaluation, such as forms of protective
nationalism calling for pre-entry barriers in order to insulate the cultural identity
of a given society, to limit family reunification, or to “control the level and
composition of immigration” (Goodman 2011). Tests are the last avatars of the myth
of integration or assimilation into ex ante existing cultures and of the ideology of
monocultural and monolingual communities (Blackledge 2009).
The nationalistic premise is obviously incompatible with neutral assessment of
citizenship claims. As in all nationalistic polities, only members are entitled to enjoy
full political partnership. But the tacit ideology or the nationalistic routine often
ignores that coherent language communities are precisely the result of nationalizing
policies, of the progressive (and coercive) integration of peripheral languages into
the official tongue, and not an a priori characteristic of political communities.
France is probably the worst-case scenario of such linguistic nationalizing policies
(Busekist 2004, 2012), Québec, in a milder nationalistic way, rations its immigrants
according to language skills.
What about the claim that sharing a language is useful for both parties and that
language testing is consequently more acceptable than citizenship tests in general?
Among academics there seems to be a “consensus [ . . . ] that requiring language
does not push citizenship tests across the threshold of discriminatory, illiberal
practices” (Goodman 2010: 36). In other words, once we get rid of the cultural
and historical questions—the thick cultural requirements—language expectations
in citizenship tests are compatible with liberal evenhandedness (Carens 2013: 183;
Benhabib 2011: 164). How convincing is this argument? Is it true that one can isolate
language requirements from value requirements?
In France, for example, language appears as early as article 2 of the French
Constitution (la langue de la république est le français) and entails significant
duties on behalf of social and political actors and institutions (Busekist 2007).
Language also plays a performative role and serves as an indicator of belonging
and of “frenchness” (Busekist 2014). The (still powerful) nation-language-identity
equation can be traced back to the French revolution and the proto-linguistic
policies carried out by its proponents (Busekist 2004). Language proficiency is
wed to other cultural and legal expectations, and the “Welcome and Integration
Contract” [Contrat d’accueil et d’intégration]9 does not say otherwise. Whether
9 The signature of the “contract” is supposed to be the necessary (but not sufficient) condition
to obtain a 10-year residence card or to renew a temporary resident card. The contract clearly
states what is expected from the migrant (which set of values she needs to accept) and the
resources the state avails for integration. The contract lists the values of the French republic
on the one hand (indivisibility, laïcité, gender equality, mandatory schooling for children under
age 16, French language) and the requisites for integration on the other hand (civic instruction,
language courses, medical checkup, professional skills assessment). There is no language test per
se, but it is acknowledged that the newcomer has to learn the language, and the evaluation of this
ability through official interviews will heavily count in the decision of the public official to grant a
residence permit. There is in fact no need for an official test, since the entire process is based on the
embeddedness of the “republican” values in French language, sometimes creating clear situations
this exclusionary approach to granting citizenship is due to the fear of numbers

and alien cultural norms of migrants or to the fear of Anglophone hegemony is yet
another debate. However, the francophonie argument is more commonly used in the
French context to legitimize public policies regulating the production and diffusion
of cultural goods (music, movies, etc.). The situation in Québec is quite different.
Here again, the “special relationship” between language and given territories
is a historical and ideological legacy: on the one hand, we know that building
states and nations has been carried out through cultural and political assimilation,
language rationalization, and systematic exclusion of minority languages (Laitin
2000; Gellner 1983), but we fail to acknowledge—scholars and practitioners alike
(Goodman 2010)—that we are the willing followers of exactly those policies on the
other hand, assimilation into the normative culture through the official language(s).
Empirically, we know that purely monolingual polities belong to the past, but
normatively we seem to be caught in the trap of methodological nationalism, despite
our commitment to post-national or global demoi and despite our commitment to
pluralism.
[The basic outline of liberal nationhood should] include relatively easy access to citizenship
after, say three to five years of residency, with minimal tests of national integration, includ-
ing knowledge of the national language, knowledge of national history and institutions, and
an oath of loyalty to the country and its constitution(Emphasis added) (Kymlicka 2006:
136–137)
So, is language testing compatible with liberal-democratic pluralism? Can

language testing avoid the traps of promoting a single conception of the good life?
Is a polity entitled to condition access to its relevant institutions through language
testing, or must we bite the bullet and admit that language testing belongs to the
legitimate (and indeed unavoidable) policies of modern states?
These questions have been partially answered by sidestepping the dilemma:
firstly, as De Schutter (2007, 17) recalls, “employing a neutral hands-off approach
is unworkable with regard to linguistic diversity. [ . . . ] [I]n making policies on,
among other things, education or simply courtroom practices, states unavoidably
have to make linguistic decisions: fully a-linguistic state policies simply do not
exist.” Secondly, expecting language proficiency does not violate liberal neutrality
principles regarding individual lives, since the specificity of language is its
“exteriority,” as Joppke puts it. It is not about the inner beliefs of people; it is
therefore compatible with liberal forms of loyalty (Bauböck and Joppke 2010).
Finally, learning a new language is “capacity-enhancing, it does not deprive the
individual of anything, least their ‘identity’.”
Proficiency in the official tongue is hence considered to be a fair expectation on
behalf of the (nation) state, rather than a specific political competence or a sign of
cultural affinity even among the defenders of open or porous borders. Consequently,
language proficiency is a legitimate criterion for controlling access to citizenship or
of discrimination. Hachimi Alaoui and Pélabay (2013) give the example of a veiled woman who,
despite a flawless accent, will have fewer chances than “white” and apparently secular Canadians
with a very heavy accent.
nationality from the point of view of the state. For migrants, host-country language
skills may come with a cost as the means and opportunities to sustain their native
languages vary greatly among democracies.
Interestingly, the consensus on desired language proficiency among scholars is
not tied to any specific commitment to liberal, republican, or communitarian values.
There seems to be a general agreement that membership in a demos remains a
substantive commitment, which ought to be expressed through linguistic fluency.
Republicans, as in France, are very straightforward about an intrinsic link between
language and republican values, linguistic practice, and political praxis (Busekist
2004). On the liberal end of scholarship, Carens (2013: 183) sees “no reason for
objecting to the use of linguistic competence as one factor in the selection of
immigrants [emphasis added],” and Benhabib (2011: 164) argues that once the
“right to membership” is “publicly and openly formulated, non-discriminatory, and
compatible with international human rights agreements,” then “other conditions
of membership such as language fluency may be plausibly stipulated [emphasis
added].” On the cultural-liberal-multicultural end, authors such as Kymlicka (2001:
25), who promotes integration into a “societal culture” based on “common language
and social institutions [emphasis added],” proficiency in the national language is
also a necessary condition, among others, for citizenship. And even the dialogical
or deliberation-based model of the political community tacitly or explicitly involves
a common tongue (Euben 2007).
In short, aspiring to an inclusive society of equal and participative citizens
de facto creates a linguistic barrier between those who can literally take part in
the “(liberal) conversation” and the others (Ackerman 1980: 95).10 The deceitful
paradox of this line of argumentation (crossing ideal theory of open borders with an
ideal definition of democracy) is then the following: sharing a common language (or
languages) is the necessary clause for a lively participatory domestic democracy but
also the rationale for drawing boundaries and excluding those who have a language
deficiency (Kunnan 2012).
In short, we challenge the consensus among liberals, liberal culturalists, and
republicans on language testing, by providing a more powerful yet equally liberal
argument against it. A liberal democracy cannot duly justify language testing
since it creates an unfair burden on non-native speakers. Even if an immigrant
is not a refugee and has the choice to move into one specific country rather
than another (Miller (2015) distinguishes immigrants along these lines), we argue
10 As one anonymous reviewer argues, one could say that this linguistic barrier does exist only
until the immigrants learn the common language. But this hints to yet another problem, relating
to the social equality of members, not the inequality between immigrants and citizens. Forms of
discrimination continue to occur even when the language is well known; foreign/regional accents
or the mastery of linguistic repertoires will be met by social or cultural discrimination (Bourdieu
1982). We should therefore distinguish between inequalities at an early stage of entrance on the
territory where the lawmaking citizenry has an impact on the design of immigration laws and
structural inequalities within the citizenry, namely, between those who speak the normative tongue
and those who do not.
that we owe plausible justifications to those who are affected by coercion at our
borders (Abizadeh 2008), that these justifications are not satisfactory so far, and
that language testing distributes the burden inequitably among applicants, in other
words fails the equal treatment clause if tests are mandatory. The burden is indeed
“distributed unequally amongst applicant citizens, since the costs of additional
language learning will vary according to linguistic background” (Shorten 2010:
111).
3 The Problem with Language Proficiency as a Sign

of Political Competence
In order to make our argument, we will now look at the different types of immigrants
who are subjected to the tests. In the last section, we will then provide a positive
argument in favor of language training as a right as opposed to testing as a
requirement.
Let us first consider foreigners who aspire to enter the state and are subjected to
language tests prior to any contact with the host society. In our view, the status
of refugee or asylum seekers trumps any other entrance condition in the name
of human rights and the obligation to assist (Convention relating to the Status of
Refugees, UNHCR, 1951). There is no a priori need of cultural assimilation, nor any
need for specific knowledge of the receiving state, consequently of language, since
the goal is to protect vulnerable individuals.11 Furthermore, in order to avoid any
form of domination, it seems obvious that the host country would have to provide
interpreters and translators to be sure that their claim is properly made and heard.
There are a posteriori Charter duties regarding language for the receiving state, and
there may be a genuine interest for the refugee to learn the host country’s language.
But there cannot be an a priori obligation justified on fair terms.
We should add that language testing for refugees is often used to push a specific
political agenda, hostile to immigrants from specific origins. There is evidence that
language testing (more precisely language analysis) is primarily used to determine
the geographical origins of the refugees, in order to evaluate the truthfulness of their
claim to political asylum. While citizenship tests aim at evaluating the potential
of integration into the host country, linguistic analysis looks at the genuineness of
the migrant’s demands. Obtaining refugee status generally depends on the locus
of origin and the fact that she faces an imminent danger in her home society.
Language analysts are called in to identify the accent of the claimants in order to
prove or disprove a genuine claim of persecution. But as MacNamara and Shohamy
(2008) write, “linguists have raised concerns about the naïve ways in which the
11 This is very much in line with a general consensus regarding refugees and asylum seekers,
although there is an ongoing discussion about alternative destinations: refugees and asylum seekers
have a right to enter a state but not necessarily the state they have chosen (Miller 2015).
link between ways of speaking and speakers’ origins are often investigated, as well
as how the conclusions of these investigations are often used in decisions about
speakers’ claims to asylum” (see also Eades 2009 and more generally Fassin 2013).
Language testing is even more relevant for the ordinary admission of immi-
grants.12 For liberal nationalists, as we have mentioned, taking language tests
could be a fair sign of willingness to take part in the political life of this or that
specific country since a claim to immigrate is supposed to be specific and relational:
freedom of movement should encompass an adequate range of possible countries of
migration, rather than the entire world (Miller 2007: 207).
Liberal nationalists are committed to the rule of law and a healthy welfare
state. As nationalists, they believe in the legitimacy of protecting “shared beliefs
and mutual commitments” in order to foster trust, cooperation, solidarity, and
mutual protection and a right to a specific territory that is “marked off from other
communities by its distinct public culture” (Miller 1995: 27). As liberals, they are
committed to justice, and they believe that the proper functioning of a self-governing
state should include mechanisms of adjudication between competing claims, rules of
reciprocity, and justification: “Justice in immigration requires that the policy chosen
should be legitimate, but it requires more than that—for instance [ . . . ] that it does
not discriminate between prospective immigrants on unjust grounds” (Miller 2015:
392).
The receiving state is hence entitled to require immigrants “to absorb some
aspects of national culture as a condition of being admitted to citizenship” (Miller
2010: 250). Incentives are not enough, because, according to Miller, the interest
of immigrants in learning the language or to apprehend the political culture
may conflict with their interest in protecting traditional family values, ancestral
languages, or communitarian ties. Consequently, “the policy [ . . . ] of making access
to citizenship conditional on passing a test, that requires, for example, a working
knowledge of the national language, and some familiarity with the history and
institutions of the country in question, can be defended on these grounds” (ibid.).
But doesn’t this argument ignore the interests of immigrants? The nationalist logic
of the argument gives unquestioned priority to the values of the receiving state, as
if culture and language were unified and territorially fixed once and for all (Sager
2016a).13
Let’s nevertheless assume that language is indeed part of the public culture or
rather that the public culture is expressed in a certain language and that without
12 For the sake of thoroughness, we should also mention tourists who have to apply for a visa in
order to visit a country. There is no need to argue that language proficiency cannot be a condition
for obtaining such a visa, since it would defeat the purpose of an economically efficient tourism.
As Robert Dahl argues (1989), transients have no claim to participate in local politics since
they will not endure the consequences of their participation; the brevity of their stay and their
own unwillingness to take part socially or politically in the society make any form of linguistic
requirement irrelevant.
13 We referred to Buchanan’s argument about excludable club goods earlier (see n. 1 and 6). The
nationalistic logic we address here neatly fits his model.

a certain level of proficiency, integration is bound to fail. Instrumentally, being

proficient in the receiving state’s tongue would furthermore give the applicant’s
claim more weight as his potential compatibility and compliance with the host
culture is measurable—at least idiomatically. However, even if we accept the idea
that cultural affinity measured by language is valuable both for the immigrant and
the host country (in terms of employability, personal autonomy, future participation,
shared civic culture, upward mobility), it is not clear why language proficiency and
language training should be mandatory, neither for family reunification14 nor for
permanent residence. In other words, liberal nationalists may be right in identifying
language as one of the building blocks of citizenship, but they do not offer a proper
justification for coercive testing.
Liberal nationalists need to offer a coherent justification as to why testing
immigrants is required. We know that (language) integration is a process (Durkheim
1975; Portes 1995; Fishman 2012) and cannot be a desert-based privilege sanctioned
by a test. The paradoxical logic at play here is that one needs to be already integrated
(linguistically) in order to be considered fit for (political) integration. Languages are
learnable, and language training is useful, but contact with native speakers probably
remains the best way to acquire a new language. Pre-entry barriers therefore make
no sense if we look at processes and timelines, learning, and acquisition, instead of
photographs of the migrant skills taken the day they file their application.
Finally, language tests for would-be nationals are more plausible, since citizen-
ship or nationality allegedly requires more loyalty, more rights, and more duties.
It also seems more legitimate to expect active participation from people who have
been living in the host country for several years (although this is self-fulfilling in
most cases: residents who have been living in the host country usually master the
official language(s)).
The ways in which citizenship is tested are good indicators for the political
and normative understanding of citizenship. Ricky van Oers, for example (Van
Oers et al. 2010), distinguishes three types of citizenship and analyzes how tests
embody one or the other. Whether citizenship is defined as a legal status (liberalism),
an activity (republicanism), or an identity (communitarianism), tests differ and
are more or less culturally laden. We have written that for liberals, republicans,
communitarians, or nationalists alike, linguistic tests are legitimate, because they
express either the ability to actively participate politically or are signs of loyalty
to the national culture and solidarity. Language proficiency is therefore highly
desirable both for future citizens, because they can interact (autonomy) and take
part in the political culture (deliberation), and for the polity, because it fosters
cooperation and solidarity and ensures the sustainability of the domestic (political)
culture. And we have argued that the desirability of having (a) common/official
14 As Carens (2013: 188) puts it: “Both the immigrants and the wider community will be much
better off if the immigrants learn the official language. But these considerations do not justify the
creation of barriers to the entry of immediate family members. The right of human beings to live
with their immediate family members imposes a moral limit on the state’s right simply to set its
admissions policy as it chooses.”
language(s) can be shared by the newcomers themselves since they have an interest
in social mobility and employability (Blackledge 2009; Kahn 2004). But this does
not per se justify the coercion that linguistic tests represent. Wishing that citizens
speak the same language (or have at least one language in common) is quite different
from coercing individuals to pass a linguistic test that conditions the distribution of
membership.
In all these situations, tests conflate language proficiency and political com-
petence, e.g., the specific ability to participate meaningfully in the host society’s
political life. If we take language proficiency as an a priori condition for membership
for granted, there is no political participation without language proficiency, and
reversely, political participation depends on a shared language. This argument
is made in particular by proponents of a regional or global lingua franca. The
assumption being that without such a common language, democratic deliberations
are bound to fail or to exclude significant parts of the demos. But democratic
participation is not related to any specific competences. Political scientists have
long abandoned the belief that political competence is an individual “quality”
that a policy maker (or any scholar for the same matter) can confidently evaluate
(Blondiaux 2007; Landemore 2013; Landemore and Elster 2012); and political
philosophers generally reject the Platonic ideal of competence in the name of
democracy (Elkin and Soltan 1999). The very idea of testing proficiency leans on
the ideal of a competent citizen, whose competence justifies participation. On the
other side of the spectrum, deliberative theories of democracy show that competence
is a collective endeavor that comes into existence through participation rather than
beforehand (Manin 1987). But as we mentioned earlier, these theories also rely on
an idealized monolingual forum where language proficiency is considered as an a
priori competence (Schmidt 2014). Everything we know about migration precisely
questions this and pushes deliberative theories to acknowledge that proficiency is
a tacit competence that excludes a minority which is affected by the outcomes of
deliberation. Competence should hence be analyzed as a collective issue: although
it is important to be well-informed in order to participate, there are many ways to be
informed in other languages than the official or common one.15 The romanticized
view of general deliberation where everyone speaks in a virtual agora is far too
high an expectation (Shapiro 1999b). Social interactions and public discussions
do matter for a democracy to work properly, but there is no reason for making
15 The issue of translation policies or of “translational justice” (Meylaerts 2011) is too far reaching
for the scope of this chapter. The debate about rights (and accompanying public policies) to
translation services has been going on for a while and has not been settled. Reine Meylaerts
(2011) is right when she writes that “there is no language policy without a translation policy,”
and this is true in multilingual polities as well as for immigration policies. Translational justice is
relevant for participatory democracy and non-domination because citizens should have a right to
effectively communicate with the official authorities. Demands for translation services classically
include legal translators (a claim must be properly heard) or multilingual ballots (participation).
Current debates include linguistic challenges faced on a daily base: access to bureaucratic services
healthcare, interaction with schools for parents with children, etc.
language proficiency a necessary condition for being a proper (a good—normatively

defined) citizen. Language competence and political competence are two different
types of skills, but language testing in citizenship contracts juxtaposes and conflates
them. A routine social life might provide enough basic information (international
media, neighbors, schools and parents organizations, associations, etc.) to be a well-
informed citizen (Khubchandani 1997; Rodriguez 2006).
4 Teaching Instead of Testing
It is true nevertheless that language skills are enabling and that linguistic exclusion
should not lead to situations of helplessness? Individuals should have access to
language training in order to avoid domination (lack of autonomy) and humiliation
(disparity of esteem). In this section, we will argue in favor of free language training
as a democratic right.16 Language disadvantages are detrimental to democratic
equality and therefore to democratic participation. The argument for parity of
participation is usually made in support of official common languages to foster a
healthy “talkcentric” (Dryzek 1990) participatory territorial or national democracy;
but parity of participation thanks to a common language is also supported by
lingue franche proposals for “Europe and for the world” (Van Parijs 2011). Global
egalitarian justice is better achieved in a common idiom, ideally connecting all
citizens.17
A convincing account of the proper trade-off between liberal principles and
principles of democratic coherence is Rainer Bauböck’s stakeholder model (2007,
2009, 2015a) combined with what he calls the “political value of languages”
(Bauböck 2015b). He argues that the test for the legitimacy of boundaries “cannot be
which border is more conducive to delivering social justice. We need to ask instead
16 One could say, as one reviewer did, that there is no such thing a “free language training.” But the
same way public school is generally free of charge and financed by taxes, we argue that language
training could equally be free and paid by the taxpayers who are the future citizens taking these
classes. Expecting migrants to “give something back” for these courses would actually be like
preventing emigration for citizens who have been trained in public schools. Distributional systems
are not based on a strict reciprocal relation; there is room for delayed forms of loyalty and gratitude.
Another argument could be made based on the idea of basic interests: education and language
training concern basic interests of individuals and may be more or less unconditionally provided.
This is why France, for instance, has a universal healthcare coverage for all residents, and police
forces protect anyone in danger on its territory, regardless of the identity of the victims and without
inquiring whether she is a citizen or a taxpayer.
17 The global lingua franca (English) is tempered by coercive territorial linguistic regimes in
order to sustain more vulnerable national or regional languages. The reason for sheltering these
languages, and the reason for language communities to “grab a territory” in Van Parijs’ words, is
justice related: individuals feel attached to their native tongues and may feel disparaged by living
in the shade of greater languages: “In a just society, people must not be stigmatized, despised,
disparaged or humiliated by virtue of their collective identity” (Van Parijs 2011: 119).
which territorial arrangement accommodates competing claims for self-government

in such a way that it deserves to be supported by all” (Bauböck 2015b: 214).
But let’s start with the political value of languages. In a piece dedicated to the
critique of Van Parijs’ territorial principle as a compensation for disparity of esteem
felt by speakers of minority languages, Bauböck justifies territoriality in a useful
way for our purpose. Instead of supporting territoriality and coercive language
policies within given boundaries for the sake of social support for self-respect, he
rightly notes that languages are foremost tools for self-government. Establishing
(a) particular language(s) in a given polity is hence “the legitimate outcome of
democratic procedures that have been suitably constrained by linguistic freedoms
and minority rights” (Bauböck 2015b: 214), and not an a priori requirement for
linguistic justice. He endorses an instrumental account of languages that does not
impede on identity issues, since these are also framed in egalitarian democratic
terms (identity claims are morally equal but constrained by legitimate rules of
democratic self-government). He also seems to reject the fact that individual
language rights are the building blocks of coercive territorial language regimes: it is
rather that a language regime is a democratic choice “constrained by, but not derived
from individual language rights” (Bauböck 2015b: 222; see also Peled 2011). In
short, languages are tools for building self-governing policies. Self-government in
that sense is the independent variable (with language as a tool), whereas language
(as an identity marker) is the dependent variable. We hence ought to test the
legitimacy of language laws by “asking whether they are the result of legitimate
exercise of self-government powers” (Bauböck 2015b: 221).
Let’s now turn to the “stakeholder principle”:
It relies on two assumptions. The first one is that individuals have a basic interest in
[such] membership both for instrumental reasons (in order to gain protection of their
fundamental rights) and intrinsic reasons (because membership contributes to their self-
respect and equality of respect by others). The second assumption is that citizens of
a self-governing polity share at least a presumptive collective interest in preserving its
autonomy and contributing to its flourishing. The stakeholder principle links these two
assumptions by proposing that those and only those individuals have a claim to membership
whose individual autonomy and wellbeing is linked to the collective self-government and
flourishing of a particular polity. (Bauböck 2015a: 9 [emphasis added])
On first sight, the combination of the two arguments seems to be a powerful jus-
tification for the legitimacy of language requirements: given that language laws are
the result of self-government powers (the outcome), and not an a priori requirement
for fairness, self-governing bodies should be authorized to pass whatever language
laws they deem necessary (within the limits of democratic rules). But that would
suppose that (a) common language(s) are necessary resources for self-government;
and (b) that language(s) per se ought to be protected, over individuals as equal
bearers of rights. Neither is true, as Bauböck admits himself (Bauböck 2015b: 221–
222). It would also suppose that there is a conceptual link between democratic
politics and a common language. It may be true empirically that it is easier to fully
participate in the democratic debate when mastering the common tongue (although
many multilingual countries manage very well), but a common language is neither
a necessary nor a sufficient condition for lively democratic deliberation as we have

argued above.
But overall, his account is consistent with our argument: admission of immigrants
should be granted without pre-entry proficiency tests, but once admitted, immigrants
and applicants for citizenship should have a right to language training, in order
to take part in the self-governing polity. This right is purely instrumental or
consequential in the sense that membership in the self-governing body (whether
as residents18 or as citizens) enables them to alter, influence, and shift language
preferences (through municipal arrangements or general laws). In other words,
language skills are political enabling skills, and not cultural admission tests or
means to verify the compatibility of the migrant’s language background with the
host society’s linguistic values. It is consequently a right for all immigrants to access
the common good of language as an enabling skill.
What about the subsequent application for citizenship? We argued that natural-
ization should occur without language testing or attendance in language classes
after a period of residency, the duration of which should be kept relatively short.
Residents who wish to take up the citizenship of their host society should be
welcomed without skepticism and helped in all possible ways, but the situation
is necessarily asymmetrical. In accordance with his social membership principle,
Carens (2013: 60) argues along these lines:
One may wish and hope that citizens will be well informed, but it is unreasonable to
insist on knowledge of the dominant language for the sake of an idealized form of
political information that typical native citizens do not possess. [ . . . ] After several years
of residence, ten at the most in my view, any language requirement should be set aside.
Requiring immigrants to pass tests of linguistic capacity and civic knowledge as a condition
of naturalization is ultimately unjust.
In short, either we argue in favor of mandatory citizenship independently from

the interests of individuals or groups to acquire citizenship because citizenship is
not only a right and a duty but a significant burden, and hence abolish the category
of long-term residents,19 or we acknowledge that there is nothing wrong with
asymmetrical situations, as long as states do not pursue nationalistic and exclusive
policies (a certain form of thin nationalism may be a side effect but should not be
the main purpose (Tamir 1993)).
Mandatory attendance in language classes (a condition waived after a period of
residency) may still seem too paternalistic a policy for true liberals. But combined
18 See Bauböck (2015a) on multilevel citizenship: birthright citizenship and residence-based

membership.
19 Because the alternative to mandatory citizenship, according to Helder De Schutter and Lea Ypi
(2015: 15), “is not to have no linguistic or cultural others; the alternative is having a group of non-
citizen linguistic or culturally others [ . . . ]. Those who defend harsher citizenship acquisition rules
oversee the result: not the absence of immigration, but the presence of more non-citizen immigrants
[ . . . ].” The authors also suggest that it is wrong to make democratic equality dependent on the
contingency of immigrant’s interests. The duty to take up citizenship should be a general rule in
order to avoid a “life as a permanent guest.”
with a series of services, incentives, and compensations, we believe that mandatory

attendance can be justified. If the classes are free of charge and taught by qualified
instructors, either in specific locations easily accessible (in schools, e.g., for parents
with children, or even in joint classes with the children if the parents need
alphabetization; on the workplace with specific agreements from employers) or
possibly via the internet, costs and burdens would be significantly lowered and
learning would be facilitated, especially when combined with other social practices
and interactions.
5 Conclusion
Language requirements are justifiable under a specific balance of four provisos: (1)
the way language skills affect economic integration and employability (a utilitarian
perspective), (2) expected benefits of a common language for the public culture
of the host country (a more substantive or axiological perspective), (3) the way in
which language skills affect political rights (a parity of participation perspective),
and (4) the way in which specific language requirements affect self-respect and
parity of esteem (Van Parijs 2011) and what kind of linguistic arrangements offer a
significant realm of choice and of opportunities (a good life perspective).
Let’s check to conclude whether the type of thin language requirement we argued
for is consistent with these provisos: (1) economic integration and employability
would certainly be enhanced, especially if language classes are taught in a com-
prehensive way and in adapted locations. (2) The benefits for the public culture of
the host society are instrumental, political, and moral. The communicative value
of a common language is instrumental. The political value refers to the ability
of participating in the self-governing polity in the usual tongue of the debates.
We should not forget that politics is about more than words uttered in the right
language: language courses taught in a comprehensive way are avenues into the
history, the culture, and the institutions of the receiving state. The moral value of
a common idiom can be captured by the “existential threat” Andrew Shorten refers
to: ongoing immigration in the absence of language learning may have significant
effects on the national distinctiveness people are legitimately attached to (Shorten
2010: 108). One can also argue that equality in language(s) is a moral attribute of
political communities or that oldcomers expect newcomers to go through the same
learning process and that a common language simply increases social cohesion.
(3) Whether language skills affect parity of participation is less evident; however,
the fact that only full citizenship allows the newcomers to participate in making
and altering the laws, and consequently language policies, combined with enhanced
communication skills, tends to prove that language skills are not a condition for
participation (instrumental language rights such as translation services could be
provided, knowing that these cannot encompass too broad a range of languages) but
certainly a condition for a more efficient and a less mediated participation. (4) As
for parity of esteem, a linguistic arrangement that respects the linguistic identity of
migrants, provides transitory instrumental services, and offers free language training
in the receiving state’s language without hampering other social goods or economic
opportunities safely passes the test.
The argument we offer about language training as a right combines both
the republican ideal of a contract and the liberal logic of testing and avoids
the corresponding problems we have identified. We are aware of the risk that
transnational elites or cultural minority ghettos with individuals reluctant to learn
the polity’s language(s) will remain.20 That is why we remain committed to the
republican ambition to create a contractual political community of citizens. This
remains relevant and could be enforced through mandatory attendance to language
courses. Immigrants may require the necessary means to achieve their integration
and claim protection from (linguistic) domination; in that sense, language training
(in which beneficial socializing side effects might occur) takes on its full meaning
when the newcomer is actually in contact with native speakers. On the other hand,
the liberal logic may correct paternalistic policies (or the positive liberty claim) a
republic imposes on newcomers: language courses must not necessarily be validated
by a formal evaluation21 and should be justified in the name of individual autonomy
rather than in the name of loyalty to a set of predetermined values. Language
remains a sufficiently thin and (eventually) enabling skill a liberal state is justified
to require (e.g., in the name of the value of education), as opposed to cultural
or historical pre-entry knowledge. The ideal objectivity and neutrality of tests,
as opposed to their costly, biased, and inefficient nature, should be dropped to
reconsider language not as a means to control boundaries and define communities
but as a tool to foster democratic participation of future citizens.
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The Myth of English as a Common
Language in the European Union (EU)
and Some of Its Political Consequences
Jean-Claude Barbier
1 Introduction
Most social scientists and an overwhelming majority of politicians, either at the

national or the European level, disregard the existence of any “language issue” in
the EU. The doxa about it is that English competence is steadily increasing and
that English will soon be able to universally deliver all the functions that a common
language in the European Union, and even more largely, in Europe, asks for and
will ask for in the foreseeable future. Yet, this assumption is flawed, as we have
shown (Barbier 2015). As this issue is very poorly documented, we will start in
a first section by recalling the essential characteristics of actual English language
competence today across the EU. We will then reflect upon the likely developments
in the future, with regard to the link of language skills to education. In a second
section, we will deal with some of the consequences of the existing language issue
which, generally brushed aside as not important, are indeed essential for political
reasons. It is actually not enough to assess these implications in economic terms,
despite the crucial importance of economics in the real world today. This analysis
calls for the launching of a research programme.
J.-C. Barbier ()

Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris, France
e-mail: Jean-Claude.Barbier@univ-paris1.fr

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1_6
210 J.-C. Barbier
2 Do Europeans Enjoy a “Lingua Franca” in the Union?

The State of the Language Issue in the EU
The very scarceness of available data and analyses about language skills and usage
in the EU is in itself testimony to the marginal interest the role of languages raises
in contemporary European societies, among social scientists and politicians. The
remark applies not only to statistical data1 but to the entire spectrum of social
science, except sociolinguistics and linguistics for obvious reasons. The rule for
social scientists is “publish in English or perish”: whenever some of them are
interested in what we will call here the “language issue in the European Union”,
they are inevitably bound to fall back on Eurobarometer data. Eurobarometer is a
functional statistical instrument that was invented in the early days of the European
Communities as decision-makers in the European elite experienced the dire absence
of any “public opinion” or any equivalent of Öffentlichkeit at the EU level. This
mainstream opinion poll was gradually used (and misused) for a wide range of
political purposes and, by that process, became increasingly politicized—in the
sense that it more and more functioned as a key element in the special style of
“political communication” (or “spin”) politicians in the EU need (Aldrin 2010).
Apart from long-term and reliable inquiry and documentation of such questions
as trust in the European Union, or attachment to the national, regional, local or
supranational levels of government, day-to-day findings of Eurobarometer surveys
are used to try and promote official policies and programmes implemented by the
Commission and the EU institutions.
Yet, as a classic opinion survey, Eurobarometer was always bound to be an
inadequate tool for assessing language skills. For lack of other comprehensive and
cross-national comparative surveys, it has nevertheless been used for this purpose.
As no better instrument is presumably available (in terms of coverage) and research
funding is scarce, some scholars do not hesitate to jump to the flawed conclusion
that Eurobarometer can be seriously relied upon.2 Yet, as many have shown, when
used for assessing language skills, Eurobarometer will ever remain based on self-
declaration, thus introducing a huge bias (see Kraus 2008: 154–155; Barbier 2008:
251–257; 2015: 195–198). Self-declaration and the vagueness of the definition
of what is “speaking a second language” (“being able to hold a conversation”)
inevitably tend to lead to overestimating foreign language skills. In 2012, according
to the Eurobarometer,3 foreign language speaking showed no progress since
1 Since the creation of the Eurobarometer, the EU Commission only implemented a survey of
citizens’ language skills (aged 15 and more) three times; the first was Special EB 54.1 as late
as 2001; the second was issued in 2006, special EB243. And the latest version was published in
2012, Special EB 386. As is explored further, the Adult Education Survey (Eurostat) also delivers
interesting findings.
2 Van Parijs (2011: 9): “there is no dataset that could document it [the extension of English as a
lingua franca, ndr] with anything like the same precision as the Eurobarometer”.
3 Special EB 386, June 2012
The Myth of English as a Common Language in the European Union (EU). . . 211
2006; language skills were rather stagnant—even as younger speakers effectively

performed significantly better than the old. They even decreased if one used the
mean figure, a measure that has little meaning. Across the European Union, in 2006,
the proportion of people supposedly able to speak a second language—in their great
majority, English—was 56%, whereas in 2012 the proportion was 54%.4 The mean
strict rate of English speaking as a foreign language according to Eurobarometer
was thus only 38% among Europeans in 2012. In the European Union, this leaves
out 60% of the people aged 15 and over, not a very robust evidence indeed for
documenting the existence of a “lingua franca”.5
Nevertheless, limited as they may be, other data about language skills exist. In
other words, it is possible to escape at least some of the “Eurobarometer traps”. It so
happens that, from 2007, the European Commission has been publishing findings
that came from an experimental survey (Adult Education Survey, AES).6 This
survey has now a second point of measure with 2011 (except for some countries,
see Gazzola 2014, 2016). It is representative of the European population aged
from 25 to 64, and this puts English skills higher than a survey representative of
all ages would do. Also using self-declaration, the AES has limitations similar
to EB’s. However, it displays a more rigorous approach because people are put
in types according to defined abilities. Initially the survey had four types (basic,
fair, good and proficient). People were asked whether they were (a) proficient
(this means the ability to understand and produce a wide range of demanding
texts and use the language flexibly), (b) good (this means claiming an ability to
describe experiences and events fairly fluently and to produce a simple text), and
(c) fair/basic, i.e. an ability to understand and use the most common and everyday
expressions in relations to familiar things and situations. AES findings collected in
20077 showed that, across the EU, only 13.3% of “adults” (25–64 of age) considered
themselves as “proficient”, i.e. belonging to the best category; 15.9% considered
themselves among the “good”. If these figures are to be trusted, less than a third of
Europeans were able at the time to really handle a rather simple situation in English
and to write simple texts. This obviously excluded the ability of debating about
politics or reading or writing complex texts, except, at least on the basis of their
declarations, for the small 13.3% of “proficient” people. At the time the majority
was made of those who had no second language (38.3%) and those who claimed a
fair knowledge (30.0%). Four years later, in 2011, figures had not changed much,
except for a decrease of those who stated they knew no language and an increase
4 This figure may reflect the absence of Turkey and Croatia in the second survey.
5 There are of course many available definitions for “lingua franca”, an English version of the
classic “vehicular language” (Hagège 1985). A very loose definition indeed does not care about
the proportion of speakers in communities linked by the lingua franca, as P. Van Parijs contends
(2011: 9). As will be discussed later, his definition implicitly assumes that political participation
may be legitimately restricted to an elite (ibid. 30–31).
6 AES collected data in 2007 in 24 member states; AES then collected data in 2011 in 28 member
states.
7 Eurostat news release, STAT/1O/139, 24.9.2010
212 J.-C. Barbier
Table 1 Exclusion rates in the European Union in a monolingual regime (English as the official
language in the EU)
%, AES, 2007, figures from Gazzola 2014 Absolute exclusion rate Relative exclusion rate
Across the EU 49 81
Age 55–64 63 82
Age 25–34 37 79
Highest income quintile 29 Na
Lowest income quintile 60 Na
Highest education level 19 Na
Lowest education level 89 Na
Intellectual occupations 16 60
Managers 35 66
Low qualified workers and employees 69 86
Financial industry 12 59
Agriculture 86 97
of the proportion of “good” speakers, but these figures are not strictly comparable.8
English is thus no “lingua franca”, not to mention a “common language” for citizens
in Europe today, and it will not be in the near future, except for a tiny elite, given the
huge gaps that exist in language skills across the EU. Inequalities, which are very
wide, cannot be spelt out here in detail (see Gazzola 2014, 2016; Barbier 2015).
On the basis of his analysis of the AES (year 2007),9 Gazzola (2014) went further
and defined a “linguistic disenfranchisement rate” (tasso di esclusione linguistica).
He compared various linguistic regimes, one of which being a monolingual one with
English as an official language. An “absolute” exclusion rate (Ea) measured the rate
of those who didn’t speak or understand documents and broadcasts in English. A
“relative exclusion rate” was added when only those who had English as a mother
tongue or understood or spoke it excellently were not excluded (Er). Gazzola’s
figures appear in Table 1. Mean figures show that the proportion of the absolutely
excluded makes about half the European Union population (25–65), and, when they
are neither native speakers nor proficient, more than 80% of it. Figures would be
higher still if the survey covered people aged more than 65. Gazzola’s analysis of the
2011 data shows limited change: the absolute mean rate in Europe was 45%, while
the relative rate was 80%. He compares them with the 2012 EB survey, according
to which 50% of Europeans aged 15 and over are absolutely excluded, i.e. do not
speak English as a second language, and 79% relatively excluded, i.e. are neither
proficient nor have English as their mother tongue.
8 The sample was slightly different. Corresponding figures were people stating they know at least
one foreign language 66%, no foreign language 34%, 13.2% declared they were proficient, 23.10%
saw themselves as good, and 29.7% as fair or basic (Eurostat news release 138/2013, 26.09.2013).
9 There were several limits to the coverage of the survey in 2007: no data for the Netherlands and
partial data for Italy, Malta, and Denmark.

Table 2 Second language and performance of best known foreign language speakers in some
countries in the EU
AES 2011% of adults No second One language Best known second
25–64 language language in the country
Very good Basic and fair
All levels of education
EU 34.3 35.8 20.0 44.8
Countries
UK Na Na Na Na
France 41.2 34.9 12.7 49.4
Germany 21.5 42 16.2 49.8
Italy 40.1 39.6 9.7 64.5
Spain 48.9 34.0 18.6 39.7
Poland 38.1 26.6 17.4 48.7
Sweden 8.1 31.6 43.3 20.7
Denmark 5.9 26.3 36.4 28.0
Hungary 63.2 25.9 24.8 44.5
Greece 41.9 43.0 18.7 42.8
The Netherlands 13.9 25.2 36.2 18.7
Source: AES 2011, Eurostat figures available on line (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/education-and-
training/data/database)
Table 1 illustrates the fact that a small minority of people in the EU is able
to accomplish the basic social requirements in English that are expected10 from
ordinary members of any society. The “language issue” in the EU also comprises
another essential feature: a polarization exists in each country of the EU between
English-speaking citizens and non-English-speaking ones. This is also true in
countries where second language (and English) skills are at the highest in the EU,
for instance, the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands. In the most populated
countries, exclusion rates illustrate this polarization at the national level (Table 2).
Table 1 also illustrates a huge polarization between the lower qualified (almost
90% of them do not enjoy English skills) and the better qualified (only 20%
are absolutely excluded). Similar polarization goes along with income levels and
occupations. People employed in agriculture are absolutely excluded from English
at nearly a 90% rate, while the absolutely excluded working in the financial sector
are only 12%. What is perhaps even more striking is that when one takes into
consideration the level of proficiency, occupations deemed to be better qualified
still have very high relative exclusion rates (two thirds for managers). Being de facto
excluded from the practice of “very good English” is also the situation of about one
fifth of Scandinavian adults, despite the very high levels of the national Swedish
10 Obviously, expected is not actual: European surveys have estimated that about 20% of European
citizens lack the literacy skills they need to function fully in a modern society, and the OECD PISA
studies in 2009 showed that one in five 15-year-olds had poor reading skills.
214 J.-C. Barbier
average. In Table 2, we let aside the assumption of a monolingual regime consisting

of English, and we deal with the 2011 AES findings concerning second language
speaking, notably in the most populated countries of the EU. Dominantly, second
language de facto means English.
Across Europe, Gazzola (2016) additionally showed that only an elite of 7–8%
of the population of the continent is able to have access to the documents written in
English by the European institutions and make full use of them. To sum up briefly
the situation: the “language issue” in the European Union is extremely worrying,
because across the Union, roughly eight out of ten people cannot understand the
ordinary functioning of European politics—once it is done in English—and are thus
de facto excluded from any serious political participation in them.
2.1 When Language Is Hidden Behind Education Indicators
The polarization of language skills roughly coincides with extensive inequalities of

training and other education: the fact is that training/education inequalities actually
hide language skills inequalities, in the sense that only the former are taken into
consideration. In the present “EU Education and Training strategy”, improving the
proportion of tertiary educated people in the member states has been one of the main
targets (40% as overall target), the second one being the decrease of early school
leaving. For the first indicator, polarization between countries was still extremely
wide in 2013: only Luxemburg, Ireland, Lithuania, Sweden, Cyprus, Finland and
the United Kingdom achieved more than 45% (Fayolle et al. 2015: 12). Italy and
Romania were at less than 25% and six countries of the EU (Denmark, France,
Estonia, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain) achieved a rate between 40% and
45%. Poland, Latvia and Slovenia were at 40%, but the rest of countries were faring
at between 25% and 35%. The existing surveys and indicators do not allow for
a precise association of language skills with education levels. However, existing
data amount to showing a picture of high inequality, i.e. a pattern of persisting and
permanent “exclusion” of certain categories of citizens from the resources attached
to language skills. This especially concerns early school leavers, but many more
groups. For a long time, inequalities attached to education have been very widely
acknowledged as detrimental to the economy and have given many opportunities to
discuss and design policies to alter the situation. This has been the stuff of European
labour and employment policies since the Delors’ Growth, Competitiveness and
Employment White Paper in 1993. In these efforts only limited if any accent has
been put on the specific question of language skills.
Confronted with such inequalities, one can hardly hope that much chance exists
that the outcome of current education and language policies in the EU and in
member states can deliver significantly better results for language skills in the
foreseeable future. Investing massively in education and, by the same token, greatly
enhancing language skills, and especially English skills as a common basis for
sharing a common language, would probably be a beneficial strategy,11 but it does

not seem very realistic for various reasons. First, as a result of current economic
policies, education funding has suffered over the years of the crisis from austerity
strategies, and future arbitration in favour of language education is extremely
unlikely. In fact, inequalities in language skills are not very well known, as if
their consequences were negligible. Second, English skill gaps are enormous, and
they are not decreasing at a reasonable pace. What’s more, English skill gaps
are also obvious among well-trained people: very significant gaps exist among
very well-trained workforces in certain countries. Those who are classified as
“elementary occupations” suffer from huge rates of exclusion from the resources
attached to language skills; this is the case even in countries like the Netherlands
and the Scandinavian countries where English can really pass for a sort of vehicular
language across a wide spectrum of society. Many scholars (see this book) frame the
question in terms of “injustice”, and they may be right. However, for sociologists
who tend to abide by the principle of Wertfreiheit, the exploration of such potential
injustices has to be checked against representative surveys of the actual feelings
of injustice among the public, and these are lacking. Most generally, when the
“language issue” is not altogether disregarded, it is conceived of as only a subsector
of the economic question of training and education inequality: as Van Parijs (2011)
and many other scholars consider language, it is a “resource”, a “capital” and an
“asset”. In the following section, we would like to challenge this view and stress
the political importance of languages, e.g. the importance of language in European
politics.
3 Some Political Problems the European Union Has

with Languages Today
Politics are impossible without language. In many countries (India, Canada, South
Africa, Belgium, etc.), politics is done however via a plurality of languages. Such
practice does not mean that these languages enjoy an equal standing in the countries
mentioned. In India, for instance, legal language for the federation uses English,
and only a small minority of Indians are able to master a central element of Indian
politics, i.e. Indian federal law. In some countries, for instance, Canada, French
and English compete in politics, especially at provincial level. With regard to the
empirical functioning of politics, each case of multilingualism should be analysed
in detail, and the fact that such and such a country has been successfully using
more than one language for internal politics provides only limited inspiration for
11 Given the various uses of English today, increasing its knowledge among disadvantaged publics
would be a priori favourable for them. Funding English training as a priority however has
detrimental effects on funding training in other languages as foreign languages.
216 J.-C. Barbier
the European Union. The situation in the EU is such that national politics are played
with national official languages (Catalan and Castillian for instance in Spain). Trans-
or supranational politics on the other hand overwhelmingly use European English.
However as we have shown for social policy (Barbier 2014), issues that are dealt
with in trans- or supranational forums are hierarchized according to domains. The
financial, banking and budgetary legislation, for instance, is entirely discussed and
decided in English—except the strange case of German banks that have succeeded
in using German in their communication with the European Central Bank (ECB).
No European citizen can hope participating in the debate about the most important
topics of European government without being fluent in English. Even in matters
considered less important—social policy, for instance—general orientations are
framed, discussed and decided over in a language, which is European English.
These simple facts are easily checked by sociologists who take part in various
forums and confirmed by statistics of legal departments of the European Com-
mission (Barbier 2016). But they are so much taken for granted that the influence
languages have on EU politics is rarely addressed specifically. Very few researchers
indeed do acknowledge the relevance of the issue (Grin 2005; Kraus 2008; Van
Parijs 2011; Kjaer and Adamo 2011). In the huge literature about European
integration, scholars are very rare who explore the relationship between politics
and language and, especially, the question of whether a putative “common demos”
needs a “common language”. Van Parijs is one among the political philosophers who
acknowledges the existence of a language question in the EU and takes it seriously.
He does so for very special reasons that he explains in his Linguistic Justice (2011).
As Europeans, to him, we form some type of what he calls a “transnational demos”
(2011: 24–31). As human beings, we need a common language to form a more
conscious and rational humanity. However, Van Parijs sees language as a functional
instrument, and he has only contempt for the “narcissism” of defenders of languages
per se12 ; he is after finding a tool for the pursuit of transnational justice, of which
a common demos and a common language are “preconditions” (2011: 36–37).
Whatever normative assessment sociologists make of Van Parijs’ views of “justice
for all” and of the intrinsic value of languages, he points to an important aspect that
many sociologists actually underestimate: democracy in Europe needs some form
of shared language for deliberation and for the politics of redistribution. Although
we do consider Van Parijs’ utopian proposals with considerable scepticism and even
with dread (Barbier 2012), this author makes an undeniable strong point when he
stresses that no deliberation—no politics, actually—would be possible without a
shared language, what some call a “lingua franca”, thus supposed to be urgently
needed (Van Parijs 2011: 31). As for existing effective practice of multilingualism in
the European Parliament, the same author rules it out as a solution because allegedly
too expensive and cumbersome; in this, he deliberately ignores research showing
that it is feasible and not costlier (Gazzola 2006). Additionally, other strategies could
12 For him, this goal is not contradictory with allowing for the local use of various languages for
subordinate and mundane functions.

be devised as to facilitating multilingualism in other forums in the European Union.

Nevertheless the empirical necessity of a shared language (however complex and
multiple this language may be) for political decision and discussion remains. As
we have shown (Barbier 2015), it is precisely the case today that top politicians
of the EU often misunderstand their counterpart fellows, because of the limitations
brought about by the exclusive use of European English.
The language issue has long seemed relevant to us for the study of European
integration, from two points of view: one is the actual practice of EU politics (and
most especially in the area of social protection); another is the use of languages
by social scientists (Barbier 2008, 2013a). Social protection, up to now, has always
been organized at national or infra-national levels (Ferrera 2005; Bartolini 2005),
and it has always been associated with key features of the national official languages:
language is especially a vehicle for identifying the other members of a community
where sharing and reciprocity are possible (Barbier 2013a). Decontextualized
solidarity is unknown in the realm of empirical social protection. A legal and
empirical locus is indispensable where deliberation takes place and decisions for
sharing and reciprocity are taken: in Europe, this political body has chiefly remained
situated—despite nearly 60 years of European integration—at the national level
and in a national official language (exceptionally, more than one, as in Spain and
Belgium, for instance). However, from the beginning of the EU communities,
for all the firm embedding of politics into the national space, politics in the EU
have acquired another tier, where the political game is now played in English.
In the early stages of the European Communities, other languages still played an
important role, especially French,13 but now these days are gone (Barbier 2015).
Additionally, in these days prevailed what political scientists have characterized
with hindsight as a period when the public treated politics at the EU level with
benign neglect (Schmidt 2006). The relevance of EU level politics, where English
always dominates, has increased tremendously, with an immense development of
various forums (Barbier 2014). More and more European political issues have
become politicized in a supranational way, in the sense that voters in the national
states are more and more concerned and state their preferences for issues that
they previously ignored. In 2005, the referendums for a constitutional treaty in the
Netherlands and in France were key turning points in this respect. The controversy
over the “Services Directive” in 2006 soon followed. The situation where European
politics is increasingly salient is not going to disappear as the active politicization
of the European elections just demonstrated in 2015. The misunderstanding or
disinformation of voters about the real substance of policies leads them to negative
votes and feeds what is too simply classified as “populism”. For instance, secret
negotiations between the United States and the EU about transatlantic treaties bring
to the fore strong hostility in Germany; these oppositions are clear disagreements
and cannot just be swept under the carpet as manifestations of “populism”. Here
the language issue is particularly important to consider. At a time when electorates
13 See later: traces of the influence of the French language are still existing yet.
218 J.-C. Barbier
are more and more dissatisfied with their governments, whether at the national
or at the European levels, will a European Union be feasible in the future where
only a minority of citizens speak the language of the ever more hegemonic tier of
politics? Hardly explored in the literature on European integration, this immense
problem will be introduced by two observations, followed up by a wider discussion.
The first observation concerns the extent to which EU citizens trust or distrust
Europeanization and EU integration: a significant change has been with us since
the 1990s in this respect. The second observation is more recent and is based on the
fact that forces hostile to European integration have gained support and are more
and more vocal in EU politics.
3.1 The Polarization of Trust and the Polarization of Foreign

Language Skills: A First Coincidence?
There is a strong link between foreign language abilities and education levels as
we have just seen, but we must also observe that trust or mistrust are also linked
to education levels. Is this merely a coincidence? The overall fall in trust in the
European Union did not occur only with the recent economic and political crisis, and
the polarization of opinion about it is not at all a new phenomenon. Bruno Cautrès
wrote: “The less favorable assessment that Europeans relate to European integration
( . . . ) dates from the early 1990s when the conjunction of the ‘post-1989 world’
and public debates on the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty introduced in public
opinion a series of questions about the limits, the scope and meaning of economic
and political European integration” (2014: 21). Indeed political science literature
demonstrates that the relationship citizens entertain with European integration has
been polarized according to “class”, employment status and education for a long
time (see also Arnold et al. 2012). This was already the case after the elections for
the European Parliament in 1999, before the 2004 wave of enlargement. Although
with varying degrees, in all countries, the gap was already very high between the
highly and the lower qualified. Cautrès and Grunberg named this the “elitist bias”
(2007), a bias that has remained with us until today. This phenomenon should not be
considered as if the EU were an aggregate polity, as Neil Fligstein (2008) wrongly
assumed when he predicted a cross-EU “Euro-clash”. As already stressed, the bias
exists within the boundaries of each country, as Table 3 illustrates. Cautrès and
Grunberg documented the proportion of people showing what they call “strong
support”14 for European integration according to the length of their education. For
instance, in Spain, those who stopped their education at the latest when 16 were
60% in 2004 to show strong support for the EU, as against 73.3% of those whose
14 With the help of aggregating answers to five questions of the Eurobarometer, they distribute the
barometer sample into two categories (strong versus weak), each making 50% of it.
Table 3 “Strong support” for European integration

Country/age for end of education Up to 16 years old After 20 years Difference
Spain 60.0 73.3 13.3
Greece 54.9 70.3 15.4
Germany West 34.5 68.3 33.8
Germany East 38.5 61.0 22.5
Hungary 36.9 66.0 29.1
The Netherlands 40.5 61.6 21.1
Italy 40.2 60.9 20.7
France 33.9 60.1 26.2
Poland 29.5 55.5 26.0
Denmark 31.8 52.7 20.9
The United Kingdom 20.8 50.7 29.9
Sweden 21.9 39.4 17.5
EU 40.4 58.9 18.5
Source: Cautrès and Grunberg (2007) using Eurobarometer EB62, 2004
education went beyond the age of 20 (first line in Table 3). In 2004, differences
ranged from about 13 points in Spain to more than 33 in West Germany. We do not
know 2014 comparable figures, but we know the answer to one of the five questions
used in Cautrès and Grunberg’s index of strong support, i.e. “tell me if you tend to
trust or tend not to trust the European Union”.
Across the EU, the positive answer to this question fell from 57% at the beginning
of the crisis (spring 2007) to 31% in spring 2014 (in autumn 2004, it was still
50%). As the elitist bias has been present for a long time, it is certain that it has
persisted. This characteristic of the citizens’ relationship to European integration
comes as a complementary aspect to what we have seen with the coexistence of
low qualification and low skills in foreign languages (generally English). Available
data certainly do not allow us to conclude that the fact of speaking English—the
language of the transnational forums of politics—is one of the causes for trusting
and its absence a cause for mistrusting the EU. However the coincidence is more
than just troubling. We follow up on this first observation by a second one focused
on three countries, France, the Netherlands and Denmark. In these, the difference
of trust is rather high, at 26.2, 20.9 and 21.1 points, respectively, in 2004 (Table 3).
Before this, one should note that the United Kingdom is a special case: the role of
English is, by definition, different in its case, but the gap between the higher and
lower educated was one of the strongest noted by the authors: years later, except
for the role of age, this gap seems to still play an important role in the June 2016
referendum on Brexit.
220 J.-C. Barbier
3.2 France, Denmark and the Netherlands: Anti-Europeans

Do Not Speak English, a Second Coincidence?
We selected the three countries because ethno-populist15 parties have gradually

established themselves as key political actors in all three for the last 20 years:
France, with the Front National (FN), initially created as the offshoot of a proto-
fascist group in 1972 (see Milza 2002); Denmark, with the Dansk Folkeparti (DFP),
created in 1995, another offshoot of the extremist Progress Party also founded in
1972; and the Netherlands, where, after the initiative and demise, for cause of
assassination in 2002, of the Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF), the PVV (Partij voor de
Vrijheid), led by Geert Wilders, has taken over since 2006. FN and PVV are allies in
the European Parliament, but the DFP declined to join their group. All three parties
are strongly anti-immigrant (especially migrants of Muslim/Arab origin), and they
combat European integration explicitly, although not uniformly. At this preliminary
stage, we just want to draw the reader’s attention to one conspicuous coincidence—
not to be of course seen as a correlation or cause: the amazing parallel of education
backgrounds (often, more generally, social class) of the three parties’ supporters and
of the groups of citizens who do not enjoy foreign language and English skills.16 We
start by the French case, using AES data similar to those discussed in the previous
section (see Table 4).
In France, the immense majority of lower educated people, 6 out of 10, do not
speak English. A similar situation is true for so-called “elementary” occupations.
Inactive people (aged 25–64) and the unemployed are also easily distinguished from
managers or higher educated people. The polarization of foreign language/English
skills is well captured by contrasting the 24% of managers who don’t speak foreign
languages with the 60% of labourers. If we turn to experts of the Front National,
what we find is that 74% of FN supporters have less than “bac” (i.e. secondary
education), whereas 44% of other voters achieve more (Perrineau 2014). At 79%,
Perrineau (2013) puts FN voters among the “losers of modernity”. Twenty-two
percent of voters with primary education, 28% of the unemployed voters, and 31%
of the worker voters choose the Front National, as against 6% of those with a higher
education background and 7% of managers. Clearly then, the profile of nonspeakers
15 “Populism” has been a classic conundrum posed to political philosophers, sociologists and
political scientists for the last 50 years. One of the first important intellectual (and unsurpassed)
milestones in its discussion was held as a seminar in London in May 1967 and featured the
seminal paper by Isaiah Berlin. Taguieff (2002) has very convincingly showed that, along with
an ethno-populist trend displaying xenophobic and more often than not racist features, the qualifier
“populist” is often straightforwardly attributed by elite politicians and journalists (as well as
numerous social scientists) to all sorts of critical—and obviously as legitimate as favourable
ones—attitudes towards the consequences of globalization and business-led integration, as they
are experienced by voters of all sorts of parties across the political spectrum.
16 It is also to be noted that in the three countries, significant extreme-left parties exist, which are
also strongly acting against the various forms of European integration: we don’t take this point in
consideration for our exploratory observation.
Table 4 France
2011/AES (% aged 25–64) No second languagea One language
All levels of education 41.2 34.9
Lower education (levels 0–2) 60.0 30.1
Medium education (levels 3–4) 47.6 32.6
Higher education (levels 5–6) 15.8 42.5
Managers 23.7 41.1
Clerks 39.2 36.4
Skilled workers 55.2 30.8
Elementary occupations 59.9 29.1
Unemployed 45.7 32.2
Inactive 54.5 28.6
In employment 38.0 31.6
a InTables 4, 5, and 6, second language means all foreign languages and not only English. I thank
Michele Gazzola for drawing my attention on this point. Scores for English as second language are
affected by the fact that other foreign languages have significant scores in such and such a country,
for instance, Spanish in France
Table 5 Denmark
2011/AES (aged 25–64) No second language One language
All levels of education 5.9 26.3
Higher education (levels 5–6) Na 19.5
Managers Na 19.8
Clerks 5.0 25.2
Elementary occupations Na 36.1
Unemployed Na 28.9
Inactive 12.1 29.2
of English in France is comparable to the profile of FN supporters. Something

similar can be observed in Denmark.
The average situations of Denmark (Table 5) and France (Table 4) are very
different with regard to English skills, as we just documented (Table 2). According
to their declarations, Danes are generally seen as good or very good speakers of
English. As in the case of the Netherlands, many reasons facilitate the promotion
of English practice in both countries (small open countries, with a high share of
222 J.-C. Barbier
services production, and a relatively good education system are some factors).17
In both countries stands a very powerful political force set at the far right, hostile to
Arab immigrants and Islam, but also hostile to European integration. Compared to
France, lower educated people not speaking a second language are a minority (about
15%): yet this figure is nearly three times the Danish average, and the proportion of
“very good” in this category is less than half the figure for the higher educated
people (Barbier 2015). Even in a country that scores well on average, extensive
polarization exists between the low and high qualified. In parallel, when one looks
at the composition of DF voters (Stubager et al. 2013: 65–73), one finds that—
leaving aside other anti-European parties like Enhedslisten18—DF voters (13%
overall, against 27% of Venstre and 25% of social democrats in the 2011 elections)
were 19% among the low qualified and 18% among the unemployed, as against
7% among the highly qualified managers; DF supporters also score higher in the
low-income groups (25% among those with an income inferior to 200,000 Danish
crowns, as against 8% among those with more than 800,000 crowns). A significant
group also belongs to the self-employed. When it comes to education levels, lower
levels tend to vote more for the DF (17% of Danes with a folkeskole background
(primary) and 20% with erhversfaglig (occupational education) as against 2% of
those with a long higher education (lang videregående). Here again, and perhaps
more excluded in a society, the Danish one, where English is supposed to be
commonly mastered, the profiles of the lower educated and the lower occupations
are comparable to the profile of those who vote significantly more for the DFP and
are not good at languages.
The Dutch case (Table 6) is again different from the Danish (Table 5) and French
(Table 4) ones. The Dutch are those who, according to Eurostat categories, claim
to be among the best in Europe. Only 4% of the higher educated spoke no second
language in 2011, as against seven times more (29%) for the lower educated—a level
which corresponds roughly to French managers. In a country where, as in Denmark,
the possession of (some) English competence is seen as “normal”, the polarization
between the less and higher educated appears very high (the proportion of very good
performers in foreign languages/English among the higher educated equals twice the
level of lower educated people). And in the Netherlands, although there exist rivals
to the PVV among anti-European and anti-immigrants political forces, the typical
PVV voter is lower educated and male, and he earns less than the average income
(Hovens 2012). Ninety-six percent of Wilders’ supporters voted against the treaty
for a constitution in 2005 (as against about an average of 62%). Before the European
17 Comparisons between the structures of qualification between Denmark, the Netherlands and
France are made difficult because of statistics: at face value (Eurostat), the three structures are not
very different. Danish colleagues have reminded me of the limitations of Danish statistics for the
measurement of training and skills. Moreover, the linguistic situation is affected by the practice of
other Scandinavian languages.
18 The SF party (Socialistisk Folkeparti) also used to be anti-European.
Table 6 The Netherlands

2011/AES (aged 25–64) No second language One language
All levels of education
Higher education (levels 5–6) 4 20.5
Managers 5.0 23.1
Clerks 14.9 27.2
Elementary occupations 25.2 Na
Unemployed 3 2
Inactive 24.6 28.1
Parliament elections in 2014, the PVV was supposed to appeal to a broader section
of the population, including highly educated people, and it remains to be seen what
will be the consequences of this recent election, not to mention the alliance with the
French Front National. In any case, a clear first observation leads to think that the
profiles of the non-English speakers and of the opponents to the European Union in
the Netherlands are lower-qualified in a majority.
The above comments only sketch out three national situations that would deserve
much more research, and triangulation with a host of national data, comparing
the evolution of more than one anti-European party, and the rest of the political
spectrum. The distinction between English and other foreign languages should
also be dealt with more accurately. Our purpose only being to shed light on
a generally unexplored phenomenon, we cannot but be conscious that extensive
analysis remains to be performed about these phenomena. However, the observation
in three countries affected by the wave of hostility to European integration tends
to point to a situation of polarization within the three countries selected. The
polarization is between those who possess second language skills and those who
don’t: this opposition strongly follows the opposition between the lower and higher
qualifications and occupations. Voters with low education tend to favour voting for
ethnonationalist parties. For scholars who consider that languages are important,
as key vehicles for politics in Europe, an interesting research question would be
to inquire more deeply about the various links existing in many countries between
language skills, other skills, occupations and voting behaviour. This is not an easy
task because of existing language skills data, the quality and the availability of which
are very low, a situation that has the detrimental consequence of shedding all the
light on qualifications in general and de facto underestimating the role of language
skills.
224 J.-C. Barbier
3.3 Understanding Hostility to European Integration in the

Context of Language Skills
With regard to voters’ choices, the commonly accepted interpretation of today’s

transformation of European politics is “populism”, but, as we have shown, this
classic view is extremely unsatisfactory and normatively biased (Barbier 2015:
footnote 16). Indeed, the presence of an “ethnonationalist/ethno-populist” orien-
tation among very many political forces that challenge the legitimacy of European
integration is rather well established (Taguieff 2002). But there is a wider aspect to
Euroscepticism and hostility to European integration. These political forces’ very
diverse normative orientations directly challenge one of the key foundations of the
legal economic structure of the European Union, namely, the free movement of
workers, and are hostile to all sorts of immigrants, especially Muslim ones. Those
accused of “populism” by frightened European elites indeed comprise some racists
and fascists and undoubtedly many forms of extremists and anti-establishment
parties, but their essential common trait is to condemn and oppose the main tenets
of European integration politics. That such an attitude of a significant proportion
of European citizens is legitimate, by principle, is precisely what the oligarchic
European elite tries denying.
At the end of the day, the polarization of trust across the European Union,
which is firmly associated with levels of education, income and, actually, class,
is to be linked with the fact that a very important—and growing—proportion of
European electorates rejects the legitimacy of politics and policies as they are
conceived, designed and carried out today. One of the most salient problems
is the balance/imbalance between the national and supranational Öffentlichkeiten
(public “spaces”) where politics are made. Policies are challenged by this growing
and nationally fragmented constituency on two essential topics: economic and
immigration policies that, intrinsically, put in question the very legal fabric of the
European Union.19 No genuine political debate is today possible in the European
Union across borders, and national-specific debates prevail which foster conflicts,
notably between elite representatives from different nations, as the fierce opposition
about refugee policy illustrated in 2015. Even more than a vague increase of
“populism”, one danger the EU faces today may well be that a social divide will
become more and more salient within each of the nations. Our detailed exploration
of the distribution of language skills across Europeans adds one aspect to this
diagnosis: a troubling parallel exists between speakers of foreign languages and
supporters of European integration, as the two roughly painted ideal types illustrate
in Table 7.
19 For lack of space in the present article, we cannot explore the immensely important question of
refugees.
Table 7 A troubling parallel: two ideal types of EU citizens

Attitude to In favour of European Hostile to further European integration
European integration. Trusting the (or to European integration as such).
integration and European Union institutions Distrusting EU institutions for their
Europeanization for their achievements achievements (a special case: the euro).
(outcomes). Favouring the Hostile to immigration (potentially
four freedoms of movement racist, mainstream xenophobes)
Occupation and Professional and highly Lower qualified occupations. Short
education qualified. Long-lasting education
education
Mobile/immobile Mobile and enjoying the four Immobile, de facto mainstream
freedoms, including those impossibility (economic and cultural) to
brought about by the euro and individually enjoy the benefits of the
freedoms of travel four freedoms
Relationship to “European English” /foreign Nonspeakers of “European English” and
“European language speakers of foreign languages
English”
4 Conclusion
The evolution of EU politics leads to two main observations: the EU has been
confronted with a growing problem of legitimizing its policies for the last decade, if
one takes the failure to pass the project of a constitutional treaty in 2005 as a crucial
turning point. At the same time, and even more with the most recent post-crisis
political developments, the swift and pervasive construction of a de facto economic
government (which still officially passes for “governance”) (Barbier 2013a, b) has
immensely increased the relative weight of the supranational/transnational tier of
European politics. Despite piecemeal traces of the influence of French and the
exception of the working language of the Court of Justice of the European Union,
these politics are made in English from their very inception to their conception
and implementation (Barbier 2015).20 No European citizen can really face the
immense cost it takes to understand and participate in these politics unless he
or she is proficient in English, the language of the European forums and arenas,
where decisions are prepared and eventually taken (Barbier 2014). This is why the
possibility of “enlightened despotism” (Barbier 2013b)21 is more and more likely to
20 A particularly illustrative example can be taken in social policy: the essential legal instrument
that the EU Commission has published for the last 5 years is “Com 2013 (83), Communication from
the Commission: Towards Social Investment for Growth and Cohesion—including implementing
the European Social Fund 2014–2020”. The communication itself has 23 pages in English. It is
accompanied by about a dozen so-called working documents where the essential argumentation of
the policy lies: of these several hundred pages none had been translated in 2015. Only the 23 pages
are available in all EU official languages.
21 In the late eighteenth century, while remaining despots, monarchs in Europe pretended to abide
by the rules of reason. The European institutions today act very much alike, while overruling
democratic rules in the name of the general economic interest of the Union.
226 J.-C. Barbier
materialize, if it has not yet settled over the EU. Enlightened despotism can easily be
practised and implemented by top politicians and officials, an elite who masters and
uses an English lingua franca. In this respect, should we trust Gazzola (2016) who
tells that only 7% of Europeans (non-native speakers fluent in English) can really
participate in EU politics? Notionally one has to add the 13–14% of native English
speakers, but their interest in EU politics has been very rare and will presumably
be even more one-sided now that Brexit is being negotiated. The problem remains,
however, as to how the European Union will accommodate the existing masses who
have been accustomed to some form of democracy that no political sociologist will
idealize and how it will be able to manage the consequences of a steadily declining
trust of these masses and of the growing perturbations introduced by pervasive
disaffection of voters towards their political elites, whether at the national or at
the European levels. How will the EU be able to handle the very high levels of
“exclusion” that we have documented here?
A particularly preoccupying area of European politics is the increasing reach of
European law into more and more domains (Barbier et al. 2015). As we showed
with a sociological analysis of EU lawmaking (Barbier and Colomb 2012), actual
European rights of citizens are radically unequal in the Union: the footloose enjoy
many, whereas the immobile enjoy few. Because of the particular conception of
EU law, EU citizens are not linked by a common legal consciousness as they are
supposed to be in their own nations. On top of this, only scarce and weak policies at
the EU level address the language issue (Barbier 2013a), and there are no signs that
a credible constituency of actors will today push successfully for stronger political
intervention in the area of languages. Hence the language divide cannot be simply
ignored. More empirical research is needed urgently. Political philosophers have
paved the way for a normative discussion about what sort of language policies
should be promoted (Van Parijs (2011) as well as other contributions in this book) in
terms of “linguistic justice”. These scholars’ very interesting contribution however
needs sociological and political science confrontation about the actual conceptions
of actual citizens; such inquiries have not been implemented yet, and normative
views have yet to be tested among representative citizens.
In the second section of the present text, we put forward one crucial question:
does de facto exclusion of English proficiency explain the hostility of excluded
individuals to European integration and, even more, to all things “Europeanized”
that the elites, on the other hand, appreciate and fight for? This is certainly not the
only factor or the main one. It has nothing to do with English but with English
as a marker of exclusion from linguistic resources outside the United Kingdom.
The empirical data we provided the reader with were only able to start a new
discussion. As a consequence, a question is addressed both to sociolinguists and
to language economists and sociologists as well as political scientists: when will
they inquire about the wishes of the citizens in terms of present and future language
developments? How is language linked to other sociological factors, for instance,
poverty and social class? Philippe Van Parijs may very intelligently explain what
the justice criteria are for languages and write a splendid discussion in English,
concluding that some room should be preserved in the future for national languages
at local level and for subordinate activities. Also writing in English, Glyn Morgan
(2005), among many others, can adopt a different view and affirm that English is
the ideal solution for Europe.
But what are exactly the opinions and attitudes of EU citizens? Given what
one knows today about elections in Europe and various debates at the national
level, most voters are very unlikely to become enthusiastic about the necessity
of “universal justice” and a common language that cannot but be English; such
sophisticated imaginings remain to be tested against mundane attitudes. Most
ordinary citizens would be very surprised at reading in Van Parijs’ terms that they
are selfish if they want to preserve their mother tongue and that it is “justice”
that they should pay for the preservation of what he calls a “fetish” (Van Parijs
2011: 168). The question remains about whether ordinary citizens’ opinions actually
matter but also whether an “enlightened despotism” regime is actually feasible in
the European Union on the long term. Turning again to the 2012 Eurobarometer,
the dire limits of which we have already documented, one gets an indirect approach
to what Europeans think about multilingualism. The European Commission official
commentator is enthusiastic about the majority of them. The Europeans seem to be
favourable in their great majority to multilingualism and are convinced about the
equal value of languages. Yet in 2012, 34% of them (over 15 years), surprisingly,
had no motivation to learn languages (European Commission 2012: 89 sqq).
Additionally, one in five Europeans seemed to share an opposite view of foreign
languages speaking: they simply do not care about learning other languages. They
are 16% in France, 19% in Italy, 18% in Germany and 24% in the United Kingdom.
Their proportion is especially high in the Central European countries, where they
are almost a third (30% in Hungary, 31% in Poland). Do these people, who are
obviously excluded from the benefits of multilingualism, resent this situation? Do
they feel excluded from European politics? They may not care and stick to their
mother tongue, not to mention their ordinary use of English phrases disseminated
by adverts and cinemas; they may also be hostile to European integration. Empirical
surveys, here again, are necessary to understand this situation more in-depth. This is
another example of the many unknown implications of the language issue in Europe
that urgently requires to be explored extensively. Even in terms of EU law itself
(entirely permeated by the conception of “anti-discrimination”), EU officials and
politicians should be also aware of the potential an anti-discrimination action could
have in the future in the variegated areas of language usage, perhaps through the
mobilization of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. Many social scientists
have de facto accepted that the European project cannot be genuinely democratic.
However, there are still numerous members of the academic and political elites who
undoubtedly share Jürgen Habermas’ (2011) genuine advocacy for a democratic
European Union. Yet not many institutions indeed support these politics today. Such
reasons are in abundance, as Bartolini (2005, 2006) has intelligently demonstrated.
Some scholars, abandoning the prospect of further European integration, propose to
turn back to the national level (Scharpf 2014). The European situation is one of a
great upheaval which, exposing the myth of English as a universal language, could
well give language a renewed relevance.
228 J.-C. Barbier
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Part III
Economic Approaches to Language Policy
and Linguistic Justice
Linguistic Justice in a Federal Setting:
The Case of Canadian Provinces
François Vaillancourt
1 Introduction
Linguistic justice has been addressed by various authors. Alcalde in this volume
summarizes the various strands of literature, while Van Parijs (2002) puts forward
various computable formulae that could be used to establish if a given combination
of costs and benefits of learning (or not) a second language is just or not. This
chapter does not examine in detail if linguistic justice exists or not in the case of
Canadian provinces although an opinion is offered in conclusion. It simply provides
information on a methodology that some may find useful in ascertaining the value
of these costs and benefits and applies it to the case of Canadian provinces and thus
in a multi-jurisdiction state.
This chapter is divided into three parts. First, we present analytical and factual
information. Then we illustrate for the case of Ontario how provincial numbers are
derived. Finally, we present the results for the nine provinces with French language
minorities.
This paper draws for the most part on two studies completed for the Fraser Institute: Vaillancourt
and Coche (2009) and Vaillancourt et al. (2012).
F. Vaillancourt ()
Université de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada
e-mail: francois.vaillancourt@umontreal.ca

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1_7
234 F. Vaillancourt
2 Language Policy and Decentralization, National

and Provincial Statistical Information and Legal
Framework, and Methodology for Cost and Benefit
Calculation
This first part of the chapter is divided into three subparts: the first presents some
observations on language policy in a decentralized setting and some statistics and
observations on official language minorities for the ten provinces of Canada, the
second, the constitutional and legal framework, and the third, the methodology used
to establish costs and benefits (when computed).
2.1 Language Policy in a Decentralized Setting:

A Few Observations
Grin and Vaillancourt (2002), after reviewing the principles of fiscal federalism,
use them in examining minority self-governance from an economic perspective.
They note that there are equivalences between the traditional approaches to language
policies that are the personality and the territorial approaches on one hand and the
models of governance used in fiscal federalism on the other.
The personality principle links language rights to individuals wherever they may
reside, while the territorial principle links language rights to the place of residence,
whomever lives there.1 Club goods2 are not quite private goods such as a meal or a
book; they result from belonging to a specific group be it the users of a tennis court
or of a common language. This is summarized in Fig. 1 where the two principles are
matched vertically with three models of decentralized provision of public services
ordered from weak to strong minority powers.
They then put forward the following points:
1 Territorial autonomy, weak or strong, when feasible, is preferable to the person-
ality approach since it gives stronger foundation to minority-favoring language
policies.
2 Territorial autonomy need not be the same for all public services; special districts
with stronger powers may be useful in the case of education given its salience in
ensuring minority language survival.
3 Self-financing of minority language services by minority groups is a desirable
feature as it strengthens autonomy, but insofar as linguistic diversity benefits
all society, and not only minority members, cross subsidization from majority
members also plays a relevant role.
1 See De Schutter (2008).

2 For more on this, see the introductory chapter of this volume.
Linguistic Justice in a Federal Setting: The Case of Canadian Provinces 235
Language Personality Weak territorial Strong territorial

governance principle autonomy autonomy
Weak to strong
minority powers
Fiscal federalism Club goods Deconcentration or Devolution with financial
perspective provision devolution with freedom: self-financing
conditional transfers or unconditional grants
Fig. 1 Relationship between language governance and fiscal federalism frameworks. Source:
Adapted from Grin and Vaillancourt (2002: 80). The minority is presumed to be concentrated
into some areas of a country where they may even be the majority
That said, they then make a plea (81–83) for a proper cost-benefit analysis of
language policies. This requires taking into account both market and nonmarket
costs and benefits of language policies or, put differently, carrying out a true cost-
benefit analysis and not simply a financial one. Thus one must examine outputs
resulting from the minority governance arrangements to identify benefits and use
marginal and not total costs of minority language policies to identify costs.
2.2 Minority Languages in Canada: Statistics

and Constitutional/Legal Environment
We present in Table 1 some basic demographic information on minority language

groups in Canada to allow the reader to put into context the policies discussed in the
chapter. Table 1 shows that provinces differ substantially in the absolute and relative
size of their official language minorities. In absolute number, the largest minority
is in Québec (575,000) followed by Ontario (489,000), while in relative size, the
largest minority is in New Brunswick. In general, minorities are concentrated in
specific parts of each province in part as a result of historical settlement patterns
in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth century. Finally the survival of
francophone minorities as measured by the LCI3 varies widely between provinces.
These minorities live in a legal/constitutional framework that goes back to the
Québec Act of 1774 that codifies post-conquest (1763) key aspects of life in Québec.
Of greater relevance is the initial Canadian Constitution of 1867, the British North
America Act (BNA); it contains little in terms of linguistic obligations at the
provincial level. Article 133 requires a bilingual legislative assembly in Québec as
well as bilingual courts. It gives equal status to English and French in the legislature
and the courts. French and English are both used for the drafting and publication
3 Defined as the ratio of persons with a given home language to persons with the corresponding
mother tongue
236
Table 1 Population size and importance of official minority language groups, Canada and ten provinces, 2006
Official language % minority that is
minority share of Unilingual minority unilingual Language continuity
Population (1) population (%)a (2) % population (3) (4) = (3) × (2) index (LCI) 1996 (5)
Canada (10 provinces) 31,140,455 4.9% 0.96% 19.59% –
Alberta 3,256,355 1.9% 0.05% 2.63% 0.32
British Columbia 4,074,385 1.3% 0.03% 2.31% 0.29
Manitoba 1,133,510 3.9% 0.15% 3.85% 0.47
New Brunswick 719,650 32.4% 10.15% 31.33% 0.92
Newfoundland Labrador 500,610 0.4% 0.01% 2.50% 0.42
Nova Scotia 903,090 3.6% 0.11% 3.06% 0.57
Ontario 12,028,895 4.1% 0.36% 8.78% 0.61
Prince Edward Island 134,205 4.0% 0.04% 1.00% 0.55
Québec 7,435,905 7.7% 2.36% 30.65% –
Saskatchewan 953,850 1.7% 0.04% 2.35% 0.29
Source: Columns (1)–(4) from Table 1.1 in Vaillancourt et al. (2012: 2) and column (5) from Table 9 in O’Keefe (2001: 54)
a English in Québec, French in the other nine provinces. Thus the minority % for Canada as a whole does not include Francophones in Québec
F. Vaillancourt
of laws and other parliamentary documents. French and English could both be used
in legislative debates and before any federal and provincial courts. However, one of
the major concerns of the Fathers of the Confederation regarding education was to
protect Catholic minorities outside Québec and the Protestant minority in Québec.
Thus there is indirect protection of linguistic minorities through Section 93 of the
Constitution Act of 1867. It states that, if a system of separate schools exists or is
created in a province, the provincial government should not affect by its actions
any rights of the religious (Catholic or Protestant) minority. Given the relationship
between language and religion in 1871 shown in Vaillancourt et al. (2012: Table 2),4
this can yield protection for linguistic minorities.
The adoption in 1982 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms5
introduced explicitly the protection of minority language educational rights in the
Constitution. This is done in Section 23. Given this section, citizens (1), whose
first language learned and still understood is that of the official linguistic minority
population of the province in which they reside, or (2) who have received their
primary school instruction in Canada in English or French and reside in a province
where this language of instruction is the language of the linguistic minority of
the province, have the right to have their children receive primary and secondary
school instruction in that language in that province. Also, families who have one
child that has received instruction in English or French in Canada have the right to
have all their children receive primary and secondary school instruction in the same
language. The rights mentioned above apply wherever in the province where:
the number of children of citizens who have such a right is sufficient to warrant the provision
to them out of public funds of minority language instruction; and includes, where the
number of those children so warrants, the right to have them receive that instruction in
minority language educational facilities provided out of public funds.6
This part of article 23 is thus subject to judicial interpretation in order to define

the circumstances under which the number warrants provision. Court rulings indi-
cate that the “sufficient” number must include the population that will potentially
take advantage of the service.7 This is estimated by the Supreme Court as being
somewhere between the known demand and the total number of persons who
could potentially take advantage of the service.8 In Mahe v. Alberta,9 the Supreme
Court enunciated the sliding scale approach to determine the extent of provincial
obligations. The sliding scale approach means that the content of the obligation will
4 70% of Catholics are French-speaking (Darroch and Ornstein 1980: 312). Most Protestants were
Anglophones.
5 http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const/page-15.html
6 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Sect. 23.
7 Arsenault-Cameron v. Prince Edward Island, [2000] 1 S.C.R. 3
8 Reference re Public Schools Act (Man.), [1993] 1 S.C.R. 839, p.850, Mahe v. Alberta, [1990]
1 S.C.R. 342, p. 384

9 Mahe v. Alberta, parag 371–374; Doucet-Boudreau v. Nova Scotia (Minister of Education), [2003]
3 S.C.R. 3
238 F. Vaillancourt
Table 2 The supply of minority language services, Canadian provinces, 2006

Service Post-secondary education Health institutions Municipal services
Alberta Very limited; one None None
university college
with a few
programs
British Columbia Very limited; one None None
college
Manitoba Limited; one None Limited
university college (Winnipeg + a few
and one technical villages)
school
New Brunswick Very good; one Very good; Very good;
university and one concentrated in concentrated in
community Acadia + Madawaska Acadia + Madawaska
college use
French as
teaching language
Newfoundland None None None
Labrador
Nova Scotia Limited; one None None
French language
university with a
few programs
Ontario Good; two Good (very good in Limited; Ottawa,
bilingual Ottawa and Toronto, francophone
universities and Laurentian area, areas
two French limited elsewhere)
language
community
colleges
Prince Edward Very limited None None
Island
Québec Complete; Very good; complete Very good; complete
English language in Montreal, good in Montreal, good
universities and outside Montreal outside Montreal
community
colleges
Saskatchewan Very limited; a None None
small university
level institute
Source: Vaillancourt et al. (2012) as summarized by the author
be worked out by examining the appropriate services for the students and the cost
of providing these services. According to this approach, the facilities that need to be
provided will depend on the number of students and the services offered. Thus the
appropriate service facilities can range from a single class to a complete network
of schools. The Court also stated that “Section 23 confers upon minority language
parents a right to management and control over the educational facilities in which
their children are taught.”10 The Supreme Court also insisted on the necessity of
an education of equal quality in both languages. Thus the judicial interpretation of
the constitutional provisions on the availability of minority language education has
become clearer over time and tries to balance costs and benefits.
Turning to specific minority language provincial legal frameworks, there are five
types of provinces in Canada in terms of language rights.
1. New Brunswick where English-French bilingualism is constitutionally
entrenched
2. Manitoba where some protection of the francophone minority is derived from the
constitutional arrangements of 1870 when Manitoba joined Canada
3. Québec where a provincial law makes French the sole official language and
constitutional bilingualism requirements apply with respect to law making
4. Ontario where there is some constitutional protection of catholic schools that
historically school the francophone minority and a provincial policy on bilingual
services
5. Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and
British Columbia where there is little in the way of services (other than minority
language education provided by Section 23) for Francophones.
As a consequence of these diversified legal environments, the supply of minority
language services varies between provinces as summarized in Table 2.
We now turn to how to measure the costs and benefits of provincial language
policies.
2.3 Costs and Benefits of Language Policies: Computational

Framework
2.3.1 The Costs
We are interested in the marginal cost of providing services in a minority language;

this is defined as the difference between the cost of one unit of service in the
minority language and one unit of services in the majority language. In our case,
the minority language is French in nine provinces and English in Québec. One
method used to measure the expenditures resulting from the provision of French or
English minority language services will be to use as such the spending information
on relevant services (e.g., translation) from the public accounts or the annual reports
of the relevant government; we call this the explicit cost approach. The other method
used is the simulated cost approach. What this means is that, for example, the total
10 CanLII Section 23 Canadian Charter of Rights Decisions Digest, [Online]. http://www.
droitslinguistiques.ca/images/stories/Bibliographie/RGD/Andre_Braen_-_La_decision_de_la_
Cour_supreme_dans_l_affaire_Mahe.pdf
240 F. Vaillancourt
cost of providing education in French to francophone minority students is not the

correct cost of minority language education in an English language province. It is
only the additional cost of doing this in French, given that school boards and the
Department of Education would be providing service in English otherwise and thus
would incur costs for employees, schools, and so on. We obtain the relevant data
from the public accounts and from annual reports of various departments for the
fiscal year 2006–2007. In a few cases, analogies between provinces will be used to
estimate simulated numbers.
The simulated cost method disentangles the extra costs of programs or services in
two languages and not the extra costs of serving more individuals. We establish this
additional cost by computing the cost of services for one individual (unit) from the
majority for a program in a given province; we use a mean cost estimate. Then using
this per individual cost, we calculate what minority individuals would cost in total at
this majority unit cost. Finally we compute the difference between the actual costs
of the minority group and the (minority quantity × majority unit costs) simulated
amount; this is the extra cost of a specific language policy such as primary education.
The following six-step numerical example may help the reader better see what we
calculate for a province with a majority (MAJ) and a minority (MIN) group:
1. Assume a program with a budget of 100,000,000$ broken down into two
language-specific programs: the MAJ one with 60,000,000$ spending and the
MIN one with 40,000,000$ spending.
2. Assume a population of 1,000,000 broken down between the MAJ group
(800,000) and the MIN group (200,000).
3. Spending per capita for a MAJ group member is 75$ (60,000,000$/800,000).
4. Notional spending for the MIN group (at the MAJ per capita level) is
15,000,000$ (200,000 × 75$).
5. Surplus spending on the MIN group is 25,000,000$ = 40,000,000$ (effective
spending) – 15,000,000$ (notional spending).
6. So the cost of the minority language program is 25,000,000$ and not 40,000,000$
as a casual reading of the expenditure budget could lead one to conclude.
These calculations assume linear unit costs (constant returns to scale) associated
with one additional service user; this is probably a reasonable assumption for
educational services with set teacher/student ratios and so on; it is also reasonable
for many health and social services where the provision of more services is linked to
more hours of work by specialized personnel. It would be less plausible for public
broadcasting, for example, where more listeners/viewers in a given time slot do not
require more spending on programming.
We are interested in spending by the provinces. This spending is not funded
only by own provincial revenues since there are federal transfers for both general
and for some specific items of spending such as minority language education. One
possibility would be to net out these transfers by province. We do not do this since
these transfers are paid by the residents of both the recipient province and of other
provinces through federal taxes. Thus to argue that provincial spending in Alberta
on K-1211 minority language education is funded in part by federal transfers and

thus requires less provincial revenues is correct but to argue that the amount paid
by Albertan taxpayers to support both Alberta- and Canada-wide spending on K-12
minority language spending is reduced is not correct since they pay federal taxes.
Indeed, there is most likely cross-provincial subsidization.
2.3.2 The Benefits
There are various benefits ascribed in the literature to an increase in the number of
languages spoken in a given territory. The most common one is an increase in export
capability. In this case, one would argue that bilingualism allows Canada to serve
world markets in two languages as opposed to one and that this increases export and
thus GDP, employment, and so on. This could perhaps be relevant for some countries
(knowledge of English or German in Holland), but for Canada, the evidence does
not support this. Why? Because almost all exports of goods and services by Canada
are made using English. This is mainly a result of the share of the US market in
Canada’s export and of the use of English as the language of international trade.12
At best, one can argue that some exports of goods and services (tourism, university
education) to France, Belgium, Switzerland, and some African countries would not
have been made. In our opinion, at most 1% of exports of goods and services may
be thus affected since some exports to these countries may well be in English.13 But
what would have been the supply of such exports in the absence of the provincial
language policies? Since export capacity is the result of linguistic skills in private
firms, a change in provincial language policies is unlikely to have any effect on
this except perhaps in the long term if it leads to a reduction in the number of the
speakers of an export-linked language. So this is not a relevant argument here.
The main benefit of non-educational provincial language policies is that
it allows Francophones (Anglophones in Québec), unilingual or bilingual (in
English/French), to access the services of the provincial government in their mother
tongue. A person’s welfare will increase if services are available in his or her
preferred language. However, it is difficult to put a monetary value on this. We
will use the methodology put forward in Vaillancourt and Coche (2009) to estimate
these benefits.
11 Kindergarten–Grade 12 education or primary-secondary education; except in Québec, high
school ends in Grade 12 in Canada.

12 See Ku and Zussman (2010).
13 In 2010, exports to France accounted for 0.6% of Canadian exports. Adding those to Belgium
and Switzerland weighted by the French language share of their respective population yields about
1%. Exports to French-speaking Africa are negligible. Looking at it differently, exports to the
USA + UK by themselves are 77% of Canadian exports. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/
sum-som/l01/cst01/gblec02a-eng.htm
242 F. Vaillancourt
The methodology requires one to assume that the decision to do away with
provincial services in French (English) outside (inside) Québec is made on a given
date. One can imagine the following responses to this policy choice:
• An informal supply of services in French by provincial civil servants. This would
take them away from their other duties and impose a cost on the provincial
government if service standards were maintained since more time and thus more
employees would be required in service/call centers dealing with a population
with the highest concentration of Francophones.
• A supply of English capacity by bilingual friends of unilingual Francophones.
This would require expenditure in time by bilingual Francophones.
• A supply of English capacity by professional interpreters/translators that would
set up offices outside provincial facilities or maintain websites and so on. This
would require an expenditure in money from unilingual Francophones.
We will estimate costs for each option and use an unweighted average of these
three costs when we use them.
But, for this analysis to make sense, there must be a substantial supply of services
in the minority language to do away with and a reasonable number of users to begin
with. If there is no supply and almost no users, the analysis while technically feasible
is not very useful. As shown in Table 1 above, the reasonable number of users makes
this relevant for three provinces: New Brunswick, Ontario, and Québec.
But what happens in the other seven provinces? Insofar as labor faces little
mobility barriers within Canada and since one finds in Québec a fair-sized labor
market that operates mainly in French and a large spectrum of services available in
French, it is reasonable to presume that the Francophones who live in one of those
seven provinces do so by choice and thus are satisfied living in an environment
where little public services are available in French. Thus the loss of welfare
associated with this situation is low, and those who are unilingual Francophones
(less than 4% of the population in each of these provinces) adopt one of the coping
strategies discussed above.
But there are also educational services offered in the minority language. The
value of these services cannot be measured on a flow basis; they do not provide
governmental services to users of minority language services but may increase the
future number of the users of such services compared to what it would have been
in the absence of minority language education since assimilation of the minority by
the majority would most likely have been higher.
The results reported in the third part of this chapter required that the calculations
discussed above be carried out for the ten provinces of Canada. It is impossible
to report them in the space available to us. We thus choose to show how the
methodology was applied in the case of Ontario; we picked that province since it
has the largest francophone minority of Canada; a wide array of minority language
services yet is not constitutionally bilingual.
3 The Costs and Benefits of French Language Minority:

The Case of Ontario
We first begin with the costs then turn to the benefits, both calculated using the
methodological tools described above.
3.1 Costs
We are interested in the marginal cost of providing services as a result of the Ontario
language legal context and thus, since English is the majority language, of providing
services in French. We obtained information on these costs using information from
the Public Accounts 2006–2007 (Ministry of Finance 2007) and from annual reports
of various departments for the fiscal year 2006–2007. We first discuss explicit costs
then turn to simulated costs.
3.1.1 Explicit Costs
Grant and Contribution Payments
We distinguish between direct spending by the provincial government and transfer

payments under the form of grants or contribution14 to various bodies. For example,
translation costs are direct spending, and payments to the Association Française des
municipalités de l’Ontario are contributions or grants. These are mainly aimed at
Franco-Ontarian cultural projects and at the promotion of French language. Grant
and contribution payments to various bodies for 2006–2007 are $18.3 million and
are presented in Table 3.
Direct Provincial Spending
Direct spending related to language policy includes translation costs, the cost of
the Office of Francophone Affairs and the Office of the French Language Services
Commissioner, costs of health services and education services, and expenses for
municipalities required by their charter to provide French services (Ottawa and
Toronto). Health, education, and municipalities will be addressed in separate
14 Grants are unconditional transfer payments for which eligibility can be verified. If an individual
is eligible for a grant, the payment can be made without requiring the recipient to meet any other
conditions. The payment of a contribution is subject to performance conditions that are specified
in a contribution agreement. The recipient must continue to show that these conditions are being
met in order to be reimbursed for specific costs.
244 F. Vaillancourt
Table 3 Ontario grants and contribution payments related to the language policy, 2006–2007, in
$1000
Ministry of Culture 3781
Ministry of Education 6023
Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (+ health promotion) 3872
Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities 1801
Office of Francophone Affairs 1688
Others 1198
Total 18,362
Source: Table 6.1 in Vaillancourt et al. (2012: 50)
Table 4 Direct minority French language-related provincial spending, Ontario, 2006–2007, in

$1000
Office of Francophone Affairs 4445
French Language Services Commissioner 788
Language training for newcomers (French) 966
Translation and interpretation
Central government 6451
Debates interpretation 640
Health sector 1359
Total 14,649
sections. Translation costs consist of the translation of legislative debates, trans-

lation services for the provincial administration through the government translation
services (GTS), and translation within ministries. The simultaneous interpretation
cost of debates is $0.6 million. Translation expenses for the provincial government
of Ontario are $6.4 million.15 To this we need to add the translation spending
of the health sector. These expenses are $1.4 million.16 The cost of the Office
of Francophone Affairs and the French Language Services Commissioner are,
respectively, $4.4 million and $0.8 million. To this we can add the cost of French
language training for newcomers to Ontario which is $1 million. Table 4 summarizes
direct provincial spending.
To this we can add the expenses of the francophone section of the Ontario
Educational Communications Authority (TVO). TVO has a francophone branch
named TFO (Télévision Francophone en Ontario). TVO reports to the Ontario
15 According to the GTS, there are more than 20 full-time translators distributed in various
departments. At 1200$ per week, this yields 1.248 million. To this, we need to add the translation
done by private firms. This rises up to 5.203 million for 2006–2007. We then have a total of 6.451
million for the central government translation.
16 Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, French Language Health Services, [Online] Available
http://www.health.gov.on.ca/en/public/programs/flhs (see Communication material, Informational

material, Technology use and Forms and Questionnaires)
legislature through the Minister of Education.17 In 2006–2007, $16.67 million was

spent for TFO programming services.18 To this we add the proportion of technical
and production support services attributable to TFO which is $15.2 million.19
We then have $31.8 million for TFO for 2006–2007. This brings the total direct
spending to $46.5 million.
3.1.2 Simulated Costs
Education
For primary and secondary education (K-12), we use the simulated cost method.
For 2006, there are 82,042 students in French language commissions scolaires and
1,878,230 students in English language school boards. Using data from 12 French
language school boards (commissions scolaires),20 we calculate a cost of $14,652
per student in these boards. Using the data for all school boards, we calculate a
per student cost of $9776 for English language boards. This yields a per student
cost difference of $4876 between the majority and minority students and a minority
system cost difference of $400 million.
We were unable to find information on the costs incurred within the department
of education as a result of this policy. We know that in the case of Saskatchewan,
the per minority student internal administrative cost was roughly $1000 for a total of
1,000 students, while in Nova Scotia, it was $200 per student for 4,000 students and
in New Brunswick $80 per student for 32,000 students (Vaillancourt et al. 2012).
Thus for Ontario, we will use $50 per student; with 80,000 students, this yields a
total cost of $4,000,000. We thus assume a decreasing unit cost curve but with a
decreasing slope as shown in Fig. 2. This is a tool that may be useful in various
types of analysis.
The calculations for Ontario rely on aggregate data. It can be the case that more
complete data are available. We present in Box 1 an example of calculations of the
cost of minority language education using detailed data from Alberta. This gives the
reader a second perspective on this type of calculation.
17 This semiautonomous status explains why we did not include it in Table 4.

18 Ontario Educational Communications Authority (2007: 21)
19 The overall technical and production support services are 36,353,000$. TFO programming
service costs represent 41.74% of all programming expenses. Applying this proportion on the
technical and production service costs yields 15,173,742$.
20 We were unable to find aggregated data for English and French language boards separately. We
thus use information from http://sunshineonschools.ca/default.aspx (no longer active) on French

language commissions scolaires and all boards in our calculations. We validated the data using
information on the list of school boards in Ontario (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_
districts_in_Ontario). A comparison with aggregate numbers for enrollment for 2008–2009 does
not raise issues (http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/funding/1011/funding10.pdf).
246 F. Vaillancourt
1200
1000 1000
800
600
400
200 200
80
50
0
SASKATCHEWAN 1000 NOVA SCOTIA 4000 NEW BRUNSWICK 32000 ONTARIO 80000
Observed data Projecon
Fig. 2 K-12 administrative costs per student in four Canadian provinces, 2006. Source: Vaillan-
court et al. (2012); presentation by author
Box 1 An example of detailed K-12 schooling cost analysis: Alberta
Expenses for the Francophone Authority and the Anglophone Boards, Alberta, 2006–2007 ($)
Total expenses Per pupil expenses
Francophone Anglophone
Total authorities boards Francophone Anglophone
Total 4,903,733,000 63,144,000 4,840,588,000 15,252 8840
Instruction 3,693,909,000 40,875,000 3,653,034,000 9873 6671
Operations and 701,074,000 8,143,000 692,931,000 1967 1265
maintenance
Transportation 260,560,000 7,593,000 252,967,000 1834 462
Board and 179,605,000 3,172,000 176432,000 767 323
system
administration
External services 68,583,000 3,359,000 65,223,000 813 119
Source: Ministry of Education of Alberta, Audited Financial Statement Report of Expenses by Program
2006–07
Expenses are reported for five functions, examining them we find higher costs for all five functions with
transportation costs for French language authorities’ student 400% higher than for English language school
boards
Per pupil expenses are on average 15,252 $ for the francophone authorities and 8840 $ for the anglophone
boards.21 The additional cost of minority language calculated with the simulated cost approach is $26.5
million
21 Ministry of Education of Alberta, Audited Financial Statement Report of Expenses by Program
2006–07
For post-secondary education, we face the problem that while there are bilingual
universities in Ontario, there are no French-only universities as in New Brunswick
or Nova Scotia. Thus, our standard simulated cost method cannot be used. We thus
calculate for 2006–2007 the average cost per student for all universities that is
$9834 and the average cost for the students of the two major bilingual universities,
Laurentian University and Ottawa University that is $11,182 for a difference of
$1349. We then apply this difference to the total enrollment (31,652, i.e., 9.8% of
total enrollment of Ontario students) of these two universities for a total amount
of $42,698,548. Our hypothesis is that the cost of bilingualism is imbedded in the
total costs of these two institutions and is the sole explanation of the observed cost
differential. Given that the additional cost of a francophone student was $3243 for
New Brunswick with a stand-alone French language university (Vaillancourt et al.
2012), this number is reasonable.22
There are 2 French language community colleges and 22 English language
ones. We obtained graduation data for 2006–2007 from the Employment Profile
annual survey publication; graduates from francophone colleges number 1792 out
of 60,406 (thus 58,614 in English-speaking colleges).23 We obtain public subsidy
to community colleges from the public accounts of Ontario for 2006–2007.24
The two francophone colleges received $100,689,48825 out of $931,448,736 (thus
$830,759,248 for the anglophone colleges).26 We multiply the number of graduates
by three (the length of a community college degree in Ontario) to approximate the
number of students in our calculation. Students in francophone colleges receive a
subsidy of $18,729 and those in English-speaking colleges a subsidy of 5297 for a
difference of $13,432. Let us assume that some of this may be due to differences in
graduation rates, these being lower in French-speaking schools, and use $10,000 as
a per student cost difference; this yields a total cost difference of $53,760,000 for
French language colleges.
Table 5 summarizes the minority language education-related spending in
Ontario.
22 One can find more recent information in Mercier and Diaz (2014).
23 These data are no longer available online. Data for recent years can be found at https://www.
ontario.ca/data/college-enrolment.
24 Data for specific colleges are found in Volume 3 under Ministry of training, Colleges and
Universities (pp. 211–212).

25 http://www.ontla.on.ca/library/repository/ser/15767/2006-2007//V.3.pdf
26 http://www.ontla.on.ca/library/repository/ser/15767/2006-2007//V.1.pdf
248 F. Vaillancourt
Table 5 Estimated cost of K-12 education costs

minority language in
education, Ontario, Department of Education 4000
2006–2007, in $1000 Additional cost of francophone students 400,037
K-12 costs 404,037
Post-secondary education costs
PSE cost 96,459
Municipalities
Turning to municipalities, as noted in Table 1, only Toronto and Ottawa have

language obligations in their charter. The city of Ottawa has more obligations than
Toronto because its French language services policy involves the provision of a large
range of services in both languages. The city of Toronto provides some services in
French, but its legal obligations are limited to the use of French and English at
city council meetings and the simultaneous interpretation of debates. Turning to
costs, they are mainly translation and services expenses. Using the 1.4% increase
in general government spending linked to the provision of municipal services in
French in New Brunswick (Vaillancourt et al. 2012: 85) and taking into account that
such spending was 2360 million for Ontario at the municipal level in 2006,27 one
obtains an estimated costs of $33 million. But since only two large municipalities
have some bilingual responsibilities, we estimate this at $16.5 million.
Health
Finally, with respect to health services, there are no obligations to provide services
in French, but some institutions do provide services in French such as hospitals in
Cornwall Hawkesbury, Ottawa, Sudbury, or Timmins. They receive subsidies but
may also incur unsubsidized costs. We will assume these costs to be $5 million
based on the observation of costs in New Brunswick.
Embedded Costs
Finally, we know from work on the federal government (Vaillancourt and Coche
2009) that some costs of minority language services are embedded in total spending
and are neither explicit nor capable of being simulated. We estimate them using a
top-down methodology, rather than adding up specific spending as done for other
costs. We start with total government spending, identify in a list of government
spending that is not affected by language policies, subtract them from total spending,
27 CANSIM table 385-0003

and finally for the relevant spending estimate the costs. Vaillancourt and Coche
(2009) found that such costs were 0.0023% of total federal program spending. Since
total program spending in Ontario was $79,297 million28 in 2006–2007, applying
this 0.0023% yields $182 million. But using this amount is predicated on a similar
effort at minority language services by Ontario to what the federal government does
which is not the case. We peg this effort level at 20% of the federal one yielding
$36.4 million of embedded costs. Box 2 illustrates this approach.
Box 2 Embedded cost methodology

Embedded costs, minority language programs, federal government, Canada, 2006–2007
Item $ billion Language overhead Methodology
Total 222.2 – –
Public debt payments −33.9 No –
Program spending 188.3 – –
Transfer payments: individuals and −124.9 No –
governments
Public corporations −7.2 Yes Not included
Operational expenses 56.2 See breakdown By sub items
Salaries 32.9 Yes 100 million assumed
Professional and special services 6.8 Yes 5% = 340 millions
Rental, amortization utilities, 16.5 No –
maintenance etc.
Source: Vaillancourt and Coche (2009)
The table shows how we estimate the total embedded costs at the federal
level in Canada operational expenses affected. In this table, we estimate that
operational spending possibly subject to additional costs due to the Official
Language Act totals $56.2 billion. For example, recruitment activities of
the armed forces are conducted in both languages, and the fixed costs of
producing material in both languages may make this more costly than if
it were done in English only (two separate press runs). Most armed forces
activities would not be affected by this, but it is impossible to estimate this
precisely. More than half of this $56.2 billion amount is for salaries. Since
we have already accounted for the bilingualism bonus and the Commissioner
of Official Languages expenses, direct labor expense would be incurred in
the Treasury Board and in the departmental directorates responsible for the
application of the Official Languages Act. Assuming an amount of about
$100 million seems reasonable. Other items in the $56.2 billion amount such
as transportation, totaling about 5% for the sum of repair and maintenance,
(continued)
28 Fiscalreference tables Department of Finance http://www.fin.gc.ca/frt-trf/2009/frt0904-eng.

asp#tbl23
250 F. Vaillancourt
and utilities and rentals, which together account for about 12% of the total
non-transfer program spending, are unlikely to be higher because of the
requirements of the OLA. The only interesting suspects are professional and
special services, which total $6.8 billion. If 5% (this percentage is based on
work on the difference in costs between using an indigenous or minority
language as opposed to the official or majority language in primary education
(Grin and Vaillancourt 2000b)) of this $6.8 billion is due to minority language
costs (the result of the fixed costs of using a minority language), that would
equal $340 million.
All Costs
The costs of the provision of minority language services by the provincial and local
public entities are brought together in Table 6 for Ontario in 2006–2007. So the
total cost of French language minority services is $623 million or 0.8% of program
spending. And without French language K-12 education which is a constitutional
obligation, this amount is $219 million.
3.2 Benefits
The benefit of the provision of minority language services in Ontario is that it allows
Francophones, unilingual or bilingual (in English), to access the services of the
provincial government in French. A person’s welfare/well-being will increase if
services are available in his or her preferred language. However, it is difficult to put
a money value on this gain in welfare. Therefore, we concentrated our analysis on
measurable costs that could be incurred following a change in the language policies
in Ontario. According to the 2006 Census, there are 49,210 residents of Ontario
Table 6 Cost of French Grants and contribution payments 180,000

language policies in Ontario,
2006–2007, in $1000 Direct spending 46,000
French first language education 404,000
PSE 96,000
Municipalities 17,000
Health 5000
Imbedded costs 36,000
Total 623,000
Source: Table 6.4 in Vaillancourt et al. (2012:
53). Sum may not equal total due to rounding
that know only French.29 What would happen if services governed by provincial
law were not offered in French but only in English? This implies that the provisions
of the French language Services Act and other language-related legislation—but
not Section 23 of the Charter—are abolished. Presumably, there would be some
reduction in the demand for some provincial government services by unilingual
Francophones, such as trips to provincial parks or applications for subsidies to small
businesses with perhaps a substitution toward private outdoors facilities or private
financing in French. But for many provincial government services accessed either as
an individual or as an employee/employer such as interacting with the Department
of Finance or obtaining a provincial health card, this is not feasible.
Assume that the decision to do away with provincial services in French is
implemented on January 1st 2007. The following three responses were discussed
in Sect. 1.3:
• An informal supply of services in French by provincial civil servants
• A supply of English capacity by bilingual friends of unilingual Francophones
• A supply of English capacity by professional interpreters/translators
What are the plausible costs of such a policy? This is difficult to ascertain. In
2006, Ontario provincial civil servants worked a total of 125.4 million hours.30
Dividing this by Ontario’s population of 12,160,282 yields a maximum interaction
time of 10.3 h. We get a higher amount of time for health employees (26.5) and
22.8 h for municipal employees.31 This yields a potential direct interaction time
of 59.6 h to which one must add time interacting with forms, say 10 h in total.32
Not all such employees interact with individuals; hence, let us assume that a typical
unilingual Francophone interacts directly on average 15 h a year with the provincial
government and municipalities and devotes 5 h dealing with documents from these
two levels of government. Such interactions result from:
• Interacting with social assistance agencies and WSIB (Workplace Safety and
Insurance Board). In 2006–2007, the social assistance caseload was 199,584 with
378,534 beneficiaries.33 In 2007, there were 329,161 claimants for work-related
compensation.34
29 StatisticsCanada (2006)
30 This number is obtained by multiplying average hours in 2007 (35.7 per week) by annual
employment (67,575) and by 52 weeks. See Statistics Canada (2007). CANSIM tables 281-0033
and 281-0024
31 This number is obtained by multiplying average hours in 2007 (31.8 per week) by annual
employment (195,203) by 52 weeks. For municipal employees, we use 33.7 h and 158,500
employees. See Statistics Canada (2007). CANSIM tables 281-0033 and 281-0024
32 This and the following numbers of 15 and 5 are based on work on tax compliance by individuals,
on survey data, and on common sense observations.

33 Ministry of Community and Social Services, Ontario Works. These data are no longer available
online. Data for recent years can be found at https://www.mcss.gov.on.ca/documents/en/mcss/

social/reports/OW_EN_2017-12.pdf.
34 See Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (2008: 5).
252 F. Vaillancourt
• Interacting with tribunals. In 2006–2007, there were 82,107 new civil proceed-
ings initiated in the Superior Court of Justice, 27,790 new family proceedings
in the Ontario Court of Justice, and 68,863 new proceedings in the Small Claims
Court.35 Abolishing access to French services would mean that these trials would
take place in English.
• Interacting with bilingual (libraries, sports, etc.) municipalities.36
• Applying for various grants and subsidies from the provincial government.
• Visiting provincial parks.
Since there are 49,210 French unilingual citizens according to the 2006 Census,
one would need to:
• Add 492,100 hours37 of civil service output assuming that as they translate, they
also produce something of value to their employer and the applicant given their
specialized knowledge. We arbitrarily split the difference in two. This would
directly cost about $13,220,000$ as the average provincial employee wage in
2006–2007 was 973.86$ weekly38 (considering 36.25 h per week according to
Service Ontario).
• Use friends who can be assumed to have a value of their time somewhere between
zero and the average wage in Ontario. We will use 66% of the average wage of
$780.1139 per week in 2006–2007 thus yielding $514.87. This times 984,200 h
and yields $13,921,000.40
• Use translators whose average wage is about $27.1241 hourly yielding a cost of
$26,691,000.
This yields an average total cost of $17,944,000 when each possibility is given a
weight of 1/3 in the calculation.
35 Ministry of the Attorney General (Court services division), Annual report 2006/07. These data
are no longer available online but can be requested at https://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/

english/about/pubs/#csd-annual.
36 As mentioned before, only two cities (Ottawa and Toronto) have language obligations in their
charter. The other municipalities are offering French language services on a voluntary basis.
37 Number of French unilingual citizens (1930) X 20 h/citizen = 38,600 h; divided by 2 = 19,300.
38 Statistics Canada, CANSIM 281-0027. Ontario, all employees, excluding overtime, provincial
government public administration

39 Statistics Canada, CANSIM 281-0027. Ontario, all employees, excluding overtime, industrial
aggregate (excluding unclassified)

40 In 2007, employees in Ontario worked 36.4 hours per week on average. Human Resources and
Social Development Canada, Work—Weekly Hours Worked. These data are no longer available
online.
41 Living in Canada, Translators, Terminologists and Interpreters: Canada Salary and Wage Guide
[Online]. Available at http://www.livingin-canada.com/salaries-for-translators-terminologists-

and-interpreters.html
Table 7 Costs of public and private provision, official language services, Ontario, 2006–2007
Private costs. Private costs.
Unilingual All
Publicly costs Francophones Francophones
Post-secondary 96,459,000 5,000,000 5,000,000
schooling
Government and health 122,735,000 26,901,000 158,649,000
services
Total 219,194,000 31,901,000 163,649,000
Concerning health services,42 with 10 h of interaction per year with health

services,43 we have a total of 492,100 h. We then have a cost of $6,565,000$,
$6,961,000 and $13,346,000 depending on the hypothesis used. This yields an
average cost of $8,957,000.
This yields a grand total of $26,901,000 for unilingual Francophones. But if we
consider that bilingual Francophones also put a value on being served in French,
we should develop some method to account for this. There is evidence from Québec
that Francophones prefer being served in French when purchasing private goods and
services even when they know English (Vaillancourt 1985). Assume that bilingual
Francophones would also be willing to pay for the same services as unilinguals
but only half as often. This would mean that the 488,815 francophone residents
would be willing to pay for French services for 10 h a year interacting with the
provincial and municipal governments and another 5 h a year for interacting with
health services. This would result in a value of $87,832,000 for French language
services at the provincial and municipal level, of $43,916,000 for health services,
and thus a total of $131,748,000 for bilingual Francophones.
Turning to post-secondary education (PSE), only 4.7% of Francophones aged
20–24 are unilingual; this most likely overestimates that % for those attending PSE.
Thus, given potential dropouts, at best a few hundred francophone would move
to Québec for PSE. If we assume 500 such movers spending $10,000 extra each
compared to studying in Ontario, this yields a cost of $5 million.
Table 7 brings together the calculated public and the potential private costs.
To summarize, provincial official language services in English majority
provinces in Canada have two aims.
The first is the ongoing existence (survival) of the official language minority
through the provision of educational services at the K-12 level. If these services were
not provided, assimilation into the anglophone majority would most likely occur at
a higher rate leading to eventual disappearance of the francophone minority.
42 In 2006–2007, there were over 1.1 million discharges from hospitals for patients requiring
medical, surgical, obstetric, and other types of care across the province.
43 Statistics Canada (2007). CANSIM tables 281-0033 and 281-0024
254 F. Vaillancourt
The second is the provision of services to members of the official language

minority that would otherwise not be able to consume services in the official
majority language or that can do so but prefer to use their minority language when
communicating with various providers of public services.
In the case of Ontario, about 60% of the spending is on the provision of minority
language education with an annual cost of about 34 $ per resident, while the cost for
all services is about $50 per capita. We cannot ascertain if the benefits of a larger,
more vital francophone minority are worth it or not for a typical Ontario resident
(median voter), but note that the issue of the cost of bilingual services is not very
salient in political discourse in Canada.
The costs of publicly provided (excluding K-12 education) French language
services are slightly higher than the estimated private value of such services even
if we bring these costs down to $187 million by removing TFO costs ($32 million)
since we did not include viewing time in the benefits received by Francophones. We
now turn to interprovincial comparisons.
4 Interprovincial Comparisons
Tables 8 and 9 present total and per recipient or capita costs of minority language
services provided by Canadian provinces.
Table 8 shows that provincial costs sum to $868 million. Of this total, 59%
is incurred for minority primary and secondary education (K-12) as mandated
Table 8 Minority language spending, total and three items, ten provinces, Canada, 2006–2007, in
$1000
K-12 (article 23) Post-secondary
costs education costs Other costs Total costs
Alberta 27,747 3952 1040 32,739
British Columbia 21,719 250 1400 23,369
Manitoba 8083 1257 8690 18,031
New Brunswick 24,856 23,178 35,117 83,150
Newfoundland 2480 0 875 3356
and Labrador
Nova Scotia 10,302 5182 2548 18,031
Ontario 404,037 96,459 122,735 623,230
Prince Edward 2162 143 2752 5057
Island
Québec 3600 0 46,900 50,500
Saskatchewan 8949 96 1240 10,286
Canadian 513,934 130,516 223,298 867,749
provinces total
Table 9 Per recipient or per capita cost, minority language spending, ten provinces, Canada,
2006–2007, in $
K-12 (article 23) K-12 (article 23)
per student costs costs per capita Total cost per minority member
Alberta 6702 10.1 534.7
British 5798 5.7 426.9
Columbia
Manitoba 1483 15.9 410.2
New Brunswick 768 115.5 356.9
Newfoundland 11,224 6.7 1780.3
and Labrador
Nova Scotia 2494 20.0 554.1
Ontario 4925 51.8 1275.0
Prince Edward 3067 37.7 946.2
Island
Québec 32 6.8 87.7
Saskatchewan 8613 10.8 640.5
Canadian 2097 27.9 573.5
provinces total
under article 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights, 26% is for general government
services, and 15% for post-secondary institutions.
If we focus on only French language minorities, the total is $817 million with
minority language education accounting for 63% of these costs.
How robust are these numbers? We would argue that the minority language
education spending is very well measured (+/− 5% error overall) given the
availability of school board level data, that the PSE spending is well measured but
with a reasonable margin of error (+/− 10%), and that the other costs are measured
as well as possible with a higher margin of error for Ontario and Québec and fairly
precise numbers for Manitoba and New Brunswick. Given these caveats, we now
turn to amounts per individual as reported in Table 9. It shows a fair amount of
variability in the per student cost of minority language education. In general, as
shown in Fig. 3, this amount drops with an increase in the size of the K-12 minority
student population. The average annual cost per K-12 student for Canada is $2097,
and the average cost per Canadian (ten province residents) is $17 per capita. The
average cost per Canadian (ten province residents) of all minority language service
provision is $28 per year, while the average annual cost outside Québec is $34.
The cost per minority member is $574 ($872 outside Québec). Per capita total
costs are highest in the two provinces where the largest number of Francophones
resides, Ontario and New Brunswick; this is explained by the greater availability
of provincial services in French. Follows PEI because of the small population over
which fixed costs can be spread out and then Nova Scotia and Manitoba on one hand
because of the amount spent on French language PSE and on the other because of
256 F. Vaillancourt
12000
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
or
nd
an
ia
rta
ba
ick
rio
bi
ot
ad
ew
ito
a
ta
sw
be
m
isl
Sc
br
On
lu
an
Al
un
ch
d
va
La
Co
M
ar
at
Br
No
d
sk
w
an
s
Ed
Sa
iti
Ne
d
Br
ce
an
in
dl
Pr
un
fo
w
Ne
Fig. 3 Cost per francophone minority student of K-12 education, Canada, nine provinces ordered
by increasing size of minority student population, 2006–2007, in $. Source: Table 9, this chapter
constitutional requirements for French language services. Other provinces face low
annual costs per capita of the order of $5–10.
The results presented above show that the English-speaking minority of Québec
is the one that costs the least to service. Indeed its education unit costs at all levels
are lower than those of the French majority. This is due in good part to the territorial
concentration of this minority in Montreal. Yet, it has the most complete range
of services of all ten provincial minorities. It also shows that the two costliest
francophone minorities from the perspective of the majority group are those of New
Brunswick and Ontario where a wide range of education and a reasonable range
of health services are available in French. Finally, other minorities in Canada cost
almost nothing; they receive little in minority language services outside of K-12
education.
5 Conclusion
This chapter draws on previous work (Grin and Vaillancourt 2000a, 2002; Vaillan-
court and Coche 2009; Vaillancourt et al. 2012; Leblanc-Desgagné and Vaillancourt
2016) on the analysis of the provision of minority language services from an eco-
nomic perspective. It focuses on the decentralized provision of minority language
services in Canada and in particular on the provision of services to the francophone
national language minority, leaving aside the anglophone minority in Québec that
is a member of both a Canada- and North America-wide majority. It presents a
methodology for evaluating the costs and benefits of such services and illustrates
its use with data from Canadian provinces. The results show a wide disparity of
costs between provinces associated with a wide disparity in services available; in
particular, one finds that the range of services offered is wider and their costs are
higher when the francophone majority is larger in a province.
Is the outcome observed just? As noted in the introduction to this volume,
economists do not have the tools to answer this question. Clearly, there are
important differences in the services offered in French by Canadian provinces. But
the constitutional right to live in French outside Québec is found only in New
Brunswick. Thus, the supply of minority language services is a response to the
weak political weight of Francophone in the other eight anglophone provinces.
My opinion is that given the existence of Québec, resources to offer services in
French appear to be allocated efficiently spatially that is more where there are more
Francophones and thus justly across Canada. One should recall that the cost of
public services in a minority language is born both by the majority and the minority.
The exact shares will vary, but if the majority is asked to pay a large amount for a
small result, it is not obvious why this would be seen as just.
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Language Policy and Social
Segmentation: Evidence from Catalonia
Ramon Caminal and Antonio Di Paolo
1 Introduction
The current status of the Catalan language is often cited as a remarkable success
story, a rare example of a minority language that has managed to stay alive and even
regain vitality in a world where globalization seems to have accelerated the decay
and threatened the survival of so many small languages.1
The language policies of the Catalan regional government in the post-Franco
period appear to be a crucial ingredient of the story. In particular, in the 1980s, the
Catalan education system initiated a slow but long-lasting reform that transformed
Catalan schools from places that excluded Catalan to ones that use Catalan as their
main language of instruction. The goal of this reform was to make all pupils,
regardless of their social and linguistic backgrounds, fully competent in both
Spanish and Catalan.
We regard the Catalan case as a unique opportunity to study the role of languages
beyond their role in communication. While there is a large amount of evidence
showing that language skills affect social and economic outcomes, the question is
whether or not these effects are exclusively due to their communication benefits. The
recent education reforms in Catalonia represent a quasi-experiment to test whether
1 See, for example, the interview with Joshua A. Fishman, available at www.internation
al.ucla.edu/cwl/article/114238.
R. Caminal ()
Institut d’Anàlisi Econòmica, CSIC, Barcelona GSE, Barcelona, Spain
e-mail: ramon.caminal@iae.csic.es
A. Di Paolo
AQR-IREA, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
e-mail: antonio.dipaolo@ub.edu

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1_8
260 R. Caminal and A. Di Paolo
languages matter beyond their role as vehicles of communication. The reason is

twofold. First, everyone in Catalonia was fully competent in Spanish before the
reform and remains competent after the reform; hence, the ability to communicate
has never been at stake. Second, all the reform has achieved is to improve the (oral)
Catalan skills of native Spanish speakers on a relatively large scale and thus provided
additional language skills that are redundant from a communicative point of view.
Whereas the first condition, the existence of a common language, is also satisfied
in many other contexts (such as Wales or the Basque Country), the second condition,
a large-scale change in proficiency in the weak language, is more likely to take
place in societies in which the weak speech community is sufficiently large and the
distance between the two languages is not too great, so that the learning costs are
modest. In this respect, the Catalan education reform is rather unique.2
Thus, the main research questions are as follows: (1) Do these additional
language skills affect economic and social outcomes? (2) By which mechanism do
these effects operate? Although in the theoretical discussion we allow for almost any
form of cooperation, because of the data availability, the empirical analysis focuses
on the formation of couples.3
Most of the economic literature on the effect of language skills has characterized
languages as neutral communication codes. Since many economic activities (like
trade or production) are collaborative and require communication between indi-
viduals and social groups, sharing a common language is a prerequisite for such
cooperation. Thus, when an individual acquires a second language, new, possibly
more efficient, opportunities become available. This can explain the wage premium
of immigrant workers who are proficient in the local language (see, for instance,
Chiswick and Miller 2007, 2014) or the higher propensity to engage in international
trade of those countries with more extensive knowledge of foreign languages (see,
e.g., Frankel and Rose 2002; Mélitz 2008).
We build on these ideas but also stress that languages matter beyond their role
as vehicles of communication. We claim that most bilingual individuals are not
indifferent toward the language of use in various circumstances. The reason is that
people tend to develop an emotional attachment to their native language or the
language that they have since adopted as their own. The fact that individuals have
a preference for a particular language implies that sharing a common language is
2 Wales and the Basque Country have also implemented language-in-education reforms, also
starting in the 1980s, with limited effects on the average language skills. Three-quarters of
the Welsh population report having no Welsh language skills (Census 2011). In the Basque
Country, about 32% are fluent in Basque, and an additional 18% are passive speakers (Encuesta
Sociolinguistica 2011, http://www.euskadi.eus). In Catalonia, 95% can understand, and 83% can
speak Catalan (Idescat 2011, http://www.idescat.cat). In all these cases, there is a large gap between
knowledge and use. For instance, according to our database, only about 50% of the respondents
use Catalan on a daily basis.
3 Whereas other data sets typically restrict their attention to married couples, our data set is not
concerned about the legal status of the couple, although it does distinguish between couples who
live and do not live together.
Language Policy and Social Segmentation: Evidence from Catalonia 261
not a sufficient condition for cooperation. Even if they share a common language,
individuals and social groups must also resolve a conflict of interest: they must reach
an agreement over the choice of language. We argue that additional language skills
that are redundant from a communication point of view can significantly relax the
conflict of interest and expand the possibilities of cooperation among individuals
and social groups.
If we examine the Catalan education reform through the lens of this theoretical
setup, then we can conjecture that the reform must have relaxed the conflict of
interest and increased the propensity to cooperate between members of the two main
speech communities. In other words, we can predict that the reform has generated
aggregate social gains. This is a particularly important remark in a volume dedicated
to linguistic justice. It is usually argued that policies that protect minority languages
can be justified in terms of equity criteria: society must protect the rights of minority
groups, even if this implies spending additional resources (and even if this involves
an aggregate welfare loss). In contrast, we argue that efficiency and equity may go
hand in hand. Under some circumstances, promoting the knowledge of minority
languages may actually generate an increase in aggregate welfare.
We find the abstract notion of linguistic preferences very appealing for our
purposes. However, one may argue that these preferences are likely to be related
to ethnicity or national identity. We argue below that, in the case of Catalonia, the
main results are not exclusively driven by ethnic or national identity, and as a result
we prefer to retain our more abstract preference interpretation.
In the next section, we provide some historical background, with an emphasis
on the impact of the education reform on language skills. Section 3 introduces the
idea of linguistic preferences and describes an alternative channel through which
additional language skills may affect social and economic interactions. Section 4
presents a preliminary analysis, which serves as an introduction to the multivariate
analysis offered in Sect. 5. The closing section (Sect. 6) contains some concluding
remarks.
2 Language-In-Education Policies in Catalonia
Spanish (Castilian) and Catalan are today the two most important languages in
Catalonia. They are both romance languages; hence, it is relatively straightforward
for any native speaker of one of them to learn the other (or at least to acquire an
oral command). These two languages have coexisted for centuries. Not surprisingly,
their relative position in Catalan society throughout history has evolved in corre-
spondence with the major political and institutional changes.
In recent times, Franco’s regime (1939–1975) represented an important setback
for the Catalan language. It was not only banned from education but also excluded
from any type of social activity. Nevertheless, it was still used in the private sphere
and many families also transmitted it to the next generation.
Another important factor was the massive migration flows from the south of
Spain to Catalonia, especially in the late 1950s and 1960s. In 1975, 40% of the
Catalan population was born outside Catalonia. Very often, these immigrants lived
separately from the natives, in authentic linguistic and social ghettos, and hence
had very little contact with Catalan speakers. In addition to the urban segregation,
the exclusion of Catalan from schools and the media caused, for the first time in
history, a very large fraction of the Catalan population to be monolingual in Spanish
(Woolard and Gahng 1990; Siguan 1991).
Thus, at the end of Franco’s period, the Catalan language found itself to be
cornered but nevertheless ready to fight for resurrection. During the transition to
democracy, the Catalan society forged a very wide social consensus regarding the
need to promote the Catalan language. The chosen label was “normalization.”
After the Catalan regional government had been set up, one of the first important
legal initiatives was the “Language Normalization Act” (LNA). This law was
unanimously approved in 1983 by the regional parliament. The primary goal of
the LNA was for all pupils to be fully bilingual in both Catalan and Spanish by the
end of their compulsory education. It also laid down an education system in which
students were not separated on the basis of their native language.
During the first 10 years of application of the LNA (1984–1993), the two
languages were taught as subjects and used as the language of instruction in
proportions that varied depending on the linguistic characteristics of the students
and the teachers’ language skills. The LNA also introduced “language immersion
programs” targeting primary and preschools located in predominantly Spanish-
speaking neighborhoods. These schools used only Catalan as the medium of
instruction during the first years. The programs were initially tried in a few schools,
but in 1990, they involved about one-fourth of all public schools.
In 1994, the authorities gave Catalan full priority as the language of instruction
in all public schools, but in practice Spanish was also used, particularly in secondary
education (Muñoz 2005). Such official marginalization of Spanish in primary
education has been challenged by some pressure groups, as well as by political
parties with a relatively small representation in the regional parliament, so that the
initial unanimity has been buried, although the political and social consensus in
Catalonia is still very wide.4
In any case, our main concern is related to the effects of these policies on
students’ language skills. The regular tests conducted by both Catalan and Spanish
authorities suggest that such asymmetric treatment of the two languages has
produced rather symmetric results. At the end of compulsory education, students’
levels of proficiency in Catalan and Spanish are very similar (Consell Superior
d’Avaluació del Sistema Educatiu 2013). Moreover, the level of proficiency in
Spanish of students coming from Catalan schools is similar to that of students in
the rest of Spain (Instituto de Evaluación 2011).
4 Unfortunately, information about the relative use of each language is very scarce. See Vila-i-
Moreno (2000) and Vila-i-Moreno and Galindo-Solé (2009).

Catalan Spanish
10
10
9
9
8
8
7
7
6
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year of birth year of birth
Catalan-native speakers Spanish-native speakers
Fig. 1 Average speaking proficiency (0–10 scale) by year of birth
The Survey of Language Use of the Catalan Population, a database that we use
later in our statistical analysis, can also provide some useful additional information.
This survey provides self-reported measures of the respondents’ level of proficiency
in both Spanish and Catalan on a scale from 0 to 10, where the value 0 stands for no
knowledge at all and 10 for perfect proficiency. For the restricted sample described
below, Fig. 1 displays the average speaking proficiency in Catalan and Spanish (and
a quadratic fitted line) by year of birth for both Spanish and Catalan native speakers.
The differences in language skills across cohorts could be related to their different
degrees of exposure to the education reform. As expected, oral Catalan proficiency
is uniformly high for native Catalan speakers, who by definition acquired oral
competence during childhood in their family and hence must have been affected
little by the education reform. However, the younger cohorts of native Spanish
speakers exhibit higher oral proficiency in Catalan than their older counterparts,5
suggesting that the reform might have improved their Catalan skills.
Since the main focus of the analysis is on the propensity of individuals to find
a partner outside their own language community, it seems natural to focus on oral
language skills (in particular, the ability to speak the language). In any case, to
draw a more complete picture, Fig. 2 displays the average written skills. As in the
case of oral skills, the level of written Spanish skills is uniformly high and virtually
identical for the two speech communities. However, the written Catalan skills are
5 However, there is substantial variability around the trend.

Catalan Spanish
10
10
9
9
8
8
7
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year of birth year of birth
Catalan-native speakers Spanish-native speakers
Fig. 2 Average writing proficiency (0–10 scale) by year of birth
better for the younger cohorts of both speech communities, with a higher slope for
native Spanish speakers.
In summary, the two main observations are the following: (1) younger gener-
ations of native Spanish speakers have better skills in Catalan, possibly due to
the educational reform, and (2) Spanish skills are uniformly high for both speech
communities, suggesting that the reform has not altered these skills significantly.6
3 The Theoretical Framework
A game-theoretic literature exists that portrays languages as neutral communication

devices, compares the private and social incentives to learn second languages, and
studies the consequences of language policies (see, e.g., Selten and Pool 1991;
Church and King 1993). Let us first examine the main insights provided by this
approach and its limitations.
Indeed, many economic and social activities (production, trade, romantic rela-
tionships) require communication and hence the use of a common language. Hence,
if Mary, a native English speaker, learns Japanese, then new economic and social
opportunities will arise from the fact that she can now communicate with those
Japanese speakers who do not speak English. Clearly, from a pure communication
6 See also Vila-i-Moreno (2008) and the references contained therein.

viewpoint, the benefits of learning a second language increase with the number of
speakers. But learning a new language is typically costly (in terms of time, effort,
and money); therefore, individuals make their learning decisions taking into account
a comparison of the (private) costs with the (private) benefits. If learning costs are
independent of the size of the speech community, then languages with a larger base
of speakers tend to attract more second-language learners (higher benefits). The size
advantage would be reinforced if learning cost decrease with the number of speakers
(learners may find more opportunities to practice a popular language).
An important insight from this literature is that learning a second language
involves positive externalities. That is, if Mary and other English speakers choose to
learn Japanese, they obtain a private reward, but they also raise the value of knowing
Japanese for everybody else (they expand the size of the network for other Japanese
speakers). In other words, now Mary can communicate with the Japanese, but the
Japanese can also now communicate with Mary and other second-language learners.
The potential benefit runs both ways, even if only one party pays the full cost.
The presence of such positive externalities implies that, in the absence of public
intervention, the effort involved in learning second languages is, from a social point
of view, inefficiently low. Indeed, public policies can raise aggregate welfare: it can
generate aggregate gains that exceed the value of the subsidies. This brings us to
the question of which language should be subsidized. In this context, the answer is
simple: only the majority language should be supported. More specifically, if the
authorities of a bilingual society wish to guarantee universal communication, then
they might need to intervene and promote the learning of the language with the
largest base, thus minimizing total learning costs.
Thus, this theoretical framework provides a justification for public intervention,
but it offers little hope to minority languages, especially if the authorities are only
concerned about aggregate efficiency and refuse to embrace any notion of linguistic
justice.
However, outside the field of economics, it is widely recognized that languages
are much more than neutral communication codes. It has been pointed out that they
are repositories of cultures and carry a strong symbolic value regarding ethnic and
national identity. From the individual point of view, it has also been noted that most
people develop an emotional attachment to a particular language (very often the
native language). As a result, multilingual individuals tend to have preferences about
the language of use (linguistic preferences) in many social situations.7 As mentioned
above, the reasons behind these preferences may be very complex and are likely to
differ across individuals. Before discussing the origin of these preferences in more
detail, though, it will be useful to explore their implications.
Consider a bilingual society in which the two languages are A and B. Suppose
that a fraction α of individuals are native A speakers and the rest, a fraction 1–
α, are native B speakers. Independently of the relative size of these two speech
7 A few studies in economics have also considered some kind of linguistic preferences. See, for
instance, Grin (1992), Wickström (2005), Mélitz (2012), and Iriberri and Uriarte (2012).
communities in the society, suppose that these two languages are not symmetric, but
one of them (say A) has a higher status internationally. For the sake of argument,
let us make this asymmetry sufficiently extreme that, as a result, all native B
speakers also learn language A, but all native A speakers remain monolingual.
Thus, this society exhibits asymmetric bilingualism, in the sense that only members
of the weak speech community (B) are bilingual and hence intercommunity
communication is exclusively carried out using the strong language (A).
This is a stylized description of several European regions, like the Basque
Country, Wales, or Catalonia at the beginning of the 1980s, where essentially all
native speakers of the weak language (Basque, Welsh, and Catalan, respectively)
were (and still are) also competent in the strong language (Spanish, English, and
Spanish, respectively), but only a small fraction of native speakers of the strong
language used to learn the weak language. In other bilingual societies, like Quebec,
Belgium, or several former Soviet republics, a significant fraction of both speech
communities remains monolingual, but it is still the case that one of the languages
has a stronger international status (English in Quebec, French in Belgium, Russian
in the former Soviet republics), and as a result the members of the weak language
community have a greater propensity to become bilingual.
Returning to our abstract model, we need to describe the role of languages as
vehicles of communication. Suppose that individuals wish to engage in a certain
social activity. To keep things simple, each individual must find a suitable partner
to start up a particular kind of collaborative activity, for example, setting up a
business, playing tennis, or getting married. For each individual, a best match exists
from all nonlanguage considerations, which is reciprocal: if Mary is in love with
John, then John is also in love with Mary. Such a best match is selected randomly,
independently of individuals’ language characteristics. Thus, 1–α is the probability
that best match for a native A speaker is a native B speaker. Similarly, α is the
probability that a best match for a native B speaker is a native A speaker. As a
result, the fraction of mixed ideal matches (which include two members of different
speech communities) is 2α (1–α).
Suppose that the realization of this collaborative activity requires the use of
a language. In principle, this should not be a problem, since all individuals are
assumed to be competent in language A and hence the ability to communicate
is not at stake. However, suppose that individuals have preferences about the
language of use. These preferences generate a potential conflict of interest: the
potential partners of an ideal match have to reach an agreement over the language
of use and, depending on the distribution of language skills and the intensity of
these preferences, the best match may not materialize. Let us consider a simple
distribution of preferences over the population. Suppose that one-half of the
members of each community have such strong preferences that they will never be
willing to accept their best match unless communication takes place in their own
native language. In contrast, the other half feels much less strongly about using their
second language with their partner; thus, they are always willing to switch (provided
that they are bilingual, of course).
Given the initial distribution of language skills (native A speakers are monolin-
gual, but native B speakers are bilingual), the above assumption implies that only
half of the potentially mixed ideal partnerships will materialize. The reason is that a
mixed partnership can only operate in language A (the only common language) and
half of the native B speakers involved will prefer to give up such a possibility and
instead find the second best among their own speech community.
It is important to notice that the fraction of realized mixed matches is socially
inefficient. The reason is that when individuals unilaterally decide not to materialize
the best match, they do not take into account the negative externality inflicted on
their potential partners. A numerical example might help at this point. Suppose that
the formation of the best match involves a premium of 10 utility units for each
partner (related to all nonlanguage aspects of the partnership) with respect to the
fallback options. Suppose that the native B speaker incurs a utility loss of 12 units
if she has to use language A with her partner. In this case, the native B speaker
will prefer to walk away from the best match and obtain a net gain of 2, but such
a decision will impose a loss of 10 on the native A speaker. In this case, the B
speaker’s decision is privately optimal: it generates an individual gain of 2; but it
is socially inefficient: it generates an aggregate loss of 8. As a result, if individuals
are free to walk away from their ideal matches, then the fraction of successful best
matches is socially inefficient: the level of aggregate welfare generated is below its
potential.
Let us now consider an alternative distribution of language skills. Suppose that
native A speakers learn language B and hence the society becomes a symmetric
bilingual society (members of both speech communities are bilingual). As in the
previous situation, if the mixed potential partnership includes a native B speaker
with soft language preferences, there will be no obstacle to the formation of the best
match. However, if the native B speaker has strong preferences and thus refuses to
adopt language A, then there is still a 50% chance that the native A speaker will
have soft preferences and accept the use of language B with the partner. Hence, in
this case, three-quarters of all potential mixed partnerships will materialize, instead
of the half of the initial scenario. Therefore, the acquisition of additional language
skills that are redundant from a communication point of view may actually increase
the fraction of mixed partnerships (reduce endogamy) and increase the use of the
weak language. Finally, notice that the aggregate welfare will increase since the
fraction of inefficient breakdowns will fall.8
To summarize, in the presence of linguistic preferences, the acquisition of
additional language skills that appear to be redundant from the point of view of
communication will tend to relax the conflict of interest and thus raise the fraction
of mixed partnerships (Hypothesis 1). At the same time, it will promote the use of
8 We ignore the costs involved in acquiring the additional language skills. In a complete analysis,
the benefits identified in this discussion must be compared with the learning costs. In other words,
the presumption in the main text is that the learning costs are not especially large.
the weak language with the partner (Hypothesis 2).9 These are the main hypothesis
to be tested in the empirical part of the chapter.
In addition to the positive predictions, it is important to note the normative impli-
cations of our conceptual framework. As in the standard framework, in our setup,
acquiring a second language generates a positive externality on other individuals.
More specifically, if a native A speaker learns language B, then cooperation with
native B speakers will be more likely10 ; hence, native B speakers will also benefit
from these new language skills. Consequently, if learning choices are made at the
individual level, then the investment in second languages will be inefficiently low
from a social point of view. Once again, efficiency-motivated public intervention
can be justified. The new angle here (with respect to the standard model) is that the
optimal policy includes the promotion of the weak language instead of the strong
language. In other words, in situations in which communication is guaranteed by
the universal knowledge of the strong language, promoting the learning of the weak
language can raise total welfare (provided that learning costs are not too large). In
other words, in this case, efficiency and equity need not be conflicting goals.
In the previous discussion, we took linguistic preferences to be exogenous.
Individuals were assigned to a particular speech community, and we split each
community into two subgroups: individuals with soft and strong preferences. A
natural question concerns the origin of these preferences. As the first approximation,
one may argue that those preferences tend to be related to individuals’ native
language, but we also need to consider other possibilities. In particular, linguistic
preferences may not be completely exogenous but influenced by environmental
factors. Indeed, it is not rare to find examples of individuals who were socialized in
a particular language but later in their lives decided to adopt a different language as
their own. Thus, as a possible alternative to the native language as the (exogenous)
determinant of linguistic preferences, we could entertain the idea that individuals
have a preference for the language of self-identification (endogenous). In the next
section, we discuss the correlation between the native language and the language of
self-identification in Catalonia.
Clearly, whether or not linguistic preferences are affected by language policies
is important for interpreting our statistical results. We will argue below that
endogenous changes in identity may play a role in our analysis, but they are clearly
not the only important factor.
9 In our previous paper (Caminal and Di Paolo 2015), we provide a formal derivation of these
hypothesis.
10 In particular, cooperation between a native A speaker with soft linguistic preferences and a native
B speaker with strong linguistic preferences will only be possible if the native A speaker learns
language B.
4 Preliminary Analysis
In this section, we present some aggregate indicators of the relationship between lan-
guage skills and the degree of endogamy in partnerships, obtained from the Survey
of Language Use of the Catalan Population. This is a representative survey carried
out by the Catalan Statistical Institute (IDESCAT) every 5 years. We use the last
two waves, 2008 and 2013. This survey, in addition to the usual sociodemographic
variables (gender, education, year of birth, place of birth and residence, parental
education, place of birth, etc.), provides a full array of sociolinguistic variables,
which represent key variables for our purposes. As mentioned above, the survey
includes self-reported measures of the respondent’s level of proficiency in both
Spanish and Catalan, on a scale from 0 to 10, as well as information about (a)
the native language of the respondent (i.e., the first language spoken at home),
(b) his/her language of self-identification, (c) the language of both his/her parents,
and (d) the language of his/her partner. For each of these questions, the respondent
can select a single language or combinations of languages. In fact, a significant
fraction of respondents reports both Spanish and Catalan as their native or self-
identification language. Moreover, the survey reports (e) the relative use of Catalan
(versus Spanish) with the partner. The corresponding question asks whether the
individual speaks with his/her partner (1) only Spanish, (2) more Spanish than
Catalan, (3) equally Spanish and Catalan, (4) more Catalan than Spanish, or (5) only
Catalan, which means that we use a proxy for the intensity of the use of Catalan with
the respondent’s partner relative to Spanish.
For our statistical analysis, we restrict the sample to subjects who were born in
Catalonia or who were born in the rest of Spain and migrated to Catalonia before the
age of 6. We also exclude individuals with a native language different from Spanish
or Catalan, as well as those whose partner speaks another language.11 The restricted
sample includes 5357 individuals. There are at least two strong reasons to adopt
such a selection criterion. First, as argued above, changes in language skills have
mostly been caused by the education reform. Hence, it makes sense to focus on those
individuals who completed their entire compulsory schooling in Catalonia. Second,
excluding recent immigrants may help to reduce the unobserved heterogeneity.
If we focus on the native language to define the two speech communities, then
we should notice (see the first column of Table 1) that the relative sizes of the two
speech communities in our restricted sample are very similar. Table 1 also shows
that there is an interesting relation between the native language and the language
of self-identification. In particular, most individuals whose native language is only
Catalan (as opposed to Catalan and Spanish or only Spanish) also report that their
language of self-identification is only Catalan: fewer than 5% select other options.
However, about one-fifth of native (only) Spanish speakers report (only) Catalan
11 We also exclude individuals born before 1950, after 1990, those who are students at the time of
the survey, and those who have never had a partner.

Table 1 Transition from native language to language of self-identification

Native Relative % CAT as % CAT/SPA as % SPA as
language frequency self-ident lang. self-ident lang. self-ident lang.
CAT 50.8 95.3 2.8 1.9
CAT/SPA 4.5 46.4 42.2 19.4
SPA 44.7 19.4 14.0 66.6
Table 2 Native language and language of the partner

Native Relative % partners with % partners with % partners with
language frequency SPA CAT/SPA CAT
CAT 50.79 22.86 3.71 73.43
CAT/SPA 4.48 41.25 20.83 37.92
SPA 44.73 64.23 7.8 27.96
SPA* 51.42 55.48 7.88 36.64
SPA*: Spanish native speakers with speaking proficiency in Catalan higher than 8
as their language of self-identification.12 Thus, our sample contains a significant

fraction of “language switchers”: native Spanish speakers who have adopted Catalan
as their language of self-identification. Determining whether or not our results are
driven by this subgroup is certainly an important issue.
The respondents also report the language characteristics of their partners. Table 2
clearly shows that mixed couples are not rare; nevertheless, individuals bias their
partner choices in favor of other speakers of their native language. For example,
28% of native Spanish speakers have a partner who speaks only Catalan, but 64% of
them choose a Spanish-only speaker (the rest, 8%, have a partner who speaks both
languages).
It may be useful to summarize all this information in a single number. Specifi-
cally, we use the following Index of Linguistic Endogamy (ILEi ):
γi − αi
ILEi =
1 − αi
where α i is the fraction of the population belonging to speech community i and

γ i is the fraction of speakers of language i who are matched within their speech
community.13 If γ i = α i , then ILEi = 0. This represents the case in which
12 The analogous transition matrix from native language to habitual language exhibits a similar
degree of asymmetry. In particular, the fraction of Catalan natives who adopt Spanish as their
habitual language is quite small, but the reverse is rather sizable. This is probably another sign of
the regained vitality of the Catalan language.
13 Very similar indices have been intensively used in the marriage literature, with no trace of
authorship. Here we use a convenient adaption to the format of our data.

Table 3 Native language and language use with the partner

Native Relative % speak SPA % speak CAT/SPA % speak CAT
language frequency with partner with partner with partner
CAT 50.79 8.78 10.51 80.71
CAT/SPA 4.48 34.17 28.33 37.5
SPA 44.73 63.23 21.04 15.73
SPA* 51.42 48.9 25.83 25.26
individuals do not pay attention to the native language of their potential partners
(and focus exclusively on their nonlanguage characteristics). In other words, if all
potential partners, regardless of their native language, have the same probability of
being the best match of a particular individual, then by the law of large numbers, the
propensity to be matched with a member of the same speech community is equal
to the relative size of the community. Furthermore, notice that index Ii increases
linearly with γ i and reaches its highest value (ILEi = 1) at γ i = 1, that is, the case in
which individuals only look for partners within their community. To summarize, the
value of ILEi provides a reasonable metric of the extent of the endogamy exhibited
by speech community i.
In a static setup with only two speech communities, in which every individual is
matched with another individual, given that a mixed partnership involves a member
of each community, the γ s of the two communities must be related. In fact, it is easy
to show that, in this case, the two indices must be the same (ILE1 = ILE2 ). In our
sample, these two indices need not coincide. However, if we allocate respondents
with mixed answers (Catalan and Spanish as native languages) to the Spanish-
speaking community, the two indices are similar and close to 45%. Consequently,
the level of endogamy across linguistic lines in Catalonia is somewhat intermediate.
Table 2 also illustrates the fact that the propensity to match outside the com-
munity is related to language skills. In particular, native (only) Spanish speakers
with high oral command of Catalan (higher than 8), who represent about half of all
native (only) Spanish speakers, are more likely to be matched with a native Catalan
speaker.14
The relationship between the language used with the partner and the respondent’s
native language is depicted in Table 3, in which we aggregate the intermediate values
(2–4) into a single category for simplicity. As can be noted, only half of native
Spanish speakers with a Catalan-speaking partner speak Catalan with their partner.
However, conditional on high Catalan-speaking proficiency, this ratio is roughly
equal to two-thirds.
We can also quickly consider the role of language switchers (i.e., self-
identification language different from native language). In particular, we reproduce
14 The average oral Catalan proficiency of native Spanish speakers whose partner’s language is
Spanish is 7.93. However, if the partner’s language is Catalan, this average climbs to 9.46.
Table 4 Native language and language of the partner (excluding the “switchers”)
Native Relative % partners % partners % partners
language frequency with SPA with CAT/SPA with CAT
CAT 59.67 22.80 3.72 73.48
CAT/SPA 5.26 41.00 20.92 38.08
SPA 34.95 76.06 6.74 17.20
SPA* 39.42 71.84 7.20 20.96
Table 5 Native language and language use with the partner (excluding the “switchers”)
Native Relative % speak SPA % speak CAT/SPA % speak CAT
language frequency with partner with partner with partner
CAT 59.67 8.73 10.53 80.74
CAT/SPA 5.26 33.89 28.45 37.66
SPA 34.95 78.32 17.64 4.03
SPA* 39.42 69.12 23.84 7.04
Tables 2 and 3 eliminating from the sample those native Spanish speakers whose
language of self-identification is either Catalan or Catalan and Spanish. The results
are shown in Tables 4 and 5, respectively. Clearly, those switchers explain part
of the correlation between the language skills on the one hand and the propensity
to be matched outside the community and language use with their partner on the
other. Unsurprisingly, those native Spanish speakers who have adopted Catalan as
their language of self-identification have a higher proficiency level in Catalan than
the average. Hence, as expected, when we exclude this group from the sample, the
degree of correlation falls. However, the sign and the statistical significance of these
correlations are maintained. In other words, it is still the case that native Spanish
speakers who report Spanish as their language of self-identification and who have
a higher level of Catalan proficiency are more likely to be matched with a Catalan
speaker as well as to speak Catalan with their partner more often.
Overall, these aggregate data seem to be perfectly compatible with the two main
theoretical predictions, suggesting that better skills in Catalan favor the formation
of mixed partnerships and the use of Catalan with the partner. In the following,
we move a step ahead from the analysis of bivariate relationships by showing the
conditional correlation between language proficiency and the two social outcomes
of interest in a multivariate framework.15
15 The reader should bear in mind that the results from the following multivariate analysis should
be taken as conditional correlations rather than causal effects. This is because our relationship(s) of
interest might be affected by reverse causality (i.e., Spanish speakers who find a Catalan-speaking
partner improve their skills in Catalan), omitted variable bias (i.e., Catalan proficiency depends
on unobserved characteristics that also affect our outcomes of interest), and measurement errors
(i.e., individuals tend to overreport their true language skills). All these issues generate biases and
5 Multivariate Analysis
We now adopt a multivariate framework of analysis and focus more specifically

on native Spanish speakers, since they constitute the only group with noticeable
variability in their language skills. The goal is to ensure that the previously high-
lighted correlations are robust when controlling for covariates. More specifically, we
quantify the association between language skills and the two outcomes of interest
(the probability of having a Catalan-speaking partner and the propensity to use
only Catalan), keeping constant other characteristics that are likely to be related
to both oral proficiency in Catalan and the two outcomes (descriptive statistics for
the subsample of native Spanish speakers are reported in Table 6).
These two dependent variables are essentially discrete and can be viewed as
categorical ordered variables. This is quite obvious in the case of the variable
capturing language use with the partner, since it is collected in the survey using an
ordinal scale that reflects the intensity of the use of Catalan (versus Spanish) with
the partner. Moreover, the information regarding the partner’s language can also be
taken as an ordinal variable, which ranges from no Catalan (the partner speaks only
Spanish) to some Catalan (speaks both Spanish and Catalan) to the highest level of
Catalan (speaks only Catalan). Therefore, we can use an ordered probit model16 to
carry out the multivariate analysis and analyze the conditioning factors for the two
dependent variables (for additional details, see, e.g., Long and Freese 2014). Within
this framework, we estimate the probability of observing a given outcome (Y = j) as
a function of language skills (Cat) and other control variables (X), that is:

P rob (Yi = j |Cat i , Xi ) = Φ αj − γ Cat i − βXi − Φ αj −1 − γ Cat i − βXi , j = 1...J
(1)
where · is the standard normal distribution and α j represents the additional

parameters to be estimated (the so-called cutoff points) for each ordered category of
the dependent variable (j): having a Catalan-speaking partner and speaking Catalan
with the partner.
Since the estimated coefficients cannot be interpreted directly as changes in
probability, we compute and report the corresponding (average) marginal effects.
That is, for each outcome, we report how the predicted probability changes with the
explanatory variables, averaging the marginal responses across all observations. In
this way, we are able to quantify the impact of an increase in language proficiency
inconsistencies in the estimates. In our previous paper (Caminal and Di Paolo 2015), we address
these issues by adopting a TSLS approach, which provides qualitative results that are very similar
to the ones reported in this chapter.
16 Notice that the multinomial logit model could be an alternative way to model the partner’s
language, if one assumes that the three categories are unordered. We also tried this alternative
specification, and the results are qualitatively the same as those obtained using the ordered probit
model. We finally retained this latter specification for simplicity as well as to avoid imposing the
restrictive “independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA)” hypothesis underlying the multinomial
logit model.
Table 6 Descriptive statistics (native Spanish speakers)

Variable Mean Std. Dev.
Language of the partner = Spanish-only 0.642 0.480
Spanish and Catalan 0.078 0.268
Catalan-only 0.280 0.449
Language spoken with the partner = only Spanish 0.632 0.482
More Spanish than Catalan 0.101 0.302
Equal Spanish and Catalan 0.077 0.266
More Catalan than Spanish 0.033 0.178
Only Catalan 0.158 0.365
Language of self-identification = Spanish-only 0.664 0.472
Catalan and Spanish 0.143 0.347
Catalan-only 0.193 0.395
Speaking proficiency in Catalan 7.882 2.578
Wave 2013 0.526 0.499
Age 40.76 9.919
Male 0.474 0.499
Parental origins = both parents born outside Catalonia 0.699 0.459
One parent born in Catalonia 0.213 0.409
Both parents born in Catalonia 0.088 0.284
Catalan spoken by none of the parents 0.890 0.314
Catalan spoken by at least one parent 0.110 0.314
Missing parents’ language 0.006 0.076
Highest parental education = no education 0.263 0.440
Primary 0.489 0.500
Secondary 0.155 0.362
Tertiary 0.062 0.242
Missing parental education 0.031 0.172
Individual’s place of residence = Barcelona city 0.177 0.382
Barcelona’s metropolitan area 0.449 0.498
Girona 0.073 0.261
Tarragona 0.077 0.266
Southern Catalonia (Terres de l’Ebre) 0.018 0.131
Western Catalonia (Ponent) 0.110 0.313
Central Catalonia 0.071 0.256
Pyrenees 0.026 0.158
Individual’s place of birth = Barcelona 0.628 0.483
Girona 0.050 0.218
Tarragona 0.057 0.233
Southern Catalonia (Terres de l’Ebre) 0.011 0.104
Western Catalonia (Ponent) 0.056 0.231
(continued)
Table 6 (continued)
Variable Mean Std. Dev.
Central Catalonia 0.054 0.226
Pyrenees and Aran Valley 0.012 0.110
Balearic Islands and Valencia 0.005 0.074
Basque Country and Galicia 0.005 0.071
Other Spanish regions 0.121 0.326
Completed education = primary or less 0.300 0.458
Secondary 0.481 0.500
Tertiary 0.199 0.399
Other education levels 0.020 0.139
Number of observations 2390
on the probability that a native Spanish speaker will be matched with a Catalan
speaker and/or speak only Catalan with his/her partner, controlling for a large set of
observed covariates (i.e., the ceteris paribus effect).
Moreover, the inclusion of covariates may also be of independent interest, since it
also enables the quantification of the effect of other intervening variables. The Sur-
vey of Language Use of the Catalan Population contains several variables that can
be considered as controls, corresponding to information about parental background
(parents’ place of birth, language, and education) and individual characteristics
(gender, age, place of birth, place of residence, and completed education), which
are potential conditioning factors of the two outcomes of interest.17
The marginal effects derived from the ordered probit estimation are reported
in Table 7. It is important to notice that the positive association between oral
proficiency in Catalan (reported in a 0–10 scale) and the two outcomes is also
positive and significant after controlling for individual characteristics and family
background. More specifically, each additional unit of language proficiency is
associated with an increase in the probability of being matched with a Catalan
speaker of 0.035 (3.5% points) and an increase in the probability of speaking Catalan
with the partner of 0.05 (5% points).
To obtain a clearer picture of the quantitative effect of language skills in the two
outcomes, in Fig. 3, we plot the average predicted probabilities against oral Catalan
proficiency (0–10 scale). Concerning the probability of having a partner who speaks
only Catalan (Fig. 3a), we obtain a smooth but significant increase in the predicted
probability as the language skills improve, which approaches the value of 0.35 for
native Spanish speakers with a full command of Catalan.18 The effect of Catalan
17 With the exception of age (which is specified using a quadratic function) and oral skills in
Catalan, which are continuous variables, the rest of the variables are categorical and included
as dummies. Notice that we also include an indicator variable for the second wave of the survey
(wave 13).
18 That is, if we were to make a causal interpretation of these estimates, the propensity of native
Spanish speakers to form a mixed match would increase from 29% (current average) to 35% if their
276
Table 7 (Average) marginal effects on the predicted probabilities

Pr (Catalan-only speaking partner) Pr (speaking only Catalan with the partner)
Wave 2013 −0.066*** (0.017) −0.004 (0.011)
Age 0.007 (0.006) 0.003 (0.004)
Age2 −0.000 (0.000) −0.000 (0.000)
Male 0.044*** (0.016) 0.026** (0.011)
Speaking proficiency in Catalan 0.035*** (0.004) 0.050*** (0.003)
Parental origins = both parents born outside Catalonia Reference category
One parent born in Catalonia −0.032 (0.022) −0.017 (0.014)
Both parents born in Catalonia −0.048 (0.030) −0.025 (0.020)
Catalan spoken by at least one parent 0.165*** (0.034) 0.096*** (0.024)
Missing parents’ language 0.002 (0.091) 0.015 (0.062)
Highest parental education = no education Reference category
Primary 0.038* (0.020) 0.033** (0.013)
Secondary 0.037 (0.028) 0.030* (0.018)
Tertiary 0.093** (0.043) 0.025 (0.026)
Missing parental education 0.047 (0.050) 0.045 (0.035)
Individual’s place of residence = Barcelona city Reference category
Barcelona’s metropolitan area −0.013 (0.023) −0.003 (0.014)
Girona 0.172*** (0.055) 0.121*** (0.038)
Tarragona 0.027 (0.051) 0.022 (0.032)
(continued)
R. Caminal and A. Di Paolo
Table 7 (continued)
Southern Catalonia (Terres de l’Ebre) 0.401*** (0.108) 0.311*** (0.108)
Western Catalonia (Ponent) 0.018 (0.039) 0.012 (0.025)
Central Catalonia 0.093 (0.059) 0.068* (0.037)
Pyrenees 0.255*** (0.074) 0.234*** (0.065)
Individual’s place of birth = Barcelona Reference category
Girona −0.060 (0.047) 0.013 (0.034)
Tarragona −0.021 (0.050) −0.015 (0.030)
Southern Catalonia (Terres de l’Ebre) −0.120 (0.085) −0.048 (0.060)
Western Catalonia (Ponent) 0.087* (0.050) 0.105*** (0.038)
Central Catalonia 0.043 (0.061) 0.082* (0.043)
Pyrenees and Aran Valley −0.052 (0.082) −0.079** (0.035)
Balearic Islands and Valencia 0.113 (0.090) −0.018 (0.073)
Basque Country and Galicia 0.279** (0.124) −0.033 (0.057)
Other Spanish regions −0.027 (0.029) −0.005 (0.019)
Completed education = primary or less Reference category
Language Policy and Social Segmentation: Evidence from Catalonia
Secondary 0.020 (0.020) 0.043*** (0.014)

Tertiary 0.054** (0.027) 0.096*** (0.018)
Other education levels −0.009 (0.068) 0.068** (0.032)
Pseudo-R2 0.183 0.400
Number of Observations 2390 2390
Note: The average marginal effects are obtained from Ordered Probit estimates with robust standard errors (in parenthesis). *** significant at 1%, ** significant
at 5%, * significant at 10%
277
.4
.3
.2
.1
0 Pr(Catalan-only speaking partner)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
speaking proficiency in Catalan
Pr(speaking only Catalan with the partner)

.25
.2
.15
.1
.05
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Fig. 3 (a) Average predicted probabilities (having a Catalan-only speaking partner) by proficiency
in Catalan. (b) Average predicted probabilities (speaking only Catalan with the partner) by
proficiency in Catalan. Note: the area in gray color corresponds to the 95% confidence interval
of the predicted probabilities
skills on the use of this language with the partner is even more remarkable (see Fig.
3b), since such a probability rises exponentially from 0 to 0.25 when oral proficiency
changes from 0 to 10.
If we focus on individual characteristics, the results indicate that male native
Spanish speakers are more likely to choose a partner who speaks only Catalan and
are also more likely to speak only Catalan with their partner than their female
counterparts. In addition, we observe a positive effect of being born in Galicia
or in the Basque Country (other bilingual regions) on the probability of finding a
Catalan-speaking partner, keeping other characteristics fixed.19 Regarding the place
of residence, individuals living in some (but not all) of the areas with a higher
share of Catalan speakers (like Girona, Southern Catalonia, or the Pyrenees) are
more likely to match with a Catalan speaker and to use Catalan more intensively,
relative to their counterparts living in Barcelona. Finally, the increase in education is
also associated with higher probabilities of both outcomes, with a more pronounced
effect in the case of the language used with the partner.20
If we focus on family background, both parental language and parental education
are relevant variables.21 More specifically, having at least one Catalan-speaking
parent increases the chances of finding a Catalan-speaking partner by 16.5% points
relative to native Spanish speakers whose parents speak only Spanish. It also
increases the probability of speaking only Catalan with the partner by 9.5% points.
Such strong effects are not surprising, since they probably reflect the case of families
in which Spanish was the dominant language but Catalan was also present. Parental
education has a weaker, but still significantly positive, effect on both outcomes. In
particular, having at least one parent with tertiary education raises the probability of
finding a Catalan-speaking partner by 9.3% points.22
Consistent with the findings from the bivariate analysis, we obtain a somewhat
different picture when the language switchers are excluded from the sample
(Table 8). There is still a positive and significant association between oral
proficiency in Catalan and the two outcomes, but, unsurprisingly, the size of these
two effects is smaller. In particular, the marginal effects of language skills on
the partner’s language and language use fall from 0.035 and 0.05 to 0.015 and
0.012, respectively. Figure 4a and b depicts the predicted probabilities estimated for
different values of our oral language fluency scale for each of the two outcomes,
respectively. The patterns obtained for the whole sample are largely maintained
average Catalan skills reached their maximum level. Their index of endogamy would accordingly
fall to 31% from its current value of 45%.
19 Some of these individuals are likely to be also Basque or Galizian speakers and hence less
emotionally attached to Spanish but also with a more intricate language background.
20 Age does not seem to exert a significant effect on any of these two outcomes (we control for
language skills).
21 Notice that negative and insignificant coefficients of the dummies for parental origins are due to
the fact that we also control for parental language, that is, when parental language is excluded from
the model, the coefficients of parental origins’ dummies are positive (but still insignificant).
22 The parents’ place of birth does not seem to have any marginal influence on the two outcomes.
280
Table 8 (Average) marginal effects on the predicted probabilities (excluding the “switchers”)
Wave 2013 −0.031* (0.017) 0.016*** (0.006)
Age −0.001 (0.006) 0.000 (0.002)
Age2 0.000 (0.000) −0.000 (0.000)
Male 0.068*** (0.017) 0.018*** (0.006)
Speaking proficiency in Catalan 0.015*** (0.004) 0.012*** (0.002)
Parental origins = both parents born outside Catalonia Reference category
One parent born in Catalonia −0.032 (0.023) −0.014** (0.007)
Both parents born in Catalonia −0.056** (0.029) −0.012 (0.010)
Catalan spoken by at least one parent 0.106** (0.045) 0.023 (0.016)
Missing parents’ language −0.028 (0.105) 0.013 (0.028)
Highest parental education = no education Reference category
Primary 0.013 (0.021) 0.010 (0.007)
Secondary 0.018 (0.031) 0.006 (0.010)
Tertiary 0.091* (0.049) 0.008 (0.014)
Missing parental education −0.055 (0.042) −0.021** (0.009)
Individual’s place of residence = Barcelona city Reference category
Barcelona’s metropolitan area 0.006 (0.022) −0.002 (0.007)
Girona 0.171** (0.073) 0.077** (0.034)
Tarragona 0.030 (0.051) 0.012 (0.018)
Southern Catalonia (Terres de l’Ebre) 0.345* (0.177) 0.015 (0.036)
Central Catalonia 0.102 (0.072) 0.047 (0.031)
Pyrenees 0.056 (0.091) 0.011 (0.027)
(continued)
R. Caminal and A. Di Paolo
Table 8 (continued)
Individual’s place of birth = Barcelona Reference category
Girona −0.089* (0.045) −0.034*** (0.008)
Tarragona −0.019 (0.052) −0.017 (0.014)
Southern Catalonia (Terres de l’Ebre) −0.128** (0.060) −0.023 (0.028)
Central Catalonia 0.002 (0.068) 0.000 (0.022)
Pyrenees and Aran Valley 0.091 (0.127) −0.009 (0.027)
Balearic Islands and Valencia −0.003 (0.076) −0.003 (0.024)
Basque Country and Galicia 0.251* (0.130) −0.011 (0.029)
Other Spanish regions −0.016 (0.028) −0.006 (0.010)
Completed education = primary or less Reference category
Secondary 0.010 (0.020) 0.011 (0.007)
Tertiary 0.050* (0.029) 0.032*** (0.010)
Language Policy and Social Segmentation: Evidence from Catalonia
Other education levels −0.009 (0.068) 0.052*** (0.017)

Pseudo-R2 0.102 0.264
Number of observations 1595 1591
Note: The average marginal effects are obtained from Ordered Probit estimates with robust standard errors (in parenthesis). *** significant at 1%, ** significant
at 5%, * significant at 10%
281
.25
.2
.15
.1
.05 Pr(Catalan-only speaking partner)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Pr(speaking only Catalan with the partner)

.08
.06
.04
.02
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Fig. 4 (a) Average predicted probabilities (having a Catalan-only speaking partner) by proficiency
in Catalan (excluding the “switchers”). (b) Average predicted probabilities (speaking only Catalan
with the partner) by proficiency in Catalan (excluding the “switchers”). Note: the area in gray color
corresponds to the 95% confidence interval of the predicted probabilities
even when language switchers are dropped from the sample, although the likelihood
of either having a Catalan-speaking partner or using only Catalan with him/her is
smaller at any level of proficiency. In other words, the positive association between
language skills and the two outcomes is not exclusively due to the presence of
language switchers, but it also holds for those individuals whose language of self-
identification as well as their native language is Spanish.23
To summarize, the evidence presented in this section is compatible with our
theoretical predictions. In particular, a higher level of proficiency in Catalan by
native Spanish speakers is associated with a lower level of endogamy. Nevertheless,
it must be stressed that the results reported above should not be taken directly as
causal relations, just as conditional correlations. Whether or not these “complex”
measures of association actually reflect causality depend on the extent to which the
estimated coefficients are subject to some kind of bias or inconsistency.
We approached the causality issue in our previous paper (Caminal and Di Paolo
2015), in which we estimated the impact of Catalan proficiency on partnership
formation and language use exploiting only the exogenous variation in oral Catalan
proficiency among Spanish native speakers that was generated by the exposure
to the education reform. This enabled us to construct an instrumental variable
and to estimate the relationship of interest by the two-stage least squares (TSLS)
technique, which provides estimates that can be reliably interpreted as causal effects.
Specifically, we showed that (1) each additional year of exposure to Catalan in
compulsory schooling improved the oral proficiency of Spanish native speakers, and
(2) this exogenous improvement in language skills raised the frequency of mixed
couples as well as the use of Catalan with the partner. Overall, the results that
we obtained from our TSLS approach were qualitatively similar to those obtained
disregarding possible sources of bias and inconsistencies (i.e., reverse causality,
omitted variables, and measurement errors). Moreover, in line with the results
presented in this chapter, when we excluded the language switchers from the sample,
not only were the sign and significance of the main results maintained, but even the
size of the causal estimates remained largely unchanged.
6 Concluding Remarks
The results of the statistical analysis presented in this chapter, as well as the causal
analysis performed in our previous paper, provide clear evidence in favor of our
theory. That is, an exogenous improvement in language skills that are redundant
from a communication point of view can reduce the level of endogamy and generate
positive aggregate welfare effects. Thus, languages are much more than neutral
communication vehicles. Even when the ability to communicate is not at stake (it
is guaranteed by the presence of a common language), social interactions involving
23 The impact of the covariates is also smaller, and in most cases, they even lose statistical
significance, especially when the outcome is the language used with the partner. In some specific
cases (such as parental place of birth and parental education), the sign of the effect is even reversed.
members of different speech communities must still resolve a conflict of interest

over the language of use. In other words, linguistic preferences apparently have a
non-negligible impact on social outcomes.
Our notion of linguistic preferences is very abstract. If these preferences are
mostly related to ethnic or national identity, then perhaps the results can be
interpreted in a more specific way. Woolard (1989) pointed out that back in the
1980s, ethnicities were very important in understanding the language attitudes
and choices in Catalonia. In particular, she documented the fact that Catalan
was perceived by non-Catalan speakers as the language of native Catalans and
completely alien to everybody else. In that context, the adoption of Catalan was
interpreted as a signal of assimilation. In contrast, Spanish was perceived by almost
everyone as “the language of everybody,” free of any ethnic marks. If such a view
is still valid nowadays, then our results could be interpreted differently. It might be
the case that the positive association between better skills in Catalan by Spanish
native speakers and a higher propensity to be matched with a Catalan speaker may
not reflect a lower level of endogamy but simply assimilation; that is, for a similar
level of endogamy, if a fraction of Spanish native speakers cross over the ethnic
lines and become “ethnically Catalans,” then these individuals would tend to learn
more Catalan and at the same time be matched more frequently with other ethnically
Catalan individuals (who happen to speak Catalan).
The analysis presented in this chapter, as well as the results from our previous
paper (comparing the results of estimations with and without language switchers),
clearly indicates that assimilation alone cannot account for all the evidence. Indeed,
excluding language switchers does not alter the qualitative relationship between
language skills and partnership formation, which suggests that the results reflect
a mechanism that is broader than a simple assimilation pattern. This observation
suggests that nowadays perceptions are different. A fraction of Spanish native
speakers who maintain Spanish as their language of self-identification are more
likely to be matched with a Catalan speaker as a result of their better Catalan skills,
because they are willing to use Catalan with their partner. In other words, Catalan
is increasingly perceived as everybody’s language and no so much as a signal of
Catalan ethnicity.
Can we extrapolate the results from Catalonia? We find no reason to believe that
language preferences are exclusively a Catalan phenomenon. Thus, in other bilin-
gual societies, additional language skills that are redundant from a communicative
point of view are also likely to reduce endogamy. In societies in which there is an
important fraction of monoglots in all the speech communities, the impact is likely
to be much stronger, since additional language skills will also improve the ability to
communicate.
As mentioned above, our focus on the Catalan case is strongly motivated by its
unique conditions. In particular, a large-scale educational reform capable of causing
a substantial change in language skills in the weak language can only happen in
particular circumstances: a sufficiently large fraction of native speakers of the weak
language and low costs of acquiring the additional language skills. Those conditions
are not likely to be met particularly often. However, the main point of this paper is
not to predict when and where policies that promote the weak language will be
implemented but to establish the social benefits of these policies. Moreover, the
reported evidence clearly indicates that the emotional aspects of languages do affect
social outcomes and hence they should be taken into account in policy design as
well as in future research.
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Languages, Human Capital,
and Well-Being in Sub-Saharan Africa
Katalin Buzási and Péter Földvári
1 Introduction
Languages are not only one of the most essential characteristics of being human,
but they also influence the performance of societies through various channels.
As a means of communication, (commonly spoken) languages make information
flow cheaper and easier, thus are expected to increase the efficiency of exchange
and cooperative behavior (Smith 2010). Languages are also considered as cultural
markers, which serve as a base for sociocultural clusterization leading to serious
social and political problems (Mauro 1995; Alesina et al. 2003; Montalvo and
Reynal-Querol 2005; Putnam 2007). Identifying the abovementioned channels and
quantifying the developmental effects of the linguistic characteristics of a society
have concerned many social science fields.
Existing economic and political science literature has some shortcomings though.
First, most studies are concerned with the development impacts of ethnolinguistic
diversity, while other dimensions of the language situation such as multilingualism
and proficiency in second languages, which are expected to counterbalance the
negative effects of heterogeneity, gain less attention. In other words, while there
is much emphasis on the cultural and identification role of languages, we know less
about the development impacts of the communication function (Liu and Pizzi 2016).
This can be partly explained by data unavailability on other than primary languages.
Second, the effects of language policies on the welfare of societies and linguistic
groups are also less explored empirically.
K. Buzási ()
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
e-mail: k.buzasi@aiid.org
P. Földvári
Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
e-mail: P.Foldvari@uva.nl

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1_9
288 K. Buzási and P. Földvári
This chapter aims to reduce the aforementioned gaps in the literature by

investigating how language policy and the dimensions of the language situation1
influence economic performance through human capital accumulation in Sub-
Saharan Africa (SSA). While our study adopts the approach of the current strand of
the literature to a great extent, it has several novelties. Unlike sociolinguistic studies
which are usually descriptive and commonly based on case studies investigating
single linguistic groups or countries or comparing a limited number of cases (Trudell
2006, 2012; Brock-Utne 2007; Desai 2001), our analysis covers all Sub-Saharan
Africa. Moreover, unlike recent empirical political science works (Laitin and
Ramachandran 2016; Liu and Pizzi 2016), which attempt to explain the relationship
between languages and development on the global level, we focus on a single region
with distinctive linguistic and development characteristics that are worth individual
analysis.
Sub-Saharan Africa is commonly known as the most underdeveloped region of
the world. According to the latest United Nations Development Report (UNDP
2014), there are not any non-SSA countries among the bottom 15 and 29 in the
gross national income (GNI) per capita and life expectancy ranking, respectively.
The picture on adult literacy is similar: there are only 2 non-SSA countries among
the bottom 15. This poor social and economic performance is accompanied by
a peculiar language situation.2 The region exhibits high ethnolinguistic diversity.
However, this applies to most developing societies. What is more important, with a
few exceptions, former colonial languages are used as the exclusive official language
in public affairs and in education above the primary level. Since a high share of
local languages is unstandardized and unwritten, their use in elementary schooling
is limited. The average proficiency in official languages is poor (Albaugh 2014:
236–287). With the exception of Southern Asia (e.g., Pakistan and Bangladesh)
and the Pacific (e.g., Fiji), none of the formerly colonized regions exhibit this
kind of language situation. Latin-American people commonly speak Portuguese and
Spanish, while Southeast Asian countries predominantly have indigenous official
languages.
Despite the aforementioned stylized facts, there are significant linguistic and
development differences within Sub-Saharan Africa. There is about 24,000 USD
(at 2011 prices) gap between the poorest (Democratic Republic of the Congo, 444
USD) and richest (Seychelles, 24,632 USD), about 30 years difference between the
1 Similarly to the existing literature (Buzasi 2016; Lopes 1998), in this chapter language situation
is generally applied as an “umbrella” concept that refers to all linguistic characteristics of a society
including ethnolinguistic diversity, the prevalence of multilingualism, geographical distribution
of languages as first and second, the legal and social status of languages, and the share of the
population speaking officially recognized languages. However, our empirical analysis focuses only
on four aspects, namely, linguistic diversity, the share of population speaking the former colonizer’s
language, the share of population speaking the largest local language, and the intensity of local
language use in education (ILLED).
2 The general description of the language situation in Sub-Saharan Africa is largely based on
qualitative and quantitative information from Ethnologue (Lewis et al. 2015) and Albaugh (2014).
Languages, Human Capital, and Well-Being in Sub-Saharan Africa 289
longest (Cape Verde, 75.1 years) and shortest living (Sierra Leone, 45.6 years), and
about 70% points between the most (Equatorial Guinea, 94%) and least (Guinea,
25.3%) literate Sub-Saharan countries. The number of living languages ranges
between 3 in Burundi and Rwanda and 520 in Nigeria (Lewis et al. 2015). There is at
least one official local language in Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar,
Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, and Tanzania. Some countries acknowledge the
educational use of indigenous languages more than others. While former British
colonies (e.g., Malawi, Nigeria, and South Africa) have been promoting local
languages since the colonial times, most former French (e.g., Benin, Burkina Faso,
and Senegal) and Portuguese (e.g., Mozambique) colonies started to experiment
with them only in the 1990s or even later. Other countries still maintain the exclusive
use of European languages (e.g., Togo). The lowest share (3%) of the population
speaking the former colonizer’s language is estimated for Gambia, while the highest
share (80%) is found in Gabon (Albaugh 2014). These within-region variations and
the potential relationship between them (discussed in more detail in the following
sections) have inspired our study.
This chapter applies ordinary least squares (OLS) and generalized method of
moments (GMM) technique3 to elaborate on the research question on a cross section
of about 40 Sub-Saharan African countries. Two of the investigated language-related
variables, namely, the share of the people speaking the official language and the
intensity of local language use in education, are found to have positive effect on
both human capital accumulation and income. However, the policy implications
of the role of the intensity of local language use are highly dependent on how it
is measured. Linguistic diversity and the share of the people speaking the largest
indigenous language (either as primary or second) are found to have negative impact
on income but do not seem to influence human capital accumulation.
The chapter is structured as follows. The next section reviews the previous
economic, political, and sociolinguistic literature on how language situation and lan-
guage policy affect human capital accumulation and socioeconomic performance.
The third section introduces our data and presents basic observations. The empirical
findings in Sect. 4 are followed by the discussion and policy implications.
2 Related Literature
The most recognized channel through which languages affect development is human
capital accumulation. In this section, we provide a review of the literature that
discusses the role of ethnolinguistic diversity, language status,4 and language policy
3 See,e.g., Verbeek (2008) for a short and accessible discussion of these techniques.
4 The status of languages is a multidimensional concept which refers to the official recognition as
well as the social and communication importance of languages. The most complex language status
indicator is the language vitality index designed by Lewis and Simons (2010) and published in
in facilitating literacy building, education, and access to healthcare, which are the
main aspects of human capital5 in our empirical framework developed in Sect. 3.
High ethnolinguistic fragmentation is found to have a negative impact on the
amount and the accessibility of public goods including education and health services
(Easterly and Levine 1997; Alesina et al. 1999, 2003; Englebert 2000; Ensor and
Cooper 2004) through at least three channels (Habyarimana et al. 2007). The
first one is preferences. Due to cultural values and norms, the optimal amount,
types and location of public goods vary by ethnolinguistic group (Bates 1973).
The second channel is the advantages of belonging to the same group. Due to
common language and norms, cooperation within homogenous societies is expected
to be more efficient than within heterogeneous communities (Hardin 1995) and
since non-cooperating co-ethnics are easily identifiable in homogenous groups, the
punishment of undesirable actions are more likely (Miguel and Gugerty 2005). The
third channel is the possibility that the strategy of individual behavior in certain
situations depends on with whom they interact: noncooperative behavior is more
likely between non-co-ethnics (Fearon and Laitin 1996).
The second dimension of the language situation which is expected to influence
the accumulation of human capital is the difference in the status of languages
that people speak in the society. While certain indigenous languages are officially
recognized in national or provincial public administration and education, others
are not. Certain languages are standardized and used in the media, while others
do not even exist in written form. Yet, established orthography is necessary for
textbook development. Moreover, while certain languages are used for interethnic
communication and are attached with high social prestige, others are viewed as
inferior and are being abandoned by younger generations.
Sociolinguists highlight that children who are not brought up or not proficient in
languages in which schooling is provided are more likely to perform worse in school
and drop out of the education system leading to lower self-confidence in general
(Batibo 2005: 55). Speaking the “right” language is expected to determine one’s
success on the labor market through increasing productivity, lowering the costs of
job search, increasing the ability to negotiate about the terms of employment, and
serving as a signal to employers (Casale and Posel 2011). While most empirical
studies are concerned with the effect of immigrants’ language proficiency on wages
in developed countries (see Chiswick 1991 on the United States, Dustmann and
van Soest 2002 on Germany, and Shields and Wheatly Price 2002 on the United
Kingdom), there is less evidence on the relationship between language proficiency
and earnings in traditionally multilingual developing countries. Moreover, if avail-
able at all, research on developing countries provides evidence only on the positive
effect of speaking the official language usually inherited from former colonizers
Lewis et al. (2015). The vitality of languages is evaluated along five dimensions: identity function,
official recognition, intergenerational transmission, literacy status (standardized orthography), and
use among younger generations.
5 For surveys on human capital measurement, see Wößmann (2003) and Becker (2007).
(Azam et al. 2013 on India, Casale and Posel 2011 on South Africa, and Godoy et
al. 2007 on the Tsimane’ group in Bolivia) but ignores the potential economic value
of indigenous languages. The status of language also affects the health component
of human capital: minority language speakers are less likely to gain access to health
services and know about epidemics or disease prevention (Batibo 2005).
The status of certain languages was determined centuries ago. Languages
that had important roles in interethnic communication and especially trade long
before the colonial times such as Hausa (Niger and Nigeria) and Swahili (Eastern
Africa) are still prestigious and used as lingue franche by millions across country
boundaries. Amharic, which was already a written language before the Common
Era, is the single official language of Ethiopia.
However, the current status of African languages is largely determined by
the colonial language policies maintained after independence. Although most
countries have a European official language, the educational role of local languages
predominantly follows the old colonial patterns. While Belgian Congo (currently
the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and former British colonies have been pro-
moting African languages in primary schooling since the beginning of the twentieth
century, former French and Portuguese colonies have started to experiment with
local languages only in the 1990s (Albaugh 2014).
If it is well known that mother tongue education contributes to more efficient
human capital accumulation and the proficiency in official languages is still poor in
Sub-Saharan Africa, one might ask why colonial language policies were not given
up after independence. The answer to this question is complex.
Changing historically embedded laws and rules is very likely to violate the status
quo (existing power relations) and the preference of the society. Political leaders
of post-independence African countries often argued that choosing an external lan-
guage would prevent from giving extended privilege to certain linguistic and cultural
groups which would lead to civil unrest (Bokamba and Tlou 1977). However, it is
easy to see that securing the hegemony of the colonial language, especially in former
French territories, served the elite’s interests. Historical evidence suggests that the
French colonial education system provided disproportionate access to the European-
type education, French language, and colonial administrative positions to certain
groups (Blanton et al. 2001). Henceforth, keeping French as the single official
and educational language after independence reinforced the political and social
power of these previously prioritized groups. Moreover, since European languages
have always been seen as the languages of power, social prestige, and economic
opportunities in African societies (Bunyi 1999), introducing local languages in
education, even if at the lower levels only, might lead to the dissatisfaction of
African people. This is so, even though it is shown that proficiency in the mother
tongue helps accumulating second languages (Eriksson 2014; Taylor and von Fintel
2016).
The other, less sophisticated, reason for not changing the existing language
policy is that language recognition is a costly enterprise which is expected to
pay off only in the long run. While the costs of translating official documents,
applying translators in public administration and healthcare, publishing textbooks,
and training teachers occur immediately, the benefits such as increased human
capital and higher productivity are experienced later. Analyzing the economic
and social costs and benefits of multilingual policies has been the main concern
of several studies on Canada (Vaillancourt and Coche 2009) and the enlarging
European Union (among others, see Ginsburgh et al. 2005).
Although descriptive analyses and case studies are available, comprehensive for-
mal theories explaining language policy choices are rare. Laitin and Ramachandran
(2015) develop a game theoretical model to explain the official language choices
in postcolonial multilingual societies. They argue that the likelihood of language
regime change, namely, switching from colonial to an indigenous official language,
is dependent on the extent of linguistic diversity and the availability of a writing
tradition. High linguistic diversity is associated with more challenging coordination
difficulties which are expected to reduce the probability of giving up the status
quo, the colonial language. The recognition of an indigenous language is again
less possible when it does not have an established orthography: as highlighted
above, institutionalization and standardization impose high initial fixed cost. Their
model explains well the current official language patterns across the world including
Africa.
Quite uniquely, three recent empirical political science papers have attempted
to analyze the effects of language policies on the dimensions of human and
economic development. Ramachandran (2017) investigates the effects of providing
mother tongue education for certain linguistic groups (Oromo, Sidama, Tigrinya,
and Wolaita) in a limited number of regions of Ethiopia in 1994. He finds
that mother tongue education has increased reading abilities and decreased the
likelihood of both dropping out of primary schooling and holding an agricultural
job. Compared to previous works, which usually focus on individual countries,
two papers rely on global samples. Laitin and Ramachandran (2016) investigate
how the linguistic distance of the official language from local languages6 and the
exposure to official language determine human capital accumulation and health.
They assume that the higher the distance between official and indigenous languages
and the lower the exposure to official languages, the higher the costs of learning and
accessing health information, thus the lower the probability of accumulating human
capital and obtain sufficient healthcare. Their hypotheses are supported by various
subsamples (country-level analysis containing information on almost 150 countries,
individual-level data from the Indian National Family Health Survey 2005–2006,
and individual-level data from the second round of the Southern and Eastern Africa
Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality program).
Liu and Pizzi (2016) analyze the development effects of language policies
in multilingual countries from a different angle. They argue that one of the
shortcomings of the empirical works on diversity and development is that they
neglect the communication role of languages. While it is well-acknowledged that
6 The linguistic distance is based on the linguistic tree diagram of Ethnologue (Lewis et al. 2014)
and is computed as proposed by Fearon (2003).
ethnolinguistic diversity is harmful,7 the potential beneficial impacts of speaking

other languages than one’s mother tongue are not explored. Their empirical models
have two important findings. First, the negative effect of ethnolinguistic diversity
on economic growth turns insignificant when the share of the society speaking
the official language (not necessary as mother tongue) is controlled for. Second,
the share of the population speaking the official language is positively related
to growth. The main policy implication of this study is that government policies
can neutralize the potential harmful effects of diversity and promote economic
performance by supporting official language learning. This finding is in line with
Laitin and Ramachandran (2016) who argued that exposure to official languages is
beneficial for individual well-being.
3 Data Description
Conceptualizing and quantifying well-being, either at the country or individual

level, have proved a fundamental challenge in social sciences in the past decades.
Initially, material welfare was approximated by the core national account indicators
such as gross domestic product (GDP) and gross national income (GNI), since
these are readily available for many countries and are correlated with other possible
measures of well-being. Yet, the shortcomings of GDP and GNI in this respect are
obvious and much discussed.8 Since the 1990s, various aspects of the well-being
are represented by a handful of composite indicators of which Human Development
Index (HDI, UNDP 2014) is perhaps the most popular. HDI can be defined as a
composite measure of the average achievement of a country in three key quality-
of-life attributes, namely, education, health, and income. For sake of comparison,
the three components are transformed so that they take values between 0 and 1 and
then averaged with equal weights. While HDI is clearly a step forward in measuring
well-being in internationally comparable way, it also has statistical shortcomings.9
Furthermore, we wish to identify the relationship between linguistic variables,
7 Although the majority of the literature argues that ethnolinguistic diversity has negative societal
consequences, some studies find that the effect of diversity on socioeconomic outcomes is
insignificant (Gerring et al. 2015), not convincing (Fish and Brooks 2004), even positive (Arcand
and Grin 2013), or dependent on other factors (Easterly 2001; Collier 2000).
8 For a detailed description of the types and evolution of well-being measures, see Fleurbaey and
Blanchet (2013: 1–8).

9 A major disadvantage of HDI, often neglected in the literature, is that it assigns arbitrary weights
to its components. Bear in mind that the components of HDI (education, life expectancy, and per
capita income) all contain the latent well-being factors and hence they each have a common piece
of information (often referred to as commonality). This is the reason why we find a moderate to
strong correlation between them. Aggregating them with equal weight necessarily means that the
same factor is taken into account multiple times (double counting). The resulting variable will have
higher variance than the latent well-being factor that it is supposed to represent.
SYC
10 GNQ
1
GABMUS GNQ ZAF
BWA SYC
GABMUS
SWZ
ZAF BDI
NAM ZWE BWA
Adult literacy rate

logarithm of GNI
.8
NAM
LSO
9
AGO COM
NGA SWZ SDN AGOUGA KEN
CMR GHA
ERI STP
TZA
RWA MDG
SDN STP GHA COD MWITGO ZMB
MRT
CIV ZMBLSO MRT
.6
CMR GNB CAFCIV
8
SEN KEN
GMB
MOZ SENNGA
BFATCD BEN SLE TZA
MLI GMB COM
RWA
ETH MDGUGA ZWE SLELBR
GIN GNB ERI TGO ETH
MOZ
.4
7
NER TCD
MLI
LBR MWIBDI
CAF BFA
NER BEN
GIN
COD
.2
6
-2 -1 0 1 2 -2 -1 0 1 2
standardized latent human capital standardized latent human capital
ZAF
10
80
SYC
Average years of schooling
BWA
MUS
Life expectancy at birth

MUS SYC
8
GAB
70
GHA ZWE
SWZ
ZMB STP
KEN
NAM MDG NAM
CMR
LSO ETH RWA
SEN
ERI GABBWA
6
UGA GNQ SDN

MRT TZA KEN
NGATGO
MDG
TZA LBR COM GHA
ZWE
BEN UGA
60
SEN STP
AGO NER GMB ZMB
CIV
MWI BFA TGO ZAF
LBR MRT GIN MWI CMR
MLI GNB
4
CAF
RWAERI BDI GNQ
BEN MOZCODSDN NGA AGO
SLE
GMB COMBDI TCD
ETH GNB MOZCAFCIV
COD LSO SWZ
50
MLI
GIN
2
NER
BFATCD SLE
40
0
-2 -1 0 1 2 -2 -1 0 1 2
standardized latent human capital standardized latent human capital
Fig. 1 Scatterplots between per capita GNI, literacy, average years of education and life
expectancy, and the latent human capital variable
human capital, and per capita income separately, which requires that we rather
focus on the components of HDI than the aggregate measure itself. The composite
HDI measure is rather used to illustrate the relationship between well-being and the
language situation as the starting point of this study (Figs. 1, 2, 3, 4).
In this paper, per capita income is measured by the gross national income per
capita in 2013, expressed in international dollar at 2011 prices. As usual, we will
take the natural logarithm of GNI for the statistical analysis, to correct for its strong
positive skew.10
Human capital is commonly defined as those skills and abilities that are used in
creating new value and result in additional income (Mincer 1958). We use three
proxy variables of human capital: literacy, average years of education, and life
expectancy at birth. Human capital is usually decomposed into two components:
raw labor (or health component)11 and educational component. The first receives
relatively little attention in most empirical studies, since developed countries
all have high life expectancy and comparable access to general healthcare. As
a result, we should not expect that observed income differences among high-
10 Positive skew means that most individuals have lower than average income or in other words,
low incomes are common, and high incomes are rare.

11 See Weil (2007).
.8
.8 SYC
MUS MUS
SYC
BWA BWA
.7
.7
GAB GAB
ZAF ZAF
NAM NAM
HDI in 2013
HDI in 2013
.6
.6
GHA
COG ZMB GHAZMB COG
STP GNQ GNQ
SWZ AGO KEN SWZ KEN AGO
MDG RWA NGA
CMR RWAMDGCMR
NGA
COM LSO MRT ZWE SEN TZA
UGA MRT
COM
TZA
UGA SEN LSO ZWE
.5
.5
DJI SDN BEN TGO BEN

DJI TGO
CIV
GMB GMB CIV
ETH ETH
MWI MLI LBR MWI
MLI LBR
BDI GNB
MOZ
GIN GIN
BDIGNB MOZ
ERI BFA BFA
.4
ERI
.4
SLE TCD SLE

TCD
NER CAF
COD NER COD CAF
.3
.3
0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 0 .2 .4 .6 .8
Linguistic diversity (Alesina et al.) % speaking the former colonizers language (Albaugh)
.8
.8
MUS MUS
SYC SYC
BWA BWA
.7
.7
GAB GAB
ZAF ZAF
NAM NAM
HDI in 2013
HDI in 2013
.6
.6
ZMB GHA
COG COG
ZMB GHA
GNQ STP STP
GNQ
AGO KEN SWZ AGO KEN SWZ
CMR
NGA RWA
MDG CMR RWA
NGA
MDG
UGA ZWE SEN TZACOM
MRT LSO COM
SEN MRT ZWEUGA
TZA LSO
.5
TGO BEN
DJI SDN
.5 BEN
TGO
DJI SDN
GMBCIVETH CIV
GMB ETH
MWI LBR LBR MWI
MOZ GIN
BFA GNB MLI BDI MOZ
GIN
BFA
MLI
GNB BDI
.4
.4
TCD ERI SLE TCD SLE

COD NER CAF CAF NER COD
.3
.3
.2 .4 .6 .8 1 0 2 4 6 8 10
Largest language speaker share (Albaugh) ILLED_1990
Fig. 2 Scatterplots between the linguistic variables and HDI
SYC SYC
GNQ GNQ
10
10
MUS GAB MUS GAB

BWA BWA
ZAF ZAF
NAM NAM
logarithm of GNI
logarithm of GNI
9
AGO AGO
SWZ NGA SWZ NGA
COG COG
GHA GHA
STP MRT DJI SDN DJI
MRT
LSO CIV ZMB
CMR
ZMB
CMR LSOCIV
8
SEN KEN SEN

KEN
SLE SLE
COM BFA BEN
GMB TCD
MLI
TZA GMB
BENTCD
TZA
BFA
COM
MLIRWA
MDG RWA ZWE ETH UGA ETH UGA MDG ZWE
ERI GIN
GNB TGO ERI
GINGNB TGO
MOZ MOZ
7
NER NER
BDI MWI LBR BDI
MWI LBR
CAF CAF
COD COD
6
0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 0 .2 .4 .6 .8
SYC SYC
GNQ GNQ
10
10
GAB MUS GAB

MUS
BWA BWA
ZAF ZAF
NAM NAM
logarithm of GNI
logarithm of GNI
9
AGO AGO
NGA SWZ SWZ
NGA
COG COG
GHA SDN SDN GHA
DJI ZMB STP
MRT STP
DJI
ZMB MRT
CMR CIV LSO CIV
CMR LSO
8
KEN SEN SEN KEN

SLE SLE
BFATCDBEN
GMB MLI
TZA
COM
BEN
BFA
GMB
COM TCD MLI
TZA
UGA ETH ZWE RWA
MDG ETH ZWEUGA RWA
MDG
GINTGO ERI
GNB GIN
TGO GNB
MOZ MOZ
7
NER NER
MWI LBR BDI LBR MWI BDI
CAF CAF
COD COD
6
.2 .4 .6 .8 1 0 2 4 6 8 10
Fig. 3 Scatterplots between the linguistic variables and GNI

ZAF ZAF
2 SYC SYC
2
BWA
MUS MUS BWA
SWZ GAB SWZ GAB
latent human capital

ZWE ZWE
GNQ GNQ
GHA GHA
1
1
LSO NAM KEN NAM LSO
KEN
CMR
ZMBUGA UGA CMR
ZMB
MDG STP BDI AGO TGO TZA TZA MDG AGO
BDI TGO
MWIERI SDN CIV NGA MWI NGA
0
0
COM ERI COM CIV
RWA
MRT SEN RWA
MRTCOD SEN
CAF
COD CAF
MOZ LBR LBR MOZ
GMB
GNB GMB GNB
SLE SLE
-1
-1
ETH
BEN ETH BEN
MLI
TCD MLI TCD
NER BFAGIN NER
GIN
BFA
-2
-2
0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 0 .2 .4 .6 .8
ZAF ZAF
SYC SYC
2
2
MUS BWA MUS BWA
GAB SWZ GAB SWZ

ZWE ZWE
GNQ GNQ
GHA GHA
1
1
NAM KEN LSO KEN NAM
LSO
UGA CMR ZMB CMR
ZMB UGA
AGOTGO STPTZAMDG AGO
STP
TGO
TZA MDG
BDI BDI
NGA CIV SDN MWI ERI MWI NGA
0
0
COM COM
CIV SDN
MRT
SEN RWA SEN MRT RWA
COD CAF CAF COD
MOZ LBR MOZ
LBR
GMB GNB GMB GNB
SLE SLE
-1
-1
ETH
BEN BEN ETH
TCD MLI TCD MLI
BFA
GIN NER BFA
GIN NER
-2
-2
.2 .4 .6 .8 1 0 2 4 6 8 10
Fig. 4 Scatterplots between the linguistic variables and human capital
income countries depend much on life expectancy. In less developed countries

(LDCs henceforth), however, there are striking differences in the expected lifespan,
which strongly affects the available workforce and is likely to result in significant
differences in the observed income levels. It is therefore important that for our
analysis on Sub-Saharan Africa, we introduce life expectancy as part of human
capital, a proxy of health and longevity. The educational component captures the
effect of formal schooling on the labor productivity of individuals. The primary
indicator for formal educational attainment is the average years of education, but
since in LDCs a significant portion of the population may still lack fundamental
skills such as literacy, we also use literacy rates. Unlike the new version of the
HDI, we do not use the expected years of schooling that projects current enrolment
rates among the youth into future average years of education, since that is not
representative of the current situation.
Table 1 Factor loadings from a factor analysis after VARIMAX rotationa

Factor 1 Factor 2 Uniqueness
Standardized literacy 0.867 −0.187 0.249
Standardized education 0.894 −0.059 0.133
Standardized life expectancy 0.326 0.265 0.775
Eigenvalueb 1.734 0.109
Variance explained 89.9% 10.1%
a This table can be interpreted so that a linear combination of the three components,
0.867·Literacy + 0.894·Education + 0.326·LifeExpectancy, yields a variable that capture almost

90% of the variance being the three variables. Hence it can be considered the main factor driving
all three processes
b From the unrotated FA
Literacy12 data for 2013 is available from the UNESCO, while the average years
of schooling for the year 2012 and the life expectancy at birth in 2013 were taken
from UNDP (2014). We do not only use the three components of human capital
but also employ factor analysis to estimate the latent human capital variable. Factor
analysis (or FA) is a multivariate statistical technique that explains the observed
correlation among k variables by less than k common factors. The factors can be
estimated as a linear combination (weighted sum) of the underlying variables. Since
the three variables are measured by different units, they are standardized prior to the
procedure.13 Table 1 has the summary of the results.
We extracted two factors, of which the first can explain 89.9% of the observed
variance of the three component variables. The loadings on Factor 1 are all positive
as expected; hence, we can interpret it as the common human capital factor, and after
standardization, we will use it further as a latent human capital variable. It is worth
noting that the uniqueness (one minus commonality14) of literacy and education are
quite low, meaning that the two common factors explain 75–85% of their observed
variance of the three variables. Life expectancy is highly unique: it is also affected
by other factors than human capital, which is not surprising. Figure 1 shows the
relationship between the different indicators and the estimated latent human capital
variable. The strong positive relationship between human capital and per capita GNI
at the upper left corner corresponds with previous studies. Also, the scatterplots
12 The literacy rate reported by UNESCO is understood as the share of the population aged 15
or above who can, with understanding, read and write a short simple sentence on their everyday
life. However, UNESCO data are based on various sources such as population censuses and the
Demographic and Health Surveys (DHSs) which differ in terms of literacy measurement. While
reading abilities of those with unfinished primary schooling are actually tested in the DHSs, literacy
data in population censuses are usually based on self-report.
13 Standardization is the rescaling of a variable so that it has zero mean and unit standard deviation.
14 Communality measures the share of observed variance of a variable that is explained by the
extracted factors. Since factors are common among all variables, this measure can be seen as an
indicator of the fit of the underlying factor model.
visualize what we found in Table 1: the latent human capital factor is more strongly
correlated with education and literacy rate than with life expectancy.
The language situation and language policy are measured with four variables.
The linguistic diversity indicator, drawn from Alesina et al. (2003), is interpreted
as the probability that two randomly selected people from the society belong to
different groups defined by their mother tongues.15 The possible beneficial effects
of multilingualism in linguistically fragmented societies are measured with the share
of the population speaking the former colonizer’s language (CL share, which is the
official language in most cases) and the largest indigenous language (LIL share)
as primary or second. The language policy is captured with the Intensity of Local
Language Use in Education (ILLED) (Albaugh 2014: 235–236). ILLED has two
dimensions. The proportion of local languages is measured on a scale from 0 to
5, and the extent of language use in the primary schooling can assume five values
between 1 and 2.16 Then, these two values are multiplied, thus ILLED can assume
a finite number of values between 0 and 10 (see the Appendix). Although the
measure is available for three points in time (at independence, 1990 and 2010),
we present only those computed for 1990 (discussion is provided later). Table 2
reports the correlation coefficients between the different linguistic variables. Since
the ILLED variable is measured on an ordinal scale, we preferred the Spearman rank
correlation, which, however, has the same interpretation as the linear correlation
coefficient but requires only the assumption of monotonicity.17
The small to medium magnitude coefficients in Table 2 suggest that the four
linguistic variables capture different aspects of the linguistic situation and hence
none of them are redundant. This is important since many studies in development
economics apply linguistic diversity to capture the effect of linguistic heterogeneity,
even though this variable reflects just a single aspect of the linguistic situation.
The signs of the correlation coefficients are as expected: if a single local language
dominates in the society, we have a lower linguistic diversity (−0.503), and the
dominant local language is expected to play a more profound role in education
15 Alesina et al. (2003) utilize the Encyclopedia Britannica 2001 that reports the share of languages
spoken as mother tongue, generally based on national census data. Issues related to using national
censuses and other surveys to describe a country’s linguistic situation as well as the discrepancy
between linguistic terms used in linguistics and in national surveys are discussed in Buzasi (2016).
16 The proportion of local languages used in education can assume 0 (no local language used),
1 (classical Arabic), 2 (single minority language), 3 (few languages or one major language), 4
(several languages or one dominant language), and 5 (most languages or one overwhelmingly
dominant language). The extent of local language use in primary education can assume 1
(experimental), 1.2 (moderate), 1.5 (extensive), 1.8 (generalized), and 2 (exclusive).
17 The linear correlation coefficient would require that the variables are at least on an interval scale,
that is, an increase in the value from 0 to 1 and from 1 to 2 represents the same degree of change.
This is obviously not true for the variable ILLED, since all we know is that, say, the value 2
represents a higher degree of local language use in education than the value of 1 or 0, but we cannot
argue that the difference between the categories 1 and 0 is the same as between the categories 2
and 1. All we can assume is that the order of the assigned values are monotonic and increasing.
Table 2 Spearman rank correlation coefficients between language variables

Linguistic diversity CL share LIL share ILLED 1990
Linguistic diversity 1
CL share 0.081 1
LIL share −0.503*** −0.158 1
ILLED 1990 −0.275* −0.095 0.395*** 1
Note: *** and * denote coefficients significant at 1% and 10%, respectively
(0.395). Finally, we find that a higher linguistic diversity is associated with a lower
intensity of local languages in education (−0.275).
Figures 2, 3, and 4 visualize the relationship among the four linguistic variables
and three of our key variables related to welfare: HDI, GNI per capita, and
human capital. Generally, we can argue that a higher degree of linguistic diversity
is associated with lower levels of human development, per capita income, and
human capital endowment. A higher share of speakers of the colonizer’s language
seems to have a positive relationship with all the three variables.18 The picture
is less straightforward for the population share of the largest language speaker
group and the use of local languages in education. We find that countries with a
more dominant language tend to have somewhat higher human capital stock but
slightly lower per capita income. However, none of the slopes of the three related
univariate regression lines are significant. Although the intensity of local language
use in education (ILLED_1990) exhibits a slight positive relationship with the
three development-related variables, the coefficients of the linear regressions are
insignificant. Statistically, the insignificance of the coefficients is explained with
the high number of countries with various levels in terms of the three development
variables where the value of ILLED_1990 is zero. If these countries are excluded,
we find a significant positive relationship between ILLED and HDI, log GNI,
and human capital on the sample of the remaining 26 countries (figures are not
presented).
What we observe here is already indicative that language situation may affect
human capital and per capita income differently, via direct and indirect channels.
As a result, for an efficient language policy recommendation, these channels need
to be identified, and the magnitude of the effects should be estimated. This is done
in the next section. Table 3 has the summary statistics of the variables used in this
chapter.19
18 Gabon seems to behave as an outlier in the graphs, but removing it from our sample does not
significantly change the results.

19 Sub-Saharan African countries in the sample are Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso,
Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo,
Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Kenya,
Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia,
Niger, Nigeria, Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles,
300
Table 3 Descriptive statistics

Number of Standard
Name Name in empirical analysis observations Mean deviation Source
Human Development Index (HDI) in HDI 46 0.490 0.104 UNDP (2014)
2013
The share of literate population in Literacy 44 0.631 0.193 UNESCO (2013)
2012
Average years of education in 2012 Education 46 4.65 years 2.17 years UNDP (2014)
Life expectancy at birth in 2013 Life expectancy 46 58.3 years 6.09 years UNDP (2014)
Human capital (latent variable) hc 44 0 1 Own estimates
Gross national income (GNI) per GNI per capita 46 4328$ 5763$ UNDP (2014)
capita in 2013 at 2011 prices
Gross capital formation (% GDP) in GCF 42 24.04% 10.9% World Bank (2013)
2013
Urbanization rate in 2010 Urban 48 38.6% 16.3% United Nations (2015)
Linguistic diversity Diversity 47 0.629 0.274 Alesina et al. (2003)
The share of colonial language CL share 44 0.184 0.158 Albaugh (2014)
speakers
The share of the largest indigenous LIL share 47 0.705 0.197 Albaugh (2014)
language speaker
Intensity of Local Language Use in ILLED 1990 46 3.56 3.67 Albaugh (2014)
Education in 1990
K. Buzási and P. Földvári
4 Empirical Analysis
As discussed in the previous section, there seems to be a statistical relationship

among the linguistic situation, human capital, and per capita income. Yet, the exact
relationship is unknown, and learning more about it is indispensable for any further
assessments of the net and total effect of language-related factors on well-being.
First, we estimate a simple system of equations with OLS method to find out
if we need to cope with a problem of simultaneity20 (Table 4). We also report the
standardized or beta coefficients that remove the effect of the units of measurements
and directly estimate the importance of an explanatory variable in explaining the
variance of the dependent variable. The dependent variable is the logarithm of the
per capita GNI in Model 1 and 3 and the latent human capital in Model 2 and
4. The models also include the Gross Capital Formation21 to capture the effect of
physical capital accumulation. According to the Breusch-Pagan test, the error term
is homoscedastic, that is, the error’s variance is constant and does not depend on
any explanatory variables.
The results in Table 4 are indicative of a simultaneous relationship between per
capita GNI and human capital. The beta coefficients (both around 0.6) suggest that
this endogenous relationship is the most decisive in shaping the observed values of
both key variables. The most important finding from our aspect is that the effects
of the language-related variables on human capital are different from those on
per capita GNI. While linguistic variables do not seem to influence income once
human capital is accounted for (specifications 1 and 3), two of the four linguistic
variables are positively related to human capital accumulation once per capita
income is fixed (specification 2 and 4). The beta coefficients in specification 4
suggest that the intensity of local language use in education (ILLED_1990)22 and
the share of colonial language speakers (CL_share) are almost equally important in
explaining the variance in the dependent variable: a unit standard deviation increase
in ILLED_1990 and CL share is associated with about 0.3 standard deviation rise in
human capital with other factors hold fixed. Linguistic diversity and the share of the
population speaking the largest local language do not yield significant coefficients.
It should be noted, however, that the results in Table 4 are affected by the effect
of simultaneity, which causes a reduction in the efficiency of the estimates and
Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, the Gambia, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and
Zimbabwe. Important data are not available for Djibouti, Somalia, and South Sudan.
20 Simultaneity means that the causality runs both ways between two variables. For example, more
education may lead to higher income, but higher income may also result in a higher educational
attainment.
21 Gross capital formation is the total value of investments in physical capital stock (equipment,
machines, buildings, etc.). It consists of two components: one is the depreciation (the loss of capital
stock as a result of wear) and the net change in capital stock (net capital formation).
22 The explanatory variable ILLED_1990 is treated as a variable measured on an interval scale. This
common technique used in social sciences is chosen to limit the number of explanatory variables
relative to the sample size.
Table 4 Initial OLS estimates of log GNI and the latent HC factor
(1) (2) (3) (4)
Log GNI p.c. Latent HC
Log GNI p.c. Latent HC (standardized) (standardized)
GCF 0.0249*** (2.41) −0.0163* (−1.73) 0.266*** (2.41) −0.189* (−1.73)
Log GNI p.c. – 0.508*** (3.96) – 0.551*** (3.96)
Latent HC 0.616*** – 0.609*** –
(3.96) (3.96)
Diversity −0.666 −0.121 −0.174 −0.034
(−1.19) (−0.24) (−1.19) (−0.24)
ILLED1990 −0.029 0.087*** −0.105 0.341***
(−0.78) (3.00) (−0.78) (3.00)
CL share 0.963 1.785** 0.157 0.316**
(1.07) (2.42) (1.107) (2.42)
LIL share −1.157 0.506 −0.231 0.109
(−1.59) (0.77) (−1.59) (0.77)
Constant 8.316*** −4.491*** – –
(9.52) (−3.49)
N 38 38 38 38
adj. R2 0.570 0.585 0.570 0.585
T-statistics in parentheses, homoscedasticity of the error term was not rejected at 10%. * p < 0.1,
** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01
introduce a bias as well. For this reason, we do not use the results in Table 4 for
model selection and do not remove the insignificant language-related variables from
the empirical analysis.
For the isolation of the causal effects, we make use of our finding that two
linguistic variables (ILLED 1990 and the CL share) affect GNI indirectly through
human capital accumulation, and we include two additional variables (instruments)
in the equation for log GNI: urbanization rate in 2010 and the distance from the
equator. Urbanization is a variable known for its strong relationship with per capita
income, and empirical literature also observed that countries closer the equator are
on average poorer23 (Ram 1997; Theil and Finke 1983). Furthermore, we assume
that LIL share and language diversity may affect both variables directly. To shed
light on the causal relationship between per capita income and human capital, the
coefficients of Eqs. (1) and (2) are estimated with a two-stage GMM procedure.
23 Kamarck (1976) proposed that a country’s geographical location has a significant effect on
its ability to develop. The tropics is characterized with climatic and biological conditions such
as erratic patterns of rainfalls, soil of poor quality, lack of mineral resources, and a variety of
weeds, fungi, insects, and other microbes, which affect crops and human life negatively. Due to the
aforementioned factors, labor productivity and human and nonhuman capital accumulation tend to
be low.
Table 5 Results from the first stage of the two-stage GMM estimation procedure
(1) (2) (3) (4)
Log GNI p.c. (standardized) Latent HC (standardized)
GCF 0.0240** 0.256** −0.00613 −0.066
(2.12) (2.12) (−0.69) (−0.69)
Urban 0.0260*** 0.408*** 0.0182** 0.281**
(2.78) (2.78) (2.25) (2.25)
lndisteq 0.118 0.122 −0.0657 −0.069
(1.13) (1.13) (−0.46) (−0.46)
Diversity −1.168* −0.303* −1.022 −0.271
(−1.82) (−1.82) (−1.50) (−1.50)
ILLED1990 0.0656* 0.238* 0.129*** 0.471***
(1.87) (1.87) (3.33) (3.33)
CL share 2.057* 0.335* 2.685*** 0.444***
(2.01) (2.01) (3.86) (3.86)
LIL share −1.284* −0.257* −0.257 −0.052
(−1.99) (−1.99) (−0.35) (−0.35)
Constant 6.409*** – −0.240 –
(6.46) (−0.16)
N 39 39 39 39
F-test 15.84 15.84 6.09 6.09
adj. R2 0.495 0.456 0.456
T statistics in parentheses, homoscedasticity of the error term was not rejected at 10%. * p < 0.1,
** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01
Results from the first and second stage estimations are presented in Tables 5 and 6,
respectively.
ln GNI p.c.i = α0 + α1 GCFi + α2 HCi + α3 urbani + α4 lndisteqi

+α5 diversityi + α6 LIL sharei + ui (1)
HCi = β0 + β1 ln GNI p.c.i + β2 GCFi + β3 diversityi + β4 ILLED1990i

+β5 LIL sharei + β6 CL sharei + vi (2)
The coefficients from the first-stage regressions can be interpreted as the total
effect of exogenous variables and the additional instruments on the endogenous
variables (log GNI per capita and the latent human capital). Note that in Model
1 and 3 of Table 5, where human capital is omitted from the equation of GNI, the
linguistic variables become significant again. This confirms our earlier observation
that human capital is the main channel of the effects of linguistic situation on per
capita income. The intensity of local language use in schooling and the share of
colonial language speakers are positive, while the linguistic diversity and the share
Table 6 Results from the second stage (GMM)

(1) (2) (3) (4)
Log GNI p.c. Latent HC (standardized) (standardized)
Latent HC 0.626*** – 0.575*** –
(3.38) (3.73)
Log GNI p.c. – 0.619** – 0.656**
(2.56) (2.54)
GCF 0.029*** −0.0213** 0.316*** −0.249**
(3.40) (−2.37) (3.49) (−2.43)
Urban 0.0199*** – 0.335*** –
(3.16) (3.20)
lndisteq 0.137** – 0.141* –
(2.10) (1.95)
Diversity −0.621 −0.034 −0.184 −0.056
(−1.27) (−0.08) (−1.37) (−0.04)
ILLED 1990 – 0.072*** – 0.287***
(2.69) (2.64)
CL share – 1.640* – 0.278*
(1.93) (1.95)
LIL share −1.221** 0.935 −0.243** 0.192
(−2.21) (1.35) (−2.23) (1.31)
Constant 6.631*** −5.526*** – –
(9.38) (−2.68)
N 38 38 38 38
R2 0.701 0.660 0.701 0.603
Weak identification 0.0004 0.009 0.0002 0.007
test (p-value)
Hansen test (p-value) 0.547(d.f. = 1) 0.243(d.f. = 1) 0.565(d.f. = 1) 0.235(d.f. = 1)
Robust t statistics in parentheses. *p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01
of the largest indigenous language speakers are negatively related to per capita
income. The results of the model with human capital as the dependent variable do
not differ much from those in the OLS estimates. Therefore we can expect that the
linguistic variables will affect human capital accumulation in the long run.
The second stage is used to estimate the relationship with the effect of simultane-
ity removed (Table 6). In this step, the original specification is estimated but with the
instrumented endogenous variables. As a result, the coefficients can be interpreted
as causal relationships.
Before accepting the results, two diagnostics tests must be carried out. The
first test examines if the instruments we have chosen are sufficiently related to
the endogenous variables. If our instruments are just loosely correlated with the
endogenous variables, then the whole two-step estimation procedure will lead to
biased estimates, and the cure is worse than the illness. Even though one of the F-
tests in the first-stage regressions was lower than the rule of thumb (F > 10) would
require, the weak identification test rejects the null hypothesis of weak instrument
problem at 1%.
The second test (Hansen test) concerns the exogeneity and excludability of the
instruments. If the instruments are themselves endogenous or if they have a direct
effect on the dependent variable, then they cannot be used as additional instruments.
The Hansen test cannot reject the null hypothesis at any conventional level of
significance that the excluded instruments are proper. Therefore, we can move on to
the interpretation of the results in Table 6.
First, we find evidence that human capital has a positive effect on per capita
income in Sub-Saharan Africa, and that a growth in per capita income also increases
human capital, a simultaneous relationship that is expected. Similarly, we can
confirm that urbanization has a positive effect on per capita income and that
countries further away from the equator have on average higher per capita income.
Second, we find that once we include all four linguistic variables, linguistic
diversity does not have any statistically significant effect on per capita national
income and human capital, at least in the short run. The share of the largest language
group yields a positive, statistically insignificant coefficient in the human capital
equation and a significant negative coefficient in the per capita GNI equation.
Two language-related variables, the share of colonial language speakers and the
ILLED_1990, yield positive, significant coefficients in the human capital equation.
The coefficient suggests that one unit increase in the ILLED_1990 score results in a
0.072 standard deviation increase in human capital. Similarly, a 1% point growth
of the share of speakers of the colonizer language results in a 0.0.016 standard
deviation increase in human capital on average. To judge the size of these effects,
it is better to turn to the beta coefficients: the beta coefficients are both in the close
vicinity of 0.3, which points at the comparable importance of the ILLED_1990 and
CL share in affecting average human capital endowment. The only factor having
a larger effect on human capital is, not surprisingly, the per capita income itself
(beta = 0.656).
5 Discussion and Policy Implications
As the next step, we can estimate the total effect of a unit change in the exogenous
variables on per capita GNI and human capital. The coefficients in Table 6
can be interpreted as immediate, direct effects of the explanatory variable on
either the log per capita income or human capital. Because of the simultaneous
relationship between income and human capital established in Table 4, there will
be a multiplication effect. For example, if the share of speakers of the colonizer
language increases, initially human capital will increase. This direct effect is given
by the coefficient in Table 6. Yet, the effect of CL share is not fully exerted yet.
An increase in human capital, namely, will result in a growth of per capita income,
which will further increase human capital. The total effect is the effect of an increase
Table 7 The total effect of Log GNI Latent HC

linguistic variables on the log
GNI per capita and the latent GCF 0.026** −0.006
human capital variable (2.36) (−0.74)
(t-statistics in parentheses) Urban 0.031*** 0.019**
(5.09) (2.15)
lndisteq 0.145 0.091
(1.55) (1.23)
Diversity −1.19* −0.822
(−1.95) (−1.41)
ILLED1990 0.067*** 0.118***
(2.83) (3.69)
CL share 1.670** 2.945***
(2.70) (4.81)
LIL share −1.212** 0.211
(−2.09) (0.31)
Note: Estimated from a GMM-system
two-step estimation, N = 38, * p < 0.1,
** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01
in an explanatory variable on an endogenous variable with all feedback (spillover)

effects taken account with and hence can be regarded as a long-term effect.
The total effect can be estimated by substituting (1) and (2) into each other and
taking the first derivatives of the resulting equations with respect to the variable of
interest. The estimated coefficients are reported in Table 7.
While in Table 6 we found that capital formation yields significant coefficients,
in Table 7 we only find a significant total effect in case of the per capita GNI, but we
find no relationship between human capital and physical capital accumulation. The
effect of urbanization ratio preserves its positive sign and statistical significance, but
the distance of equator turns out to be insignificant.
Now we turn to the discussion of the language-related variables. The total effect
of linguistic diversity is found to be negative on per capita income at the 10% level
but does not seem to influence human capital accumulation.
The impact of the largest language share on income and human capital is similar
to those of the linguistic diversity: negative total effect on the former while no
significant effect on the latter. However, this relationship sounds counterintuitive.
Since speaking a common language is assumed to foster communication and
decrease the costs of cooperation, we would expect that the share of people being
able to communicate with each other is positively related to economic development
once linguistic diversity is controlled for. We have hoped to solve this puzzle by
reestimating our models on a reduced sample excluding countries where a single
dominant language is spoken as first language by almost everyone (Burundi, Cape
Verde, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritius, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, and
Swaziland). Thus, we excluded countries where the share of the largest language
speakers does not differ significantly from the share of the largest linguistic group
defined by primary language. The idea behind this strategy is that second languages
can execute their expected beneficial effect if there is a need for languages for
interethnic (intergroup) communication, which does not apply to societies with
very low diversity. Nevertheless, reducing the sample has not eliminated the strong
negative effect of LIL share on income.
The intensity of local language use in education has a positive effect on both
dependent variables. If ILLED_1990 increases by 1 unit, human capital is expected
to grow by 0.118 standard error, and the GNI per capita increases by 0.067%.24
This finding suggests that acknowledging the educational role of local languages
promotes human capital which further induces economic growth.
As told in Sect. 3, the intensity of local language use is available for three
points in time: at independence, 1990, and 2010. While former British colonies
still recognize local languages more in general, former French and Portuguese
colonies have started to move away from the practice taken over from the colonial
period. Moreover, some former British colonies (e.g., Ghana and Malawi) have
recently taken a step back and limited the use of African languages in school.
Although empirical results in this chapter are displayed using ILLED_1990 only, we
reestimated our models in Tables 4, 5, 6, and 7 using information for the other two
points in time. While findings with ILLED_independence do not differ qualitatively
from those with ILLED_1990, ILLED_2010 does not seem to explain human capital
and income differences among the sample countries. One possible explanation for
this insignificance might be that the actual implementation of language policies
(designing materials and teaching trainers in local languages) might take time, thus
the beneficial impacts of recognizing local languages cannot be shown immediately.
The share of the population speaking the former colonizer’s language positively
affects human capital accumulation and income. If CL share increases by 1% point,
human capital grows by about 0.03 standard deviation, and per capita GNI grows
by 0.0167%. To make the effect of CL share comparable to that of ILLED_1990,
we calculate the effect of one standard deviation increase in ILLED_1990 and CL
share. A unit standard deviation growth in the intensity of local language use (3.7
points) is related to an increase of 0.43 standard deviation increase in human capital
and 0.25% increase on per capita GNI. The corresponding numbers for CL share
(standard deviation = 0.158 or 15.8% points) are about 0.47 standard deviation and
0.26%, respectively. The effects of the two factors are hence comparable.
However, in order to interpret the policy relevance of the above findings, we have
to take a look at the construction of ILLED and understand what it takes to increase
ILLED by a unit standard deviation (3.7 points). The intensity of local language use
has two pillars (footnote 7): the proportion of the society with recognized language
and the extent of local language use. Since the indicator can assume a value between
0 and 10, a 3.7 point change is relatively large. Holding the second pillar constant
at a certain level, say 1 (experimental), a 3.7 point increase in ILLED would require
24 Note that the latent human capital variable is standardized and GNI per capita is used in the
logarithmic form.
a language policy that moves the country up with four category (for instance, from
category 0 (European language only) to 4 (a language policy that covers 70–85%
of the society) in terms of the first pillar. If the second pillar is held constant at
a higher level, 3.7 point increase in ILLED can be achieved with a smaller jump
along the first component. The possible values of the ILLED along the two pillars
are presented in the Appendix. To explain our result from a different angle, the same
human capital and income effect achieved by increasing the share of the colonizer’s
language speakers by about 16% (unit standard deviation) can be reached by a
language policy that increases the share of the population with recognized language
by 35% to 85%, depending on the initial score along the second pillars. In a country
with low linguistic diversity or a few dominant groups, increasing the share of
people with officially recognized language by about 35% can be implemented by
developing textbooks and providing teacher education in one or two languages.
In countries with high diversity, the same proportion share is more costly since it
requires material development and teacher education in numerous languages.25
This chapter aims to investigate the effects of the dimensions of the language
situation on development through human capital accumulation on a cross section
of about 40 Sub-Saharan African countries. Although one of the novelties of our
study that it takes both indigenous and official languages into account, we cannot
confirm that indigenous languages are as efficient sources of development through
human capital accumulation as are former colonial languages. Rather, our empirical
models confirm what has been found by previous studies which suggest that policies
promoting official language proficiency induce human development (Liu and Pizzi
2016; Laitin and Ramachandran 2016). However, languages are established to
influence development through various channels. Investigating the development role
of local languages through other channels than human capital is proposed for future
research.
25 Although ILLED is a useful indicator and based on a thorough data collecting procedure, it has
some shortcomings from the aspects of our study. The scores assigned according to the two pillars
are quite arbitrary. For instance, score 2 in the first pillar is given to countries where there is only
one (minority) language recognized in education covering up to 50% of the society. Score 3 is
given if there are several minority languages or one dominant language is acknowledged covering
between 50% and 70% of the population. For our research, a continuous or a more detailed measure
would be more adequate.
Appendix
Table 8 The possible values of the intensity of indigenous language use in education (ILLED) measure
Pillar 2 scores
1 1.2 1.5 1.8 2
Experimental Moderate Extensive Generalized Exclusive
Pillar 1 scores 0 European language only 0 0 0 0 0
1 Classical Arabic 1 1.2 1.5 1.8 2
2 Single minority language (<50%) 2 2.4 3 3.6 4
3 Few languages or a major language (50–70%) 3 3.6 4.5 5.4 6
4 Several languages or one dominant language (70–85%) 4 4.8 6 7.2 8
5 Most languages or one overwhelmingly dominant language (>85%) 5 6 7.5 9 10
Languages, Human Capital, and Well-Being in Sub-Saharan Africa
Note: The share of population covered by the language(s) is in parentheses

309
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Linguistic Disenfranchisement
and Labour Mobility in Europe
Till Burckhardt
1 Introduction
The “right to move and reside freely in the territory of the member states” is
considered as a fundamental freedom associated with the status of European Union
citizen. Although an ever-growing literature has emerged on the best way to measure
linguistic justice of the official language regimes of the supranational organisations
of the European Union (Ginsburgh and Weber 2005; Fidrmuc 2008; Gazzola 2016),
little attention has been paid to the implications of free movement of persons
for language policy and planning (LPP). The aim of this chapter is to show that
the linguistic disenfranchisement indicator developed by this scholarship for the
purposes of status planning at supranational level can be extended to the needs of
acquisition planning evaluation in a transnational setting.
In the wake of the growing territorial imbalances within the internal market,
labour mobility is considered by the EU authorities as one of the tools to promote
economic development and equal opportunities among Union citizens (European
Commission 2008, 2010, 2014). Although over half a billion of European citizens
have legally the right to move, to reside, and to work freely in an single labour
market encompassing 32 countries,1 the EU citizens residing and working in a
member state other than their own only represented 3.3% of total employment
in the EU and only 0.2% of the population moved to another EU state in 2013
(European Commission 2014). However, when flows between member states follow
asymmetric patterns, migration may turn into a burning political issue. Sustained
1 Four EFTA countries in addition to the 28 in the EU.

T. Burckhardt ()
Université de Genève, Obervatoire Économie-Langues-Formation, Geneva, Switzerland
e-mail: Till.Burckhardt@unige.ch

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1_10
314 T. Burckhardt
immigration flows are not always politically accepted, and high emigration figures
raise the issue of brain drain.
In February 2014, Swiss voters adopted a popular initiative giving a mandate to
the government to renegotiate the terms of the freedom of movement agreement
with the EU in order to take back control on immigration. In June 2016, free
movement of Union citizens turned into one of the core issues at stake in the
referendum hold in the United Kingdom that eventually led to the decision of
exiting from the EU. While public opinions in both countries are marked by a
well-rooted scepticism against the supranational nature of the European integration
process, they both feature comparatively high figures in terms of net migration as
well as a rather unique linguistic situation. Switzerland,2 which recognises German,
French and Italian as official languages, is the only country that shares a common
first language with nearly 40% of the EU population. The UK is—together with
Ireland—one of the two member states whose official language is taught to nearly
all young Europeans in compulsory education. Hence, a deeper understanding on
the economic and political implications of the impact of language skills on mobility
perspectives turns out to be a necessary condition to comprehensively assess the
fairness of the single labour market in the perspective of future economic integration
models within and with the EU.
The European integration process has emerged as a flourishing field of interest
in the growing scholarship on linguistic justice. The issue of linguistic inclusion
of citizens moving across Europe raises a whole series of fundamental questions,
which may lead to divergent normative responses (see Busekist and Boudou in this
volume). While normative contributions on linguistic justice in Europe are present
in the academic debate (Van Parijs 2011), rather little attention is given to the effects
of language planning on labour mobility.
An increasing scholarship in economic literature acknowledges the language-
specific nature of the production system (Hočevar 1975; Lang 1986; Sabourin
1985; Grin et al. 2010), and the incidence of language skills on the determination
of immigration paths has been empirically examined (Chiswick and Miller 2002,
2015; Ortega and Peri 2009; Adsera and Pytlikova 2015). Recent findings also
confirm that effective foreign-language education in the school system has a
positive effect on enabling learning and work mobility among young Europeans
(Aparicio-Fenoll and Kuehn 2016). These findings imply that the field of study of
language-related mobility patterns shall investigate the incidence of both native and
2 The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) consists of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and
Switzerland. Between the member states of the European Union (EU) is regulated by primary
and secondary sources of Union law, between the EFTA member states by the EFTA Convention.
Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein are parties of the European Economic Area (EEA) agreement,
which involves a partial dynamic reception of Union law, including most provision on the free
movement of persons. Switzerland has established the freedom of movement of persons with the
EU Member States through a mixed agreement, which does not foresee any automatic adoption of
Union law.
Linguistic Disenfranchisement and Labour Mobility in Europe 315
foreign language skills, and that more sophisticated indicators may be needed in
econometric modeling.
Although “linguistic knowledge” is recognised as an acceptable limitation to the
principle of non-discrimination on the labour market of the European Union,3 the
design of immigration policies is largely language-blind—or, better said, language-
deaf—and does not take into account that the one’s capability to move freely will
up to a large extent rely on their language repertoire.
The following section (Sect. 2) extends the concept of linguistic disenfranchise-
ment to transnational labour markets from a theoretical perspective. It first explains
the dynamics of language-augmented production models before and after liberal-
ising labour mobility (Sect. 2.1), and later introduces the basic disenfranchisement
model (Sect. 2.2.1) and its evolution from a supranational context (Sect. 2.2.2) to
a transnational one (Sect. 2.3). In the third section, the model will be applied to
measure the implications of acquisition planning in the European Union. A short
analysis of the relevance of foreign language acquisition in the EU language policy
stance (Sect. 3) will be followed by the presentation (Sect. 4) and the discussion of
the findings (Sect. 5). The sixth section concludes.
2 Labour Market Liberalisation and Linguistic

Disenfranchisement
In order to understand the implications of foreign language skills on a transnational

labour market, this section starts with a very simplified language-augmented
production function in a closed and open economy. It explains up to which extent
language barriers can be considered as protectionist borders in the labour market,
and how acquisition planning can contribute to effectively foster labour mobility.
It is later followed by a discussion on how to develop indicators to measure
the effective linguistic openness of labour markets through an adaptation of the
disenfranchisement index.
2.1 The Language-Augmented Production Function
We will start with a very basic microeconomic production model. Instead of having
a hugely complex market with thirty-two economies and twenty-four languages, we
reduce it to a simple situation with two countries and three languages, and assume
that all other things are equal (ceteris paribus).
3 Art. 3 (1) of Regulation 492/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 April 2011
on freedom of workers within the Union states that the provisions of the article “shall not apply to
conditions relating to linguistic knowledge required by reason of the nature of the post to be filled.”
316 T. Burckhardt
There are several microeconomic approaches to address the implications of lin-

guistic communication in the production system through language-related variables
(Hočevar 1975; Sabourin 1985; Lang 1986; Grin et al. 2010) as well as several
theoretical approaches to the implications of immigration on the labour market
(Hamermesh 1996; Borjas 2003; Becker 2011).
The theoretical model is based on a language-extended Cobb-Douglas production
function (Grin et al. 2010, pp. 163–170). For practical reasons, we consider that
labour is the only language-specific production factor, and that there are no bilingual
businesses. Since output (y) is a function of language-specific labour (hj ) and
capital (k), the basic function reads as follows, where J is the number of languages
considered and hj are hours of labour in a specific language j in a set of languages
J (j = 1, . . . , J ).
y = y(h1 , . . . , hJ , k) (1)
The profit function ( ) is the result of the difference between the sales, defined
as the product of the output (y) and the price (p), and the production costs, defined as
the sum of the products between hours worked (hj ) and the wage (wj ), and capital
and investment (i), where y = y(h1 , . . . , hJ , k). Since labour demands specific
language skills, the wages may be different depending on the language used.

J
= yp − (ki + hj wj ), (2)
j =1
As a consequence, the language-specific wage has a negative effect on the profits

∂
( ∂wj
< 0). If the output is not language-specific, and all other factors are equal,
the producer will hire the employees demanding the lowest wages. If the labour
markets are language-specific, the equilibrium wage wj∗ may be different between
the language communities j (Lang 1986).
Let’s now assume that the output is language-specific and aggregate at national
level (YMj ) in a set of two countries M (A and B) and a set of three languages j (a,
b, and c). Let a be the dominant language of country A and b the dominant language
of country B, while c is a foreign language in both countries.
There are six equilibrium wages, for all six country-language combinations wMj ∗
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗
(wAa , wAb , wAc , wBa , wBb and wBc ). If the two markets are merged into a single
market S, the bilingual speakers will have the choice in which country to work.
There will therefore be a convergence toward three language-specific equilibrium
wages wSj ∗ (w ∗ , w ∗ ,w ∗ ).
Sa Sb Sc
Assuming that the demand for goods and services in countries A and B is
language-specific, and therefore requires language-specific labour in languages a
and b respectively, workers will need to learn the language in order to be able to
move to the other country. The larger the size of bilinguals, the larger are the chances
that the two language-specific wage equilibria are converging.
Public foreign-language education has the consequence of increasing size of the

labour supply able to migrate. According to Aparicio-Fenoll and Kuehn (2016),
the introduction of a foreign language into a compulsory school curriculum almost
doubles the migration flows from the EU member state that introduced the language
to the EU member states where the language is natively spoken. If the labour
supply in one of the languages (Lj ) is exogenously augmented through compulsory
foreign-language education in both countries, the equilibrium wage between the
two countries is expected to converge, even if the losses may be compensated by the
increased efficiency of the labour market.
If the producers decide to sell part of their output in language c, which is
compulsorily taught in both countries, there will be a third wage equilibrium,
denoted as wSc ∗ . The most important limitation to a lingua-franca-based labour
market lies in the fact that most producers usually sell language-specific markets,
which imply language-specific human capital (Hočevar 1975). Working in a foreign
language requires an additional effort that needs to be compensated (Sabourin
1985) and the shift towards a lingua-franca-based language regime usually leads
to communicational challenges with potential backlashes on the management and
governance system (Marschan-Piekkari et al. 1999; Stotz 2001; Feely and Harzing
2003). As a consequence, lingua-franca-based labour markets are usually restricted
to specific economic sectors. These can be high-end activities such as finance,
corporate management, research and development, or design and fashion, but also
low-end ancillary activities. These activities tend to be concentrated in clusters,
mostly located in so-called global cities (see Van Parijs 2011, pp. 161–164).
Furthermore, it needs to be noted that the need and the level to speak one language
usually depends on the kind of job and the level of qualification. Hence, the
language barriers may be lower for unqualified workers in manual or ancillary jobs,
while the chances to find a job in a non-local language may depend on the concentra-
tion of specific activities, starting from “ethnic” businesses in the low-paying sector,
to tourist guides up to very highly qualified jobs in the “global economy”. Moreover,
a very large majority of manufacturing and service jobs implies a knowledge of the
local language, as suggested by the theoretical literature on the role of language in
production processes (Lang 1986) and by empirical studies on earning differentials
related to the native language of immigrants (Chiswick and Miller 2015).
2.2 Disenfranchisement
In economic literature on linguistic justice, the disenfranchisement indicator is

designed to measure the share of a population that is excluded from the group of
beneficiaries of a specific language policy (Ginsburgh and Weber 2016). In the wake
of the enlargements of the European Union, which increased the number of official
languages from four in 1958 to twenty-four in 2013, the indicator was introduced
to measure the share of the EU population that would not have access to official
communication if the number of working languages were reduced (Ginsburgh and
318 T. Burckhardt
Weber 2005; Fidrmuc et al. 2009; Gazzola 2016). Van Parijs’s minimal exclusion
model can be considered as the monolingual language regime with the lowest
disenfranchisement rate.
2.2.1 The Basic Indices
The notion of disenfranchisement was first introduced in the economic literature by

Ginsburgh and Weber (2005) to address the issue that the first language of some
groups of residents may not be included in the set of official languages. The notion
of linguistic disenfranchisement, as found in the economic literature on linguistic
justice in the European Union (Ginsburgh and Weber 2011), is used to measure the
proportion of a given population that is excluded if the choice of the languages to
be included in this set does not include all languages used in a given polity.
The communicative indicators proposed in this section measure the proportion of
the population educated in country A, which is excluded from the language regime
of a country B. The weighted aggregation of these indicators allows to measure up
to which extent the combination between territorial language regimes and education
policies enables the capability of young adults to move freely.
Ginsburgh and Weber (2005) propose a matrix including four disenfranchisement
indices. The first set of indicators only considers first language skills, while the
second one includes foreign-language skills. In both sets of language skills there
are a basic and a distance-adjusted indicator. The basic indicators (denoted as d
in Table 1) consider each language as independent, implying that no language can
be understood by someone who did not learn it. The distance-adjusted indicators
(denoted as c in Table 1) correct the disenfranchisement through a linguistic
distance index. The rationale behind it is that if two languages are very close, it
should be possible to communicate across language communities even without a
specific foreign-language training. This option leads to a reduction of linguistic
disenfranchisement, as the absence of full communication in one given language
can be partly compensated by partial communication in a related language through
the system of intercomprehension. Considering the fact that these approaches to
multilingual communication do not play a substantial role in public acquisition
planning policies, they are not extensively discussed in this paper.
j
The absolute native disenfranchisement rate dN (T j ), which does not take
foreign-language skills or intercomprehension into account, is defined as the number
Table 1 Basic Native Communicational

disenfranchisement rates j j
Absolute dN (T j ) dC (T j )
j j
Distance-adjusted cN (T j ) cC (T j )
Source: Based on Ginsburgh and Weber (2005)
j
of speakers (mk ) of a population (nj ) in country j whose mother tongue (k) is not
included in the official set (T j ) of languages (l).
j
mj
dN (T j ) = j
k
(3)
n
k∈
j
/T
j
The absolute communicational disenfranchisement rate, denoted by dC (T j ), can
be described as the share of a population, which is not included in the group vj that
speaks at least one language (l) included in the set of official languages (T j ).
j
nj − v j
dC (T j ) = l
nj
l∈Tj
(4)
vj
=1− l
nj
l
2.2.2 Supranational Disenfranchisement
In the case of the official language regime of the European Union, the set of
languages T includes all languages recognised as official at national level in the
28 member states. As a consequence, the disenfranchisement on the European level
is not the weighted average of the national disenfranchisement rates. The national
disenfranchisement rate of the EU language regime (d j (T EU )) in one member
state j is defined as the ratio between the resident population that (only) speaks
j
a language which is not recognised as official at EU level (mk ) and the total resident
population of country j (nj ).
mj
k
d j (T EU ) = j (5)
n
k∈EU
/T
This index can be adjusted to foreign-language skills and to inter-comprehension

in the same way as the national indices. The set of languages T EU officially includes
all 24 languages recognised as official nationwide in EU member states with the
exception of Luxembourgish. The disenfranchisement rate at EU level results from
the ratio between the sum of the disenfranchised population in each member state
divided by the sum of the total resident population in all member states
mEU
d EU (T EU ) = k
EU
(6)
n
k∈EU
/T
320 T. Burckhardt
Under the strict enforcement of this language regime, sometimes described

as panarchic (Pool 1996; Gazzola and Grin 2013b), language rights of European
citizens are better protected at EU level than at national level if the personality
principle is applied. This is particularly relevant for people educated in one member
state, who are willing to move to another member state which does not share the
same language regime. However, the reduction of the number of languages to
one (monarchic regime) or a limited set, usually between two and six (polyarchic
regime), would significantly increase the disenfranchisement rate at both national
and European levels (Fidrmuc et al. 2006; Fidrmuc and Ginsburgh 2007). It needs
to be stressed that in this model language skills are used as dummy variables. If
the surveys on language repertoires include indicators about the proficiency level,
the disenfranchisement can be measured in absolute terms (no skills at all) or in
relative terms (insufficient language skills) (Gazzola 2016). The disenfranchisement
rate plays a significant role in the growing normative and empirical literature on
linguistic justice in the European institutions. Yet, it falls short of providing a
comprehensive assessment of linguistic justice in Europe.
2.3 Transnational Disenfranchisement
The most fundamental freedom implied by Union citizenship is the right to move
and reside freely in the territory of the member states. By defining freedom of
movement as a capability and not just as a negative liberty, it becomes essential to
complete the gallery with indicators measuring transnational disenfranchisement.
In fact, the EU language regime is only enforced for communication with and
within the EU institutions. Mobile citizens are expected to deal with the local
authorities of the hosting state and to be integrated in the economic and social
system of their destination. This leads us to measure the disenfranchisement of
national language regimes from a transnational perspective. In the following section,
we propose a model for an indicator of bilateral disenfranchisement which can be
applied to each direction of migration flows as well as models for three varieties
of multilateral mobility: the first one measures the disenfranchisement rate of a
national or subnational language regime for all citizens in an economic area, the
second one measures the disenfranchisement rate of the economic area as a whole
for citizens of a selected member state and the third one proposes a generalised
multilateral disenfranchisement rate showing the general limitations to mobility.
2.3.1 Bilateral Disenfranchisement
The bilateral disenfranchisement derives from a direct adaptation of the national

and supranational indicator. Instead of defining the set of languages T as the official
language regime of a home country j , it measures the disenfranchisement in respect

to the language regime of a potential host country h or a subnational entity of it.
mj
d j (T h ) = j
k
(7)
n
k∈h
/T
All other things being equal, it can be considered that the substantive freedom
of movement is restricted by the fact that without knowing any official language
of the destination country, the citizen willing to move will suffer from limited
economic, social and civic inclusion. The indicator could therefore be used to
complete indicators on migration openness and integration perspectives, but also
in terms of redistributive justice to see up to which extent education policies lead
to transnational redistribution of income between two countries. As an example, if
all pupils in country A learn language b of country B, while any of the pupils of
country B learns language a of country A, it means that the potential workforce L
of country B will be equal to the sum of the workforce of countries A and B after
liberalising the labour market, while the workforce of country A will not change. All
other things being equal, it can be expected that the cost of labour (w) will increase
in country A and decrease in country B.
2.3.2 Inbound Disenfranchisement
The inbound disenfranchisement rate measures the share of the population of

the whole economic area, which is excluded from a national language regime. It
corresponds to the ratio between the population in the economic area which does not
speak any of the official languages recognised in a country or a subnational entity
and the total population of the economic area (gross inbound disenfranchisement).
mj
dgEA (T h ) = d j (T h ) = j
k
(8)
n
j j k∈
h
/T
The rate can be corrected by excluding the population of the country itself, and
just considering the share of the rest of the economic area which is excluded (net
inbound disenfranchisement).

dnEA (T h ) = d j (T h ) (9)
j =h
2.3.3 Outbound Disenfranchisement
The disenfranchisement of the population of a member or associated state in the

economic area as a whole can be calculated through the weighted average of the
322 T. Burckhardt
bilateral disenfranchisement indices in respect to all hosting countries and the

national disenfranchisement index. It therefore measures the probability that one
randomly chosen resident of the reporting country is disenfranchised in the area as
a whole.
j
nh
dg (T EA ) = d j (T h ) (10)
nEA
h
To limit the research on emigration capabilities, the effect of the national

language regime on the whole area can be excluded by calculating the net rate.
j
nh
dn (T rEA ) = d j (T h ) (11)
nEA − nj
h=j
2.3.4 Multilateral Disenfranchisement
Multilateral disenfranchisement corresponds to the weighted average of the inwards

disenfranchisement indices, and calculates the probability that a randomly chosen
resident of the whole area does not speak the local language if he or she were
(re-)located to a randomly chosen place in the area.
nh
dgEA (T EA ) = d EA (T h ) (12)
nEA
h
To limit the research on emigration capabilities the effect of the national language
regime on the whole area can be excluded, by calculating the net rate.
nj
dnEA (T EA ) = d EA (T h ) (13)
nEA − nj
h=j
3 Acquisition Planning and Labour Mobility
In this study, the disenfranchisement indicator will be adapted to the needs of

acquisition planning. While the basic design of the indicators does not change, the
set of variables that will be used is switched. For status planning purposes, the
language repertoire of the resident population is measured empirically while the
communicational environment is defined by experimental dummy variables related
to a specific official language regime. For acquisition planning purposes, the
communicational environment is considered as given (based on the linguistic
territoriality principle [LTP]), while the language repertoire of the individuals is
based on expected language skills rather than on a self-reported repertoire.
The linguistic environment is defined according to the status-planning principle

of linguistic territoriality, while the language repertoire is defined according to the
acquisition-planning policies of the compulsory education curricula. This study will
be limited to an empirical assessment of the fairness of the current foreign-language
education policies.
Before moving to the empirical section of the study, we need to stress that
our methodological approach, based on the combination of two essential status-
planning (territoriality) and acquisition-planning (education-driven language skills)
variables, does not necessarily reflect the sociolinguistic situation as it would be
recorded through an empirical survey. First, the skills in a given language were
used as a dummy variable, regardless of the level and the area of specialisation of
the speaker. Secondly, we do not consider language distance and therefore exclude
the potential of intercomprehension and fast-track language acquisition. Thirdly, we
assume that the LTP applies to all jobs in the area, excluding the use of foreign
languages as main communication tools at the workplace. Fourthly, our survey is
limited to compulsory language education and does not take other acquisition paths
into account. Last but not least, it needs to be mentioned that the sociolinguistic
situation reflects to something that will be observed in the future and not the current
situation, as the curricula change over time. The essentialisation of the study to some
basic acquisition- and status-planning variables enables to disclose the mismatches
driven by public policies regardless of the influence of variables related to individual
choices.
3.1 Acquisition Planning and European Language

Governance
Europe is the continent in which the coincidence between language, state and
nation, recognised by Mill (1862) as a condition for effective government, is most
remarkably fulfilled. As a consequence, the need or the choice to move to another
country usually implies moving to another linguistic environment. The presence of
language barriers tends to relativise freedom of movement in substantive terms.
The language policy stance of the European Union can be summed up to two
main principles. The first one is implicitly defined in Article 5 of the Treaty
on European Union (TEU), which requires the Union to “respect the equality
of Member States before the Treaties as well as their national identities”. This
principle implies that the Union respects the national language regimes of each of
the member states and does not take any action to modify the linguistic landscape
of the Union. The official language regimes of the member states are usually based
on the linguistic territoriality principle (LTP). With the exception of Belgium, which
includes two monolingual language regions,4 all member states recognise at least
4 In Belgium, Dutch is the single official language in Flanders and French is the single official
language in Wallonia. Both languages are official in the Brussels-Capital Region, while German is
official in the German-speaking municipalities in Wallonia.
324 T. Burckhardt
one language as official throughout the country, which may be taught and used along
regional and minority languages. The regulations on language use in business can
be more or less restrictive.
The second principle is explicitly spelled out in Article 165 Paragraph 2 of
the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which states that
“Union action shall be aimed at developing the European dimension in education,
particularly through the teaching and dissemination of the languages of the member
states”. The extent of this competence is restricted in the same article, which also
states the action of the Union to “incentive measures, excluding any harmonisation
of the laws and regulations of the Member States”, and invites the Council, the body
representing the ministers of the member states, to “adopt recommendations” on a
proposal of the Commission (the political body entrusted of drafting EU legislation
and supervising its implementation). This wording implies that the member states
keep their full sovereignty in the definition of the objectives and the implementation
of language education policies.
The two main common policy guidelines define the objectives of the European
strategy for multilingualism (ESM),5 which lays down the common objectives
and the main policy tools of language planning in a comprehensive way, and
the Presidency Conclusions of the Barcelona European Council,6 which set the
framework of a common education policy. In terms of acquisition planning, the
ESM sets two goals that need to be targeted through language skills. One of
them is strictly related to citizenship (strengthening social cohesion, intercultural
dialogue and European construction). The second one, the most relevant for the
purpose of this study, has a stronger economic dimension (European economy’s
competitiveness and people’s mobility and employability). The strategy reiterates
the objective set in the Barcelona Conclusions to enable young people “to master at
least two foreign languages, which is a factor of integration in a knowledge-based
society”.
The linguistic landscape of the European Union is far more complex than what
the list of the twenty-four officially recognised languages would suggest. From
a sociolinguistic point of view, European multilingualism encompasses scores of
forms of functional bilingualism and functional diglossia. First of all, regional and
minority languages play a very important role as vernacular languages. Some of
them, such as Catalan, are the official languages and the main languages of teaching
in regions encompassing millions of inhabitants. Other ones, such as Welsh or
Basque (Euskara), play an important role as co-official languages at territorial
level. Some member states host rather large recognised language minorities, who
speak the official language of another member state. It is most notably the case
of the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland, the Hungarian-speaking minorities in
Slovakia, Romania, and Croatia, or the German-speaking minority in Italy, just to
5 Council Resolution of 21 November 2008 on a European strategy for multilingualism (2008/C
320/01).
6 Presidency Conclusions of the Barcelona European Council, SN 100/1/02 REV 1.
name a few. These languages are usually taught along the main national languages
and their ancestral territories are recognised as bilingual. Secondly, a large share
of the resident population has foreign origins, which may be European. Although
we recognise the importance of regional and minority languages in the functioning
of local products and labour markets (see e.g. Alarcón 2007), they do not play a
substantial role in labour mobility at transnational level (with the possible exception
of some cross-border areas such as the Catalan and Basque countries across the
Franco-Spanish boundary).
In many cases, it implies that their native language does not correspond to the
official language of their place of residence. Hence, the idioms taught as native and
foreign languages in the school system do not necessarily have the same functions
in the language repertoire of the pupils. Nonetheless, it needs to be stressed that the
main language of education usually leads to a working proficiency in that idiom,
while the use of one’s native language for exclusively vernacular purposes may not
enable these users to work in that language, especially in a professional setting.
Despite this complexity, a comprehensive and standardised assessment of the
language skills of the European population is a necessary condition to understand
the broad distribution and the main dynamics of languages within the Union. This
purpose can be reached through standardised surveys based on the self-assessment
of the language repertoires. The economic literature on languages usually refers to
the small-scale Eurobarometer surveys (Ginsburgh and Weber 2005, 2016; Fidrmuc
2008; Gazzola and Grin 2013a) and to the more comprehensive Adult Education
Surveys (AES) (Gazzola 2016). These standardised surveys permit the measurement
of the effects of policy interventions over time and play an important role in
acquisition planning in order. Our purpose, however, is not to make an empirical
assessment of the efficiency of language acquisition policies, but to assess the
fairness of their objectives from the point of redistributional justice. Hence, our
study will be based on surveys measuring the enrolment rate of pupils in foreign
language programmes in compulsory education. This approach enables to provide
picture on the language repertoires of the population such as they should be
according to the official acquisition planning policies.
The implementation of the language acquisition objectives set in the European
strategy on multilingualism is a competence of the member states. According to their
constitutional system, language policy may be defined at national, regional, or local
level. Furthermore, non-binding European recommendations may not constitute
the most relevant source of inspiration for national and local policy-makers. The
policy papers drafted by most educational bodies to define the objectives of their
foreign language acquisition strategy usually refer to European integration next to
globalisation and the access to a (mostly Western) cultural heritage (see e.g. KMK
2013). Hence, the continental dimension promoted in the European strategy needs
to be combined with other sources, which may promote local, national, or global
priorities. Our approach to focus on one specific element of the ESM only does not
imply that this element should be considered as the only relevant one or the most
important one to define the policy design. Nonetheless, it provides a tool to measure
326 T. Burckhardt
the consistency between national educational policies and one substantial objective
of EU citizenship and the EU internal market.
A comprehensive cross-level approach has been promoted by Van Parijs (2004,
2011), who takes a stance in favour of the recognition of English as a common
language coupled with a strong enforcement of the linguistic territoriality principle
(LTP). The first element, the choice of English as a so-called “lingua franca”,
is based on the minimal exclusion (minimex) communicational mechanism. The
“minimex” language regime can defined as the monolingual language regime with
the lowest disenfranchisment rate. It recognises the fact that in a communicational
setting in which the participants have different levels of skills in different languages,
the chosen code will be the one that excludes the least number of people in absolute
terms. Considered that English has an uncontested position in terms of outreach as
a foreign or second language, it is the natural candidate to play this role. The second
element, territoriality, is based on the recognition of the ambition of communities
to keep their local language as the main tool of communication in daily life at local
level. These findings lead to a two-level language regime. English can be considered
as the “ground floor” to ensure effective communication, while local languages are
spoken at the “upper floors” among insiders.
This two-storey model has two major limitations: First, it blinds completely
out that the comfort standards—that is, wages and working conditions—of these
language-specific upper floors across Europe may be very different. Given dif-
ferences in the social welfare, it can be assumed that working conditions in
Romanian-speaking environments are usually not the same as in Danish-speaking
ones. Secondly, it does not sufficiently consider the implications of the openness
of these upper floors for both incumbents and outsiders. In our model we assume
that the capability to move and reside freely can be only measured if the access
to the upper floors is taken into account. The European Union counts twenty-four
official languages, which are concentrated in linguistically largely homogeneous
states. All other things being equal, the fact of working and living in a country in
which the spoken language is not known at the moment of the relocation implies a
big opportunity cost.
3.2 Data
While previous studies employ datasets on self-reported language skills, such as

Eurobarometer (Fidrmuc and Ginsburgh 2007; Gazzola and Grin 2007) or the Adult
Education Survey (Gazzola 2016), this study refers to the UNESCO, Eurostat and
OECD joint data collection (UEO) on enrollment in formal-language education at
primary and secondary levels (Eurostat 2016). As the purpose of this chapter is to
evaluate the fairness of national language acquisition policies with the perspective
of European integration rather than questioning the relevance of official language
regime, it seemed to be more appropriate to use data that refer to the expected skills
by policy-makers, rather than on self-reported skills that may have been affected
by other factors. The aggregated dataset provided by Eurostat includes estimates

about the number of learners of all EU official languages and a selection of non-
EU languages. Data are provided for all EU member states as well as Iceland,
Liechtenstein, and Norway.
As the distribution of foreign-language classes varies over the different stages
of the school curriculum, the number of learners was calculated on the basis of the
highest reported figure, meaning that if the enrollment figure for one language is
higher at primary level than at secondary level, the reference will be the primary
level. If in another country the priority is set the other way round, the reference
figure will be the one for the secondary level.7 The data were compared with
the findings of the Eurydice network (EACEA 2012). The data for Switzerland,
which is part of the area of free movement, but not included in the UOE database,
were extrapolated from the official foreign-language curricula of the Conference of
Cantonal Ministers of Education and educational enrollment statistics (EDK 2016).
As enrollment in the local official language was not reported, it was assumed that
100% of pupils are enrolled in compulsory first-language education.
For the purpose of this study, regional and minority languages were not taken into
consideration, as they do not play a major role in European transnational mobility.
For Ireland and Finland, English and Finnish were respectively assumed to be
spoken by 100% of the population, while Belgium and Switzerland were split into
two and three monolingual communities respectively, which were methodologically
treated as separate entities.8 In Spain, regional languages (Catalan, Basque, and
Galician) were not considered as Spanish is at least partly used as vehicular language
of education and there are no reliable statistics on the prevalence of the other
languages on the labour market. Information about the prevalence of Hungarian
as a first language in Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, and Slovenia could not be
retrieved, and the share of Hungarian may be therefore slightly underestimated.
The population data refer to 2013 and are retrieved from the Eurostat population
database.
4 Findings
This section illustrates the impact of expected educational language policy outcomes
on mobility potential. It first shows up to which extent the selection of languages to
be included in the curricula enable young European citizens to reduce their outwards
disenfranchisement index. It later presents the impact of the incidence of foreign
language education policies on the inbound disenfranchisement of national language
regimes, and concludes with a presentation of the aggregated disenfranchisement
rate at European level (Tables 2 and 3).
7 In the Norwegian curriculum enrollment of English language classes declines to 43% at upper
secondary level.
8 The German-speaking community of Belgium and the Romansh-speaking community of Switzer-
land were included in the statistics of the French- and German-speaking communities respectively.
328 T. Burckhardt
Table 2 Inbound disenfranchisement (expected from compulsory language education policy)

Population Incoming
(millions, 2013) L1 FL Total
Belgiuma 11.2 0.94 0.16 0.77
Belgium (French) 4.6 0.87 0.38 0.49
Belgium (Dutch) 6.5 0.97 0.01 0.96
Bulgaria 7.3 1.00 0.00 1.00
Czech Republic 10.5 1.00 0.00 1.00
Denmark 5.6 1.00 0.00 1.00
Germany 80.5 0.97 0.21 0.76
Estonia 1.3 1.00 0.00 1.00
Ireland 4.6 0.88 0.86 0.01
Greece 11.1 1.00 0.00 1.00
Spain 46.7 1.00 0.21 0.79
France 65.6 0.99 0.43 0.55
Croatia 4.3 1.00 0.00 1.00
Italy 59.7 1.00 0.03 0.97
Cyprus 0.9 0.98 0.00 0.98
Latvia 2.0 1.00 0.00 1.00
Lithuania 3.0 1.00 0.00 1.00
Luxembourg 0.5 1.00 0.00 1.00
Hungary 9.9 1.00 0.00 1.00
Malta 0.4 1.00 0.00 1.00
Netherlands 16.8 0.99 0.01 0.98
Austria 8.5 0.83 0.18 0.65
Poland 38.5 1.00 0.00 1.00
Portugal 10.5 1.00 0.00 1.00
Romania 20.0 1.00 0.00 1.00
Slovenia 2.1 1.00 0.00 1.00
Slovakia 5.4 1.00 0.00 1.00
Finland 5.4 1.00 0.00 1.00
Sweden 9.6 1.00 0.01 0.99
United Kingdom 63.9 0.99 0.97 0.02
Iceland 0.3 1.00 0.00 1.00
Liechtenstein 0.0 0.82 0.17 0.64
Norway 5.1 1.00 0.00 1.00
Switzerlanda 8.0 0.84 0.23 0.61
Switzerland (German) 5.7 0.83 0.18 0.65
Switzerland (French) 1.9 0.86 0.38 0.48
Switzerland (Italian) 0.4 0.88 0.03 0.86
Source: Eurostat (Population), Eurostat-OECD-UNESCO (EEA), EDK (Switzerland)
a Weighted average
Table 3 Outbound disenfranchisement (expected from compulsory language education policy)

Population Outgoing
(millions, 2013) L1 FL Total
Belgiuma 11.2 0.93 0.28 0.65
Belgium (French) 4.6 0.87 0.16 0.71
Belgium (Dutch) 6.5 0.97 0.36 0.60
Bulgaria 7.3 1.00 0.20 0.80
Czech Republic 10.5 1.00 0.28 0.72
Denmark 5.6 1.00 0.23 0.77
Germany 80.5 0.97 0.16 0.81
Estonia 1.3 1.00 0.20 0.80
Ireland 4.6 0.88 0.13 0.75
Greece 11.1 1.00 0.20 0.80
Spain 46.7 1.00 0.17 0.83
France 65.6 0.98 0.20 0.78
Croatia 4.3 1.00 0.27 0.73
Italy 59.7 1.00 0.23 0.77
Cyprus 0.9 0.98 0.28 0.70
Latvia 2.0 1.00 0.20 0.80
Lithuania 3.0 1.00 0.15 0.85
Luxembourg 0.5 1.00 0.46 0.54
Hungary 9.9 1.00 0.20 0,80
Malta 0.4 1.00 0.26 0.74
Netherlands 16.8 0.99 0.29 0.70
Austria 8.5 0.83 0.21 0.62
Poland 38.5 1.00 0.21 0.79
Portugal 10.5 1.00 0.21 0.79
Romania 20.0 1.00 0.27 0.73
Slovenia 2.1 1.00 0.29 0.71
Slovakia 5.4 1.00 0.27 0.73
Finland 5.4 1.00 0.23 0.77
Sweden 9.6 1.00 0.25 0.75
United Kingdom 63.9 0.99 0.11 0.88
Iceland 0.3 1.00 0.22 0.78
Liechtenstein 0.0 1.00 0.27 0.73
Norway 5.1 1.00 0.26 0.74
Switzerlanda 8.0 0.84 0.28 0.56
Switzerland (German) 5.7 0.83 0.26 0.57
Switzerland (French) 1.9 0.86 0.31 0.55
Switzerland (Italian) 0.4 0.88 0.46 0.43
Source: Eurostat (Population), Eurostat-OECD-UNESCO (EEA), EDK (Switzerland)
a Weighted average
330 T. Burckhardt
4.1 Outbound Disenfranchisement

4.1.1 “Native” (First Language) Outbound Disenfranchisement
In terms of limitation to the emigration potential (excluding mobility inside the

reporting country), the lowest absolute net outbound disenfranchisement rates can
be registered in countries or subnational language regions which share an official
language with one or more large neighbours. Due to an atypical demographic
structure combined with a unique language and citizenship the population of Lux-
embourg can be considered in the same time as the most or the least disenfranchised
population at European level. In fact, if Luxembourgish is considered as the single
native language of the population—which would be inaccurate from an empirical
point of view—the disenfranchisement rate would be among the highest in Europe.
If the three languages involved as languages of teaching in the school system are
considered (Luxembourgish, German, and French), the Grand-Duchy becomes the
country with the lowest outwards native disenfranchisement rate (0.69).
There are only four countries and one language region that can speak in their
language with more than 10% of the rest of the EU/EFTA population (d j (T rEA ) <
0.9). These are Liechtenstein (0.82), the three language regions of Switzerland
(weighted average: 0.84), Austria (0.83), Ireland (0.88) and the French-speaking
region of Belgium (0.87). Malta could be added to the list if English is considered
as a second rather than a foreign language.
4.1.2 “Communication” Outbound Disenfranchisement
The best scores in “communication” disenfranchisement rates, that is including

foreign-language users, can be found in countries where foreign-language learning
concerns a set of widely used languages. The two least disenfranchised countries
are Luxembourg (0.54) and Switzerland (weighted average of all language regions:
0.56), which implies that pupils educated in these countries have the chance of
speaking the first language of nearly half of the population of the “homogeneous
extended single market”. Other countries with good scores are those that teach
another large European language at a broad scale (Belgium, Austria, Netherlands). It
has to be recognised that all these countries belong to the wealthiest ones in Europe,
meaning that the average wages are much higher than in most other countries.
4.2 Inbound Disenfranchisement
4.2.1 “Native” (First Language) Inbound Disenfranchisement
The figures for the “native” inbound disenfranchisement are broadly the same ones
as those for the outbound “native” rates, as there is a strong consistency between the
vehicular language of teaching and the vehicular language of the economic system.
However, the implications are different, as these figures indicate the immigration
potential rather than the emigration potential.
4.2.2 “Communication” Inbound Disenfranchisement
The best scores in the net communication outbound disenfranchisement rates,

i.e. including foreign-language users, can be found in countries whose official
language is most widely taught. Unsurprisingly, the two least disenfranchising
countries are Ireland (0.01) and the United Kingdom (0.02), as English is almost
universally taught in the compulsory education system. The economies of the
French-speaking regions of Switzerland (0.48) and Belgium (0.49) are the only
other ones in which less than half of the EU/EFTA population coming from other
countries is completely disenfranchised. In most countries, the education-based
“communication disenfranchisement” is of 100%, as their official languages are
(almost) never taught in the rest of the Union. It implies that their domestic labour
markets are quite highly protected from foreign competition, but it also implies that
they will be less attractive for foreign qualified labour force.
5 Discussion: Lingua Franca and “Brexit”
The results of the study show that the combination between a status-planning
approach based on the preservation of the national languages at territorial level and
an acquisition-planning approach giving the priority to English, which has an official
status in only two out of thirty-two participating states, leads to a strong imbalance
in terms of disenfranchisement. The choice to teach English to all pupils all over
Europe has some undeniable advantages to fulfil other goals of the national and
European language education strategies. It opens the access to a large part of the
Western cultural heritage, and it allegedly enables a stronger cohesion by tearing
down language barriers (House 2003; Van Parijs 2011). Nonetheless, this approach
also has downsides that deserve to be empirically explored.
In previous literature, the imbalances driven by the dominant position of English
were mostly associated with the cultural hegemony of English-speaking countries
(Phillipson 2009) as well as with the economic advantages related to the language
industries and the savings in terms of teaching as a foreign language (Grin 2005).
The increased competition on the labour market implied by our study increases
the competitiveness of the British and of the Irish economy. However, at least
from a theoretical perspective, the increased competition on the labour market is
expected to lead to lower wages and/or an increase of unemployment if the cost
of labour is fixed. The high net immigration flow from the other EU/EFTA states
towards the United Kingdom and the criticism on free movement of workers in
the wake of the referendum on exiting the Union may be partly explained by the
fact that the language barriers between these countries and the UK are asymmetric.
332 T. Burckhardt
This leads to a situation in which the British labour market is more open than the
national labour markets on the continent. The possible restrictions to free movement
between the United Kingdom and the continent and the significant reduction of
the number of English native speakers among decision-makers and public servants
in the EU institutions may lead to a decline in the importance of English in the
European Union (Ginsburgh et al. 2017). Notwithstanding this change at the level
of the European Union, it is questionable that English will loose its status as the
main Western and global language. As a consequence, it cannot be expected that
the educational authorities of member states will significantly change their language
acquisition policies. In the case that “Brexit” had really substantial consequences
on the functioning of the labour market, the status of English in national language
regimes may be partly upgraded to attract UK-based businesses willing to relocate
within the new boundaries of the internal market, in the case Britain will loose its
privileged access to the EEA.
A comparison between the disenfranchisement figures and the mobility figures
clearly indicates a correlation between the “native” inbound disenfranchisement and
the immigration figures. Luxembourg, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, and Ireland
have the highest figures in terms of intra-EU/EFTA incoming immigration, and the
countries of origin are those sharing their official languages (Germany, Belgium,
and France for Luxembourg, Germany, Italy, and France for Switzerland, the United
Kingdom for Ireland, France and the Netherlands for Belgium, and Germany for
Austria). The causality of this correlation could also be the fact that all these
countries are neighbours and share common cultural traits, which are also featured
as significant explanatory variables in the literature on the determinants of migration
flows (Belot and Ederveen 2012; Adsera and Pytlikova 2015). However, language
and culture are strongly correlated, and the levels of migration flows between
neighbouring countries with bigger discrepancies in terms of wage levels (especially
between Germany and Austria and their formerly communist neighbours) do not
feature the same levels of mobility.
Future research could investigate the impact on linguistic justice of alternative-
language education policies by simulating the effects of changing the set of
languages included in compulsory education or assuming other language regimes
than monolingual territoriality, like the option of bilingualism between a territorial
language and English.
6 Conclusion
In this chapter, we provided a methodological framework for evaluating the

fairness of language acquisition planning policies in a transnational labour market
characterised by linguistic territoriality. We introduced four new sets of indicators to
evaluate the linguistic openness of a national labour market and the labour mobility
perspectives resulting from the typical national education policy stance.
The outbound indicators show that the priority given to a limited set of “world
languages” and the rather weak position of German in the curricula of most member
states leads to a situation in which most young Europeans do not have access to a
very large part of the European labour market if the linguistic territoriality principle
is enforced. The inbound indicators show that the choice of continental governments
to teach English to all pupils from the earliest age leads to an asymmetric destruction
of language barriers with English-speaking countries.
If the United Kingdom will eventually leave the area of free movement,
these asymmetries will be partly reabsorbed, but in the same time the share of
disenfranchised European school-leavers will dramatically increase if the linguistic
territoriality principle is enforced. A shift in acquisition planning towards languages
with large and dynamic labour markets could have the advantage to increase the
efficiency and the fairness of the European economy.
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Press.
Choosing Working Languages
in a Multilingual Organization:
A Statistical Analysis with a Particular
View on the European Union
Dietrich Voslamber
1 Introduction
Most of the international organizations worldwide have been founded in the last
century, many of them in the political context that reigned after World War II.
Apart from the European Union, which will be discussed in detail below, their
official language regimes have largely been established according to the power
relations of that time rather than on the basis of criteria demanding objectivity or
linguistic justice. The dominating languages in nearly all of these organizations
are English and French. The United Nations Organization (UNO) and its various
bodies and agencies, for example, have chosen Arabic, Chinese, English, French,
Russian, and Spanish as their official languages but have put special emphasis
on English and French as their working languages. The official languages in the
World Trade Organization (WTO) are English, French, and Spanish and in the
International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) are English, French, German, and
Spanish. In the Council of Europe, English and French are the official languages,
while German, Italian, and Russian are partly admitted as other working languages.
English and French are also the (only) official languages in the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO), in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD), and in the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC).
All these organizations, which of course do not form a complete list, have been
founded to reinforce international cooperation between governments or nongovern-
mental associations of different states. Since such organizations need little direct
participation by the citizens of the various member countries, the choice of official
languages or working languages does not have much influence on their daily lives.
D. Voslamber ()
Verein Deutsche Sprache e. V., Dortmund, Germany
e-mail: dietrich@voslamber.org

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1_11
338 D. Voslamber
This is quite different, however, for the European Union (EU) which aims at a high
degree of political and economic unification of its member states1 and thus deeply
affects the political and social existence of its individuals. Therefore, the capacity of
efficient communication between the public and political instances of the member
states and the decision-makers of the EU institutions is one of the very important
political issues of the European Union. Unfortunately, as will be argued below, this
aspect has been addressed so far only in a distinctly unsatisfactory way. Although a
number of stipulations favoring linguistic diversity and linguistic rights have been
laid down in the European treaties and deriving regulations, these stipulations are
far from being followed in practice. Contrary to these provisions, the choice of
languages used for both the internal functioning and external communication of the
European institutions is again largely restricted to English and—less frequently—
French.
As will be shown in the forthcoming sections of this article, the lack of fairness
inherent in these narrow linguistic practices could certainly be remedied by more
extended and more equitable linguistic regimes. These would have to be chosen
so as to respect both the demographic weights of the languages in the EU and the
necessity that all staff members of the institutions enjoy full equality of treatment
with regard to their linguistic skills. It will be demonstrated by various statistical
model calculations presented in Sect. 3.2 that language regimes comprising three
working languages, for example, would be easily realizable and regimes up to five or
even six working languages might also be imaginable, provided the language skills
of the staff members notably increased and the institutions were ready to afford
some more funds for putting multilingualism into real practice.
2 The Language Regime of the European Union
2.1 Legal Versus Current Practice
As mentioned before, the languages that the administrations of the EU institutions

and the European Commission altogether principally employ in their daily business
and also in large parts of their external communication are English and (to a lesser
extent) French. Occasionally, though very marginally, German is used as well. The
linguistic practice of the EU is thus similar to the one encountered in the other
international organizations mentioned above, but it has—in contrast to these—no
legal foundation.
All treaties of the European Union to date, the last one being the Treaty of Lisbon
which entered into force in 2009, have put distinct emphasis on the cultural and
linguistic diversity of the Union.2 These treaties and their deriving regulations have
1 See, e.g., the preamble and Article 1 of the Treaty on European Union.
2 See, e.g., Article 165 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
Choosing Working Languages in a Multilingual Organization: A Statistical. . . 339
also assured some of the most fundamental linguistic rights of the public in the EU.
According to Article 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,
each citizen of the Union has “the right to petition the European Parliament, to apply
to the European Ombudsman, and to address the institutions and advisory bodies of
the Union in any of the Treaty languages and to obtain a reply in the same language”.
In its Article 55, the Treaty on European Union stipulates that its wording is equally
authentic in the 24 official languages of the member states3 but does not include
any regulation concerning a specific choice of official or working languages. As for
this latter question, the decision4 is left to the Council who in 1958 unanimously
agreed on the famous “Regulation No 1 determining the languages to be used by the
European Economic Community (now European Union)”.
The consolidated version5 of this regulation (commonly referred to as “Council
Regulation No 1/58”) gives in its Article 1 an enumeration of the 24 official
languages of the member states and stipulates that all these languages are the official
languages and the working languages of the institutions. In its Article 6, though, it
specifies that “The institutions of the Community may stipulate in their rules of
procedure which of the languages are to be used in specific cases.” However, if one
has a look at the rules of procedure of the various EU institutions, and especially at
those of the European Commission6 (the most important one from a linguistic point
of view7 ), one realizes that none of these rules includes any choice of languages
and any specific cases in which certain languages would have to be used. On the
other hand, there have been numerous official statements of the Commission—
some of them8 even referring to Article 6 of Council Regulation No 1/58—that
its “procedural languages” are English, French, and German.
However, in practice the staff members do not even have the choice between the
three languages that have been introduced as “procedural languages”. Tender offers
of the European Commission and of the European External Action Service typically
require “a thorough knowledge of an official EU language (C1) and a satisfactory
knowledge of English or French (B2)”.
Since the rules of procedure of the institutions do not include any restricted
choice of working languages, their current linguistic usage apparently violates
Article 1 of the Council Regulation mentioned. The question of whether the
institutions are nevertheless allowed to reduce the number of working languages
has recently been answered by the European Court of Justice in connection with the
3 Situation as in October 2015

4 See Article 342 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
5 See footnote 3.
6 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A32000Q3614
7 According to Article 17 of the Treaty on European Union, legislative and various other acts may
only be adopted on the basis of a Commission proposal. The languages used in the Commission’s
original texts therefore play a vital role in the further decision-making of the Council, the European
Parliament, and all the political environment involved in the act under question.
8 See, e.g., document SEC(2008) 550 of the Secretariat-General of the European Commission.
340 D. Voslamber
recruitment procedure of the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO)9 . This

Office had published several notices of open competition requiring the candidates
to have a satisfactory knowledge of a second language to be chosen from German,
English, or French. The Court annulled these notices stating that the institutions had
neither provided objective justification for this choice of languages nor had they
stipulated such a choice in their rules of procedure.
A further legal provision currently violated by the European Commission is stip-
ulated in Article 3 of the Council Regulation mentioned, namely, that “Documents
which an institution of the Community sends to a Member State or to a person
subject to the jurisdiction of a Member State shall be drafted in the language of such
State.” As a matter of fact, numerous decision-relevant documents that are sent to
the national parliaments, for example, are largely drafted in English or in English
and French. Apart from violating the mentioned Article 3, this prevents the political
representatives of the member states from efficiently taking part in the political
decisions of the EU,10 a right that is assured by Article 12 of the Treaty on European
Union. More generally, the EU institutions often restrict their communication with
the outside world to the same one or two languages they also use for their internal
purposes. Thus their website europa.eu, although its homepage is presented in all
the official languages of the EU, includes numerous pages that are only available
in a restricted number of languages, many being solely in English. This is even
true for large parts of the documentation in the Commission’s open public online
consultations. In accordance with Article 11 of the Treaty on European Union,
these are intended to enable the European public to express its views on various
EU policies but actually exclude all those citizens whose knowledge of English is
insufficient for efficiently taking part in the political debate.
2.2 The Main Linguistic Injustices of the EU Institutions
Apart from its unsatisfactorily narrow range, the language regime as it is practiced
nowadays in the EU institutions, and particularly in the European Commission,
implies at least three injustices.
The first one concerns the language skills required by the staff. While those
officials whose mother tongue is English or French have to know only one foreign
language (the francophones have to know English, and the anglophones have to
know French), all the others have to know two foreign languages, namely, both
English and French.
The second injustice of this language regime is that it completely disrespects
the demographic situation in the European Union, particularly with regard to the
9 See,e.g., case T-275/13 and former cases referred to in this judgment.

10 See,e.g., http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/bundestagsabgeordnete-wollen-eu-dokumente-
auf-deutsch-a-1047108.html.
German language. German is by far the most frequently spoken mother tongue in
the EU and even as a foreign language comes second after English, at about the
same level as French (see, e.g., Ammon 2015). Therefore, considering that in a
democratic regime the concerns of the most numerous communities should not be
treated with less regard than any of the smaller ones, it appears highly undemocratic
to neglect German, as the Commission does in both its internal operations and its
external communication with EU citizens.
The third injustice resides in the economic advantages of those countries whose
languages are used by the institutions. This point will not be detailed further in
this article as it has already been largely discussed in the literature, especially with
regard to the enormous benefits that Great Britain gains due to the dissemination of
its language (see, e.g., Grin 2006 and references therein).
The general issue of linguistic justice has been addressed in many further papers
(see, e.g., Gazzola 2006, 2014; Ginsburgh and Weber 2011; Grin 2005, 2006; van
Parijs 2011; Trabant 2014).
3 Proposals for a More Equitable Language Regime
3.1 Language Policy
The present article is not intended to present an “ideal” language regime which
would be devoid of any imaginable linguistic injustice. Possibly, such a regime
might not even exist when using a neutral artificial language like Esperanto
(although this would imply a high degree of impartiality11), as a really neutral
language would at least have to include equal portions of linguistic roots of all the
languages involved in the multilingual organization. The goal of this article is rather
to suggest some possible solutions to the language problem that involve a higher
degree of multilingualism than is presently practiced by the EU institutions and in
which the first and the second of the injustices mentioned above are removed.
Any reasonable solution to the language problem has to observe that the
simultaneous use of 24 working languages for any situation in any institution of the
EU would be unrealistic for practical and financial reasons. A balanced language
regime might consist of selecting a limited number of working languages in such a
way that it represents equitably their demographic weights and linguistic potentials
in the population of the EU. Once these languages have been chosen, each member
of the staff should be committed to adopting a given number of them as foreign
languages. For the sake of justice and fairness, the number of foreign languages to
be mastered should be the same for all staff members, whether their mother tongues
belong to the set of working languages or not. This implies that those staff members
11 See the detailed discussion by Grin (2005).

342 D. Voslamber
whose mother tongue is one of the working languages know one working language
more than the others.
In case one decides to have a relatively large number of working languages, one
might achieve some flexibility by admitting that in some working processes not all
of the working languages should be applied at the same time. The (demographically)
smaller languages, for example, might be used less frequently than the larger
ones, or their application might be limited to certain specified subject areas. Such
measures should of course be restricted to their least possible extent.
As for the optimal number of working languages to be selected, there are
good reasons for taking it as large as possible, primarily to allow for an efficient
participation of the public in the political activities of the EU but also to minimize
the disenfranchisement and discrimination of the various linguistic communities.
Having many working languages would also be desirable to give due consideration
to Europe’s unique cultural wealth, which it essentially owes to the diversity of
its languages with their different concepts and views of the world. Although these
aspects have largely been accounted for in the Lisbon Treaty,12 they obviously
have not found the interest of the EU institutions whose attention appears to focus
uniquely on those motivations that are in favor of rendering the number of working
languages as small as possible, with the long-term goal of having only one, namely,
English.
Undoubtedly, the number of working languages of an institution has to be as
small as necessary to ensure that its functioning be efficient and not intolerably
expensive. There is, however, no valid reason for keeping the language regime as
restrictive as it is now. The argument that the use of further working languages
would lead to unbearable expenses does not hold, as can be understood from the
fact that presently the total annual costs due to translation and interpretation within
the EU institutions altogether amount to hardly more than 2 A C per citizen of the
EU.13 (More precise estimates have been carried out by Gazzola and Grin 2013). It
thus appears that the costs should not be considered as the most decisive factor in
the present context. A serious challenge to regimes with large numbers of languages,
however, arises from their practical feasibility and—above all—from the language
skills that would have to be required of the staff members.
These latter issues will be addressed in detail by the statistical analysis presented
in the following sections. The general formalism of the analysis will be applied to
two case studies, one assuming that the staff members master two foreign languages
(Sect. 3.2.2), the other one that they master three foreign languages (Sect. 3.2.3).
In both cases the foreign languages are to be chosen among a given set of working
languages. Mastering three foreign languages may appear quite ambitious, the more
so as many other skills besides linguistic ones are necessary to fulfill the tasks
12 See, e.g., Article 3 of the Treaty on European Union and Articles 21, 22, and 41 of the Charter
of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

13 This fact is said to have been stated by Lord Neil Kinnock, a former vice-president of the
European Commission (see also Ginsburgh and Weber 2011: 189).

incumbent on a position in the institutions. However, the ability to work in several

languages has been settled as a key issue, for instance, in the Staff Regulations of
the European Commission:
Article 28 of the Staff Regulations of the European Union prescribes that “An
official may be appointed only on condition that ( . . . ) he produces evidence of a
thorough knowledge of one of the languages of the Union and of a satisfactory
knowledge of another language of the Union to the extent necessary for the
performance of his duties.”
Article 45 of these Regulations stipulates that promotion of the officials “shall
in particular take account of ( . . . ) the use of languages in the execution of
their duties other than the language for which they have produced evidence of
thorough knowledge in accordance with ( . . . ) Article 28 ( . . . )”. It stipulates further
that “Officials shall be required to demonstrate before their first promotion after
recruitment the ability to work in a third language among those referred to in Article
55(1)14 of the Treaty on European Union.”
It is noticeable that the wording of these Articles does not specify whether the
“thorough knowledge of one of the languages of the Union” may just concern
the official’s mother tongue or whether this language should instead be a foreign
language. One might argue in favor of this latter interpretation since it should be
considered as a matter of course that the officials of the EU, whose recruitment
is ever based on high-qualification criteria, have a “thorough knowledge” of their
own mother tongue. Moreover, “the ability to work in a third language” makes real
sense only if the three languages involved have some chance of actually being used
in the daily business of the institutions. Since for most of the present15 24 official
languages this is not the case, it seems that a reasonable application of Article 45
would consist of selecting a limited number of working languages for which the
three-language principle could really be put into practice. Possibly, one might think
of softening the linguistic requirements by admitting that one of the three foreign
languages be known but passively.
3.2 Statistical Analysis of Different Language Regimes

3.2.1 General Considerations
An important statistical ingredient for evaluating the performance and the costs of a
given language regime is the relative frequency of situations in which translation
and interpretation can be avoided. In a multilingual organization, complete and
direct communication at all levels is only possible if all the staff members have
a good command of at least one common language. If this is not the case, there are
14 Article 55(1) enumerates all the official languages of the European Union.
15 See footnote 3.
344 D. Voslamber
internal language barriers which must be bridged with the help of interpreters and
translators.
The occurrence of language barriers essentially depends on three factors:
– The number of working languages that are admitted in the regime considered
– The numbers of working languages known by the staff members
– The statistical distribution of the different combinations of working languages
known by the staff members
With the knowledge of these data, the frequency of language barriers or—
inversely—the frequency of situations with unhindered communication can be
evaluated statistically.
Let us consider a model organization whose language regime involves N working
languages (N ≥ 3) among which each member of the staff (also those whose
mother tongue belongs to the working languages) has to choose F languages as
foreign languages, F being a given number smaller than N. Those staff members
whose mother tongue is one of the N working languages then know F+1 working
languages, they will be called (F+1)-wl-speakers. The others know F working
languages and will be called F-wl-speakers.
The key quantity that determines the frequency of unhindered communication is
the probability WFN (M) that an arbitrary group of M staff members has at least one
working language in common, implying that the internal communication within this
group is possible without interpretation and translation.
The case of F = N, where all working languages are known by each member of
the staff, does not need to be included in the statistical analysis because it simply
assures that the communication capacities are complete. It involves an interesting
aspect though with regard to the (F+1)-wl-speakers who would then have to choose
one of the foreign languages outside the set of working languages, with a positive
effect on the multilingualism in the organization. This aspect appears to be of
particular interest for the case N = F = 3 which will also be discussed in Sect.
3.2.3.
All mathematical details of the statistical analysis will be given in the Appendix.
The following sections are devoted to presenting its numerical results for the
probability WFN (M) that one obtains when assuming different values of N and F and
making specific assumptions on the relative portions of F- and (F+1)-wl-speakers
and on the statistical distribution of the different choices of foreign languages known
by the staff.
3.2.2 Two Foreign Languages (F = 2)
The case where all staff members have to know two foreign languages to be freely
chosen among the N working languages has been treated in a previous publication
and evaluated numerically for N = 3, 4, 5, and 6 (Voslamber 2006). In this pub-
lication, the two foreign languages chosen were assumed to be equally distributed
for both the 2-wl-speakers and the 3-wl-speakers, i.e., no duo of foreign languages
was statistically privileged compared with any other. The working languages
were assumed to be English, French, and German when N = 3, complemented
successively by Italian, Spanish, and Polish for the remaining values of N. These
six languages were chosen because they are those with the largest demographic
weights in the EU. The fractions of staff members having these languages as mother
tongues were assumed to be proportional to the corresponding percentages of
mother tongues in the population of the EU. According to a survey of the European
Commission (Eurobarometer 63.4, 2005), they were taken to be 18%, 13%, 12%,
13%, 9%, and 9% for German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Polish, in this
order. In the meantime, these numbers were updated inter alia because Romania
and Bulgaria joined the EU. The new numbers for the same six languages (given in
Special Eurobarometer 386, 2012) are 16%, 13%, 12%, 13%, 8%, and 8%.
In the present paper, two different assumptions are made about the linguistic
composition of the staff. In the first assumption, the statistical distribution of
the various mother tongues is assumed to be the same as in the EU population.
The fractions of staff members having one of the six languages mentioned as
his/her mother tongue are then given by the figures at the end of the foregoing
paragraph. In the second assumption, the distribution of mother tongues is assumed
to correspond to the distribution of nationalities in the staff of the Commission
as published on its website.16 According to these latter data, the corresponding
fractions of mother tongues are 10.2%, 6.2%, 16.3%, 10.5%, 7.0%, and 4.9%. To
obtain these numbers, it was assumed that the 17.4% Belgians indicated on the
website17 include 6.6% French-speaking and 0.07% German-speaking officials. The
1.9% Irish were assumed to have English as their mother tongue. While the first of
the two assumptions for the staff composition would represent a true image of the
EU population and might thus be sought as a long-term goal,18 the second is, of
course, more realistic at the present time.
The numerical values for the probability W2N (M) that M staff members are able
to communicate with each other in at least one of the working languages are given
in Table 1 for four groups of working languages. For the sake of simplicity, the
following shortcuts are used throughout: DE for German, EN for English, FR for
French, IT for Italian, ES for Spanish, and PL for Polish. The upper figures in the
rows correspond to the first of the two assumptions for the staff composition, the
lower figures to the second one. It should be noticed that the results in Table 1 have
been obtained assuming all sets of two foreign languages are chosen with the same
probability.
16 https://ec.europa.eu/info/about-european-commission/organisational-structure/commission-
staff_de, under “Statistical Bulletin – HR.” Accessed in October 2015 (at the then valid Internet
address)
17 See footnote 16.
18 According to Article 27 of the Commission’s Staff Regulations (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/
legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:01962R0031-20140501&from=EN), officials shall

be recruited on the broadest possible geographical basis from among nationals of Member States
of the Union.
346 D. Voslamber
Table 1 Probability W2N (M) (N = 3, 4, 5, 6) that M staff members mastering two foreign
languages among the N working languages share at least one common language
N↓ M→ 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
3 EN FR DE 1 0.95 0.87 0.77 0.66 0.56 0.47 0.38
1 0.93 0.82 0.69 0.57 0.46 0.37 0.29
4 EN FR DE IT 0.96 0.78 0.57 0.38 0.25 0.16 0.10 0.07
0.95 0.72 0.49 0.32 0.20 0.12 0.07 0.05
5 EN FR DE IT ES 0.91 0.61 0.35 0.19 0.10 0.05 0.03 0.02
0.88 0.55 0.30 0.16 0.08 0.04 0.02 0.01
6 EN FR DE IT ES PL 0.86 0.49 0.24 0.11 0.05 0.02 0.01 0.005
0.81 0.42 0.19 0.08 0.04 0.02 0.007 0.003
All possible duos of foreign languages are assumed to occur with the same probability. The
upper figures in the rows correspond to a distribution of mother tongues equal to that of the EU
population (Special Eurobarometer 386, 2012) and the lower figures to a distribution as implied by
the distribution of nationalities in the staff of the European Commission published on its website
(See footnote 16)
The upper figures for W2N (M) in Table 1 are very similar to the results obtained
by Voslamber (2006), though slightly smaller because the relative portions of
German, Spanish, and Polish as mother tongues in the EU have somewhat decreased
since 2006. As a consequence of a clear underrepresentation of certain nationalities
(especially German) in the European Commission with respect to their demographic
weights in the EU, the lower figures for W2N (M) are distinctly smaller than the
upper ones. As expected, and as it is evident from Table 1, W2N (M) decreases in
all cases when M and N increase, i.e., the probability that many staff members
share a common language becomes noticeably small, the more so when there are
many working languages they have to deal with. It is noticeable, however, that for
the case N = 3 (working languages EN, FR, DE), the values of W2N (M) remain
relatively large. Even for group strengths M as big as 7 or 8, direct communication,
i.e., communication without translation and interpretation, is still possible in about
half of the cases. The appreciable magnitude of the values of W2N (M) for this case
is largely due to the fact that the staff includes large proportions of 3-wl-speakers
(41% when composed like the EU population, 32.7% in its present composition).
The promising case N = 3 will be discussed in more detail later in this section.
It should be noted that the statistical results presented so far have been calculated
under the assumption that all officials understand two foreign languages and not
any more. This assumption is somewhat unrealistic, however, because it does not
account for the many staff members who have passive knowledge of at least a third
language in addition to the two foreign languages they master actively. A Spaniard,
for instance, usually understands Italian, and a Dutch understands German, due to
the similarity of the corresponding languages. More generally, there is always some
degree of ease in acquiring a passive knowledge of a third foreign language if one
already knows one from the same family (Romanic, Germanic, or Slavic).
Table 2 Probability W2N (M) that M staff members mastering two foreign languages among the N
working languages and partly knowing a third of them passively understand at least one common
language
N↓ M→ 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
3 EN FR DE 1 0.98 0.94 0.88 0.80 0.73 0.65 0.57
1 0.96 0.89 0.79 0.69 0.59 0.50 0.42
4 EN FR DE IT 0.98 0.86 0.66 0.48 0.34 0.23 0.16 0.10
0.96 0.78 0.57 0.38 0.25 0.16 0.11 0.07
5 EN FR DE IT ES 0.94 0.68 0.42 0.24 0.14 0.08 0.04 0.02
0.90 0.60 0.35 0.19 0.10 0.05 0.03 0.01
6 EN FR DE IT ES PL 0.89 0.54 0.28 0.14 0.07 0.03 0.015 0.007
0.84 0.46 0.22 0.10 0.05 0.02 0.009 0.004
All possible duos of foreign languages are assumed to occur with the same probability. The
upper figures in the rows correspond to a distribution of mother tongues equal to that of the EU
population (Special Eurobarometer 386, 2012) and the lower figures to a distribution as implied by
the distribution of nationalities in the staff of the European Commission published on its website
(See footnote 16). The passive knowledge of a third foreign language by part of the staff members
is simulated through an increase of the portions of 3-wl-speakers by a factor of (1 + 1/N) and the
corresponding decrease of the portions of 2-wl-speakers
A rigorous statistical analysis of this additional potential for communication

would have to account for the degree of proximity between languages, such as
that given, for example, by the Dyen index (Ginsburgh, Ortuño-Ortín, and Weber
(2005)). However, in the present context, this would necessitate the determination of
this index for all the N(24 − N) language pairs involving the 24 – N languages of the
2-wl-speakers19 and also (for N > 3) the determination of the N(N − 1)/2 language
pairs involving the N languages of the 3-wl-speakers. In addition, one would have
to evaluate separately the probabilities that a staff member chooses a language that
is close to his/her mother tongue either as a passive or as a “full” foreign language
that he/she masters both passively and actively. While it seems difficult to carry out
such an analysis in all its details, a rough estimate might be obtained by a global
artificial increase of the portions of 3-wl-speakers. Assuming the passively known
languages belong to the set of the N working languages, the probability that a given
combination of three working languages is enhanced due to the choice of one of
them as a passive language obviously decreases when N increases. In the following
statistical analysis, the increase of the portions of 3-wl-speakers is simulated by
multiplying them by a factor of (1 + 1/N) and by decreasing the portions of 2-wl-
speakers correspondingly. In case one has three working languages (N = 3), this
would amount to an increase by 33% of those who understand English, French, and
German. The results of this simulation are presented in Table 2. As in Table 1, the
upper figures in the rows correspond to the first of the two assumptions about the
staff composition, the lower figures to the second one (see the second paragraph of
19 See footnote 3.
348 D. Voslamber
this section). Accidentally, the lower figures of Table 2 turn out to be rather similar
to the upper figures of Table 1.
Three Working Languages: English, French, and German20
As can be seen from Tables 1 and 2, the case N = 3, corresponding to the three
working languages English, French, and German, would offer a realistic chance
of being put into practice. This would mean that the present three “procedural
languages” of the Commission would have to pass from their present insignificant
formal status to a concretized status where they are practiced on an equal footing.
A fair balance between the three procedural languages could, for example, be
promoted by language courses organized by the Commission for its officials. The
implementation of such a regime would, of course, be greatly facilitated if it were
stipulated explicitly in the Commission’s rules of procedure.
Complete use of the three procedural languages without the help of translators
and interpreters would be almost fully feasible, for example, in a “vertical”
(hierarchical) communication process within a Directorate-General (DG), which
involves an officer, his head of unit, his director, and his Director-General (M = 4 in
Tables 1 and 2). Depending on the particular conditions (staff composition, passive
knowledge of languages), there would be a chance lying between 82% and 94%
that a document drafted by an officer at the lowest level in a procedural language
adequately chosen (i.e., adapted to the linguistic situation of the hierarchy under
question) can be understood by all his/her superiors. Translation would thus be
needed in only 6–18% of all the cases and might still be reduced by filling certain
positions deliberately with officials whose language skills bridge the remaining
linguistic gaps. Moreover, there are reasons why the choice of the procedural
language might be principally adapted to the first three members of the hierarchy
(officer, head of unit, and director, M = 3), with a 93–98% chance of finding a
common procedural language. Indeed, this would very often cause no additional
charge because, when a document has reached the Director-General, it is usually
close to its final version and of such an importance that it has to be translated anyway
into all the official languages of the EU.
A similar reasoning does not hold for the “horizontal” communication (e.g.,
meetings within units or directorates), unless the number of participants does not
exceed four or five officials. For meeting groups assembling more than six or seven
people, interpretation and translation would often be required in more than half of
the occurring situations. It should be noticed, however, that this would imply but a
modest expenditure since interpretation and translation would not be necessary for
all three combinations of procedural languages, but only for one of them, i.e., for
one pair of these languages, which incidentally might change from one meeting to
the other.
20 Grin (2006) has performed probabilistic calculations for such a regime to investigate the
possibility of multilingual communication of the EU population as a whole.
The remaining communication problems of a regime that is based on English,

French, and German as procedural languages and any two of them as foreign
languages would be greatly softened if one renounced the principle of “free choice”
of the foreign languages. If, for example, each DG were assigned a definite group of
two procedural languages and if the three groups had about the same probability
of being assigned to the various DGs (so that about a third of the DGs would
work in EN and FR, another third in EN and DE, the last third in FR and DE),
there would be almost no linguistic barriers left. This is evident for the hierarchical
communication within a DG or for meetings between DGs working with the same
languages. Likewise this is evident for meetings that include participants of two or
more DGs working with two different language groups as any two language groups
(among the existing three) always have one language in common. It is only when all
the three classes of DGs have to communicate with each other that translation and
interpretation (between just two of the three languages) would be needed. However,
this exceptional situation might be largely avoided by assigning the language groups
in such a way that DGs which are known to communicate with each other frequently
retain their capacity for communication. It is obvious that a language regime of this
kind would be highly economical and might thus also offer the readiness to open
the door to the use of further languages, such as Italian, Spanish, and Polish. The
only disadvantage of such an arrangement would reside in the fact that officials who
want to migrate from one DG to another would possibly have to learn an additional
language.
Four Working Languages: English, French, German, and Italian
While the communication between two or three officials in the case of four working
languages is almost as unproblematic as for the case of three working languages,
this is no longer the case when the number of officials is higher. As can be seen
from Tables 1 and 2, the vertical communication in a DG, for example, would
need translation and interpretation in almost half of the cases that may occur.
In meetings with numerous participants, interpretation and translation would be
required between three of the four working languages because otherwise there
would always be one of the six combinations of two languages that would be left
disregarded. Using four working languages under the prerequisites that were made
so far would therefore entail considerable practical effort and expenditure. These
drawbacks could only be attenuated if the knowledge of three (instead of two)
among the working languages—where passive knowledge might suffice for one of
them—were postulated for all the staff members (see Sect. 3.2.3).
Five or Six Working Languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish,
and possibly Polish
It is evident from the data in the above tables that adding further working languages
(Spanish, N = 5, or Spanish and Polish, N = 6), at least when they are considered
with equal weight, would in many cases require translation and interpretation
even for small groups of staff members. In meetings with numerous participants,
interpretation would have to be assured between four (five) of the five (six)
working languages. The vertical (hierarchical) communication would also require
350 D. Voslamber
a considerable investment in translation and interpretation. It seems therefore that a

language regime based on five or six equally ranked working languages will hardly
be viable.
One might, however, think of a regime that renounces equal treatment for the
five or six working languages and accepts, instead, a limited use of some of them.
Besides a core of three principal languages (DE, EN, FR), for example, the two
or three others (IT, ES, PL) might be used on definite occasions, depending on the
subject matter under consideration. Such a regime would gain much efficiency, of
course, if all the staff members were asked to know a third foreign language at
least passively. If the two foreign languages to be known completely (actively and
passively) were to be chosen among the core languages and the “passive” language
were to be freely chosen among the five or six working languages, there would be
a distinct reassessment of the non-core languages simply because the 3-wl-speakers
(those whose mother tongue is one of the core languages) would have to choose
their passive language among the non-core languages.
Transition Time with Remaining Higher Weight for English
The results presented in the tables above have all been calculated under the
assumption that all possible duos of working languages have the same chance of
being chosen as foreign languages by the staff members. This assumption, however,
although it should be considered a worthwhile objective in the long term, is presently
not met at all in any of the EU institutions (see the discussion in Sect. 2.1).
If ever the cultural conscience of the decision-making politicians in Europe is
awakened by some forthcoming enlightenment, it will certainly take a long time
before the present language regime gets rid of its current deficiencies. It thus seems
a pertinent task to investigate some possible intermediate stages that the language
regime of the institutions might attain during a transition period from the present
unjust state of affairs to a more equitable system. Having regard to the use of
languages other than English (and French), the question arises as to what extent
additional effort and expenditure will be needed for translation and interpretation if
the present 90% dominance of English is reduced to some lower value.
If, for instance, it is assumed in a first example that the relative weight of English
is decreased to a value just twice as large as in the case of equipartition (i.e., to 2/N
instead of 1/N), in a second example to (3/2N) and in a third example to (5/4N),
the relative weight of each of the other working languages (assuming equipartition
among these) becomes, respectively, (N − 2)/N(N − 1), (2N − 3)/2N(N − 1), and
(4N − 5)/4N(N − 1). For the case N = 3, this would correspond to 67% EN and
16.5% for each of DE and FR in the first example, 50% EN and 25% for each
of DE and FR in the second example, and 42% EN and 29% for each of DE and
FR in the third example. As is evident from Table 3, where the upper, middle, and
lower figures correspond to the first, second, and third example, respectively, one
would have rather high values for W2N (M) in these cases, especially for N = 3. The
reason is, of course, that English would still play the most important role. However,
there would be some compensation due to the circumstance that the use of the other
languages would no longer be negligible.
Table 3 Probability W2N (M) that M staff members mastering two foreign languages among the N
working languages and partly knowing a third of them passively understand at least one common
language
N↓ M→ 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
3 EN FR DE 1 0.98 0.93 0.88 0.81 0.75 0.69 0.64
1 0.97 0.90 0.82 0.73 0.64 0.56 0.49
1 0.96 0.89 0.80 0.70 0.61 0.52 0.44
4 EN FR DE IT 0.97 0.83 0.66 0.51 0.39 0.30 0.23 0.18
0.97 0.80 0.59 0.42 0.29 0.20 0.14 0.09
0.97 0.79 0.57 0.39 0.26 0.17 0.11 0.07
5 EN FR DE IT ES 0.92 0.66 0.42 0.27 0.17 0.11 0.08 0.05
0.91 0.62 0.36 0.21 0.12 0.07 0.04 0.02
0.91 0.60 0.35 0.19 0.10 0.05 0.03 0.02
6 EN FR DE IT ES PL 0.86 0.51 0.28 0.15 0.08 0.05 0.03 0.02
0.84 0.48 0.23 0.11 0.05 0.03 0.01 0.006
0.84 0.47 0.22 0.10 0.05 0.02 0.01 0.004
The mother tongues are assumed to be distributed according to the distribution of nationalities in
the staff of the European Commission as published on its website (See footnote 16). The relative
weight of English has the larger values 2/N (upper figures), (3/2N) (middle figures), and (5/4N)
(lower figures) instead of 1/N, while the relative weights of the other working languages have,
respectively, the values (N − 2)/(N(N − 1)), (2N − 3)/(2N(N − 1)), and (4N − 5)/(4N(N − 1))
3.2.3 Three Foreign Languages (F = 3)
As will be demonstrated in this section, the number N of working languages may be

distinctly increased if—according to the concept discussed in the last paragraphs of
Sect. 3.1—each official is required to choose three (and not two) of them as foreign
languages (one of them at least passively). Following the rules established in Sect.
3.2.1, such a regime would imply that those officials whose mother tongue is one of
the working languages would then know four, the others three, working languages.
The case N = F = 3 with the working languages EN, DE, and FR, which for
trivial reasons (complete communication) has not been included in the statistical
analysis, would be the most restrictive one from the multilingual point of view but
would nevertheless have the benefit that languages other than the three working
languages would also come into play. Indeed, if one remains true to the principle
that each staff member has to know the same number of foreign languages, those
whose mother tongue is EN, DE, or FR would then be committed to knowing, for
example, IT or ES or PL.
The numerical results of the corresponding statistical analysis for N > 3 are
presented in Table 4. They show that for N = 4 (working languages EN, FR, DE,
IT), one would have very good communicative capacities. In the rare cases where
interpretation or translation is needed, these would be required only between two
out of the four working languages.
352 D. Voslamber
Table 4 Probability W3N (M) (N = 4, 5, 6) that M staff members mastering three foreign
languages among the N working languages share at least one common language
N↓ M→ 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
4 EN FR DE IT 1 1 1. 0.98 0.96 0.93 0.89 0.85
1 1 0.99 0.97 0.92 0.87 0.81 0.74
5 EN FR DE IT ES 1 0.97 0.88 0.74 0.59 0.46 0.35 0.26
1 0.96 0.83 0.67 0.51 0.38 0.27 0.20
6 EN FR DE IT ES PL 1. 0.89 0.68 0.47 0.31 0.20 0.12 0.08
0.99 0.84 0.60 0.40 0.25 0.15 0.09 0.05
All possible combinations of three foreign languages are assumed to occur with the same
probability. The upper figures in the rows correspond to a distribution of mother tongues equal to
that of the EU population (Special Eurobarometer 386, 2012) and the lower figures to a distribution
as implied by the distribution of nationalities in the staff of the European Commission published
on its website (See footnote 16)
As can be seen by comparing Table 1 with Table 4, there is some numerical

similarity between the cases N = 3, F = 2 and N = 5, F = 3. Therefore, the
arguments that were put forward in Sect. 3.2.2 in favor of the first case hold to
a large extent also for the second case (working languages EN, FR, DE, IT, ES).
A difference in this latter case with respect to the first one is, however, that in
situations where interpretation and translation is needed, this would have to be
assured between three languages out of the five, implying three pairs of languages
instead of one.
The case N = 6 (working languages EN, FR, DE, IT, ES, PL) would in many
cases require translation and interpretation even for small groups of staff members.
In meetings with many participants, interpretation would have to be assured between
four of the six working languages, implying six pairs of languages. The use of
six working languages would therefore demand considerable practical effort and
expenditure, in spite of the fact that the officials are required to know three of them
as foreign languages in this case.
This circumstance should be no reason though to exclude from the outset any
reasoning about a linguistic regime that includes the six languages mentioned. Such
a regime would not only be a considerable gain for the ideal of multilingualism but
would also offer the advantage that a Slavic language be included in the system of
working languages. At least the variant discussed in Sect. 3.2.2—using three core
languages (DE, EN, FR) in all domains and three further working languages (IT,
ES, PL) on specified occasions—might be a realistic option in the present context.
If not achievable on a short-term basis, it might be aimed at the longer term after a
regime with a lower number of working languages has been implemented first.
4 Conclusion
The present linguistic practices of the institutions of the European Union are
characterized by unnecessary restrictions and injustices. They are far from the
principles of multilingualism that were laid down in the European treaties and in
the regulations deriving from them. As has been shown by the statistical analysis
presented in this paper, many of the present deficiencies in the use of languages
could be remedied if the European decision-makers had the political will to do it.
The goal of the analysis presented here was twofold. On the one hand, it aimed
at depicting various possibilities for how the language regime of the European
institutions could be improved with regard to a better allowance for linguistic
diversity, linguistic justice, and democratic principles. On the other hand, it intended
to provide some of the important quantitative data which are needed for an
evaluation of the practical and financial efforts that would have to be made for
implementing the improvements proposed. Three of the various cases investigated
here, (N = 3, F = 2), (N = 4, F = 3), and (N = 5, F = 3), appear to be of particular
interest, whereas a fourth case (N = 6, F = 3) would not be easily achievable but
would be highly desirable from the viewpoint of multilingualism. The first case
would correspond to a regime based on three working (or procedural) languages
(English, French, and German) among which the officials of the institutions would
have to choose two languages as foreign languages. This regime would not be
very demanding with regard to the linguistic abilities of the staff and would
necessitate but moderate efforts and expenditure in relation to interpretation and
translation (see the case with three working languages in Sect. 3.2.2). The second
and third case would correspond to regimes based on four or five working languages
(English, French, German, Italian, and possibly Spanish) among which the officials
of the institutions would have to choose three languages as foreign languages,
implying that these regimes would be more challenging of the linguistic skills of
the staff. While the use of four working languages would have the advantage of
implying excellent communication capacities with very little need for interpretation
and translation, the use of five working languages would be more challenging in
this respect but would have the benefit of better representing the principles of
multilingualism. These principles would, of course, be even better represented by
using six working languages (including Polish), but such a regime will probably be
possible only if one renounces complete equality between the languages and accepts
that some of them be used less frequently than the others.
Possibly, the first of the regimes mentioned (working languages English, French,
and German) might be put into practice as a first step with the option that, after it
has proved its feasibility, the other regimes be implemented as further steps in the
longer term. In order for one or the other of these regimes to be realized, it would
certainly be helpful if the decision-makers of the European institutions were ready
to apply Article 45 of the Staff Regulations in the spirit suggested in Sect. 3.1 of the
present paper.
354 D. Voslamber
Acknowledgment I wish to thank Camelia, my daughter-in-law, cordially for her numerous useful
suggestions to improve this article in both form and content. Camelia, who besides her Romanian
mother tongue speaks English, French, German, and Italian fluently, has also provided appreciable
linguistic assistance in redacting this article in English.
Appendix
The following computer program represents a Mathematica notebook (version

5.0).21 It has been worked out to explore the statistical features of different possible
language regimes of a multilingual organization and—in this context—largely uses
the theory of sets.
The language regimes investigated are based on the use of N working languages
among which each staff member has to choose F (F < N) languages that he has to
work with as foreign languages. Those staff members whose mother tongue is one
of the N working languages are called (F + 1)-wl-speakers; the others are called F-
wl-speakers. The key quantity to be calculated is the probability W[N, F, M] that an
arbitray group of M members of the organization has at least one common language.
In order that this probability may be evaluated numerically for various N, F, and
M, the organization needs be characterized by further input data. In the present
treatment, these are the relative (percental) portions of staff members whose mother
tongue is one of the working languages and the (possibly unequal) relative “weights”
(attractivenesses) of the working languages to be chosen as foreign languages.
Presentation of the Mathematica Notebook
From an electronic version of this article, the program lines (those in the Courier
format below) can be inserted into Mathematica notebooks and generated as inputs
by simple “copy and paste.” The Mathematica version installed on the computer
should be 5.0 or higher.
The first program line is to clean any data of former calculations, to avoid
unnecessary warnings of Mathematica (concerning, e.g., possible spelling errors),
and to load a Mathematica package necessary for combinatorial calculations. This
program line should be activated each time before starting a new run of the program:
Remove[“Global‘*”];Off[General::“spell1”];Off[General::“spell”];
Off[Intersection::“normal”];<<DiscreteMath‘Combinatorica‘
21 Wolfram Research, www.wolfram.com

Input Data
The N possible working languages (N is taken here to be 3, 4, 5, or 6) are numbered

in this order (essentially corresponding to their demographical weights in the EU):
D = German, E = English, F = French, I = Italian, S = Spanish, and P = Polish.
The relative portions of staff members whose mother tongue is one of the N working
languages are denoted:
pop[1]=pD; pop[2]=pE; pop[3]=pF; pop[4]=pI; pop[5]=pS; pop[6]=pP;
One of the following two cases (or any other that might be added by the user)
must be activated when running the Mathematica program:
Case 1a distribution of the mother tongues according to their proportionate distri-
bution in the population of the EU (Special Eurobarometer 386, 2012):
pD=.16; pE=.13; pF=.12; pI=.13; pS=.08; pP=.08;
Case 1b distribution of the mother tongues according to the distribution of

nationalities in the staff of the European Commission on 1 July 2015 as given on its
website22 (accessed in October 2015):
pD=.102; pE=.062; pF=.163; pI=.105; pS=.070; pP=.049;
Possible simulation of the passive knowledge of a further working language by

multiplying the proportions of (F + 1)-wl-speakers by (1 + 1/N). One of the two
following cases must be activated to run the program:
Case 2a simulation off:
passive[N_]:=1
Case 2b simulation on:

passive[N_]:=1+1/N
Assignment of a relative “weight” to each working language according to its

possible attractiveness as a foreign language of choice. The weights are assumed to
depend on N and are denoted by weight[N, n] (n = 1, 2, . . . N). They can be given
any numerical value such that their sum (n running from 1 to N) equals one. In
the following examples, only English is tentatively given a weight higher than the
other working languages. The weight it would have in case of equipartition (1/N)
is multiplied by a factor of (1 + h) (h = 0, 1/2, 1), while the weights of the other
working languages are decreased correspondingly:
delta[n_,m_]:=KroneckerDelta[n,m]; atled[n_,m_]:=1-KroneckerDelta[n,m];
weight[N_,k_]:=delta[k,2](1+h)/N+atled[k,2](1-h/(N-1))/N
22 See footnote 16.

356 D. Voslamber
One of the following three cases must be activated to run the program:
Case 3a equipartition (no higher weight for English)
h=0;
Case 3b weight for English higher by a factor of 5/4

h=1/4;
Case 3c weight for English higher by a factor of 3/2

h=1/2;
Case 3d weight for English higher by a factor of 2

h=1;
Reformulation of the portions of (F + 1)-wl-speakers to simulate the possibility

of passive knowledge of a working language. The proportions of F-wl-speakers
constitute the remaining part, so that the sum of both equals one:
popF1[n_][N_]:=pop[n]*passive[N]; popF[N_]:=1-Sum[popF1[n][N],{n,N}]
Basic Sets
Numbering of the working languages 1, 2, . . . N and of the corresponding weights

weight[N, 1], weight[N, 2], . . . weight[N, N]:
numbers[N_]:=Range[N];
weights[N_]:=Table[weight[N,n],{n,N}]
The intersection (if not empty) between the sets of languages known by the
members of a nonspecified group may contain L elements, where 1 ≤ L ≤ F + 1.
The set of all possible combinations of L languages and the corresponding set of
weights are given by:
numberCombinations[N_,L_]:=KSubsets[numbers[N],L];
weightCombinations[N_,L_]:=KSubsets[weights[N],L]
The set of all sets of possible working language combinations and the corre-
sponding set of sets of weight combinations are given by:
languageSets[N_,F_]:=
Flatten[Table[numberCombinations[N,L],{L,F+1}],1];
weightSets[N_,F_]:=Flatten[Table[weightCombinations[N,L],{L,F+1}],1]
Here is an example:
languageSets[4,2]
{{1},{2},{3},{4},{1,2},{1,3},{1,4},{2,3},{2,4},{3,4},{1,2,3},{1,2,4},{1,3,
4},{2,3,4}}
The cardinal number of both sets is:

NR[N_,F_]:=Sum[Binomial[N,L],{L,F+1}]
For an (F + 1)-wl-speaker having mother tongue m, the set of foreign languages

and the set of corresponding weight combinations are reduced to:
weightsM[N_][m_]:=Delete[weights[N],m];
weightCombinationsM[N_,L_][m_]:=KSubsets[weightsM[N][m],L]
Probability that a Staff Member Knows a Given Combination

of Working Languages
The probability p[N, F][n] that an F-wl-speaker knows those foreign languages that
are contained in the subset languageSets[N, F][[n]] of languageSets[N, F] (nonzero
only if this subset has F elements) is equal to the product of weights of the
languages concerned, divided by the corresponding normalization sum. To obtain
the probability pp[N, F][n] for the occurrence of such an F-wl-speaker, p[N, F][n]
has to be multiplied by the portion popF[N] of F-wl-speakers among the staff:
p[N_,F_][n_]:=(ls=languageSets[N,F][[n]];ws=weightSets[N,F]
[[n]]; If[Length[ls]==F,Product[ws[[i]],{i,F}]/Sum[Product
[weightCombinations[N,F][[k]][[i]],{i,F}],{k,Binomial[N,F]}],0])
pp[N_,F_][n_]:=popF[N]*p[N,F][n]
The probability p[N, F][m][n] that an (F + 1)-wl-speaker having mother tongue

m knows those foreign languages that are contained in the subset language-
Sets[N, F][[n]] (nonzero only if this subset has F elements and does not contain
language m) is obtained in an analogous way:
pM[N_,F_][m_][n_]:=(ls=languageSets[N,F][[n]];ws=weightSets[N,F]
[[n]];If[Length[ls]==F&&Length[Complement[ls,{m}]]==F,Product
[ws[[i]],{i,F}]/Sum[Product[weightCombinationsM[N,F][m][[k]][[i]],
{i,F}],{k,Binomial[N-1,F]}],0])
ppM[N_,F_][m_][n_]:=popF1[m][N]*pM[N,F][m][n]
Transition Probabilities
Suppose that the intersection of all language sets known by the members of a
group is languageSets[N, F][[k]]. The transition probability Ptrans[N, F][i, k] that
adding one arbitray person to the group leads to the new intersection language-
Sets[N, F][[i]] (which must be a subset of the first) is equal to the sum of all
probabilities (which will be called “target probabilities”) for the occurrence of
staff members whose language sets (the mother tongues of (F + 1)-wl-speakers
included) contain languageSets[N, F][[i]] as a subset but do not contain any element
358 D. Voslamber
of Complement[languageSets[N, F][[i]], languageSets[N, F][[k]]], which is the set

difference between the old and the new group.
The set of target probabilities for F-wl-speakers is obtained from
target[N_,F_][i_,k_]:=(ts={};ui=languageSets[N,F][[i]];
uk=languageSets[N,F][[k]];If[Intersection[ui,uk]!=ui,Goto[exit]];
rest=Complement[uk,ui];Do[(komb=languageSets[N,F][[n]];If[Length
[komb]==F&&Intersection[komb,ui]==ui&&Intersection[komb,rest]
=={},ts=Append[ts,pp[N,F][n]]]),{n,NR[N,F]}];Label[exit];ts)
The set of target probabilities for (F+1)-wl-speakers is obtained from

targetM[N_,F_][i_,k_][m_]:=(tsM={};ui=languageSets[N,F][[i]];
uk=languageSets[N,F][[k]];If[Intersection[ui,uk]!=ui,Goto[exit]];
rest=Complement[uk,ui];Do[(komb=languageSets[N,F][[n]];If[Length
[komb]==F&&Intersection[komb,{m}]=={},kombm=Append[komb,m]];
If[Intersection[kombm,ui]==ui&&Intersection[kombm,rest]=={},
tsM=Append[tsM,ppM[N,F][m][n]]]),{n,NR[N,F]}];Label[exit];tsM)
The transition probability Ptrans[N, F][i, k] is obtained by adding all target

probabilities for F- and (F + 1)-wl-speakers:
Ptrans[N_,F_][i_,k_]:=(ta=target[N,F][i,k];length=Length[ta];
Do[taM[m]=targetM[N,F][i,k][m];lengthM[m]=Length[taM[m]],{m,N}];
Sum[ta[[n]],{n,length}]+Sum[taM[m][[n]],{m,N},{n,lengthM[m]}])
Transition Matrix
Let w[N, F][M][n] denote the probability that the intersection of language
sets known by a group composed of M members is languageSets[N, F][[n]].
The various w[N, F][M][n] (n = 1, 2, . . . ,NR[N, F]) may be combined to
form the components of a probability vector denoted as vector[N, F, M]. If
this vector is known for a given M, its components for M + 1 are given
NR[N,F ]
by w [N, F ] [M + 1] [i] = k=1 P trans [N, F ] [i, k] w [N, F ] [M] [k].
Written for all i (i = 1, 2, . . . ,NR[N, F]), this gives rise to a matrix equation,
vector[N, F, M + 1] = transMatrix[N, F]. vector[N, F, M], which allows us to
determine vector[N, F, M] for all M by a recursive procedure, starting with M = 1 (a
“group” composed of one person). The transition matrix is made up of the transition
probabilities Ptrans[N, F][i, k]:
transMatrix[N_,F_]:=Table[Ptrans[N,F][i,k],{i,NR[N,F]},{k,NR[N,F]}]
The recursive procedure consists of successive multiplications with this matrix.

Multiplying K times amounts to multiplying with the k-th power of this matrix:
MatrixHochM[N_,F_][K_]:=MatrixPower[transMatrix[N,F],K]
Starting with the probability vector vector[N, F, 1] associated with one staff
member, the probability vector for a group of M members is given by
vector[N_,F_,M_]:=MatrixHochM[N,F][M-1].vector[N,F,1]
For one staff member, the components w[N, F][1][n] of vector[N, F, 1] vanish
when languageSets[[n]] has less than F elements and are equal to pp[N, F][n] when
it has F elements. When it has F + 1 elements, w[N, F][1][n] equals the sum of the
probabilities for the occurrence of an (F + 1)-wl-speaker having one of the F + 1
languages as his/her mother tongue and the others as foreign languages:
w[N_,F_][1][n_]:=(length=Length[languageSets[N,F][[n]]];Which
[length<F,0,length==F,pp[N,F][n],length==F+1,Sum[ppM1[N,F][j]
[n],{j,F+1}]])
ppM1[N_,F_][j_][n_]:=(nj=languageSets[N,F][[n]][[j]];
dw[j]=Delete[weightSets[N,F][[n]],j];prod[j]=Product[dw[j][[i]],
{i,F}];wcomb[nj]=weightCombinationsM[N,F][nj];sum[nj]=Sum[Product
[wcomb[nj][[np]][[i]],{i,F}],{np,Binomial[N-1,F]}];ppM1op=popF1[nj]
[N]*prod[j]/sum[nj])
vector[N_,F_,1]:=Table[w[N,F][1][n],{n,NR[N,F]}]
Probability that a Group of M Staff Members Has at Least One

Common Language
The probability that M staff members share at least one language is the sum of the
components of vector[N, F, M]:
W[N_,F_,M_]:=Sum[vector[N,F,M][[n]],{n,NR[N,F]}]
In the tables of this article, the probabilities are listed for given N and F up to
M = 9:
row[N_,F_,Mmax_]:=Table[W[N,F,M],{M,2,Mmax}]
The first line of Table 1, for instance, has been obtained by running the program
with the cases 1a, 2a, and 3a activated:
row[3,2,9]
{1.,0.95436,0.871296,0.768746,0.661487,0.55894,0.466093,0.38494}
References
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Part IV
Sociolinguistic Views and Applications
The Assessment of Sociolinguistic Justice:
Parameters and Models of Analysis
Gabriele Iannàccaro, Federico Gobbo, and Vittorio Dell’Aquila
1 Introduction
The current debate around the concept of linguistic justice shows that the topic is
interesting under many different perspectives, especially for the fact that the subject
has been discussed by scholars of different scientific branches. In his recent—and
very welcomed—literature overview on the topic, Alcalde (2015, 2018) illustrates
how the questions of linguistic justice are concern of a number of branches such
as political philosophy, economics, law, sociology of language and linguistics (in
particular, sociolinguistics, ecolinguistics and interlinguistics). According to this
study, the concept of linguistic justice on the one hand covers a quantity of problems
raised by the language diversity in international economic and political relations
and, on the other hand, deals with power unbalance among languages in everyday
life of single speakers, mostly in multilingual settings. Lately, it gains way the
idea that defining a linguistic environment as ‘just’ (or ‘fair’, as preferred by some
authors) should not only mean that people have equal access to public resources
across the world but also that a less uneven distribution of linguistic abilities should
be pursued in the linguistic reality of the everyday life of human societies as
G. Iannàccaro ()
Stockholms Universitet, Stockholm, Sweden
e-mail: gabriele.iannaccaro@su.se
F. Gobbo
Università di Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
Università di Torino, Torino, Italy
e-mail: f.gobbo@uva.nl
V. Dell’Aquila
Centre d’Études Linguistiques pour l’Europe, Milan, Italy

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1_12
364 G. Iannàccaro et al.
well. Now, ‘justice’ in the sense employed here is usually referred to the effect of
objective conditions or social constraints or policies that produce more or less just
outcomes.
However, it does not mean, of course, that speakers should be forced to achieve
a ‘just’ linguistic behaviour if they do not need it or choose to do so. Knowing the
social norms that rule the use of linguistic varieties in the society and mastering
them (see Sect. 3), i.e. the fact to be linguistically included in the society, is,
ultimately, a situation that has to be pursued also individually—depending to
speakers’ perceptions of the need, and in this respect nothing can be said—at least
in a systematic view. But it is up to the whole society, as we will argue in Sect. 4, to
provide the ideal conditions for a real achievement of this goal, if it is felt as needed.
For the discussion of the literature and the debate on linguistic justice, our
main reference will be the survey by Alcalde already mentioned above, which
we regard as the most complete and up-to-date overview on the subject so far.
Thus, we will not duplicate here the vast reminds of the pertinent literature he
examines, and we will consider as known the condition of the debate he outlines.
Specifically, our considerations can be entailed in the field of studies he classifies
as “sociolinguistics”. In particular, he notes that leading linguists often work on
the documentation of linguistic situations, paying less attention to offer concrete
proposals apt to overcome the language injustices they describe. However, there
are some exceptions. For instance, Phillipson (2008) and Skutnabb-Kangas (2000)
pledge for the application of linguistic human rights especially in the field of
education, protecting and promoting indigenous and minority languages, often
directly or indirectly threatened by the strong role played by English in this
field. Also Bastardas i Boada (2010) argues that, while glocalisation is the force
that spread English in the most prestigious domains of use, local languages are
reconceptualised, thanks to the digital tools at disposition, which can be helpful
to promote them, maintaining their vitality. The result should be a balanced
bilingualism, which will hopefully reduce linguistic injustices. However, it should
be noted that the dynamics of these two forces do not take into account another
variable that strongly complexifies the picture, i.e. mobility, where secondary,
adopted identities can emerge in second- or third-generation migrants—see, for
instance, Gobbo (2014). Moreover, another factor to be taken into account is the
potentiality in mobility—what Houtkamp (2014) calls ‘motility’: intuitively, the
higher degree of motility people have, the higher is their motivation in foreign
language learning, according to the desired destination of the potential mobility.
What we want to underline is that there are some peculiarities in each given context
where languages are in conflict—or at least in contrast—and therefore there is no
‘magic formula’ that can solve all the problems in whatsoever society. In our view,
an in-depth analysis of the concrete sociolinguistic situations where linguistic justice
is under scrutiny cannot be avoided.
In the debate on linguistic justice, several political philosophers, even the ones
in favour of minority (linguistic) rights, still take for granted the ‘Westphalian
model assumptions’—illustrated and challenged among the others by Beaulac
(2004)—that state that in a given nation-state citizens are monolingual as the rule
The Assessment of Sociolinguistic Justice: Parameters and Models of Analysis 365
and that the connection between language(s) and its use within the society is a
secondary variable. In the Westphalian model, languages are mainly tools to perform
nonlinguistic things, and they have essential characteristics, i.e. they do not change
according to the context of use. However, this essentialist view may run the risk of
underestimating the real conditions of communication by means of language within
the communities. We think that it would be of some interest considering not the
language itself as the primary unit of analysis, but on the contrary languages let
emerge after the analysis of the linguistic habits and attitudes of the community
under scrutiny. From a sociolinguistic point of view, communities are primarily
speech communities, i.e. groups of people who regularly interact with each other
by means of a common repertoire of linguistic signs, who share the same values
about these linguistic signs and who know the norms that rule the use of them.
A couple of terminological clarification is here of some interest: we prefer the
maybe old-fashion notion of ‘speech community’ to that of ‘community of practice’
(or even more up-to-date equivalent labels) because we think that all communities
are involved as a whole in the processes of sharing sociolinguistic norms. And that
is true also for mobile people (migrants, expats, high-skilled professionals, civil
servants, etc.): in her/his real life, a mobile person is necessarily obliged to have
contacts also with people outside her/his primary network, and these may be as
important as the ones she/he entertains with the inner groups.
In the same vein, we define ‘linguistic repertoire’ mainly as ‘the set of language
varieties used in the speaking and writing practices of an individual or a speech
community’. Therefore, a subdistinction will possibly be made throughout the
chapter between ‘individual repertoire’ and ‘societal repertoire’. As a rule and after
attentive consideration, we always refer to the main sociolinguistic concepts as they
are intended in the mainstream of classical European sociolinguistics; definitions
and discussions may be found in Ammon et al. (2006/2008) and Goebl et al.
(1996/1997). Of the latter, a new and completely revised edition is about to be edited
by Jeroen Darquennes, Joe Salmons and Wim Vandenbussche.
We want to point out on ‘sharing the same values about linguistic signs’, because
the term ‘values’ can refer to both the two main functions of language already
mentioned, a communicative one and a symbolic one. The communicative value of
a linguistic sign refers to its possibility to be successfully used for a specific speech
act, while its symbolic value represents the potential of self-identification outlined
by the use of a specific sign, or even a set of signs constituting a variety. As for an
example of different symbolic values conveyed by the same communicative setting,
we can take English. In the essentialist analyses, the English language is treated like
a single variable, where all its internal variations are not considered important. In
a non-essentialist view of English, such as the one proposed in Gobbo (2015), the
value of English in multilingual contexts is different. According to the Kachruvian
model of analysis of the value of English in terms of circles (for a recent account, see
Kachru and Smith 2009) English plays, for example, different roles in Wales, Hong
Kong and Sweden. While English can be considered native language in Wales, it is
part of the inner circle and therefore it plays a key role in the sense of belonging,
which is not straightforward there. In contrast, in Hong Kong, English is adopted,
as Hong Kong has been a British colony, his citizens being bilingual with Chinese
diglossia (outer circle, for Kachru). Finally, in Sweden (part of the expanding circle),
English is a pragmatic language, being perceived mainly as a commodity, as if there
were no identity issue related with it. In other words, the symbolic value of English
varies a lot, according to the context, and this variation cannot be neglected.
Now, the example was spotted on English precisely because the role of English
as an international code for international communication—and particularly in
academic or working environments—is one of the main present concerns of the
literature on linguistic justice. However, our main concern in this chapter is to
draw the attention on the sociolinguistic dynamics which affect the whole society
and on the role they play in setting ‘just’ sociolinguistic scenarios for the speakers
involved. According to this view, English used as a lingua franca is but one, albeit
important, constituent of a complex interplay of factors that shape the sociolinguistic
experience of a speaker, as we will focus in the following sections.
All human beings have a linguistic repertoire that includes all codes known
by the community (languages, dialects, patois, registers and so on) and the social
norms that rule the use of these codes. It is not important here to debate if
multilingualism is something good or bad per se: as a matter of fact, we must
take it in consideration when we analyse social discrepancies caused by linguistic
acts. In every community, different linguistic varieties are used, and their use is
ruled by binding sociolinguistic norms. In monolingual communities, we define
these varieties as registers of the same language, while in multilingual settings, the
varieties—even structurally quite different from each other—receive a specific name
by the speakers themselves (like ‘dialect’, ‘language’, ‘patois’ and so forth). In fact
in many parts of Europe (and as a norm in the world), the society is characterised
by the use of more than one variety, both at the same time and in the same
community, and these varieties necessarily show functional specialisation, what is
broadly known as diglossia—for the purposes of this paper, we intend the notion of
diglossia in a very broad sense, not taking into consideration the rather important
differences between a proper diglossia and other situations like dilalia—where both
high and low varieties can be employed in colloquial or informal situation while
leaving the monopoly to formal and writing domains to high language; see Berruto
(1995). We are of course not referring to the rare and maybe hypothetical cases of
societal bilingualism, in which all the members of the community can speak and
do use two languages for all verbal communicative purposes and situations, while
diglossia is fairly common in Europe and in the world, as said above.
Sometimes speakers find themselves ‘at ease’ with their linguistic repertoire,
but sometimes they experience difficulties. This depends on several factors, among
the others the different communicative situations. For example, it is obvious that
chatting with friends in a pub, or talking with teachers during lessons or in front of a
civil servant, puts speakers in very different communicative positions that influence
their linguistic performance. In an ideal world, no communicative situation impedes
speaker’s performances in any way: relations are always fair, and collaborative and
linguistic justice is always taken for granted. In reality, though, this it is not always
the case. A communicative situation between a student and the teacher during school
lessons or a citizen in front of a civil servant can be more compelling. This is

the reason why we want to focus here on the situations in which the insufficient
mastering of a particular language and the lack of knowledge of the social norms
that rule the use of linguistic varieties inside the society produce a personal unease
to the speaker. With ‘linguistic unease’ we mean the counterpart of ‘linguistic ease’:
a situation of linguistic unease, then, is a situation in which speakers feel that
their pragmatic linguistic competence is not fitting the communicative requirements
of the linguistic act they are about to perform—or even that the symbolic value
of their speech acts is perceived as misplaced. The notion of ‘linguistic unease’
has interesting points of contact with the parallel one of ‘linguistic insecurity’
(Labov 1972; Bretegnier and Ledegen 2002). Linguistic insecurity, however, mainly
refers to the perception of inadequacy that speakers nurture towards their own
variety vis-à-vis a desired standard norm and often has (even if not always, see,
e.g. Oakes 2007 or the parallel literature on creoles) an intralinguistic scope.
Linguistic unease, in its turn, is a more relational and situational notion and often
concerns more linguistic codes at the same time: in other words, it often has an
interlinguistic scope. Moreover, the communicative failures it triggers rely more
upon a communicative level than an identity or aspirational one—therefore it has
much to do with linguistic justice. The concept of linguistic justice, then, is deeply
rooted in the actual complexity of the linguistic communities, and it appears clear
that in any communicative setting some languages, varieties or even registers are
perceived by the speakers more adequate or more correct for a particular situation
but also more useful and even more beautiful than others. Therefore, they may be
stronger than others in terms of power.
For the purposes of this chapter, we will consider the linguistic unease of the
speaker, defined as the set of situation in which the speaker’s linguistic knowledge
is not adequate to the linguistic needs of the moment. In other words, linguistic
unease happens whenever a gap exists between the individual repertoire of the
speaker and the collective repertoire of the speech community. We will limit our
discussion to the communicative unease caused by language, and we will exclude all
other situations of unease caused by other factors like economical, cultural or racial
discrepancies. Of course, we are fully aware of the fact that the linguistic aspects are
inextricably intermingled with the other ones and that socioeconomical factors are
in many cases more imposing—or at least more evident—than the linguistic ones,
but the use of certain linguistic varieties symbolises the belonging of the speaker
to a particular socioeconomic group. For instance, if a citizen cannot access the
bureaucratic register of the language used in the local administration, his or her
linguistic rights will be de facto severely limited. In our view, linguistic justice
should take into account the sociolinguistic profiles and the concept of linguistic
unease just presented. In order to distinguish our approach from the one presented in
the literature—see the survey of Alcalde (2015, 2018), if needed—we can also refer
to sociolinguistic justice. However, what we have defined as linguistic unease is but
a possible symptom of linguistic injustice: it is not linguistically unjust per se. Also,
the typology of linguistic unease can be quite varied: there are of course cases of
unease which are so limited in situation and time as to be irrelevant for justice—for
example, unease during travelling abroad for leisure or insufficient mastery of an L2

in social or working situations in which this is not normally required. At the same
time, but this is obvious, there is always the possibility of linguistic injustice which
does not imply any uneasiness by the speaker.
In the following sections, we will identify the linguistic unease of the speaker
through a set of situations in which the speaker’s linguistic knowledge is not
adequate to the linguistic needs of the moment, in other words whenever a gap exists
between the individual repertoire of the speaker and the collective repertoire of the
speech community. Through our analysis, we want to shed light to the necessity of
reducing the linguistic inequalities among the members of the speech community,
trying to (re)balance existing odds—in terms of power—of the varieties in the
repertoire itself. The lower is the level of linguistic unease, the higher will be the
level of sociolinguistic justice. However, it must be clear that a perfect situation of
sociolinguistic justice, where all the members of the community do not suffer any
linguistic unease, is socially not achievable, as well as is not achievable a socially
and economically fully equal and just society. On the other hand, this theoretical
impossibility does not imply that sociolinguistic injustice—through the reduction of
linguistic unease of the speakers—should not be reduced at the minimum, whenever
the conditions allow the fulfilment of this goal. The following discussion will be
divided into two parts, the first dealing with static or consolidated situations, i.e. with
settled communities, and the second with situations of mobility, i.e. in migration
context.
2 Parameters of (Socio)linguistic Justice
The model presented here is intended as a cognitive tool for formalisation and
interpretation of sociolinguistic reality that can show influence on linguistic justice;
hence, it might also be possible to draw operational considerations, even if they are
not the primary purpose of this chapter. In other worlds, what we propose here is
a necessary first step in order to evaluate the level of linguistic justice of a given
context through an analytical approach, with possible further socioeconomic con-
siderations. The normative acceptability of linguistic injustice involves moral and
legal considerations that cannot be taken into account here. Our main assumption
is that the reduction of linguistic unease—as previously defined—is a valuable goal
from a societal level, albeit proceeding from individual perceptions.
If we want to consider the above view of sociolinguistic justice, then the notion
of repertoire turns out to be crucial, either considered from an individual perspective
or a societal one. In fact, it looks quite reasonable that any consideration of linguistic
justice should be based on the actual conditions of the repertoire in the speech
community. To detect the sociolinguistic situations that may give rise to linguistic
(un)ease of the speakers, we can rely on a number of parameters designed to provide
a rather good description of the dynamics underlying the repertoire of a speech
community.
We propose now some reflections driven from a scheme already offered in

Dell’Aquila and Iannàccaro (2011—a previous version of the scheme was already
presented in Iannàccaro and Dal Negro (2003)) originally planned to approach the
study of language vitality in a framework of linguistic ecology. On that framework,
we will graft considerations of linguistic justice, in order to build a model that may
prove useful to identify possible moments of linguistic weakness of some of the
speakers within the community.
Table 1 presents—in its second column—the considered parameters, followed
by six prototypical situations that show different repertoire patterns (the coexisting
codes in the speech community are labelled as A, B and C). The aim of these
proposed situations is just to help the reader in understanding the parameters by
means of some easily imaginable scenery. We can imagine that these prototypical
examples correspond to (European) localities, albeit idealised—actual situations are
of course more complex, with a number of marginal codes employed by the speech
community (immigrant languages, English used as a lingua franca and so on). Since
we are not discussing them here, we do not propose any binding identifications
between a real community and the columns ‘Situations’. Nonetheless, just for an
initial orientation, and with assumption neither of correctness nor completeness, we
suggest the following examples: for situation 1, Sevilla, Paris, Liverpool, Praha,
Pécs, Kraków and Jyväskylä; situation 2, Zürich, Cairo and La Valletta; situation
3, Aosta/Aoste; situation 4, Rēzekne; situation 5, Oviedo, Stuttgart and Como; and
situation 6, Dublin/Baile ÁthaCliath and Cardiff/Caerdydd. The codes involved are
thus what can be considered an abstract ‘normality’ of the of course more complex
real situations: in the case of Zürich, for example, it is true that a number of (mobile)
individuals can have overabundant repertories, but the societal norm tends to a
diglossia Hochdeutsch/Schwitzertütsch (plus a non-compulsory English as a L2 for
selected professional purposes).
Now, parameter 1 is but a list of the actual codes present in the ideal repertoire
of the community (i.e. the shared repertoire, not the sum of individual repertoires).
It is worth recalling that ‘diglossic situation’ refers to the fact that there is a shared
norm for code usage within the community: there can well be diglossic repertoires
involving two codes, but also others with three or more varieties.
Unlike for the other parameters, the list in parameter 1 is provided without
any hierarchy in presenting the code. It means that at this first level of analysis,
the researcher does not know yet how the codes interact within the society. All
other parameters list the codes in hierarchical order, where the hierarchy comprises
implication of use. For instance, parameter 3 shows that in Situation 3 it is always
possible to employ the code A as a spoken language within the community, while
the use of C is subject to particular restrictions.
With the labels H(igh) and L(ow) used for parameters 2 and 3, we refer to
the two functional ambits that share the domains of language use (or the social
contexts of interactions). Literature on diglossia or post-creole speech continuum
usually refers to high code(s) (or acrolects), the variety(es) that speech community
employs for written, formal, official, cultural purposes, vis-à-vis to low code(s) (or
basilects), variety(es) used for informal, familiar and peer-group conversation. In
370
Table 1 First 12 parameters of code distribution in a speech community

Parameters Situation 1 Situation 2 Situation 3 Situation 4 Situation 5 Situation 6
1 Codes in the repertoire A AB ABC ABC AB AB
2 H position codes A AB BA AB A A
3 L position codes A B AC C B A
4 Ideological codes (Wunschsprachen) B B
5 Languages A A AB CAB A BA
6 Dialects B C C B
7 Codes in expansion A A A
8 Codes in decline of status B
9 Codes in decline of speakers C CB B B
10 Nonautonomous codes B
11 Codes under special attention B B
12 In-group codes A B C C AB A
G. Iannàccaro et al.
our view, however, we set H and L as sociolinguistic positions (or spaces), set
out by aggregations of domains. This way, H and L are in practice empty boxes,
which may, depending on the characteristics of the investigated repertoires, be
occupied by more than a language at the same time. In this case, the hierarchy of the
codes appearing in each level is meant to describe complex situations of language
coexistence. Within the two H/L levels of sociolinguistic space, the codes occupy
the domains in a different way as regards, quantitatively, the number of domains and
number of speakers and, qualitatively, the type of uses. This can give an account of
complex situations in which other models accept intermediate levels (mesolects): for
instance, in Situation 3 it is always possible to employ code B for H domains, while
A presents a narrower set of possibilities—in our prototypical example (Situation 3
may be equated with Aosta), A (we may think of it as Italian) can always be used as
high code, while B (French) is subjected to sociolinguistic restrictions; at the same
time, though, A can be used also in low position (along with C (patois)), ambit
which is not allowed to B. It is noteworthy, indeed, that the same code can appear
in both in H and L position: indeed, with the important exceptions of strict diglossia
à la Ferguson (1959), it is quite possible for the same code to be used both in high-
status and low-status interactions—either because of a dilalic situation (see Berruto
1995; Iannàccaro and Dell’Aquila 2006) or because in the given speech community
a code traditionally considered low is currently in rapid rise and/or is experiencing
a quite effective standardisation.
Parameters 4, 5, 6 and 12 are written in italic: it is because these parameters
are inherently emic in character, i.e. they illustrate the subjective perception of
the community with respect to the proposed variables—see Pike (1967). On the
contrary, the other parameters need to be fixed according to the observation of the
researcher—spreading from her/his background knowledge, both of the territory
and of the literature. Parameter 4, ‘ideological codes’ or Wunschsprachen (lit.
‘languages of desire’), depicts codes—quite often powerful and prestigious—which
are not actually used by the members of the speech community, but which play a
certain role in the society. In fact, ideological codes symbolically act as reference
points for economic, cultural and social reasons. Sometimes, they were used in the
past, and they can be linked to ancestral myths of folk positioning or they can be
‘new’, external languages, which are now gaining the consideration of the speech
community due to economical or social factors. The speech community is highly
receptive to eventual Wunschsprachen: innovations which involve such codes—in
the event of neologisms or of deeper linguistic contact—will probably be accepted
by the community members. They are good candidates to the role of high language.
For example, in Ortisei (Gardena Valley, Dolomites), Ladin speakers complain that
their language is Romance, like Italian, while they would prefer to have standard
German as their Dachsprache, i.e. as the umbrella language reserved for the role of
acrolect.
Inherently emic are parameters 5 and 6, which indicate the perceived role of the
codes as experienced by the speech community itself. Varieties are normally seen
by their speakers as languages or dialects, whatever this folk category label may
mean. A ‘language’ is a standard variety, taught at school, which quite likely enjoys
high status and prestige; a ‘dialect’ is usually a low-status variety, used for family
and peer-group interactions. If the same code appears in parameters 2 and 3 as well,
it means either that the same name is used for two distinct varieties by the same
community (for instance, the code called ‘Friulian’ is an official high language in
Italian region Friuli-Venezia Giulia along with Italian; but also single low dialects
of Friulian are locally called Furlan (Friulian) by their speakers) or that the same
language enjoys both the status of ‘language’ and ‘dialect’ at the same time within
the community. Namely, it means that the variety has a codified written form and
chances of formal and official usage (and is therefore a ‘language’) but it is also used
for informal and peer-group interactions—as a ‘dialect’, as it were. It is important
to remark that the difference between parameters 2 and 3 on the one side and 5 and
6 on the other is that the first two refer to the actual use of the codes according to
the speech community rules, while the second two refer to the image that the codes
have in the society.
Parameters 7, 8 and 9 give indications of the possible evolution in the relations
between the different languages and language varieties used within the commu-
nities. It is worth noting that while codes explicitly in expansion widen both the
number of their speakers and their prestige, decline can be twofold. It is important
to distinguish if decline is in the absolute number of speakers (e.g. because of
emigration or death of older speakers, while the young already use other varieties) or
if, on the contrary, it lies in the will of the community to (try to) exclude the language
from normal usage, maybe because of its low status. In both cases, the language is
moving towards endangerment, but the conditions of language (un)ease are strongly
different in the two situations. It can also happen that a code is in decline of speakers
in spite of its growing status. Many regional and minority languages which enjoyed
revitalisation programmes in the last decades share this situation.
Parameter 10 is used to identify nonautonomous codes; it means that the code can
be employed only in contexts of code switching/mixing or in formulaic strings like
greetings. Actually, quite often even its speakers do not master completely the vari-
ety and need to perform insertions of the dominant code in everyday conversations.
Formulaic strings are nonetheless employed to mark in-group relations. Of course,
this is a case of severe endangerment in terms of language vitality. Prototypical
examples may be many Walser German dialects, spoken in the northern fringes of
Italy—see Iannàccaro (2010)—or Dalamål (Älvdalska), the Scandinavian variety
spoken in the region of Dalarna.
Codes under special attention (Parameter 11) are the ones which state, regional
or local institutions consider worth preserving or promoting. This parameter also
indicates that the code under attention is perceived as relevant by the community
leaders. However, special attention does not imply directly any actual growth in use
or vitality: codes enjoying special attention can remain long severely endangered,
but they get consideration for symbolic, cultural and political reasons. It is also
important to evaluate the sense of belonging of all the codes in the repertoires
(Parameter 12): here, the main point is that we consider that even high-status
languages can be seen as a mean of identification and regarded as in-group codes,
contrary to what stated by much of the literature on the subject, but according to
Table 2 More parameters of code distribution in a speech community

Parameters Situation 1 Situation 2 Situation 3 Situation 4 Situation 5 Situation 6
α Unmarked in A B CA BAC BA A
active oral use
β Standard A A BA AB A AB
orthography
γ Non-written C B
δ Vehicular A B A A A A
language at
school
ε Present in A AB AB AB A AB
media use
ζ Unmarked in A AB A AB A A
media use
reality (consider, for instance, the position of Irish in Ireland or of Portuguese in

Angola).
Indeed in considering linguistic justice, the latter is an important point, which
applies to all the parameters in Table 2: there is no straightforward relation between
the sense of belonging conveyed by a variety and the status of that variety. In other
words, speakers can feel attached to the acrolect as an in-group code as well as to
the basilect, with respect to their language identity. Identity feelings and reciprocal
position of the codes in the repertoires are independent variables. For this reason,
any evaluation of linguistic justice can not rely only on the mere position in terms of
power of the languages in use in a given speech community measured through more
or less objective instruments, but on the contrary, it should also take into account
the relations between the codes from the perspective of the speakers.
Now, the first 12 parameters can be a way of modelling complex repertoires
and therefore of understanding under which conditions it is possible to speak
of sociolinguistic justice. We need, however, to further investigate the aspect of
language in use within the society. This could be done by taking into consideration
five more parameters that were not present in Iannàccaro and Dal Negro (2003).
They are labelled by a Greek letter and devoted to investigate the actual use of the
codes within the speech communities, more than their ideological position. Table 2
shows the additional parameters: Parameter α is independent, while β and γ are in
oppositions; finally, ε and ζ are alternative one to the other.
Parameters α, β and γ give account of the diamesic axis, i.e. the variation of
language use across physical means, typically orality and writing. Parameter α
measures the normality of active use of languages. Orality is the standard mean
for human communication. As Lyons notes:
[although] no human society [has been] known to exist or to have existed at any time in the
past without capacity of speech [...] the vast majority of societies have, until recently, been
either totally or very largely illiterate. (Lyons 1981: 12–13)
Parameter α accounts for the normality of active use of languages, and it is

grounded in oral use because of its unmarkedness vis-à-vis the written practices
of language. Passive understanding is usually higher than active use, but for vitality
and sociolinguistic justice purposes, we spot on the active competence of speakers.
Oral use is ‘unmarked’ when the variety in use passes almost unnoticed in some key
situations, such as an adult addressing to children in a birthday party at home or a
conversation between customers and shop assistants. Parameters β and γ depict the
use of language in writing, and they isolate the two extreme cases: the presence of
a standard written code for the variety—which normally triggers the metalinguistic
awareness of it being the ‘real’, ‘correct’ variety of language; parameter γ illustrates
a context in which the code is not socially expected to be written by its speakers. Of
course, individual attempts are always possible. In such situations, considering the
terms of the schema of language standardisation by Kloss (1952), writing is limited
to squares 1 (popular prose) and 2 (intrinsically related issues).
Parameter δ is devoted to the whole area of schooling. In Dell’Aquila and
Iannàccaro (2011) (aimed, as stated, to investigate (ethno)linguistic vitality), it was
enough to consider only vehicular codes as a medium of instruction, for the reason
that learning a language at school does not imply that the language itself is in active
use. A quantity of languages, which are not part of the community’s repertoire,
may be taught at school for cultural or identity reasons, like Latin, Ancient Greek
and Sanskrit. Also a number of minority languages, even if taught at school, are
not really actively used within the speech communities. What it was considered
important is if a particular variety may be used at school as a mean of standard
communication. In this respect, the standardisation of a variety is not a prerequisite
for its use at school as vehicular mean of instruction, as, for Europe, the German-
speaking Switzerland and Norway school usage attest. The parameter was focused
on primary schools, where local languages have more chances to be spoken. If we
want to consider linguistic justice, though, a more refined analysis is needed. This
is the reason why we introduce here a set of four new sub-parameters, illustrated in
Table 3.
With δ1 we mean mainly the varieties in which the children are taught to
write and read and that they end up considering their ‘mother tongue’, be it their
code of first socialisation or not. It is essentially the variety to which the first
experiences of metalinguistic reflection is bound and to which most of the normative
drives of individual and society align. δ2 and δ3 are the situations of teaching
a language as L2: in the first case, we mean a local language different from the
tuition language and used in the same area or in a neighbouring region of the target
community—examples are French in German-speaking Switzerland or Spanish in
Catalan schools, while ‘international L2’ is a real foreign language. The letter D
in the columns ‘Situation’ indicates that such a language is out of the traditional
societal repertoire. Today, in Europe this is obviously the case of English, but still
also French, German or Russian. Of course, the two typologies (δ2 and δ3) interact
quite differently in terms of linguistic justice: on an etic level, δ2 is normally
introduced in schools systems for intrastate communicative purposes, while δ3 is
seen as a language for international communication. It is worth noting that a number
Table 3 Sub-parameters δ for school expansion

Sub-parameters Situation 1 Situation 2 Situation 3 Situation 4 Situation 5 Situation 6
δ1 Written A A A A A A
medium of
instruction
δ2 Compulsory B B B
local or other
national
language at
school
δ3 Compulsory B C D D C C
international
L2 at school
δ4 Stigmatised C
L2 at school
of studies on linguistic justice focus on this notion, which represents the vexata
quæstio of an international lingua franca. On the other side, δ4 is an emic parameter:
here belong the codes which are taught at school as compulsory L2 (that, for social
or political reasons, may be charged with negative images); if they exist, they
coincide with a δ2 or a δ3. Examples today are Swedish in the Finnish-speaking
schools of Finland and Danish in Iceland or, until some decades ago, Russian in
many parts of Eastern Europe.
At last, parameters ε and ζ investigate the media. As in the case of parameters
β and γ, the aim is to isolate the two extreme cases. Is it possible to receive inputs
in the target language? If so, are these inputs considered ‘normal’ by the speech
community? In this respect, we consider radio, television and the digital media
more important than printed press. Among other reasons, they allow a fruition that
is not directly bounded to the sociolinguistic norms of use of the codes, while
printed press (i.e. written use) is a typical example of high language situation.
Besides, the language employed in radio and TV often give the speaker occasions for
metalinguistic awareness on the standard register and its pronunciation. Moreover,
oral transmitted media can easily reach all the populations strata, even (eventual)
illiterate or young children. It is worth remarking that in many countries, the
international lingua franca (i.e. in most cases, English) is de facto present in the
media and as in contemporary music beside the national languages, and in many
cases, it is even unmarked. This has two interesting consequences in the countries
where there is a tradition of subtitling movies or TV programmes and not of dubbing
them: the lingua franca is commonly heard by nearly all the population, and there
is an established habit of reading the standard national language as employed in
non-formal communicative settings.
On the other side, the Internet gives access to a quantity of languages at the
same time, from the lingua franca to a number of varieties or codes that—given the
‘normal’ conditions of literacy in the speech communities—would have not been
written otherwise (see parameter γ in Table 2 above).
3 Towards the Estimation of Linguistic Unease
Linguistic unease shows the inadequacy of the speaker’s repertoire in a given

situation. If the researcher takes the collection of situations in which similar
phenomena appear, patterns of linguistic unease can be identified at a community
level. We believe that the careful consideration of the repertoires of a given
community can lead us to better focusing the notion of sociolinguistic justice.
This can be acquired by discussing the consequences at social level of the above-
discussed parameters, i.e. showing the linguistic ease/unease potential they imply.
The following tables are a first approximation in that direction: they show different
typologies of linguistic unease, defined in terms of gap between the requests from
the situation (which are community-driven) and the answers by the speaker (which
are based on the individual repertoire). It is important to note that the linguistic
consequences of the not complete command of the common repertoire are to be
intended in situations where all the languages are part of the set employed by the
speech communities as a whole. Parameters 1 and 11 are not in the table, because
they do not look pertinent at this stage of elaboration of the theory.
We are not going to explain in detail all cases, since we believe that a close
analysis of the scheme should give enough information per se. Nonetheless, a
few general remarks are worth giving. Tables 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 illustrate
the individual/community linguistic gaps, divided along with different dimensions
of analysis. They show what we consider the most important points of friction
between individual repertoires and societal one: here lies a number of questions
over the management of linguistic justice issues within the communities. It is
important to remind here that with ‘code’ we mean all kind of linguistic varieties
of a given societal repertoire, from registers to structurally different languages:
the more structural differences between the varieties, the higher could be the
Table 4 Individual/community linguistic gaps: H and L codes

Parameters Case Individual/community gap Expected consequences
2 H code 2.1 Ignorance of all codes in Unease in all formal situations
H (standard case for linguistic justice
literature)
2.2 Ignorance of one or more, Possible unease in some formal
but not all, H codes relations: the kind of unease depends
heavily upon socioeconomic
characteristics of the speaker
3 L code 3.1 Ignorance of all codes (H Out-grouping (possible only as a
and L) temporary status: newcomer,
foreigner, tourist and so on)
3.2 Ignorance of all L codes Severe unease in informal situations
3.3 Ignorance of one or more, Unease in some informal situation,
but not all, L codes highly depending from the structure
of the speech community (See 12)
Table 5 Individual/community linguistic gaps: ideological codes, languages and dialects

4 Ideological codes 4.1 Ignorance of the No practical
Wunschsprache consequences; it should be
a quite common situation
4.2 Knowledge of the Enjoys a strong social
Wunschsprache (plus position
all the other codes
employed by
community)
4.3 Knowledge of the Out-grouping, but
Wunschsprache only respected; practical
understanding unease
5 Languages 5.1 Ignorance of all the See 2.1 and 6.2; unease in
codes which are formal situations; the
considered ‘languages’ speaker is perceived as
quite disfavoured on
socioeconomic basis
6 Dialects 6.1 Ignorance of all the Possible unease in some
codes which are in-group relations (‘you
considered ‘dialects’ are losing your heritage’)
6.2 Only knowledge of This is the reverse of 5.1
codes which are
considered ‘dialects’
Table 6 Individual/community linguistic gaps: codes in expansion or decline codes

7 Codes in expansion 7.1 Ignorance of the code See 3 and 12 possible
in expansion unease in some
in-group relations (‘I
feel left behind in
society’)
8 Code in decline (status) 8.1 Only knowledge of Unease in some
the codes in decline in-group relations
(status) (‘they are modern; I
feel lost in tradition’);
see also 6.2
8.2 Ignorance of (all) No practical
codes in decline consequences per se
(status)
9 Codes in decline (speakers) 9.1 Only knowledge of Depends on the
the codes in decline nature of the code(s);
(speakers) possible severe
unease in formal or
informal situation
9.2 Ignorance of (all) Possible unease in
codes in decline some in-group and
(speakers) family relations
Table 7 Individual/community linguistic gaps: nonautonomous and in-group codes

10 Nonautonomous codes 10.1 Ignorance of the Light unease in some
nonautonomous code (in)formal relations
(some identity markers
are unknown); cf. 3.3
12 In-group codes 12.1 Ignorance of all the Severe unease in the
in-group codes in-group relations
Table 8 Individual/community linguistic gaps: school and the media

α Unmarked in α.1 Ignorance of the standard Unease in formal acts, e.g.
active oral use orthography of any code administration
user for written purposes
β Standard β.1 Ignorance of all the standard Possible unease, strongly
orthography orthography of one of the dependent upon the nature of the
codes used for written speech community and upon the
purposes official language policy
β.2 Ignorance of the standard Possible unease, strongly
orthography of one of the dependent upon the nature of the
codes used for written speech community and upon the
purposes official language policy
γ Non-written γ.1 Proficiency in writing the Either local cultural leadership or
code stigma in some in-group
situations
δ Vehicular δ.1 Ignorance of vehicular Severe unease (leading even to
language at languages cognitive disease)
school
δ.2 Ignorance of some vehicular Unease with peers; transient, if
languages helped
δ.3 Personal ignorance of all Possible unease, strongly
vehicular languages, some dependent upon the nature of the
of which are nonetheless speech community and upon the
known in the family official language policy
ε Media use ε.1 Ignorance of all codes in the Possible light unease in some
media in-group situations
ε.2 Ignorance of some codes in Possible light unease in some
the media in-group situations
individual/community linguistic gap. Most kinds of unease belong to the diaphasic

axis (formal vs. informal situations), which governs the formality or informality of
the situation. It is easy to forecast that ignorance of high prestige codes can lead
to unease in formal situations of various kind; see Table 4—of course, ignorance
of all acrolects (2.1) is worse than ignorance of only some of them (2.2), and a
quite common case is no command at all of written varieties, which are traditionally
related to formal situations (see also β.1/β.2 below).
Table 9 Individual/community linguistic gaps: school and the media

δ1 Written medium δ.1.1 Ignorance of the Severe unease (leading even to
of instruction written mediums of cognitive disease; professional
instruction unease)
δ2 Compulsory δ.2.1 Ignorance of one of Specific communicative unease
neighbour or these codes in out-group communication;
other national professional unease depending
language at on the official language policy
school
δ3 Compulsory δ.3.1 No command at all Professional unease in highly
international L2 at acquired in the specialised jobs or at academic
school international level; possible occasional
language unease in professional life in
international settings; specific
unease in touristic settings
δ4 Stigmatised at δ.4.1 Ignorance of the No effect per se in school
school stigmatised language environment; could lead to light
peer-group unease
δ.4.2 High proficiency and Could lead to the exclusion
use of the stigmatised from the in-group
language
Table 10 Typology of linguistic unease

Source of unease Types of unease Corresponding cases
Situation Unease in formal situation 2.1/2.2/5.1/6.2/8.1 9.1/β.1/β.2/δ.1/δ.2/δ1.1–3
Unease in informal situation 3.2/3.3/6.1/10.1/12.1/α.1 δ.2/δ.3/ε.1/ε.2/δ1.1–3
Sense of Unease in in-group relations 6.1/7.1/8.1/9.2/10.1
belonging Out-grouping as an unease 12.1/ε.1/ε.2 3.1/4.3/12.1/α.1/δ.1/δ4.2
Schooling Unease in writing 2.1/β.1/γ.1/δ.1/δ.1–3
Unease at school All the δ cases
It may look like that ignorance of high-level codes leads to practical linguistic
unease, while insufficient competence in the low-level ones implies only a less
smooth communication in the peer group. We believe, however, that this is an
oversimplifying view: the full participation in the linguistic life of the speech
community is at least as important as the access to higher linguistic abilities; the
particular combination of rules governing the codes’ coexistence within speech
communities should be maintained as a whole, and this is an important issue for
linguistic justice.
But it is also interesting as noted in Table 4 that ignorance of low languages leads
to ‘unjust’ situations of linguistic unease mainly through a non-proper command
of intergroup relations (3.1/3.2/3.3). These cases are quite intriguing, because the
particular unease to which they may lead to is depending upon the socioeconomic
characteristics of the speaker and the rules governing the use of codes within the
speech community at the same time. In particular, case 3.2 shows that ignorance of
all L codes can lead the semi-speaker to severe unease in informal situations.
An interesting sociolinguistic situation, illustrated in Table 5, arises when the
only code mastered by the speaker in the linguistic panorama of the speech
community is exactly the Wunschsprache, i.e. the ideological code which acts as
a point of reference for the speakers (case 4.1). In this case, the speaker is still
out-grouped, but she/he can enjoy a good communicative status because of the
ideological code. For instance, many monolingual English speakers living abroad
in countries where the language is mastered enough, at least passively, can skip for
a quite long time the acquisition of the local language(s), if English plays the role of
the desired language of the community. It should be noted that not all the situations
lead to individual unease or to failures in the smooth communication among the
speakers: some cases show no practical consequences (4.1/8.2), and others even
indicate an advantage in the communications skills (4.2/maybe γ.1)—in general,
however, the more codes a speaker masters (both as high varieties and as low ones),
the better it is. Moreover, ignorance of dialects (6.1) can lead to a loss of language
loyalty: from the perspective of the peers the speaker can be accused to lose the
ancestral connection to the heritage of the speech community.
Tables 6 and 7, on the other hand, show that if the ignored code is in expansion,
the speaker can feel to be nonmodern or left behind in a quickly transforming society
(7.1). Different is the case of no knowledge at all of a declining variable: here, the
(younger) speaker can experience losses in communications towards elderly people,
even in her/his own family. Similarly, if the only codes mastered are the ones in
decline, the speaker can perceive herself/himself as bearer of a tradition which can
act as a barrier towards social and linguistic innovation (8.1/9.1).
Another interesting case is when the speaker is able to write a language variety or
a dialect that it is not normally written by the speech community: graphisation is one
of the first important acts of language planning, as Haugen (1959) already noticed.
Planning a normative writing implies that the code is considered apt to be used in a
lot of contexts of modern life, rather than being only for in-group communication,
a typical domain of orality. Paradoxically, language activists involved in such a
planning effort can be considered (opinion) leaders by some fringes of the speech
community, while for others such an effort is considered ‘strange’, and the activist
can even be ostracised (γ.1). Case γ.1 in Table 8 states that the proficiency in writing
a code which is regarded by the community as mainly non-written can lead the
proficient individual either to local cultural leadership (to be perceived as a ‘local
intellectual’) or to social stigma in some in-group situations—(‘you believe you
are better than we are’). Case 10.2 does not appear in Table 7 as it is logically
impossible, given the nature of the codes involved.
A lighter form of unease is failing to follow the codes used in the media. The
media often act as cultural markers within the community: the voice of the radio
speaker and the plot of the radio or TV comedy in the language—for example,
the BBC programmes in Welsh—are topics of the conversation in the in-group
code. If the speaker does not anything of them, she/he simply fails to follow the
conversation, even mastering the code. This form of unease is not insurmountable
(cases ε.1 and ε.2 in Table 8).
Finally, a typical domain of linguistic unease is the school (cases δ.1, δ.2 and δ.3).
These forms of unease, illustrated in Table 9, can be more or less transient, if there
is some form of help in the community or the institution to overcome the language
barrier of the pupils. Of course, the role of the parents should not be underestimated:
proficiency and attitudes towards the target language by the family member play a
crucial role. In particular, the ignorance (or the lack of sufficient mastering) of the
written language used at school (parameter δ1) produces in the pupil severe unease
in the learning process. Teaching how to write and read is one of the main tasks
of any school: a situation in which a person does not master the written language
is symptom of some other social problem. The lack of mastering of the L2 taught
at school (parameters δ2 and δ3) can lead to different communicative unease in
single specific out-group situations, like professional difficulties in certain jobs or
in international settings. It is a matter of fact that in several European countries,
the mere school acquisition of a foreign language does not guarantee even a basic
command of such a language. Instead, the high proficiency of a stigmatised language
can lead, in extreme cases, to the exclusion from the in-group (but without real
communicative unease).
Table 10 summarises the possible types of linguistic unease. Essentially, the
sources of linguistic unease are of three kinds: (1) unease in formal and/or informal
situations, when some languages, varieties or dialects are missing in the individual
repertoire, but present at a community level; (2) unease connected with the sense of
belonging; and (3) specific kinds of unease, linked to particular important domains
in the society. All of these unease situations are, we believe, a direct concern of
linguistic justice. The importance of language policy and planning in order to reduce
the linguistic unease and therefore sociolinguistic injustice is clear: actions should
be taken only if language proficiency, attitudes and most of all desires of the target
population are well described, through a fine-grained work in the field. However, the
majority of the models in the current literature in linguistic justice does not take into
account the sociolinguistic variables, in particular the diaphasic axis or the sense of
belonging from the speaker’s perspective; but without taking into account a definite
situation of analysis, it is impossible to enucleate precise socioeconomic effects.
4 Sociolinguistic Justice and New Forms of Mobility
The above applies in those situations that we have labelled as ‘consolidated’—in

which the societal multilingualism is well established and the repertory rules of the
speech community have been commonly shared for quite a long time. Nowadays,
though, Europe—as well as other parts of the world—is facing the most important
population movement since the Second World War, both in terms of internal mobil-
ity and of immigration from abroad, and this poses important questions concerning
the new-developing repertoires of the communities and hence of (socio)linguistic
justice. Migrants from different places and, what is more important for us, with
different background repertoires and different attitudes towards the language(s) and
the society to which they are moving arrive in already multilingual communities—
with all the characteristics mentioned above—altering their consolidated rules of
codes’ distribution.
Here, the notion of ‘inclusion’ is pivotal: any policy devoted to raise the level of
linguistic justice in the society should tend to include the more possible speakers
into their recipient linguistic communities. This process shows nonetheless two
main facets: from one side, mobility and (linguistic) inclusion have potentially
conflicting goals. Mobility fosters change, ‘new’ varieties entering in the repertoire
and ‘old’ (but maybe highly traditional and extremely important for peer-group
relations) ones disappearing, while inclusion means accepting norms and rules of
an already existing community by newcomers. It should not be taken for granted
that both parts wish or are able to manage the potential disrupting force of such a
close and sudden linguistic contact. On the other side, language education represents
a crucial aspect in the development of an acceptable trade-off between mobility and
inclusion—but it should be clear that different kinds of education (formal, non-
formal, informal) as well as different attitudes and motivations towards language
learning lead to completely different results and pose different problems as regards
(socio)linguistic justice.
This concern is not unknown to institutions: in general, local institutions in the
hosting area are sensitive to the importance of the development of language skills
for people in mobility and often actively promote initiatives (language courses,
cultural activities and so forth) to this purpose. Nonetheless, despite how inclusive
the institutions might be, this is not necessarily mirrored in the society: while we
may have strict and precise requirements on the institutional level (e.g. knowledge
required to obtain citizenship, languages needed at school, etc.), social and actual
linguistic contexts may be de facto more fragmented; on the other hand, even if
institutions favour de jure a certain degree of interaction with people in mobility, on
the societal and language-in-use level, actual inclusion is usually harder to achieve.
Language needs of mobile people, as well as of the speakers of the recipient
society, represent a potential of ease/unease factor in any linguistic interaction of
a speech community. We have developed a set of parameters—or ‘dimensions’—
which can be of some use for identifying the language characteristics of mobile
speakers and therefore a number of issues related to linguistic justice.
Tables 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 present the dimensions considered, which are
(wrk) work and working conditions in Table 11, (dir) direction of mobility (within
EU or from outside) in Table 12, (lr) linguistic repertoire of mobile persons at the
beginning of their mobility process in Table 13 as well as (ra) linguistic repertoire of
the hosting area in Table 14, (scl) sociolinguistic condition in the target community
in Table 15 and finally (lv) a set of variables strictly connected to language learning,
such as language attitudes, educational background and language learning activities
already undertaken after arrival in the hosting area; see Table 16. An additional
dimension (out, see Table 17) represents the outcomes of the examined process,
resulting from the combination of the observed variables. These dimensions are
Table 11 Dimensions of mobility: wrk

Work/working condition
Students Mobility caused by family movement wrk 11
Mobility of the students for educational purposes Short term wrk 121
Long term wrk 122
Mobility to reach a desired job wrk 13
Type of migration: executives, basic workers, job search,
Workers ideal/ideological reasons wrk 2
Retired Mobility for pleasure (possible variable: strong/weak economy) wrk 31
Travel back to homeland wrk 32
Table 12 Dimensions of mobility: dir

Direction of mobility throughout Europe
*EU → *EU Between economically similar countries dir 11
Between economically dissimilar countries dir 12
*EU → *EU From an economically strong country dir 21
From an economically weak country dir 22
*EU → *EU → *EU . . . dir 3
*EU → non *EU (possible, but beyond the scope of our investigation) dir 4
*EU → non *EU (possible, but beyond the scope of our investigation) dir 5
Table 13 Dimensions of mobility: lr

Linguistic repertoire at the beginning of the mobility process
Monolingual Strong language lr 11
Weak language lr 12
Average L2 competence Strong language lr 21
Weak language lr 22
Bilingual Two strong languages lr 31
Strong language(s), weak language(s) lr 32
Diglossic Internal diglossia lr 41
External diglossia lr 42
Table 14 Dimensions of mobility: ra

Repertoire typology of the recipient area
Nearly/approximately monolingual ra 1
Nearly/approximately diglossic ra 2
Nearly/approximately multilingual Two strong languages ra 31
Strong language(s), weak language(s) ra 32
Table 15 Dimensions of mobility: scl

Sociolinguistic conditions in the target community
Typological distance between languages Impossible intercomprehension or lingua receptiva scl 11
Possibility of intercomprehension or lingua receptiva scl 12
Lingua franca Widely used in the host society scl 21
Known by the migrant scl 22
Social network No/feeble scl 31
Dense, multiplex Open to the recipient society scl 321
Excluding the recipient society scl 322
Communities of practice Open to the host society scl 41
Excluding the host society scl 42
Table 16 Dimensions of mobility: lv

Learning variables
Attitudes Towards integration within the recipient area lv 11
Instrumental (e.g. strictly related to working or study necessities) lv 12
Educational background Spontaneous lv 21
Formal lv 22
Language learning
after arrival Spontaneous Goal: ‘Only survival’ language skills Willingly lv 3111
Unwillingly lv 3112
Goal: enriching or improving language skills lv 312
Formal At school lv 321
Lifelong learning Institutional lv 3221
Private lv 3222
detailed in a set of subclasses. *EU indicates the actual States of EU, as well as
other States that can easily be paired with EU (EFTA and so on).
Here, as well as for the previous tables, we would like not to insist in
describing every cell of the following tables, which evidently represent different
(socio)linguistic parameters that can be combined to create (or imagine) actual
linguistic situations, each of them with its potential of linguistic ease or unease:
we will instead only describe the general structure of each section of the table in
order to make clear which parameters they are based on.
A first important variable concerns the age at the time of migration; this is strictly
connected with the main motivation for mobility (study, job, retirement, family
reunification), which is, on the other side, connected to more general causes of
migration that might concern groups instead of single persons (e.g. war, economic
crisis, persecution in the country of origin). Of course, age is crucial in any process
of L2 acquisition.
Table 17 Dimensions of mobility: F (outcomes)
Outcomes
On the original repertoire Complete maintenance out 11
Loss of one or more varieties Originally bilingual contexts out 121
Originally diglossic contexts Loss of the high variety out 1221
Loss of the medium/low variety out 1222
Complete unease in both
original and target language Also oral out 21
Only written out 22
On the languages belonging
to the recipient area Acquired bilingualism out 31
Average L2 competence out 32
Incomplete acquisition For evident necessity out 331
For insufficient evaluation of the necessity Passive command suffices out 3321
Mutual understanding
between the languages out 3322
For non-integrative language attitudes out 333
The Assessment of Sociolinguistic Justice: Parameters and Models of Analysis
385
A second noteworthy aspect is the duration of the mobility period, or more

precisely the specific life plans of people in mobility: their intention to stay for
a short or long period, to return to their countries of origin and so on. We must
also consider the linguistic repertoires of both the countries of origin and of the
hosting area, which might facilitate or hinder inclusion due to specific favourable or
unfavourable conditions.
Situations may vary greatly according to the language repertoire of the hosting
area, with multilingual areas showing a more variable and multi-faceted context,
probably more suitable or giving more opportunities to certain types of mobility.
Another factor that intervenes in the inclusiveness of people in mobility is the
structural distance between the L1 of the people in mobility and the language(s)
of the host society. In particular, the structural distance is perceived by both
population as short, and strategies of so-called lingua receptiva can emerge, i.e.
verbal communication among persons speaking each his/her variety without the
help of a third common one. This strategy of receptive multilingualism can possibly
favour mobility (‘I will be understood even without any language teaching’) and
foster inclusion (‘I understand the newcomers; hence, they are not so different from
me’).
In our perspective, there is also another aspect particularly significant for the
definition of a typology of language needs for people in mobility and its correlation
with inclusion: as stated above, the language attitudes and motivations towards
language learning play a major role in linguistic integration of mobile people. We
define motivation as a set of psychological attitudes and intentions which, given
certain circumstances, might lead to specific actions and behaviours. Motivation
has been widely observed in studies on language learning. It represents an extralin-
guistic factor strongly affecting acquisition, in particular for what concerns foreign
languages—cf. Gardner and Lambert (1972).
In these studies, motivations are examined through two basic levels of observa-
tion: type of motivation and intensity. There are two principal types of motivation,
which represent opposite poles: instrumental motivation, which concerns an ancil-
lary interest of the individual towards the language (for instance, the language is
useful to access job opportunities), and integrative motivation, which concerns the
intention of the individual to be part of the community speaking that language or the
local languages in diglossia (thus, language(s) represent a primary tool to become
integrated in the community).
These motivations might drive future behaviours according to their intensity:
more intense motivations represent intentions which have higher probability to be
realised in the future. Literature on this field abundantly shows that an integrative
motivation is usually stronger and has higher and long-lasting effect on language
acquisition.
In order to understand better how to use the dimensions illustrated in the tables,
let’s give a couple of examples out of ongoing research for the MIME project (http://
mime-project.org). The first example refers to a field research of ex-Yugoslavian
migrants in South Tyrol, conducted by the use of language biographies elicited
through semi-structured interviews. While in the past families moved because of the
war, more recently they often move because of unemployment from an economically
weak situation (wrk 2 of Table 11, dir 22 of Table 12). Usually their jobs last
for a season, as they are in the agricultural sector; therefore, these migrants are
commuters with the countries of origin, South Tyrol being not too far. Their age can
vary: however, both adults and children usually encounter difficulties in acquiring
an L2 and in maintaining their L1, as passive command suffices (out 3321, Table
17), according to their non-integrative language attitudes (out 333, Table 17). In
fact, their learning attitudes are instrumental (lv 12 in Table 16), and learning is
spontaneous and only for basic needs (lv 3111 in Table 16). In particular, mobile
people from Kosovo are often originally bilingual (lr 31 from Table 13), while the
hosting society presents two strong languages, German and Italian, with German
in diglossic relations with local Germanic varieties (ra 32, Table 14). According
to different evaluations, the degree of integration of mobile people in South Tyrol
is quite high, but there is no possibility of mutual intercomprehension between
Albanian and the three languages spoken in South Tyrol (scl 11, Table 15). However,
Italian is evaluated by the majority of the participants to be more similar than
German to their languages of origin, and this perception often positively influences
the motivation to learn Italian before German after moving in South Tyrol.
The second example refers to the expat community working for large interna-
tional companies in the bilingual town of Vaasa/Vasa in western Finland, where it
constitutes up to 10% of the overall population of the town. All the expats moved
there for normally temporary, voluntary, high-skilled professional reasons (wrk 2,
Table 11); the majority of them comes from countries which are economically
balanced with Finland (dir 11 in Table 12), and their original linguistic repertoire is
quite varied, ranging from monolingualism (lr 11, lr 12; see Table 13) to diglossia
(lr 41, 42, also Table 13). Vaasa/Vasa itself is an officially bilingual town, with
two locally strong languages of high prestige, Swedish and Finnish (ra 31, Table
14). Any kind of intercomprehension or lingua receptiva is impossible with Finnish
(scl 11, Table 15), while in some cases, a good knowledge of Germanic languages
could lead to some intercomprehension with Swedish (scl 12, Table 15). However,
English is quite widely used in the host society as lingua franca, and it is known
by all the mobile people (scl 22, Table 15). There are cases of social networks and
communities of practices open to the host society (scl 321, scl 41; see Table 15),
in particular with the Swedish-speaking community. On the whole, the attitudes for
learning the local languages are instrumental (lv 12, Table 16), and the approach
to Finnish or Swedish passes almost exclusively through formal education (lv 322,
Table 16). The situation leads to the complete maintenance of the original repertoire
and linguistic identity (out 11 in Table 17) and normally to an incomplete acquisition
of one of the local languages in the best cases because passive command suffices
(out 3321, Table 17).
In our perspective, different types of motivation are mirrored by different orien-
tations of people in mobility towards inclusion: persons interested in being included
in the social context tend to develop an integrative motivation towards learning the
language(s) of the hosting area, while instrumental motivation might more easily
be seen in people merely oriented towards inclusion in the job market. We will
therefore distinguish three profiles or ‘degrees’ of orientation towards inclusion,

placing an intermediate degree between the two poles: ‘instrumental’ inclusion
in the job market, ‘interactional’ inclusion in the hosting area and ‘integrative’
inclusion in the society. It is noteworthy to remember here that ‘unease’ is intended
as a personal condition of the speaker, who can or cannot feel the need of mastering
a particular set of the linguistic varieties available in the society—provided that
institutions created the ‘just’ conditions for this goal to be eventually achieved.
However, linguistic unease is caused not only by the personal condition of the
speaker but also by the concrete situations of the civil society. In our view, reducing
linguistic unease is a duty of the public institutions. In fact, they should raise the
attention of the civil society towards the sociolinguistic needs of the mobile people,
so that the latter will be more and more keen to be integrated—in the sense seen just
above—into the hosting society as much as possible. The strategies to apply this
goal depend on the context, and there is no “one-fit-for-all” language policy that can
make everybody feel at ease.
In order to evaluate the success of language policies, it is good to start from the
possible outcomes in terms of linguistic repertoire. Table 17 in particular illustrates
the Outcomes, in which the possible consequences of the interaction of the variable
wrk through lv are synthesised. We should consider at first the consequences on
the original repertoire of the migrant: it could be completely maintained or, more
commonly, one (or more) of the original codes can be lost, especially in cases in
which the original context was diglossic. For example, we can imagine an Arabic-
speaking person born in a diglossic area with French, standard Arabic and local
Arabic moving to France: in the migration process, she/he can lose competence in
one of the codes, most likely standard Arabic (the no more useful high code).
Attention should be given also to the acquisition of the repertoire of the host
society: the new codes can be acquired (out31) so that the person is considered a
mother tongue speaker (it happens often only in second-generation migrants); or
(out32) the codes can be acquired as an L2, i.e. the pragmatic competence of the
migrant speaker is possibly very high, but some interferences with the language
situation of origin remain; or (out33), language acquisition is incomplete under
different aspects. In the worst cases, the socioeconomical circumstances that have
caused the migration as well as the education policy of the recipient country can
lead to a situation of complete unease in both original and target language(s). It
means that the linguistic competence of the speaker is not fitting the communicative
requirements of the linguistic act she/he is about to perform, both in the language
of origin and in the language(s) of the society in which she/he is living. At the
same time, the symbolic value of her/his speech acts, if this linguistic uncertainty
is not only related to the written language, is always perceived as misplaced. The
last possible outcomes lead to different kind of severe linguistic unease—societies
should take particular care in trying to avoid them.
5 Conclusions and Further Directions of Research
We argue that the assessment of sociolinguistic justice should pass through the
promotion of linguistic ease. Multilingualism should be considered a natural state
of humankind, not a kind of Babelic curse to be eradicated. Researchers should
go beyond the Westphalian model of nation-state, which already proved to be
insufficient to tackle the complexity of globalising and localising forces of the
contemporary world, and therefore treat languages as socially constructed dynamic
abstractions rather than static entities. It is therefore useful a fine-grained view
of the linguistic intricacies in complex multilingual situations. Linguistic unease,
we argue, essentially manifests along three axes: the diaphasic axis, i.e. along the
formality of situations; the identity axis, represented by the sense of belonging
and in-group relations; and, finally, special domains like school, writing and—
possibly—administration. The impact of the three axes of linguistic unease in
economic terms highly depends on the context of analysis, e.g. on the society, region
or country under scrutiny. For instance, a state of high linguistic unease in formal
situations can hinder efficiency in the public administration as the citizens feel
insecure while relating to the public officers. Another example is linguistic unease at
school. In fact, several tasks in schools are mainly language-based (e.g. geography,
history but also art or philosophy), and such a linguistic unease can severely interfere
with the overall performance and grades of the learners. On a societal level, these
examples of linguistic unease will eventually influence the economic state of the
society itself. The concrete application of linguistic unease may be explored in
further research.
It is worth noting that linguistic ease as an absolute state of being is impossible
to achieve in the real world; rather, a realistic goal is to reduce linguistic unease
at the minimum whenever possible, unless major reasons intervene to justify
special cases of linguistic unease in specific contexts. For example, it is perfectly
acceptable to pass through linguistic unease during the learning process of an L2
in formal education such as in school, as that context is transitory, limited and
highly controlled by the teachers. The same can be said for situations like very short
stays within a community, either for travelling or short-term migrations—left alone
the non-willingness of inclusion or the personal lack of unease feeling. In these
particular cases, linguistic unease does not interfere with linguistic justice per se.
However, generally speaking, linguistic unease is often a symptom of the fact that
we are in a situation of linguistic injustice. For this reason, we hope that in the future
the literature will take more into account sociolinguistic variables in the discourse
around linguistic justice, having at the centre of their analysis not abstractly defined
languages, but rather actual speakers and their language environment.
Acknowledgements The research leading to the present paper has received funding from the
European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement No. 613344
(Project MIME). The content and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and
do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the institutions supporting them.
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Regulatory Environment, Linguistic
Inequalities, and New Opportunities
for Hungarian Minority Interest
Representation in Romania
Zsombor Csata and László Marácz
1 Introduction
In this chapter, we will argue that the Hungarian-speaking minority in Romania

has been pursuing a policy of language equality based on two different types of
strategies. The first one could be classified as the so-called traditional-confrontative
strategies in which all sorts of autonomy strives of linguistic or ethnic minorities
are on the foreground. Due to the collapse of communism and the adaptation of the
Romanian sociopolitical system to the democratic principles of the European Union,
language and minority rights have improved the position of the Hungarian-speaking
minority in the Romanian legal system. The provisions for linguistic and minority
rights in the Romanian legal system are in accordance with the Personality Principle
and not in accordance with the Territoriality Principle when rights and obligations
apply to a given territory as opposed to individuals or to groups of individuals as in
the Personality Principle (McRae 1975; Dembinska et al. 2014: 360). We will argue
that civic activism has changed and new sorts of innovative strategies have been
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh
Framework Program (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement no. 613344.
Z. Csata
Magyar Tudományos Akadémia (MTA), Budapest, Hungary
Universitatea Babes, -Bolyai/Babes, -Bolyai Tudományegyetem/Babes, -Bolyai-Universität,
Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár/Klausenburg, Romania
e-mail: csata.zsombor@tk.mta.hu
L. Marácz ()
e-mail: L.K.Maracz@uva.nl

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1_13
394 Z. Csata and L. Marácz
undertaken since 2007 when Romania joined the European Union. These strategies
received a more favorable reception from the representatives of the Romanian
majority, and thus their implementation seems to be more successful. Although their
scope and impact are limited to specific regions and towns in Transylvania, these
grassroots movements succeed because they refer to a more pragmatic reasoning of
the development economics and the “economics of language.”
It has been argued in the literature that ethnolinguistic diversity can be beneficial
for the economy in those developed countries where the institutional enforcement of
the common law on economic cooperation is effective. However, this remains to be
seen in Romania, and the hypothesis is in need of much more detailed research. On
another line of thought, more permissive supranational market regulations following
Romania’s accession to the EU have diverted the bonding type of solidarity among
ethnic Hungarians to support the commercialization of local Hungarian brands.
These new businesses have started to address the Hungarian-speaking minority in
Transylvania in their own language. This has in its turn a positive effect on the
preservation of the Hungarian cultural identity and language in Romania.
In order to make our analysis, this paper will pursue an interdisciplinary approach
to the study of language and minority rights. In our paper we will rely on different
disciplines, including geography and demography, and will give insight into the
rather complex pattern of the Hungarian minority in Transylvania. In Sect. 2 we
will discuss the demographics of the region. Although being in a demographic
minority and displaying a decreasing dynamics, sometimes the Hungarian-speaking
communities form relative or absolute majorities in the three larger areas they live in,
especially in the area called Szeklerland. In Sect. 3 we will outline the framework
of the legal system of the Romanian state focusing on the Constitution declaring
the Romanian language as the official language of the state and language and
minority rights as belonging to the Personality Principle. This leads to the situation
of asymmetric bilingualism in Transylvania. Ethnic Hungarians speak besides their
mother tongue Hungarian the official language of the state, Romanian, but vice versa
is not true for Romanians; they normally do not control Hungarian. External binding
arrangements like legal treaties of the Council of Europe, such as the Framework
Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCPNM) and the European
Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECMRL), have affected the language
situation of minorities in Romania positively. In Sect. 4 the legal approach to
multilingual institutions will be elaborated on. This section discusses the additional
laws of multilingual communication in the domains of public administration and
the educational system. The use of the Hungarian language is regulated along
the Personality Principle and restricted by the Law on Public Administration by
a threshold rule. This means that in an administrative-territorial unit, 20% of the
total population should be a minority language speaker for the minority language
be used as an official language in that unit. Separate laws specify the use of the
Hungarian language in the Romanian educational system. Higher education in
Hungarian falls under a substantially different legal regulation than the elementary
and secondary layers within the educational system. Romanian law specifies
three officially recognized multilingual institutions, including Cluj’s Babeş-Bolyai
Regulatory Environment, Linguistic Inequalities, and New Opportunities. . . 395
University. Section 5 provides a number of statistical data that show that in recent
years there is a rapid deterioration of the income situation of ethnic Hungarians in
Romania. We will discuss if this has to do with the lack of appropriate Romanian
language skills among certain categories of ethnic Hungarians in Romania. In Sect.
6 we will discuss the strategies that have been pursued by representatives of the
Hungarian-speaking minority in order to strive for parity of language use. It has
turned out that the “traditional-confrontative” strategies, like the implementation
of the Territoriality Principle referring to Szeklerland, had a much less favorable
reception from the representatives of the Romanian majority than the pursuing of
these new, innovative strategies. Two cases are discussed under this label in much
more detail: firstly, civic activism favoring the practical realization of language
rights within the boundaries of the Romanian legal framework, that is, respecting
the Personality Principle restricted by the threshold rule, and secondly, the effect
of the supranational market regulations on the commercialization and marketing of
local ethnic products and services and their possible positive side effects on a more
spontaneous public use of the Hungarian language in the economy.
2 Population and Demography
2.1 Romania’s Ethnolinguistic Diversity
The Hungarian minority in Romania counted by the latest 2011 census 1,227,623
persons who make up 6.5% of the total population of Romania.1 However, the
Hungarian-speaking minority mostly lives concentrated in the northwestern part of
the country, i.e., the Transylvanian region, stretching from the Hungarian-Romanian
country border to Szeklerland at the feet of the Eastern Carpathians mountains (Batt
2006: 171–175).2 This “stroke” is a traditional multiethnic region, and the ethnic
Hungarians are not present in it in equal concentrations (Fig. 1). The percentages of
the ethnic distribution of ethnic Hungarians and Romanians in Transylvania clearly
differ from the national percentages.
In the whole of the Transylvanian area, ethnic Hungarians make up around
19% of the total population, while the ethnic Romanians number around 75%.
Transylvanian Hungarians inhabit three spatially connected subregions displaying
a different and heterogeneous geo-ethnic distribution. Beyond the three regions
1 In Romania, the number of persons who declared Hungarian as their mother tongue was slightly
higher (1,259,914), compared to those who declared themselves ethnic Hungarians (1,227,623).
Since the difference is marginal, “Hungarian-speaking” and “ethnic Hungarian” population are
used as synonyms throughout the paper. All data refers to those who declared themselves as ethnic
Hungarians during the cited censuses and surveys.
2 The Szeklers (Hun. Székely) are an ethnic Hungarian group in Transylvania displaying a peculiar
set of ethnographic, cultural, and linguistic features. In the Hungarian Kingdom, they were
employed as border guards defending the isolated Eastern Carpathian mountain range.
Fig. 1 The proportion of ethnic Hungarians (in %) in Transylvanian municipalities (2011).

Source: Own calculations based on 2011 census data
referred and discussed below, a significant but rapidly decreasing number of ethnic
Hungarians (around 153,000) live in Southern Transylvania (Timis, , Arad, Caras, -
Severin, Hunedoara, Alba, Sibiu, and Bras, ov counties) in municipalities where they
usually represent a small minority. We will refer to these minorities as internal
diaspora communities throughout the paper.
The first subregion “Partium” is located in the Hungarian-Romanian border area
in the former eastern Hungarian region and present-day northwest Romania. In
this region, a substantial percentage of ethnic Hungarians constitute a majority in
a number of municipalities and districts, excepting the greater towns like Oradea
(Hun. Nagyvárad) and Satu Mare (Hun. Szatmárnémeti).
The second subregion, the area landward is central Transylvania with the
major city of Cluj-Napoca (Hun. Kolozsvár). In this region, the ethnic Hungarians
are often smaller minorities and live often in mixed Hungarian-Romanian-Roma
communities, but in some municipalities and districts, they can have a relative or
absolute majority (Brubaker et al. 2006).
The third subregion, which is matching the historical area of Szeklerland, is
of about 13,000 km2 and consists of the three counties Harghita (Hun. Hargita),
Covasna (Hun. Kovászna), and Mureş (Hun. Maros).3 More than a half of the
Transylvanian Hungarians live in Szeklerland and display an absolute majority. Note
that the historic Szeklerland is not recognized by the Romanian state; the term itself
does not appear in any official national or international document ratified by the
Romanian state.
The total population of Szeklerland, that is, the population of the three counties
Harghita, Covasna, and Mures, together, is numbering 1,071,890 persons, according
to the 2011 census. The ethnic Hungarian share of the total population of Szekler-
land is 609,033 persons (56.8%) which is an absolute majority.4 More specifically
in Harghita, Covasna, and Mures, , the absolute figures and percentages of the
ethnic Hungarian population are as follows: 257,707 persons (85.2%); 150,468
persons (73.7%); and 200,858 persons (38.1%). Note that in two of the three
Szekler counties, namely, Harghita and Covasna, the ethnic Hungarians have a clear
majority. Consider now the dynamics of the demographic situation in Szeklerland
depicted in Table 1.
The distribution of the ethnic Hungarians in absolute figures and percentages of
the 2002 census for the three Szekler counties Harghita, Covasna, and Mures, are as
follows: 276,038 persons (84.6%); 164,158 persons (73.6%); and 228,275 persons
(39.3%). From the comparison of the 2002 and 2011 census data, we observe that
the absolute figures of the ethnic Hungarians have slightly dropped in the three
counties. This is also the case for the two counties Harghita and Covasna, where
the ethnic Hungarians have a clear majority. Note that the relative figures have
unaffected the Hungarian distribution in Covasna and have even strengthened the
Hungarian position in the county of Harghita.
This trend is part of a much larger pattern of ethnic reordering in Transylvania.
There is an increase of the spatial concentration of ethnic Hungarians in areas
where they have a comfortable majority. Between the last two censuses, the
lowest decrease of Hungarian population was registered in counties belonging to
Szeklerland: Harghita (6.6%), Covasna (8.3%), and Mures, (11.8%). This trend is
even more visible when we take into account the town/village level data (Table 2): in
3 Following recent methods of record determined by the accessibility of statistical data, in our study
the population of Szeklerland refers to the residents of Harghita (Hargita), Covasna (Kovászna),
and Mures, (Maros) counties. The territory of “historical” Szeklerland—the one that existed
during the Hungarian Kingdom—differs from this; it included the following smaller regions
(seats): Bardoc-Miklósvár, Sepsi, Kézdi és Orbaiszék (in today’s Covasna/Kovászna county),
Csík, Udvarhely és Gyergyószék (in today’s Harghita/Hargita county), and Marosszék (in today’s
Mures, /Maros county). A smaller region in Aranyosszék (in today’s Cluj/Kolozs county) was also
part of the historic Szeklerland.
4 Out of the total population of Szeklerland, the ethnic affiliation of 38,096 persons is unknown.
These persons were added to the results obtained in the original census survey using a very
controversial methodology (Veres 2015: 26–28). So if we distribute this population according
to the ethnic ratios of the original census data, the number of Hungarians would increase with
20,665 persons to 629,698 and their proportion to 58.7% (Veres 2015: 37). Using the same method
of estimation, the number of Hungarians in Transylvania would increase by 56,487 persons to
1,273,153 and their proportion would change to 18.8%.
Table 1 The changing demographics of the Hungarian population in Transylvania, by counties (2002–2011)
398
The number of Hungarians

Changes in the number of
The proportion of Hungarian population
2002 2011 Hungarians in 2011 (%) (2002–2011, %)
Szeklerland
Covasna (Kovászna) 164, 055 150, 468 73.7 −8.3
Harghita (Hargita) 275, 841 257, 707 85.2 −6.6
Mures, (Maros) 227, 673 200, 858 38.1 −11.8
Total 667, 569 609, 033 58.9 −8.8
Transylvanian counties outside Szeklerland
Alba (Fehér) 20, 682 14, 849 4.6 −28.2
Arad 49, 000 36, 568 9 −25.4
Bihor (Bihar) 155, 554 138, 213 25.3 −11.2
Bistrit, a-Năsăud (Beszerce-Naszód) 18, 394 14, 350 5.2 −22.0
Bras, ov (Brassó) 51, 470 39, 661 7.7 −22.9
Caras, -Severin (Krassó-Szörény) 5859 2938 1.1 −49.9
Cluj (Kolozs) 122, 131 103, 591 15.9 −15.2
Hunedoara (Hunyad) 25, 321 15, 900 4 −37.2
Maramures, (Máramaros) 46, 250 32, 618 7.2 −29.5
Satu Mare (Szatmár) 129, 998 112, 580 34.7 −13.4
Sălaj (Szilágy) 57, 312 50, 177 23.3 −12.5
Sibiu (Szeben) 15, 478 10, 893 2.9 −29.6
Timis, (Temes) 51, 421 35, 295 5.6 −31.4
Total 748, 870 607, 633 11.3 −18.9
Transylvania 1, 416, 439 1, 216, 666 19 −14.1
Romania 1, 434, 377 1, 227, 623 6.5 −14.4
Source: Own calculations based on census data from 2002, 2011
Z. Csata and L. Marácz
Table 2 The change of the Hungarian population between 2002 and 2011 by the proportion of
Hungarian residents in municipalities (Transylvania, %)
Dominantly Hungarian (above 75%) −5.6
Hungarian majority (50–75%) −6.3
Minority in parity (35–50%) −15.1
Minority (20–35%) −16.6
Internal diaspora community in the making (between 10 and 20%) −22.9
Internal diaspora community (below 10%, population > 100) −31.7
Source: Kiss-Barna (2012: 18)
municipalities where the ethnic Hungarians are the dominant majority, the number
of ethnic Hungarians dropped only by 5.6%, compared to the 32% in those locations
where the ethnic Hungarians represent less than 10% of the population.
These changes are also illustrated by the fact that while in 1992 only 45.1% of the
Transylvanian Hungarians were living in the three Szekler counties, in 2011 more
than a half of them did. The increasing concentration of Transylvanian Hungarians
in Szeklerland can be explained by two main factors. First, the assimilation of ethnic
Hungarians in communities where they are in minority (especially in Northern
and Southern Transylvania) is much more accelerated. This is partially due to the
higher occurrence of mixed marriages and the decreasing accessibility of Hungarian
education in these internal diaspora regions. The second factor is that, although
negative, the natural growth of ethnic Hungarian population in Szeklerland is still
more favorable compared to the rest of the Hungarians in Transylvania (Kiss-Barna
2012). See Table 2.
3 Legislative and Regulatory Environment
The legislative and administrative environment for ethnolinguistic minorities in

Romania is determined by two types of legal arrangements. These are due to
arrangements at two different levels of governance, i.e., the national and suprana-
tional level. An important legal act in the domain of the former is the Romanian
Constitution. Below we will discuss in more detail what arrangements the Romanian
Constitution contains for the facilitation of the cultural identity of ethnolinguistic
minorities, like the ethnic Hungarians in Romania. The supranational arrangements
are quite often associated with sociopolitical processes of globalization and Euro-
peanization that have empowered minority rights protection in extending liberal
democratic contexts (Kymlicka 1996; Smith 2002; Holton 2011). The interplay
between these different levels of governance is called “multilevel governance”
(Lelieveldt and Princen 2014: 41–42). Romania stepped into the playing field of
multilevel governance in the wake of the country’s accession to the European Union
in 2007. Since then all sorts of liberal arrangements for minority rights protection
from “outside” have entered the local legal and regulatory environment (Kymlicka
2008; Marácz 2014, 2015a, b). These arrangements are sometimes even conflicting
the state of affairs in national regulations, like the Romanian Constitution.
3.1 Romanian Constitution
The Romanian Constitution declares Romania an “indivisible and unitary nation-

state” (see article 1.1), and it does define national communities or ethnolinguistic
minorities only on the individual level as “persons belonging to a national minority”
(see article 6.1). Hence, minority rights, including minority language rights, are in
fact considered rights belonging to the individual. The idea of minority rights to be a
collective or group right is excluded. So, the right to speak the Hungarian language
in Romania is a right assigned to individual speakers in the first place. Individual
minority rights are more restrictive in a legal sense than collective minority rights.
Only the latter allow the realization of all sorts of minority autonomies. Although
the Romanian legal position is defined in terms of individual rights, it is less
clear when international treaties referring to language and minority rights Romania
has ratified are taken into account. Such treaties are the ones of the Council of
Europe which we will discuss extensively in the next subsection. The Council of
Europe treaties allow a notion of “collectivity,” namely, “rights in community with
others” (Vizi 2012: 140). So, international treaties may add a collective dimension
to the rights of the Hungarian-speaking minority in Romania. This is however
not the same as collective minority rights. Collective rights, as in the case of
South Tyrolean Ladins and Germans, the Serbian minority in northern Kosovo, and
the six “cohabitating” nationalities in the Serbian province Vojvodina, including
Serbs, Hungarians, Romanians, Slovaks, Croats, and Ruthenians, guarantee these
national minorities all sorts of autonomy in the legal framework of Italy, Kosovo,
and Serbia, respectively. Such provisions are however not available for minorities
with individual rights, even if a collective dimension is added to these rights in
international treaties, like the ones of the Council of Europe (Dembinska et al. 2014:
366).
The asymmetric treatment of the Romanian majority language with respect to
the Hungarian-speaking minority language is specified further in the constitution. It
stipulates a hegemonic position for the Romanian language; article 13 declares the
Romanian language the only official language of the country. This has far-reaching
consequences for the cohabitation of the multiethnic and multilingual communities
of Romania and for the language use of Hungarian and other minority languages
in Romania. It has been observed that language hegemony is quite often the case
in states where the identity of the majority and minority population does not match
and the majority language is the official language of the country (Bourdieu 1991:
46–47).5
3.2 Transnational Actors and Structures
Next to the “national arrangements,” there is also the transnational space and
in connection to this the supranational level of arrangements (compare Marácz
2015a). After the collapse of communism and the expansion of the European
Union eastwards, global and transnational structures have led to the introduction
of European human rights norms and standards in the field of minority rights and
minority language rights in Central and Eastern European countries. Even more
robust policies in support of indigenous minority rights and languages have been
adopted by the Council of Europe. All the member states of the European Union
are members of the Council of Europe, and its arrangements in these domains have
been part of the set of conditions to enter the EU (Gál 2000; Schimmelfennig and
Sedelmeier 2005; Grabbe 2006; Sasse 2005, 2008; Marácz 2015b). Conditionality
as a part of the EU’s accession criteria has guaranteed the implementation of the
Council of Europe’s minority rights arrangements (Marácz 2011b).6
The Council of Europe has formulated the most clear legal treaties to protect
national minorities and their languages, including the Framework Convention for the
Protection of National Minorities (FCPNM) and the European Charter for Regional
or Minority Languages (ECRML) signed on February 1, 1995, and November 5,
1992, in Strasbourg, respectively (Trifunovska 2001; Skovgaard 2007). The Frame-
work Convention supports the positive discrimination of national minorities on the
basis of human rights and general freedom rights, although the explanatory report
text is ambiguous on the status of minority groups.7 It emphasizes the individual
belonging of persons to national minorities and does not recognize the collective
status of national minorities.8 However, article 3, paragraph 2 adds a collective
dimension to the status of national minorities by stating that “persons belonging
5 This political attitude, rooted in the French Revolution, of excluding nonofficial variants of the
French language—the official language of France is the language of cultivated Paris—and minority
languages from official domains for reasons of political control and social engineering has been the
dominant approach for dealing with linguistic diversity in modern France (Bourdieu 1991: 46–47).
6 The Council of Europe has its own sanctioning mechanism through the legally binding judge-
ments within the framework of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and its Court.
Minority rights are included in the ECHR, such as the prohibition of discrimination on the base of
language in article 14. Romania is part of this treaty since 1994. Recently the ECHR has been
interpreted also as a collective obligation to protect minority rights. Compare Vizi (2012) for
detailed discussion.
7 See Council of Europe. 1995. Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities
and Explanatory Report. H(95)10. Strasbourg.

8 This is explicitly stated in the paragraphs 13, 31, and 37 of the explanatory report of the FCPNM.
Table 3 Framework States Signature Ratification Entry into force

Convention (FCPNM, CETS
no. 157) Romania 01/02/1995 11/05/1995 01/02/1998
Serbia 11/05/2001 11/05/2001 01/09/2001
Slovakia 01/02/1995 14/09/1995 01/02/1998
Austria 01/02/1995 31/03/1998 01/07/1998
Croatia 06/11/1996 11/10/1997 01/02/1998
Slovenia 01/02/1995 25/03/1998 01/07/1998
Ukraine 15/09/1995 26/01/1998 01/05/1998
Hungary 01/02/1995 25/09/1995 01/02/1998
Table 4 Language Charter States Signature Ratification Entry into force

(ECRML, CETS no. 148)
Romania 17/07/1995 24/10/2007 01/05/2008
Serbia 22/03/2005 15/02/2006 01/06/2006
Slovakia 20/02/2001 05/09/2001 01/01/2002
Austria 05/11/1992 28/06/2001 01/10/2001
Croatia 05/11/1997 05/11/1997 01/03/1998
Slovenia 03/07/1997 04/10/2000 01/01/2001
Ukraine 02/05/1996 19/09/2005 01/01/2006
Hungary 05/11/1992 26/04/1995 01/03/1998
to national minorities may exercise the rights and enjoy the freedom flowing from
the principles enshrined in the present framework Convention individually as well
as in community with others.”9 Note that this formulation goes beyond the strict
interpretation of minority rights as having a purely individual status (Vizi 2012:
140). The Framework Convention also states that cross-border cooperation is not
only restricted to states but that local and regional authorities can take part in
this as well. The Language Charter has been motivated by similar considerations.
Languages are seen as part of a common cultural heritage, and the protection of
languages is deemed necessary to counterbalance assimilatory state policy and
uniformization by modern civilization (Brubaker et al. 2006; Marácz 2011a, b).
Note that Romania just like all the other Central and Eastern European states with
Hungarian ethnolinguistic minorities has also ratified these documents as is shown
in Tables 3 and 4.
So, national and ethnolinguistic minorities receive protection from these supra-
national arrangements, although the Romanian Constitution only recognizes the
Hungarian minority rights as “individual” and not as group rights and specifies
furthermore the hegemony of the Romanian language as the only official language
in the country. Due to these conflicting arrangements, the use of the Hungarian lan-
guage is specified in a separate law. As a consequence, the Hungarian language use
is restricted in scope, and although legally not banned from Romanian educational
institutions where the language of instruction is Romanian, Hungarian is not offered
9 This is also repeated in the paragraphs 13 and 37 of the explanatory report of the FCPNM.
to the pupils of these schools. This leads then to asymmetric bilingualism. Bilingual
ethnic Hungarians always speak the official language of the country, i.e., Romanian
and their own mother tongue Hungarian, whereas ethnic Romanians only speak the
official language of the country.
4 Multilingual Institutions
Above we pointed out that the Romanian Constitution facilitates minority rights,
including language rights only at the individual level. This implies that no group
or collective rights of ethnolinguistic minorities are recognized. As a consequence,
with respect to the language use in multilingual institutions, there exists a language
hierarchy. The official Romanian language is in a hegemonic position ranking higher
than the other languages, like the Romanian minority languages. The use of the latter
is specified in separate laws that point out under which conditions they can be used
(Nádor and Szarka 2003; Csergő 2007; Gal 2008), like the legal arrangements for
multilingualism in public administration and educational institutions.
4.1 Romanian-Hungarian Multilingualism in Public

Administration
In the domain of public administration, the second paragraph of article 120 of the
Romanian Constitution stipulates the use of Hungarian in administrative authorities
and public services. This article has been elaborated in more detail in government
decision Nr. 1206, from 27 November 2001, and in the Law on Local Public
administration no. 215/2001, paragraph 19, article 2 (Horváth et al. 2010: 7–9),
where more provisions of language use in local public administration are pointed
out:
Authorities of public and local administrations, public institutions subordinated to them
as well as decentralized public services, ensure the use of the mother tongue in their
relationships with national minorities, in those administrative-territorial units in which
the percentage of citizens belonging to national minorities are over twenty percent; all
according to the Constitution, the present law and the international treaties to which
Romania is a party.
Note that one of these provisions, quite particular to the Central and East European
part of Europe, is the threshold rule implying that minorities are granted a set
of linguistic and educational rights in a specific administrative region where a
“substantial” number of minority members compared to the total number of inhab-
itants of that specific region reside and where “needed” (Dembinska et al. 2014:
363). In Romania, the threshold of the substantial number of minority inhabitants
compared to the total number of inhabitants is fixed at 20%, like in the Law on the
Local Public Administration.10 This threshold determines whether ethnic Hungarian

citizens have the rights to use their own language for administrative purposes in a
specific administrative-territorial domain (Brubaker 1996; Fowler 2004; Tóth 2004;
Kovács-Tóth 2009; Batory 2010; Csergő and Goldgeier 2013; Marácz 2014). Note
however that here inconsistencies appear. Above we observed that the Romanian
Constitution only recognizes minority rights as an individual right which is in fact
an instantiation of the Personality Principle but prevents reference to collective
or group rights and the Territoriality Principle. Collective or group identity and
the Territoriality Principle are relevant for the threshold rule, but they are actually
operating as a “container” of the Personality Principle. Language rights for national
and ethnic minorities are not granted, when the percentage of citizens belonging
to a national minority is below 20% of the population in a certain administrative-
territorial unit.
Furthermore, the threshold rule also leads to anomalies. Due to the fact that the
20% is determined in reference to a relative percentage of the total population,
even when there is in absolute numbers a large community of citizens speaking
a national minority language, their language rights are not guaranteed in practice.11
The Hungarian-speaking inhabitants of Transylvania’s “capital” Cluj-Napoca are
not allowed to use Hungarian for contact and communication with the municipal
administration because, according to the 2002 census, only 19.9% of the people had
declared themselves as ethnic Hungarians (Brubaker et al. 2006). Note that this is
around 60,000 Hungarian-speaking persons living in the city, which is much more
than in the smaller Transylvanian towns with a Hungarian-speaking majority, where
Hungarian can be used in contact and communication with administrative officials
(Marácz 2011a). The latest census does not change this anomaly. According to the
2011 census, the percentage of the ethnic Hungarian inhabitants of Cluj-Napoca has
dropped to 16%, i.e., around 50,000 persons from the total inhabitants of around
309,136. The threshold rule has also consequences for the linguistic landscape
10 The threshold is varying across the Central and Eastern European part of Europe, including in
Lithuania where it is unspecified; in Estonia it is at least 50%; in Kosovo it is 10%; and in Romania,
Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland, the threshold is 20% (Dembinska et al. 2014: 364). The threshold
might be too high in some cases, but a threshold as such is not against the provisions in article 10,
paragraph 2 an extensive discussion of the Territoriality and Personality Principle McRae (1975)
and Dembinska et al. (2014).
11 During the twentieth century, a total of 12 territorial-administrative rearrangements were made
by the Romanian authorities (for a detailed analysis, see Gulyás 2010). Beyond the declared
objectives which targeted the economic and social development of the country, the redrawing
of the boundaries of different regions, counties, and municipalities was always determined also
by ethno-political considerations, usually in the detriment of the Hungarian-speaking population
in Romania. These usually sought the reduction of the proportion of Hungarians within the
administrative unit. After 1989, however, there were no radical territorial rearrangements in the
country and even if there was ethno-political reasoning behind the administrative reorganization
of certain municipalities, these occurred locally and sporadically, not in a systematic manner like
during the national-communist dictatorship. Right now there is no explicitly designed, system-wide
pursuit to push the ethnic Hungarian population below the 20% threshold.
of the city. In Romania bilingual municipality, signs are also dependent on the
20% threshold (see administrative law 2001/215). So, in a bilingual city, like Cluj-
Napoca, there are no official topographic signs in Hungarian. The 20% arrangement
in Romania might seem reasonable from the point of view of the state, but due to
inconsistencies and anomalies, it is however subject to intrastate politics involving
the nationalizing state Romania that claims to be dominated by a “core nation”
defined in ethnocultural terms striving for a homogeneous Romanian nation-state
excluding any other national culture on its territory (Brubaker 1996: 4–5) and its
Hungarian-speaking minority.12
4.2 Multilingualism in Education: Primary, Secondary,

and Tertiary Education
Article 120 of the Romanian Constitution has been integrated not only into the
Law on Local Public Administration of 2001, as we discussed above, but also into
the Romanian Educational Law (Janssens et al. 2013: 16–17). The latter gives the
Romanian Hungarians the right to establish their own educational institutions. This
is not only relevant for the teaching of the Hungarian language but also for the
teaching of the Romanian language to ethnic Hungarians. The ethnic Hungarians in
Romania complain about the fact that the Romanian educational method teaches the
Romanian language to them, as if it were their L1. Rather, ethnic Hungarians argue
that Romanian should be taught to them as a foreign, L2 language.
The Educational Law of 1/2011 specifies when the Hungarian language can be
used as the language of instruction in educational institutions. The Educational Law
is flexible in a way because it does not refer to the place of the educational institution
but rather to the number of pupils needed to form ethnic Hungarian classes being
restricted by a minimum number. This is also a threshold rule in terms of absolute
numbers, but because it is set to lower entries, it creates a more favorable context
for the minority education.
In Romania, the legislation on the public education in minority languages is quite
generous, and it is based on the principle that the right to education in one’s mother
tongue has to be ensured for all pupils and students at every school level. In primary
(1–4) and general (5–8) schools, the minimum class size required by the law is 12
pupils, but in special cases—where there is no possibility for school transport—
consolidated classes may also be established within the same school level. This
regulation creates a rather loose framework and broad leeway in organizing the
Hungarian language education.
However, due to the unfavorable demographic processes, the number of pupils
enrolled in Hungarian primary and general schools is continuously decreasing since
the change of regime. In the 2000s there was a 20% drop, and in this decade the
12 Brubaker (1996: 6) explicitly qualifies Romania as a “nationalizing” state.

trend seems to be accelerating (Barna and Kapitány 2014). However, this decline
did not represent a relative fallback compared to pupils learning in Romanian; on
the contrary, between 2002 and 2011, there was a steady increase in the proportion
of children in Hungarian education. This trend in itself could be explained by the
fact that an increasing proportion of Hungarians from Transylvania is living in
those majority Hungarian areas (Szeklerland and Partium) where the indicators of
demographic reproduction are more favorable and the Hungarian school system is
better organized (Salat et al. 2010 : 56–57). The Hungarian education is much more
problematic in the internal diaspora, where since 2010 only the number of children
to be enrolled has decreased by at least one-third, out of which slightly over a half
started to learn in their native language.
In a surprising contrast with the primary and general education, the enrolment in
Hungarian high schools has increased in absolute numbers during the 2000s. This
is partially explained by the fact that across the country more and more students
continued their studies after the general school; on the other hand, the number of
ethnic Hungarian students who chose to join Hungarian high schools also increased.
Nonetheless the Hungarian high schools succeed to recruit only about two-thirds of
the Hungarian-speaking students; the rest continues to study in Romanian.
Regarding the institutional organization of the Hungarian preuniversity education
in Romania, it is a general trend that an increasing proportion of students are
studying in an institution where the education takes place exclusively in Hungarian.
In mixed-language schools of suburban districts and small villages, the Hungarian
classes disappear one after the other.13 This institutional concentration of Hungarian
language education often leads to the fact that those families who cannot afford to
bring their children to a more distant Hungarian school are likely to enroll their
children in Romanian schools in the nearby outskirts. These trends are typical in the
bigger towns of Transylvania, such as Cluj-Napoca and Târgu Mures, .
The recess of the Hungarian language education is explained by two factors:
there is a steady decline in the number of school-age population, and in those
regions where fewer ethnic Hungarians live, the proportion of those who attend
Romanian schools is increasing. A 2004 analysis has shown (Csata 2004) that in
those locations where the proportion of ethnic Hungarians is lower, the chances
for choosing a Romanian language school for children are higher if one of the
parents is Romanian, if the parents attended Romanian schools, if they have fewer
ethnic Hungarian friends and colleagues at the workplace, and if they do not attend
community events organized by Transylvanian Hungarian institutions (including the
church).
From an economic point of view, the motivational background of school choice
in a minority context is very complex. Parents are to consider several factors when
deciding whether they enroll their children in Romanian- or Hungarian-speaking
schools (Papp 2012a). One of the most important aspects is the quality of education.
13 Here mixed-language schools refer to institutions with separate classes where either Romanian
or Hungarian is the language of instruction.

International surveys (PISA and TIMMS) and internal performance test results both
reveal that ethnic.
Hungarian children in Transylvania who learn in Hungarian outperform those
who learn in Romanian schools (Csata 2014). Moreover, another study found
the performance gap to grow between those who learn in their mother tongue
(representing the ethnic reproduction scenario) and those who learn in Romanian
(perceived as a pathway to assimilation) (Papp 2012b). Thus, although there might
be significant differences in the quality of education between individual locations,
in general it is difficult to argue in favor of enrolling the ethnic Hungarian children
in Romanian schools in the hope for a better performance.
The higher education in Hungarian falls under a substantially different legal
regulation, and only a few mixed-language institutions to be discussed in more
detail below get public funding (the Babes, -Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, the
University of Medicine and Pharmacy, and the University of Arts in Târgu Mures, ).
In some of the important domains (e.g., engineering, veterinary sciences), the
Romanian state does not finance the education in Hungarian.
Under the pretext of making up for the shortfall, the Partium Christian University
and the Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania were established with the
financial support of the Hungarian government, where in addition to engineering,
they have launched a number of specializations in humanities and social sciences
as well which already existed in Hungarian at state universities. This caused an
educational oversupply in these latter domains, and with just a few students enrolled,
some of them are struggling to survive.
As in the early 2000s, the entry barriers for higher education were eliminated
or significantly reduced, and the number of university students rapidly increased
in Romania (in 2008 it approached 900,000, which represented more than 40% of
the population aged 20–24). This enrolment wave involved the ethnic Hungarian
students as well; the historic peak was reached in 2009, when 12,000 ethnic
Hungarian students entered higher education. After that, however, the number of
ethnic Hungarian students continuously declined. The main reason for the downturn
is that between 2009 and 2013, the number of Hungarian-speaking young adults
of university age has drastically dropped by about a third from 18,000 to 12,000.
Beyond that, after 2011—when stricter exam supervision was introduced—only a
half of the Hungarian high school graduates (around 4000 students per year) passes
the baccalaureate, which is an entry requirement for the university. According to
estimates (Papp and Márton 2011), about a half of the ethnic Hungarian students
admitted to the university are studying in Hungarian, 40% choose Romanian
institutions, and about 10% continue their studies abroad (most of them in Hungary).
The appearance of oversupply in Hungarian higher education is explained to a
greater extent by these trends.
If we disregard the territorial disparities, we can conclude that after 1989 the
institutional conditions of Hungarian education have improved at all school levels.
By the end of the 2000s, the Hungarian educational path widened to four times,
which means that compared to 12% in 1990, in 2008 about a half of those children
Table 5 The education level of the population over 10 years, 2002 and 2011 (%)
Hungarians in Proportion of Hungarians
Romania (total) Romania by school level (%)
2002 2011 2002 2011 2002 2011
Tertiary education 7 14.4 5 10.2 4.7 4.4
Post high school and foremen 3 3.2 2.9 3.3 6.6 6.5
High school 21.4 24.4 21.6 27 6.8 6.9
Vocational education 15.3 13.9 17.7 15.9 7.8 7.1
Secondary (general)
education (5–8) 27.6 27 31.6 30.5 7.7 7
Primary education 20.1 14.2 17.6 11 5.9 4.8
Unschooled 5.6 3 3.6 2.1 4.4 4.3
Total 100 100 100 100 6.7 6.2
Source: Veres (2015: 78)
who started to learn in Hungarian reached Hungarian higher education in their

homeland (Papp 2012b).
Nevertheless, the educational disadvantages of the Hungarian-speaking popula-
tion accumulated during the socialist decades have not been corrected. See Table
5. The general educational level of Hungarians in Transylvania is still below the
national average: while 14.4% of the Romanian population has tertiary education,
the proportion of the university graduates among the ethnic Hungarians is only
10.2%.
Statistics of recent years (Toró 2013) show that the performance of the ethnic
Hungarian students in passing the baccalaureate is not better than the Romanians’.
Hence, a relative growth in their participation in higher education is not expected.
In sum, we can state that although the institutional conditions have significantly
improved, given the present trends in enrolment, in the near future, there is no
chance that these ethno-specific inequalities will equilibrate.
Correction of the inequalities between the official Romanian and the Hungarian-
speaking minority languages at the tertiary educational level is provided by article
135 of the Educational Law 1/2011. This article spells out that three state institutions
for higher education, where already national minorities’ programs exist in so-called
multilingual, multicultural institutions, have the right to formally institutionalize
their “mother tongue tracks” (Janssens et al. 2013: 17). The three institutions include
the Babeş-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca (Rom. Universitatea Babeş-Bolyai, Hun.
Babeş-Bolyai Tudományegyetem), the University of Medicine and Pharmacy of
Târgu Mureş (Rom. Universitatea de Medicină şi Farmacie Târgu Mureş, Hun.
Marosvásárhelyi Orvosi és Gyógyszerészeti Egyetem), and the University of Arts of
Târgu-Mureş (Rom. Universitatea de Arte din Târgu-Mureş, Hun. Marosvásárhelyi
Művészeti Egyetem). All these three universities are in multiethnic Transylvania,
have a long history of multilingual education, and are traditionally attended by both
ethnic Romanian and ethnic Hungarian students.
At the Babeş-Bolyai University, also German is a language of education in line

with the traditional presence of the German language in Transylvania. During the
last decades, the institution opened its gates for international students as well, and
several programs are running in English. So, this university ended up having a
quarto-lingual profile, that is, Romanian, Hungarian, English, and German (Marácz
2015a: 35–37).
Although they are present from the very foundation of these institutions, the
operation of minority language tracks was subjected to a soft regulation by the state
authorities. The establishment and the discontinuation of minority language tracks
were decided at the level of the universities; the minority representation in decision-
making was driven by the customary law and permanent local negotiations. This
state of affairs left minority language education more vulnerable to unpredictable
contextual changes.
Article 135 of the Educational Law 1/2011 formally institutionalized the oper-
ation of minority language education, offering the possibility to create separate
Hungarian, German, etc. structures within the university. As a result at Babes, -
Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Hungarian departments have been created within
the faculties. From 2013 the University of Arts of Târgu-Mureş operates two
faculties along ethnic lines, one in Romanian and another in Hungarian.
This process of restructuring in terms of language tracks has been less successful
at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Târgu Mureş. The explicit and insis-
tent claims of ethnic Hungarian professors for similar changes were systematically
rejected by the majoritary Romanian senate of the university. Romanian leaders
defend their position referring to the institutional autonomy of the universities;
Hungarian professors are demanding the compliance with the Educational Law.
These seemingly antagonistic differences of interests led to a sharp interethnic
conflict within the directorate. After the adoption of the new university Charta
considered unfavorable for the Hungarians, the Hungarian leaders resigned from
their positions. Moreover, they recently lost a lawsuit against this decision, and it
seems that there is little room for further negotiations.
5 Multilingualism in the Economy
5.1 Social Stratification and Economic Situation

of Hungarians in Transylvania
During the past century, the ethnic aspects of social stratification in Transylvania
have transformed significantly; the social position of the ethnic Hungarian popula-
tion has changed. Besides the cognition of the current legal and institutional aspects
of regulation, the knowledge of the historical antecedents is necessary to understand
the current linguistic issues in the region.
In the period between 1918 and 1989, as a consequence of the intended national-
izing policies of consecutive Romanian governments (Boia 2015; Kiss 2014), the
demographic and social structure of Transylvanian Hungarians has significantly
changed. Between the two world wars, this process had several stages. Right after
the rearrangement of borders following the First World War, around 150,000 ethnic
Hungarians (especially clerks and intellectuals) emigrated to Hungary. The 1921
land reform has adversely affected the Hungarian-speaking minority, the Hungarian
language education was significantly suppressed, and minorities were strongly
underrepresented in institutions controlled by the state (public administration,
education, military).
After the Second World War, during the socialist nationalization, the formerly
minority dominated private economy was abolished, and the ethnic structure of
the previously majoritary Hungarian and German cities was changed.14 This was a
planned and controlled process of the national-communist authorities who found the
solution for the “nationality problem” in a massive and accelerated industrialization
and enlargement of Transylvanian towns (Boia 2015: 110–111). The new workforce
was recruited—through incentives and relocation—in a disproportionably higher
extent from the nearby, majoritary Romanian villages and even from more remote
regions of Moldova and Oltenia. This process also contributed to the acceleration
of the assimilation and emigration of ethnic Hungarians, especially among the edu-
cated urban population. In these decades, the ethnic Hungarians had gradually lost
their favorable urban socioeconomic positions associated with higher qualification,
social respect, and remuneration.
After the democratic changes in 1989, a withdrawal of the intended and
formally institutionalized discrimination toward minorities took place. But due to
a demographic and institutional path dependency and a new wave of emigration in
the 1990s, the number and relative share of Hungarians in Transylvania continued to
decline. While the 1977 census registered a total of 1.74 million ethnic Hungarians
and their ratio within the Romanian population was 7.9%, by 2012 their number fell
to 1.22 million and their share to 6.5%.
The employment statistics show (Table 6) that the social positions of ethnic
Hungarians have not improved significantly after the transition: compared to their
proportion within the population, they are still underrepresented in higher-status
positions even after 20 years, and their relative share among the leaders and
legislators—considered as the economic elite—continues to decline.15 It is also the
14 Examples include Oradea (Hun. Nagyvárad) (Hungarians, 91.2% (1941), 33.3% (1992);
Romanians, 5.2% (1941), 64.8% (1992)); Cluj-Napoca (Kolozsvár) (Hungarians, 85.7% (1941),
22.8% (1992); Romanians, 9.8% (1941), 75.6% (1992)); Târgu Mures, (Marosvásárhely) (Hun-
garians, 93.3% (1941), 51.4% (1992); Romanians, 4.9% (1941), 46.1% (1992); Sibiu (Her-
mannstadt/Nagyszeben) (Germans, 40% (1941), 3.3% (1992); Romanians, 50.8% (1941), 93.7%
(1992)). For a more detailed description and other examples, see Boia 2015: 110–111.
15 The decline of the relative share of ethnic Hungarian leaders and legislators between the last
two censuses cannot be explained by the ethno-specific trends of emigration in this period. The
mass emigration of ethnic Hungarian elites was typical between 1988 and 1992. Among the
Table 6 The distribution of ethnic Hungarian employed population by occupational groups, compared to the national average (1992–2011)
The share of different
The share of different occupation groups within the
occupation groups within the ethnic Hungarian population in The proportion of ethnic Hungarians
population of Romania (%) Romania (%) within the occupation groups
1992 2002 2011 1992 2002 2011 1992 2002 2011
Managers, legislators 1.7 4.1 2.6 1.4 3.6 2 5.6 5.4 4.5
Professionals and intellectuals 6.2 8.6 15.2 4.7 6.3 12.7 5 4.5 4.8
Technicians and associate professionals 10.8 10.2 8.1 10.3 10.2 7.4 6.3 6.2 5.2
Clerical support workers 5.0 4.9 4.1 4.9 4.8 4.1 6.6 6.1 5.8
Service and sales workers 5.4 9 13.5 6.1 10.3 14.6 7.6 7.1 6.2
Skilled agricultural and forestry workers 19.5 23.4 23.8 11.8 13.9 19.2 4 3.7 4.6
Craft and related trades workers 28.6 21.4 14.2 37.5 28.7 21.3 8.7 8.4 8.6
Plant and machine operators and assemblers 16.1 10.3 8.1 15.7 12.9 9.8 6.5 7.8 7
Elementary occupations (unskilled workers) 6.7 7.8 10.3 7.7 8.9 8.9 7.7 7.1 4.9
Armed forces occupations 0.9 0.3 – 0.7 0.6 – 5.1 7.3 –
Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 7.1 6.6 6.5
Regulatory Environment, Linguistic Inequalities, and New Opportunities. . .
Source: Papp (2008: 167), Veres (2015: 122)

411
Table 7 Income conditions and inequalities among Hungarians in Romania compared to the
national population and the Romanians in Transylvania (2011)
Hungarians in Romanians in Romania
Transylvania Transylvania (average)
Equivalent medium income (per capita, RON) 718.3 834.1 777.2
Equivalent medium income (per capita, %) 92.4 107.6 100
Rate of poverty 16.9 15.8 23.9
GINI index 29.1 34.1 27.3
Source: Kiss (2014)
Table 8 The proportion of 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Hungarian employees among
the income quintiles of the Lower quintile 27.4 27.5 28 30.3 31.9
national data set (LFS Lower-middle quintile 25 25.1 26.6 23 24.1
2008–2012) Middle quintile 21.9 21.7 17.8 20.4 20
Upper-middle quintile 15 15.6 16.1 16.7 14.8
Upper quintile 10.8 10.1 11.6 9.7 9
Source: Own calculations based on LFS 2008–2012 data
development of the past 10 years that compared to the national average the share
of employment in the agriculture among ethnic Hungarians increased significantly
(Veres 2015).
The ethnic differences of stratification are well reflected in the income levels as
well. A comparative study made in 2011 demonstrates that the ethnic Hungarians
earn 14% less compared to the Romanians in Transylvania (Table 7) and a higher
proportion of ethnic Hungarians live below the income poverty line (Kiss 2014). The
GINI index reflecting the income inequality is lower in the case of ethnic Hungarians
not because they have considerably fewer poor but because the ratio of those with a
high income is significantly lower.
Using the international Labor Force Survey data, we can follow the ethnic
differences of income conditions and its evolution over time (Table 8). The earning
statistics confined exclusively to the employees show that in 2012 only 9% of the
ethnic Hungarians belonged to those who are the highest earning one-fifth of the
population in Transylvania, while almost 32% of the ethnic Hungarians belong to
the lowest-paid one-fifth. The results also show that between 2008 and 2013, the
proportion of ethnic Hungarians significantly increased in the bottom quintile, while
fewer and fewer people are earning as much as the upper one-fifth of the employees.
This reflects a surprisingly clear and rapid deterioration of the income situation of
Hungarians in Romania.
The long-term relative change of ethnic Hungarians’ income is related to the
spatial rearrangement of the population as well. Mainly due to the controlled internal
approximately 3 million emigrants who left Romania after the country’s EU accession in 2007,
ethnic Hungarians—including their elites—were clearly underrepresented (Kiss 2015).
migration (changing the ethnic structure of richer cities, as referred above)16 and the
subsequent demographic processes (emigration, assimilation), an increasing number
of ethnic Hungarians are living in ethnically homogeneous but economically
underdeveloped rural regions in Transylvania. Meanwhile, in richer urban areas,
both the number and the proportion of ethnic Hungarians are decreasing (Kiss
2014).
5.2 Economic Consequences of Asymmetric Bilingualism
As a joint result of the abovementioned language policies and the socioeconomic

and demographic transformations, the status of the languages used in Transylvania
changed over time.
The relative decrease of the Hungarian-speaking population in Transylvania and
the restrictive legal measures implemented between the two world wars and during
socialism concerning the official and public use of Hungarian largely contributed
to the fact that over the decades it ceased to function as a common language
for communication between different nationalities; it is used as a lingua franca
only very sporadically and only in a very narrow private sphere. The constitution
guaranteed the Romanian language hegemony in the public domain, and it became
a symbolic tool in the exercise of power, creating a highly asymmetric relationship
between the majority and minority languages.
As already discussed, after the change of regime in 1989, several laws came into
force to protect the minority languages, and also a number of factual results were
achieved supporting multilingualism in the education and administration. Never-
theless, in everyday interactions the “marked” status of the Hungarian language
subsists, in ethnically mixed areas the “default” language is Romanian (Brubaker et
al. 2006). The knowledge and the use of Romanian remain an exclusive expectation
toward the minorities (Kiss 2014). Despite the fact that the symbolic primacy and
the dominance of Romanian are considered to be legitimate by the majority of
the ethnic Hungarians (Horváth 2005), this state of asymmetric bilingualism may
cause chance disadvantages among those whose mother tongue is not Romanian.
These disadvantages stem from the fact that learning the official language involves
significant costs and opportunity costs, that the formal/official communication may
involve additional expenses (e.g., translation costs), and that there is always a
16 Historian Lucian Boia describes the ethnic aspect of the process of internal migration induced
by the massive socialist industrialization in the following way: “Masses of people poured out into
towns, being absorbed from the surrounding villages, but also from other counties or even further
afield: from Moldova and Oltenia to Transylvania and Banat. Villages being more Romanian than
the cities, and provinces of old Romania more Romanian than Transylvania, the result, naturally,
was the sharp Romanization of the cities, an environment where, until communism, Hungarians
and Germans of Banat retained their primacy” (Boia 2015: 111).
Table 9 OLS regression model for income—Hungarians in Transylvania (standardized regression

coefficients, TL survey, 2010)
Other regions
Transylvania Szeklerland in Transylvania
(N = 2404) (N = 1128) (N = 1276)
Male 0.199 ∗ ∗∗ 0.115** 0.268***
Upper secondary education (compared to 0.105 ∗ ∗ 0.084* 0.119**
primary and lower secondary)
Higher education (compared to primary 0.300 ∗ ∗∗ 0.244*** 0.333***
and lower secondary)
Urban residence 0.102 ∗ ∗ 0.093* 0.107**
Residence in Szeklerland −0.076 ∗ ∗ – –
Good command of Romanian 0.085 ∗ ∗ 0.067* 0.108**
Coefficient of determination (adjusted R2 ) 0.169 0.091 0.215
Note: *0.05 > p > 0.01; **0.01 > p > 0.001; ***p < 0.001
rhetorical drawback for those who communicate in a foreign language (Grin 2004;
Csata 2015).
Since in Romania very little research has been done in this respect, it is very
difficult to quantify the chance disadvantages along these dimensions. However,
there is a possibility for a closer examination of the relationship between the
Romanian language proficiency and the income of ethnic Hungarians. For this, we
use survey data from a 2009 research (The Turning Points of our Life Course 2.17).
A greater part of the difference, however, is not explained by the disparity of
language skills, but rather by the factors that are correlated with the latter: the
respondents’ gender, level of education, and place of residence (urban or rural,
inside or outside Szeklerland). In order to see more clearly, we included these
variables in a joint linear regression model (Table 9).18
The OLS regression was carried out in SPSS; independent variables were entered
using stepwise analysis. Diagnostic tests for multicollinearity and heteroscedasticity
were carried out; results show that they don’t violate the assumptions underlying the
regression analysis. Unfortunately, as in the majority of similar studies (Chiswick
and Miller 2015), the model was not tested for endogeneity (omitted variable
bias, reverse causality). The dependent variable (income) represents the self-
declared monthly earnings in Romanian lei (RON) of those subjects who have
revenues. The independent variables are dummies representing attributes with two
17 “The Turning Points of our Life Course 2./Életünk Fordulópontjai 2.” was a face-to-face
survey carried out in 2008–2009 by the Hungarian Demographic Research Institute of the
Central Statistical Office (Budapest) in cooperation with the Romanian Institute for Research
on National Minorities (Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár) and the Max Weber Center for Social Research
(Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár). The stratified, multistage random sample was representative for the
Hungarians living in Transylvania by gender, age groups, and territorial distribution. A total of
4017 persons was interviewed, and the margin of error was ±1.5% with a confidence level of 95%.
18 For a separated analysis on male and female subsamples, see Tables 10 and 11 in the Appendix.
distinct categories: male–female, upper secondary education–primary and lower

secondary education, higher education–primary and lower secondary education,
urban residence–rural residence, and residence in Szeklerland–residence outside
Szeklerland in Transylvania. The Romanian proficiency was measured by a Likert
scale based on the self-declaration of the subjects and was recoded into a (dummy)
variable with two categories: good command of Romanian and poor command of
Romanian/lack of Romanian knowledge.
The result shows that the lack of Romanian language skills has a significant
influence on the income, even if we control for these factors. All other things
being equal, the lack of language skills or insufficient knowledge of Romanian
negatively affects the incomes of native Transylvanian Hungarians. Moreover, this
effect among the highly educated is not valid; it causes income differences, however,
only among those who have baccalaureate at the most. So the lack of appropriate
Romanian language skills causes income loss among the less educated, further
deteriorating the situation of the most disadvantaged groups.
6 Pursuit for Language Equality
Above it was pointed out that the Hungarian language has no official status in
the Romanian Constitution and its use is recognized as an individual right of
persons belonging to the Hungarian-speaking minority. In multiethnic, multilingual
Transylvania, this means that the Romanian state language is used in the official
and public domains as the default case, while in case of the Hungarian minority
language, additional conditions, like the threshold rule, have to be met in order to be
recognized as a language of communication in the official and public domains. As
we pointed out this state of affairs also leads to asymmetric bilingualism. The official
Romanian language is used by Hungarian minority speakers—being plurilingual
speakers—with the authorities and L1-speakers of the Romanian language who
display in turn a monolingual attitude (Brubaker et al. 2006). This asymmetric
relation is a source of tensions in the multiethnic, multilingual territories of
Transylvania.
Since the collapse of communism in 1989, the Hungarian national minority
has employed several strategies in favor of their strive for the recognition of the
Hungarian language in Romania. Basically two different types of strategies have
been pursued. First of all, there are the so-called traditional-confrontative methods
that have characterized the strive for the recognition of minority and language
rights in a nation-state context. The efforts of the Hungarian-speaking parliamentary
representation, like the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania [DUHR,
Hun. Romániai Magyar Demokrata Szövetség (RMDSZ); and Rom. Uniunea
Democrată Maghiară din România, (UDMR)], of lobby organizations, like the
Szekler National Council, a shadow assembly representing the Szekler community,
and of human and civil rights groups, like CEMO, have been challenging Romanian
exclusive language policies. Alongside these so-called traditional-confrontative
strategies, new ones have been facilitated by supranational (market) regulation.

These innovative strategies build on the conviction that multilingualism is not only
beneficial for the minority but also for the aggregate welfare of the society; in an
appropriate institutional environment, the diversity has tangible (economic) benefits
for the society as a whole. On the other hand, they encourage entrepreneurs and
businesses to “capitalize” the ethnolinguistic sensitivity and solidarity of minorities
by communicating in their native languages in the process of commercialization
of goods and services and by that to gain comparative advantages and additional
revenues. Let us first discuss the traditional strategies, and then we will take up the
new ones in more detail.
6.1 “Traditional-Confrontative” Strategies
In fact, the traditional strategies distinguish two cases, involving the Personality
Principle and the Territoriality Principle. Firstly, civic activism for language rights
focuses on the practical realization of existing legal arrangements for the Hungarian
language pointed out above. In this case, the Personality Principle is operative. The
second strategy involves the Territoriality Principle. Laponce (1987) has argued
for that languages protect themselves by territoriality and that “if languages are
to survive and flourish they need territorial niches that belong to them alone—
niches in which communication will take place in one single language that can
bind together the various individuals in a given society and satisfy the various roles
of any given individual therein” (Laponce 1987: 3–4). Hence, we agree with the
conclusions of Laponce (1987) that the Territoriality Principle gives languages more
protection than the Personality Principle. In this respect, the strives for Hungarian
linguistic autonomy and territorial autonomy for Szeklerland have to be mentioned,
where the Hungarian-speaking minority displays an indisputable ethnic majority,
as demonstrated above. Generally speaking, the right of self-determination of the
Hungarian majority in Szeklerland would take the shape of territorial autonomy
in accordance with numerous other cultural and territorial autonomies in the rest
of Europe (Halperin et al. 1992: 142–143; Lapidoth 1996: 69; Jenne 2007: 91–
124; Kovács 2003). Hence, the Hungarian language in Szeklerland would receive
protection from territory. Note that territorial autonomy of Szeklerland is not
without precedent, because in the communist area, Hungarian territorial autonomy
in the Szekler region has been granted by the Romanian state. Although the rights
for self-determination were very limited in a totalitarian regime, Hungarian-Szekler
autonomy has existed in different forms and with different authorities between 1952
and 1968 (Bottoni and Novák 2011: 397–403). Let us first discuss this option in
more detail.
6.1.1 Territorial Autonomy
The Territoriality Principle could be applied to the Szekler counties Harghita and
Covasna, where there is an unambiguous Hungarian-speaking majority and these
counties are even embedded in the Romanian system of state administration. This
type of territorial autonomy has however not figured on the agenda of the ethnic
Hungarians in Szeklerland but rather autonomy for the historically reconstructed
Szeklerland that covers almost the three Szekler counties Harghita, Covasna, and
Mureş.19 Both the Hungarian political party DUHR and the lobby organization
Szekler National Council have elaborated an Autonomy Statute for Szeklerland.20
Here it is not necessary to discuss these proposals in detail, but we will concentrate
on the essentials that are referred to in both cases. For the ease of reference, we will
bear on these proposals as Autonomy Statute.
The Autonomy Statute claims an autonomous status for Szeklerland comparable
to South Tyrol in Italy. It declares that autonomous Szeklerland will fully respect the
sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the Romania state. Hence, its realization
will be a case of internal self-determination. Both the DUHR and the Szekler
National Council have avoided a unilateral declaration of the Szekler autonomy
and have instead submitted the Autonomy Statute for Szeklerland to the Romanian
Parliament for discussion. The creation of a regional sublevel is fully in line with the
European concept of multilevel governance. Furthermore, it respects the minority
and language rights of the ethnic Romanians living in Szeklerland as well due to the
fact that Szeklerland would be officially bilingual, i.e., Hungarian and Romanian.
The Szeklers have organized numerous demonstrations and referenda in the
Szekler towns since 2006 in order to support autonomy for Szeklerland and the
redrawing of the borders of the Szekler counties. Successive Romanian parliaments
and governments have put the Autonomy Statute for Szeklerland aside arguing that
it is unconstitutional and hence illegal. These abjections by the Romanian authorities
of the Szekler claims have contributed to an acceleration of the political strives for
an autonomous Szeklerland complete with its own national symbols, like the Szekler
flag and even the name “sic” which is an abbreviation of the Latin term for Szekler
“Siculitas” as a top-level domain for the domain name of the Internet.
19 See the two different collections of essay, articles, and documents on the autonomy proposal
edited by Zoltán Bognár (n.d.), and by Zoltán Kántor and Balázs Majtény (2004). Both collections
are available on Internet and are a representative overview of the debate based on Hungarian and
Transylvanian Hungarian opinions and analyses published between 1989 and 2005.
20 The Autonomy Statute for Szeklerland can be found on the website of the Szekler
National Council: http://sznt.sic.hu/hu-sic/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15

%3Aszekelyfoeld-autonomia-statutuma&catid=10%3Astatutum&Itemid=14&lang=fa (accessed
at 28 October 2015). Reference to the one of the DUHR is to be found on http://itthon.
transindex.ro/?hir=37382: ‘DAHR 2014 The Autonomy Plan of Szeklerland’, 18 September 2014
(accessed 27 October 2015). See for the text of the plan: http://rmdsz.ro/uploads/fileok/dok/
A_Romaniai_Szekelyfold_autonomia_statutuma.pdf (accessed at 28 October 2015).
Observe that the push for territorial autonomy in case of Szekler self-government
could have the effect of splitting the Transylvanian Hungarian minority. Even if the
Szekler counties are allowed to realize some sort of territorial autonomy in Romania,
still more than a half of the ethnic Hungarians in Transylvania do not live together in
compact territories where they form a majority. Hence, it is questionable whether an
autonomous Szeklerland would be able to represent the Transylvanian Hungarians
who live outside this territory.
In Dembinska et al. (2014), it has been argued that the concept of territoriality,
although it has been on the international political agenda in the post-Cold War world
order, is no longer a generally accepted concept for resolving national and ethnic
minority issues in Central and Eastern Europe. Hence, it seems the Territoriality
Principle can no longer fulfill the implementation of the self-determination of
national and ethnic minorities in these regions of Europe. This leaves minority
communities, like the Szeklers to rely on the Personality Principle in fact (Kymlicka
and Opalski 2001; Péntek and Benő 2003; Deets and Stroschein 2005; as well as
Csergő and Deegan-Krause 2011). However, the territorial option will be on the
political agenda of the ethnic Hungarians in Romania, although it seems that civic
activism for language rights in terms of the Personality Principle received a better
reception from the Romanian authorities, and led to concrete and palpable results,
as the case of the civic activist organization CEMO demonstrates.
6.1.2 Civic Activism for Language Rights
Implementation of language rights for ethnic Hungarians in Romania in the

official and public domain has been put on the agenda by several civil rights
organizations. These organizations try to raise awareness among the population for
the introduction of Romanian-Hungarian multilingualism in Transylvania without
violating the boundaries of the present legal system (Kovács 2003; Kovács and
Tóth 2009). A civil rights group that is working on the empowerment of the
Hungarian language and on the introduction of bi- and multilingualism in such a
framework is CEMO. This organization is active since 2007 after the accession
of Romania to the European Union. The activism of CEMO displays a modern
European outlook, and their language activists are trained in the circuit of European
NGOs offering training and support to empower Romanian-Hungarian bilingualism.
CEMO’s website (see www.cemo.ro) is trilingual, i.e., Romanian, Hungarian, and
English. A Mahatma Gandhi quote on the opening page of the website indicates
that CEMO is ready to use above all peaceful activism to reach its objectives within
the legal Romanian framework. Hence, the organization is a concomitant of the
democratization of Central and Eastern Europe. Although the activities of CEMO
are bound to the city of Târgu Mureş (Hun. Marosvásárhely), its activism has been
important in Transylvania because CEMO has set a trend that has been followed
by other grassroots organizations campaigning legally for language or minority
rights. CEMO has organized several civic language rights campaigns that were
unprecedented in connection with the Hungarian minority in Transylvania. Due to
this, organizations like CEMO are treated with some skepticism from Romanian
local and regional leaders and state institutions, but they have been accepted as a
part of the democratic arena and discourse (Marácz 2015a: 37–39).
CEMO is based in the town of Târgu Mureş (Hun. Marosvásárhely) which
is located in Szeklerland. According to the 2011 census, the ratio between the
Romanian- and Hungarian-speaking population in the town is almost in balance, that
is, 51.9% (66,000) and 45.2% (58,000), respectively, of the 134,000 inhabitants in
total. The Romanian- and Hungarian-speaking population together make up around
95% of the total population of Târgu Mureş. Note that the percentage of Hungarian-
speaking population in this town is far over the threshold of 20%, as fixed in the
Law on Local Public Administration discussed above, required to introduce the
Hungarian language as an official language and to realize full Romanian-Hungarian
bilingualism in this municipality. This is the legal basis for the language activism
pursued by CEMO.
CEMO regularly protests against an exclusive linguistic landscape in Târgu
Mureş, although according to paragraph 4 of article 76 of the Law on Local
Public Administration 215/2001, street signs and other public signs in public
offices and institutions must be represented in the minority language as well, when
the percentage of citizens belonging to a national minority are over 20% in an
administrative-territorial domain. CEMO referring to this law protested also against
the “Romanian-only” website of the town’s mayor office and against Romanian
monolingual signs in post offices, the mayor’s office, the culture palace, wedding
rooms, police stations, offices of the national bank, and the chamber of commerce
in the town of Târgu Mureş. Their initiative was a partial success: some of the
important information of the website was translated to Hungarian, and bilingual
signs were posted in most of the public institutions. The civic organization also
campaigned for the legitimate right to address local authorities in the minority
languages of Romania. The activities of CEMO are not only restricted to the national
arena, but CEMO targeted transnational organization as the Council of Europe as
well.
Above it was referred to that the Council of Europe’s Charter for Regional
or Minority Languages has been signed by Romania as well and has positively
affected the Hungarian language use by ethnic Hungarians (Gal 2000; Trifunovska
2001; Skovgaard 2007; Marácz 2011b). It gives the Hungarian language inside
Romania recognition and from outside the Romanian state protection (Marácz
2011a). Romania signed the Language Charter in July 1995, but ratified it only
much later under Law nr. 282 from 24 October 2007 (see Table 4). This law states
that the provisions of the Charter will apply to ten minority languages which are
used in Romania, including Hungarian. The Charter ensures the use of regional
and minority languages in various and significant areas of life, involving education,
public administration, the judicial system, and media, and in the context of social
life and cultural activities.
CEMO also managed to lobby the international monitors of the European
Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In January 2011, the civic organization
compiled a “Shadow Report to the Initial Periodical Report on the Implementation
of the Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in Romania.” The initial

Periodical Report was submitted on 26 October 2010. It was clear that CEMO tried
to put pressure on the second cycle of the State Report. CEMO’s lobbying was
successful because the findings of their report were taken up in the evaluation report
of the Committee of Experts’ released on 30 November 2011 taking side against the
threshold of 20%.21 The Committee saw some space for reevaluation of the 20%
threshold referring to article 10 of the European Charter for Regional or Minority
Languages on the functioning of administrative authorities and public services and
proposed a lowering of it.22
6.2 New, Innovative Strategies Facilitated by Supranational

(Market) Regulation
The appearance of new transnational regulations in the last decade sets the ground
for new institutional conditions, “opportunity structures” for ethnic Hungarians in
Romania, to use the economic institutions and cooperation as efficient means for
promoting multilingualism in Transylvania. It seems that the supranational control
over market regulations apparently offers more room for the articulation of ethno-
specific needs in the economy including a more frequent use of minority languages
in marketing communication, consumer service, the linguistic landscape of trade,
etc.
The promotion of minority languages through the economy has two distinct
narratives. According to the first one, multiculturalism and ethnolinguistic diversity
could be a comparative advantage for the economy; its professional management,
exploitation, and marketing can contribute to the improvement of the aggregate
welfare of the whole society. The other approach is built on the conviction that the
collective experience of living in a minority could have economically convertible
advantages. In the following pages, we will present a few economic and civic
initiatives which—consciously or spontaneously—are using these tools in their
activities.
We have to mention that the economic impact of these initiatives is low and their
potential to compensate the economic drawbacks of ethnic Hungarians discussed
in Sect. 5.1 is rather negligible. For us, the economic success of these initiatives
is less important—not to mention that its measurement would be problematic and
goes beyond the scope of this paper. We will present them only because they
21 Seethe Committee of Experts’ evaluation report adopted on 30 November 2011.

22 Committee of Experts’ evaluation report adopted on 30 November 2011. http://www.coe.int/t/
dg4/education/minlang/Report/EvaluationReports/RomaniaECRML1_en.pdf (accessed 13 Febru-
ary 2014). Committee of Minister’ Recommendation adopted on 13 June 2012. http://www.coe.int/
t/dg4/education/minlang/Report/EvaluationReports/RomaniaCMRec1_%20en.pdf (accessed 13
February 2014).
bring fresh alternatives to the “traditional,” confrontative strategies presented in

previous section and promising contributions to the spread of minority language
use in Transylvania.
6.2.1 Multiculturalism and Aggregate Welfare
The first narrative relies on those studies, which show that ethnolinguistic frag-
mentation may have a positive impact on the growth of the economy and to the
aggregate welfare of the society (Arcand and Grin 2013). Other studies found that
developed democracies and economies are able to productively “handle” ethnic
and linguistic diversity and reduce or even nullify its negative effects (Collier
2000; Easterly 2001). These narratives go beyond considering multiculturalism and
multilingualism as a value in itself and try to identify the economic benefits of
diversity.
One of these initiatives is the “Igen, tessék!”/“Da, poftit, i” (“Yes, please!”)
movement, which has been launched in 2012 in Cluj-Napoca, but it is expanding
to other Transylvanian towns as well. The movement aims to encourage commu-
nication in native language in commercial life and public spaces (shops, markets,
coffee houses, cashiers, etc.). An economic network of local businesses has been
established of those firms that serve Hungarian customers in their mother tongue.
These are promoted through an interactive webpage and monthly newspaper which
reaches 18,000 readers in the town.23 The initiative is based on the philosophy
that the use of native language in everyday interactions gives extra comfort for the
participants/consumers, leaving them with favorable impressions about shopping.
Therefore they urge the commercial businesses to recognize: if they are trying
to communicate with their customers in their native language—and if they take
into account the needs of different regions with different cultures—then they can
expect more revenues. Being supporters of culturally sensitive marketing, they use
economic arguments and strategies to encourage sellers to practice multilingualism,
and they are offering a variety of marketing interfaces for this purpose (stickers
in the windows of shops, monthly community magazine, website, and interactive
mobile application). Until now the movement has only focused on marketing among
Hungarian-speaking customers in Romania, and the proof of their success is that
they have more than 600 business partners in Cluj-Napoca.24
In their communication strategy toward the Romanian majority, the members
of the organization emphasize that multilingualism and multiculturalism are an
important source of returns. As a result of diversity, products and services containing
greater added value and thus more attractive to consumers become accessible. They
argue that as there is an increasing demand for varied, innovative services (e.g.,
in gastronomy, music, etc.), ethnic diversity increases consumer satisfaction, and it
could generate a positive amenity effect as an externality.
23 More data is available at the webpage of the organization: www.igentessek.ro

24 Source: www.igentessek.ro
6.2.2 Economic Advantages of Minority Status
A second strategy for the promotion of minority language use in the economy is
related to the expected benefits stemming from a comparatively higher solidarity
and trust among co-ethnics in Transylvania. According to this reasoning, ethnic
Hungarians are prone to pay more for products and services created and distributed
by those businesses in Transylvania that use Hungarian as their primary or sec-
ondary communication language. There are an increasing number of local and
regional brands who attempt to gain a competitive market advantage relying on
this type of social capital (Csata 2015). The popularity of local products specifically
positioned as Hungarian brands in Szeklerland, for example, shows that consumer
ethnocentrism is not only present at the level of dispositions but rather increasingly
determines the purchasing decisions of locals as well (Csata and Deák 2010).
The biggest player in this market is undoubtedly the Merkúr supermarket chain,
created in 2007 from a formal local convenience store chain in Odorheiu Secuiesc
(Hun. Székelyudvarhely).25 With its 12 locations in 5 towns in Szeklerland, Merkúr
is a successful competitor of multinational retail stores in the region (Kaufland, Lidl,
Penny Market, etc.). The company currently has more than 700 employees, and in
2016 their turnover reached 45 million euros, becoming the largest retail chain with
a domestic capital in Romania.
A significant part of the revenues comes from the Góbé product line, which is
commercialized as a kind of own brand using a unique marketing concept. Under
the same image, they bring together 350 products made by 64 individual producers
exclusively from Szeklerland.26 Although the Góbé behaves like a trademark, since
it promotes and sells the products of locals, it is rather a community brand. The
Merkúr advertises itself as the Szekler store chain; the logo and the image elements
on Góbé products (containing stylized elements about a fictional traditional Szekler
village) refer exclusively to this region.
Although the management defines Góbé as a regional brand, which any producer
from Szeklerland could join, for now the only suppliers are local Hungarians. So
it is not a coincidence that the products carry an added value based on Hungarian
ethnicity. This identity is further reinforced by the fact that in Merkúr supermarkets,
local Hungarian products made in Hungary are also commercialized in a large scale.
An even more pronounced commodification of ethno-regional solidarity takes
place in the case of a recently created Szekler product, the “Igazi Csíki Sör” (“The
25 The Merkúr retail business in Szeklerland should not be confused with the Austrian supermarket
chain founded in Wien in 1969. The official website of the Szekler brand states that the name
makes an allusion to those Merkúr stores which were popular under state-socialism in Romania.
For further details see: http://www.merkuraruhaz.ro/magunkról
26 The term “Góbé” is an archaic regionalism in Szeklerland, and it refers to a crafty, screw-witted
person you do not want to mess with—one of the characteristics of the socially constructed cultural
archetype of Szekler men.
Real Ciuc Beer” in Hungarian27). This brand was established in 2014, and in the
creation of product image, they used symbols and narratives inspired exclusively
from the history, folklore, and cultural heritage of Szeklerland. This marketing plan
seemed to be a success, and in order to satisfy the growing demand, the company
recently extended its production capacity to 40,000 RON/day, employing 86 people
in 2016.28
These two examples illustrate well that the business model built on the “bounded
solidarity” and “enforceable trust” (Portes 1998) of Hungarian-speaking population
in the region is successful in Szeklerland. During the last decade, hundreds of similar
local “Hungarian” brands were labeled as authentic “Szekler” products and services
and their number continues to increase.29 The success could also be attributed to the
fact that beyond the ethnic markers, these product concepts successfully integrate
other elements of conscious consumption as well (regionalism, anti-globalization,
environmental awareness, biodiversity, etc.). Therefore the phenomenon could be
legitimately considered as a form of collective manifestation of ethical consump-
tion.30
These results suggest that Transylvanian Hungarians (and particularly those
from Szeklerland) enjoy advantages stemming from “bounded solidarity” and it
seems that the “bonding” type of social capital has an increasing economic utility.
Moreover, from an anthropological perspective, it is particularly interesting that
viable local Hungarian companies, brands, products, and economic cooperation
practices also contribute to the further reinforcement of ethnic-regional identity.
Furthermore—and this is important from our point of view—on the ground of
market deregulation, using classical instruments of consumer marketing, they
spontaneously contribute to the development of multilingualism in the economy. We
think that without the enforcement of the laws of free competition by the European
Union, this process would have encountered more obstacles from the Romanian
authorities.
As a summary of this section, we can conclude that the market deregulation that
followed the EU membership opened up new possibilities for a “grassroots,” spon-
taneous expansion of multilingualism in the economy. These innovative strategies
on one hand argue that multilingualism is beneficial not only for the minority but for
society as a whole in terms of aggregate welfare; and in an appropriate institutional
environment, the diversity has tangible (economic) benefits for everyone. On the
27 As a result of an intensely mediated litigation process between the Heineken—owner of a brand
with a similar name—and the firm behind the “Igazi Csíki Sör”, the “igazi” (true) attribute was
temporarily changed to “forbidden,” becoming “Tiltott Csíki Sör.”
28 For more details see: http://csikisor.com/2016/02/26/robbantottak-hogy-epithessenek-
csikszentsimonban/
29 For a detailed description, see Gáll (2011) and the webpages of the Szekler trademark
institutions: “Székely Termék,” “Góbé termék,” “Transylvania Authentica,” “Székely Gyümölcs,”

etc.
30 Regarding the research perspective on ethical consumption and conscious consumerism, see a
recent analysis by Bartley et al. (2015).

other hand, they encourage economic actors to take the advantages given by the
market and “capitalize” the solidarity of ethnic minorities: to communicate with
consumers in their native language in the commercialization of their products and
services and thereby to gain additional revenues. These strategies are promising,
because along legitimate customer needs, as “a latent effect” or a “positive
externality,” they introduce multilingualism in the economy “through the backdoor.”
7 Summary and Conclusions
This interdisciplinary approach discusses the national minority and the minority
language rights of the ethnolinguistic Hungarian community in the northwestern
part of Romania, i.e., the Transylvanian region. In the beginning of the 1990s of
the previous century after the collapse of communism, ethnolinguistic minorities in
Romania have strengthened their legal positions, although constitutional provisions
declare the Romanian language to be the official language of the state and grant
the members of ethnolinguistic minorities cultural and linguistic rights at the
individual level only. Minority rights preserving the Hungarian cultural identity
and language have been regulated in separate laws and regulations. In this paper,
we have demonstrated that the implementation of these laws and regulations is
conditioned by the Personality Principle and a threshold rule which is fixed in the
case of Romania at 20%.
This has resulted into a limited recognition of Hungarian linguistic rights in
Romania. Under the above restrictions, the Hungarian language is allowed to be
used in the institutional framework of the society, including the domains of public
administration and education. Although the demographic trends are developing
unfavorably for the Hungarian-speaking minority, we have argued that the situation
of the Transylvanian Hungarian educational institutions at the primary and sec-
ondary levels has improved substantially. The same can be observed at the level of
tertiary education, although state-funded Hungarian higher education is still lacking
in important technical domains, like engineering and veterinary science and so on.
The legal situation of national minority rights and minority language rights has
also been empowered by transnational regulations due to Romania’s accession
to the European Union. These transnational regulations include the Language
Charter and the Framework Convention of the Council of Europe which have been
ratified by Romania as well. Lobby efforts on behalf of the “traditional” political
representatives of the Hungarian community to have recognized the Territoriality
Principle to claim autonomy for Szeklerland have been unsuccessful because the
Romanian authorities do only acknowledge the Personality Principle but not the
Territorial Principle or any other collective right.
We have observed that the legal situation has resulted into asymmetric bilin-
gualism. In general, members of the Hungarian minority speak next to their mother
tongue and also the Romanian official language of the state but not vice versa. We
have demonstrated that the disparity in language rights between ethnic Hungarians
and Romanians is further affected by negative demographic trends concerning the
Hungarian community—the Hungarian population is decreasing, especially in the

so-called cases of internal diaspora—and by the deterioration of the socioeconomic
position of the members of the Hungarian minority. Empirical testing shows that the
earnings of ethnic Hungarians—among other factors—significantly depend on their
knowledge of the Romanian official language. Since the circumstances of exposure
toward Romanian are varying considerably, this creates an involuntary disadvantage
for those Hungarians who are living with their co-ethnics in more homogeneous
communities (Csata 2016a).
In the course of our argumentation, we have distinguished between the so-
called “traditional-confrontative” and “innovative,” problem-oriented strategies that
have been pursued by the Hungarian minority in Romania to realize parity rights.
The traditional strategies focus on the internal Romanian dynamics to improve the
minority rights and linguistic rights situation in the legal system and the institutional
domains. These debates sometimes ignore analytical thinking, pragmatism, and
economic arguments; they are intrinsically political in nature and remain normative
on moral grounds, influenced by irreconcilable values and ideologies (Kettley
2003; Kymlicka and Grin 2003; Brubaker 2006). However, European transnational
spaces and multilevel governance have made possible new, innovative strategies
for parity rights to be introduced into the public space. We have argued that these
strategies include (1) civic language activism to strive for the implementation of the
Personality Principle within an increasingly coercive supranational legal framework
and (2) taking advantage of global market regulations that “secure the field” for
culturally conscious marketing and for the commercialization of local Hungarian
brands in Transylvania relying on the bonding type of solidarity among ethnic Hun-
garians in Romania. The former refer to sociopolitical phenomena involving a new
type of societal actors, i.e., the cosmopolitan “language activists,” while the latter
phenomena are studied in development economics and the “economy of language”
involving market-oriented forces and actors. Here, two aspects are important. First,
there is a general consumer need for variety and diversity, including ethnic products
and services, which is widening the horizon also for multilingual communication
in the economy. Second, economic actors recognized that a culturally sensitive
marketing—labeling and promoting products and services in Hungarian—has an
increasing payoff, especially in those regions where ethnic Hungarians are in
majority. Since the primary goal is to increase the profit of businesses, these
activities should not be perceived as mindful strategies or instrumental actions for
the promotion of multilingualism, which is rather a positive by-product of obvious
economic objectives. Although less visible and spectacular, their impact should not
be underestimated. Ethnolinguistic diversity in Romania and similar cases in Central
and Eastern Europe need much more detailed research in terms of development
economics and the economy of language. Our contribution belongs only to the first
modest approaches in this respect.
In conclusion, note however that the various innovative strategies for promoting
the Hungarian minority language in Romania which have been discussed in this
paper will not be enough to solve the problems associated with asymmetric
bilingualism, even in administrative areas where Hungarian-speaking communities
are in the majority, as in Szeklerland. For a higher symmetry and interethnic social
cohesion, it would be essential to consider a territorially differentiated coercive
linguistic regime as advocated in Van Parijs (2011: 136). For Romania, this would
imply the introduction of a territorial regime in those administrative regions where
the Hungarian-speaking community represents a majority over the Romanian, as in
Szeklerland. A parity of esteem would require both the ethnic Hungarian-speaking
majority and Romanian minority communities to have sufficient knowledge of each
other’s language in these areas. Due to the polarized political situation in Romania,
such a language policy is not expected to be implemented in the near future (Csata
2016b), and hence linguistic asymmetry will remain to characterize Romanian
language policy.
Appendix
Table 10 OLS regression model for income—Hungarians in Transylvania—male subsample

(standardized regression coefficients, TL survey, 2010)
Transylvania Szeklerland Other regions in
(N = 1176) (N = 543) Transylvania (N = 633)
Upper secondary education 0.188 ∗ ∗∗ 0.213*** 0.191***
(compared to primary and lower
secondary)
Higher education (compared to 0.408 ∗ ∗∗ 0.389*** 0.425***
Urban residence 0.067∗ 0.042 0.079*
Residence in Szeklerland −0.062∗ – –
Good command of Romanian 0.061∗ 0.016 0.103**
Coefficient of determination 0.182 0.135 0.197
(adjusted R2 )
Note: *0.05 > p > 0.01; **0.01 > p > 0.001; ***p < 0.001
Table 11 OLS regression model for income—Hungarians in Transylvania—female subsample

(standardized regression coefficients, TL survey, 2010)
Transylvania Szeklerland Other regions in
(N = 1228) (N = 584) Transylvania (N = 644)
Upper secondary education 0.223*** 0.247*** 0.211***
(compared to primary and lower
secondary)
Higher education (compared to 0.436*** 0.345*** 0.537***
Urban residence 0.170*** 0.190*** 0.163***
Residence in Szeklerland 0.013 – –
Good command of Romanian 0.083** 0.068 0.105**
Coefficient of determination 0.269 0.194 0.359
(adjusted R2 )
Note: *0.05 > p > 0.01; **0.01 > p > 0.001; ***p < 0.001
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The Economic Value of Mastering
Languages: The Case of Ethnically
Mixed Areas in Slovenia
David Limon, Mojca Medvešek, and Sonja Novak Lukanovič
1 Introduction
The aim of this paper is to show that in Slovenia’s nationally or ethnically mixed
areas,1 the economic factor has an influence on the implementation of bilingualism
at the institutional level, including bilingual interaction between institutions and
members of the public.
Institutional bilingualism has been respected and implemented in the ethnically
mixed areas of Prekmurje and Slovene Istria for decades. A condition for employ-
ment in the public sector is knowledge of both the majority and minority languages.
In this regard, knowledge of the minority language has an economic value to the
individual, since it increases employment prospects, while a “bilingualism bonus” or
supplement for functional bilingualism, which is paid to public sector staff who have
contact with the public, means a higher salary. Budgetary funds are made available
every year for the realisation of institutional bilingualism. The bilingualism bonus,
1 Although Slovenian laws and policy documents employ the term “nationally mixed areas”
(narodno mešana območja), we shall prefer here the more widely familiar “ethnically mixed areas”.
D. Limon ()
Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
e-mail: limon@siol.net
M. Medvešek · S. N. Lukanovič
Institute for Ethnic Studies, Ljubljana, Slovenia
e-mail: mojca.medvesek@guest.arnes.si; sonja.novak@guest.arnes.si

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1_14
432 D. Limon et al.
at least in public institutions, provides an extra stimulus. At the macro level, this
payment (and other costs associated with bilingual functioning) represents a cost to
the state, which must be guaranteed in the national budget in order for bilingualism
to be realised at all levels. At the micro level, the bonus is connected with the
individual and has great significance in the workplace: there is a motivation to learn
both the majority language and minority language since this makes employment
easier, and also there is a financial reward for doing so. However, it is difficult to
evaluate whether the level of this incentive really does have a motivational effect—
particularly for members of the majority community to learn the minority language.
There has been no research carried out so far into the effectiveness of this bonus
payment. However, some research has been done at different times into the views of
the inhabitants of the ethnically mixed areas regarding the realisation of bilingualism
in the public sector, on the use of language in public, on the value of language skills
when seeking employment and on the bilingual bonus. Some of the findings will be
presented below.
In the ethnically mixed areas, the bilingualism bonus is only one of the financial
mechanisms through which the state supports the realisation of bilingualism at the
institutional level. The intercommunity communication which comes about because
of the financing of bilingual education, the existence and functioning of minority
cultural institutions, media in minority languages, bilingual topography and so on
also have their economic aspect. It has never been clearly ascertained in Slovenia
how much public financial support is involved in guaranteeing bilingualism in the
ethnically mixed areas, whether the policy implementation is cost-effective with
regard to achieving its goals or whether it is successful from the point of view of the
minority or both. National policy in Slovenia has always been based on the principle
of guaranteeing an equal position for the Hungarian and Italian national minorities
in ethnically mixed areas; in doing so, it has taken into account elements of Giles’s
taxonomy of ethnolinguistic vitality (Giles et al. 1977).
Discussion of the connection between language and economy calls for a multidis-
ciplinary approach involving, among others, linguists, economists and sociologists.
Unfortunately, a look at the literature confirms that too few economists systemat-
ically consider this relationship or the role of language in the economic success
of companies. But we can assert that language as an important element in social
identity (May 2012) marks the ethnic aspect of perceived economic value and
the relative social position of individuals and communities. This is particularly
important for minority communities, which can strengthen their relative position
through economic activities.
The Economic Value of Mastering Languages: The Case of Ethnically Mixed. . . 433
2 Slovenian Language Policy on Minority Languages
The need for comprehensive and active language planning and policy2 has been
written about by Slovenian linguists quite extensively over the years (see, e.g.
Dular 2002, 2008; Stabej 2000; Štrukelj 1993, 1998; Toporišič 1991), although
their approaches and views vary greatly. Nećak Lük (2003) has warned about the
unbalanced development of language policy in Slovenia. In her view, language
policy with regard to minority languages in language contact is well developed,
since legislation is in place to ensure measures for language support (bilingual
education model, bilingual operating, bilingual documents, etc.) which guarantee
the use of minority languages in the public sphere as well as the intergenerational
language continuity of minority communities. In some other areas, such as contact
between Slovene and other (neighbouring and European) languages at different
levels (regional, European), evaluating the communicational needs of Slovenian
citizens and foreign language learning, there is a need for a clear and systematic
language strategy.
Language use, including minority languages, is to a certain extent determined
in the Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia.3 Article 11 states: “The official
language of Slovenia is Slovene. In regions of communes in which live Italian or
Hungarian national communities, Italian or Hungarian are also official languages.”4
Article 61 adds that: “Everyone has the right to freely express affiliation with his
nation or national community, to foster and give expression to his culture and
to use his language and script.” Article 62 covers interaction with public bodies:
“Everyone has the right to use his language and script in a manner provided by
law in the exercise of his rights and duties and in procedures before state and other
bodies performing a public function.” Finally, with regard to the special rights of the
“autochthonous”5 Italian and Hungarian minorities, Article 64 states, inter alia, that:
2 In this contribution, following Tollefson (1996: 16), we understand language planning as all the
conscious efforts that influence the framework or role of language or, as defined by Radovanović
(1986), the conscious, officially directed or determined development path of language and its status.
This means that language planning is a hypernym of language policy, which we see as the sum of
the actions by government and other political institutions and responsible bodies through which
they determine the use of language in the public context, develop language elements and guarantee
rights or the appropriate circumstances in which individuals (or groups) can preserve and develop
their language.
3 Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia. Republika Slovenija (1991).
4 Official translation available at http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/UNTC/
UNPAN014895.pdf
5 The Slovene term avtohton is used in the constitution but is not actually defined (Komac
et al. 2012: 30–33; Josipovič 2014). The underlying concept is of ethnic groups who, through
international treaties in which they played no part, found themselves a minority within a
different state—either Yugoslavia or Slovenia. Notice also that in Slovenia the term “national
community” is preferred to “minority,” especially where these are officially recognised. One
aim is to differentiate the Italian and Hungarian minorities from the Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian,
Montenegrin, Macedonian and Albanian minorities which are largely the result of economic
434 D. Limon et al.
“In accordance with laws, these two national communities and their members have
the right to education and schooling in their own languages, as well as the right to
establish and develop such education and schooling. The geographic areas in which
bilingual schools are compulsory shall be established by law.”
The goals of Slovenian language policy and those responsible for its implemen-
tation are delineated in the Public Use of the Slovene Language Act,6 Article 4
of which identifies duties such as the provision of a legal foundation for language
use, ongoing language research, the widening of language skills and ensuring the
development of language and language culture. Article 28 identifies the government
as responsible for the implementation of language policy, including the provision of
sufficient funds and the creation of a national programme; the National Assembly
is charged with monitoring the implementation of this programme. To date there
have been two 5-year national programmes: the first covering the period 2007–
2011 and the current one 2014–2018.7 In the case of the latter, with regard to
the Italian, Hungarian and Roma communities, the focus is on promotion of the
learning and use of Slovene among members of different language groups; ensuring
the strengthening and consistent realisation of the language rights of constitutionally
recognised minorities; ensuring quality education in Italian or Hungarian in those
parts of municipalities where members of the Italian and Hungarian national
communities reside; ensuring the conditions for the equal use and development
of Italian or Hungarian in those same areas; ensuring the use and development
of the language of the Roma community; promotion of the languages of the
“autochthonous” national communities and the Roma community in the field of
education; guaranteeing appropriate space in the public media for the languages of
all three national communities; the production of language guides and coursebooks
for speakers whose first language is not Slovene; and the promotion of applied
research in relation to the minority languages and speakers of Slovene as a second
language, their language skills, communication needs and stances. Elements of
language policy and planning can also be found in the National Cultural Programme
migration since World War II and which are geographically dispersed. The status and special rights
of the Roma community are set out in Article 65.
6 The Public Use of the Slovene Language Act (Republika Slovenija 2004a, ZJRS) does not directly
and comprehensively determine the use of the languages of the minority communities but leaves
this question to sectoral laws (Article 3). But of course, the content of language policy in Slovenia
cannot be limited only to the use and development of Slovene.
7 The current national programme states that language policy must ensure, through appropriate
measures, that for local language users, Slovene “to the greatest possible extent remains the
prevailing voluntary choice in private and public life” but that at the same time, it is aware of “the
particular responsibility it has towards Slovenians outside the borders of the Republic of Slovenia
while at the same time taking into account all speakers for whom Slovene is not the mother tongue:
members of the Hungarian and Italian national communities, of the Roma community, immigrants
and all others who come into contact with Slovene or wish to do so within or outside the borders
of the Republic of Slovenia” (Resolution on the National Programme for Language Policy 2014–
2018. Republika Slovenija 2013).
2014–20178 and in a range of sector-specific instruments9 and municipal statutes

that include provisions on language use.
Constitutional and legislative provisions regulating the status and use of minority
languages in the ethnically mixed areas of Prekmurje and Slovene Istria are not
only of a declarative nature but are supported by the state’s obligation to guarantee
financial resources for their implementation in practice. In these two parts of
Slovenia, both the majority and minority language are defined as equal regarding
communication in both public and private spheres of life. In the legislation,
institutional bilingualism covers all the channels of public communication, from
external symbols to education, public information, the judiciary and administrative
bodies, cultural and sports activities, business activities and so on.
3 Different Research Approaches to the Connection Between

Language and Economy
Discussions of the connection between language and economy have not evolved
from a unified concept of the subject matter; this has made it difficult to approach
the topic in a systematic way that may do justice to its complexity. According to Grin
(1996), Marschak (1965) was one of the first to focus on the question of why patterns
of language use change, why some languages survive better than others and what
language efficiency means. For Marschak, language was an object of choice directed
towards achieving a goal. He related the choice of language to communication and
the decision to learn a particular language to microeconomic pressures. He dealt
with these relations in the same way that all economic decisions made by individuals
are assessed—from buying a product to making an investment in order to achieve a
particular result—i.e. the best choice available at a given moment.
Analyses of numerous changes in language use patterns around the world have
confirmed the strength of economic factors with regard to the choice and use of
individual languages (Edwards 1985; Grenier and Vaillancourt 1983; Grin 1996).
The literature also argues that the economic aspect should be taken into account
when establishing a national language education policy, which in its turn influences
the role, position and status of language, and through that the structure of the
language market (cf. Wodak and Menz 1990; Nelde 1999; Grin 2003; Gazzola
2014). Answers to the question as to why some languages are learned more than
others in particular socio-economic environments must take into account not only
economic factors and language education policy but also various forms of informal
learning. However, most of the available research has not dealt with the latter.
8 See Nacionalni program za kulturo 2014–2017 [National Cultural Programme 2014–2017]: pot
do novega modela kulturne politike (2014).

9 For an overview of relevant legislation, see Načrt ukrepov vlade Republike Slovenije za izvajanje
predpisov na področju dvojezičnosti 2015–2018 (2015).

436 D. Limon et al.
Research has confirmed that bilingualism is an asset that gives individuals a

selective advantage in the labour market (Erreygers and Jacobs 2005) and may help
them earn a higher income (Carliner 1981). It has been confirmed empirically that
language skills, especially a higher level of communicative skills, have a clear value
on the labour market, especially in relation to the migrant population (Dustmann
1994). In contrast, in ethnically mixed areas such as Wales (Henley and Jones 2001),
the level of knowledge of the minority language is not a statistically significant
factor when it comes to employment or earnings. A similar observation has been
made by Novak Lukanovič (2002) regarding minority languages in Slovenia.
Although different approaches have traditionally been adopted in studies of
minority languages in particular areas, most frequently these have focused on the
preservation of linguistic and cultural heritage as important symbols of individual
and collective identity (Breton 1978). The economic aspects of minority languages
have seldom been factored in, especially in relation to the costs incurred in cultural
and linguistic production. Investment in a language or the production of language
materials, looked at from the narrowest economic viewpoint, may be seen from
the very start as problematic or unacceptable. The number of books published in a
minority language, or the number of readers of minority magazines or newspapers
appearing in that language, is frequently small and may not be viable from a
simple economic point of view. However, by emphasising the economic factor in
its wider sense—not only quantitatively but from the point of view of the role of the
economy in the maintenance and promotion of minority languages—the discussion
can be broadened to include language as a tool facilitating intercultural contact and
exchange, language as a condition for (micro- and macro-) economic development
and language as a public good (Čok and Novak Lukanovič 2005).
Language choice in a multicultural and multilinguistic environment shows
whether individuals can use their preferred language to function fully as citizens
and members of society—or rather whether they have the right to do so. At the
same time, it is a reflection of the relations between groups: namely, whether
they lead interconnected or separate lives. The symbolic value of language cannot
be measured as clearly as the value of an economic commodity. Exchange value
(Novak Lukanovič 2011: 330) is strongly dependent on the type of language:
i.e. differences regarding the status of a language in a society (official-unofficial,
majority-minority) or with regard to its classification as an international10 or a less
widely used language. It is virtually impossible to establish a uniform methodology
that would define the value parameters and determine how important each one is in
relation to language.
In recent years discussions of the language-economy relationship regarding
minority languages has undergone dramatic change and become important in the
language policies of the European Union. EU documents, such as the Lisbon
Strategy (Lisbon Action Plan for Growth and Jobs, Integrated Guideline No. 23),
10 The question arises as to how we decide what an international language is—whether it depends
on the number of speakers or the power of a language community.

factor in language diversity in their promotion of social cohesion and economic

development. Multilingualism and interculturalism are claimed to be vital to
successful cooperation in today’s world, and this is strongly connected to the labour
market, as well as to the single market that dictates free movement of capital, goods,
services and persons.11
To summarise what we have said so far in connection with economy: the value of
a language must be discussed in the context of a language market, which is a social,
economic and political construction (Bourdieu 1991). Numerous social, political
and economic factors in combination with the language education policy of the
country create the language production in a specific socio-economic environment.
In the case of multilingual societies, a hierarchy of languages is also created, with
different languages enjoying very different statuses. The socio-economic position of
a region, formal language policy, informal education and individuals’ perceptions of
different languages shape the structure of the language market12 within which the
use of a specific language for certain purposes is promoted. On the other hand,
economic parameters can also affect language discrimination in intercommunity
relations. In the different social and linguistic processes in a multicultural envi-
ronment, the majority language plays an important role. Every other language, even
those recognised by the constitution (such as Italian and Hungarian in Slovenia),
is connected with the official language, which represents a kind of guiding norm
facilitating the objective measurement of institutional language practices. Thus a
language market is created, which helps to determine language value and influences
the supply and demand of language services (language teaching and learning,
translation and interpreting) and goods (such as books and newspapers), including
in the minority language(s).
4 The Role of Slovenian Scholars in Examining

the Language–Economy Relationship
Although a look at the specialist literature shows that scholars began to more closely
consider the language-economy relationship largely in the last two decades of the
twentieth century, in Slovenia there was a clear interest in this connection at a
much earlier stage, particularly in relation to the economic value of language. For
11 In 2007 the European Commission established the Business Forum on Multilingualism, charged
with looking at how language knowledge influences trade and the labour market within the EU.
12 The language market is structurally connected to the economy and to national policy. Through
language planning, the state has a strong influence on the level of knowledge of particular
languages, on language use and on the social evaluation or value of language (Gazzola 2014).
In certain situations, knowledge of a language can be compared to market production. Language
on the market may help to overcome psychological barriers, provide easier access to other/foreign
markets and facilitate (or impede) mobility/flexibility and success in the labour market.
438 D. Limon et al.
example, in 1921 the Slovenian politician, lawyer and sociologist Andrej Gosar
(1985: 110−134)13 observed that:
the language question extends far into the economic field [ . . . ] The question as to whether
we should learn another language or whether others should learn ours is not only an abstract
one, but has a great deal of practical significance and is really an economic question . . .
The socio-political situation and the position of Slovene, as well as the post-
World War I conditions in the new state (the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and
Slovenes), meant that the economic value of language was considered not only
among linguists but also among economists.
In his book on the issue of Slovenian nationhood, Gosar discussed this issue in
a chapter entitled “Language in economic life”. Unfortunately, precisely because of
the language in which he wrote (Slovene), his work remained confined to a very
narrow circle of readers. Regarding the status of languages at an institutional level,
he observed that:
A large part of the nation whose language is discriminated against and not publicly
acknowledged is thus chained to the lowest possible level of social life, while members
of the ruling nation are given unrestricted access to all the best positions in private and
public life. From the highest post in the public administration to that of the most ordinary
supervisor in a private company, everything is available to them, all they require is the
professional knowledge, while the member of the discriminated nation, even after the best
professional training, without knowledge of the foreign language, cannot achieve even the
humblest of the better positions . . . (Gosar 1985: 116)
In the conclusion to this chapter, he writes:

The internal connection between the language or national and economic question is clear,
and there is no doubt that language inequality leads to general national inequality, from
which originates complete economic dependence and social disadvantage . . . (Gosar 1985:
117)
These prescient citations from Gosar prompted us to look more deeply into
the language-economy connection and to search for empirical data that show the
connection between, on the one hand, economic factors and, on the other, the
choice and use of language in different economic domains and different social
environments. In doing this we were aware that the connection can be examined
either at the level of the individual, where the choice of language is marked by a
complex of motivational factors (and the economic ones need not be the strongest),
or at the level of society, where language is steered by other factors or motivations.
Another important scholar, who some years later and from a different socio-
economic starting point established a connection between language and economic
development, was Toussaint Hočevar—a Slovenian American economist and his-
torian who is still cited by authors today (e.g. Grin 2009). He discusses the
link between ethnicity and economic development, emphasising language as a
component of ethnicity and observing that the institutions which influence economic
13 All quotations from Gosar translated from the Slovene by the authors.
development should reflect the patterns of language use in a territory if its total social
product is to be maximised. He also asserts that it is language which creates and
facilitates social mobility, asking whether the social dividing line always coincides
with the linguistic one. In his work Slovene Social Development (1979), Hočevar
claims that a language monopoly facilitates a privileged socio-economic position.
He further states that knowledge of a language “represents a capital investment that
is irreversible. For it is shut inside the brain and it is not possible to alienate it
like a material good, although we can transfer it to others. And like other capital
goods, language knowledge is subject to depreciation” (ibid.: 28). He also writes
that, in contrast to German speakers, Slovenians who wish to be included in an
activity which is subject to the German language system must make an additional
investment in German. When this involved only a few individuals, the relevant costs
were lower than they would have been in setting up an autonomous information
system.
In his discussion of the economic aspect of language, Hočevar claims that the
costs connected with language learning represent an investment in physical and
human resources. They are necessary for the collection and transfer of information,
as well as for the creation of documentation. Considering the dynamics of language
systems, he stated that the functional boundaries between individual language
systems are not stable but have a tendency to shift. For example, in an environment
where there is a dominant language A and a subordinate language B, a speaker needs
to learn language A, which is an investment involving both explicit and implicit
learning costs, including time. For speakers of language B, language A is a barrier
to overcome if one wishes to succeed in a career or work that requires command of
it. And of course, the costs involved differ depending on the individual’s learning
skills and ambitions.
Another important scholar in this area is Aleš Lokar, who discusses language
in connection with the economic activities of minorities, focusing on the Slovenian
minority in Italy. In a study co-authored with Oblak (Lokar and Oblak 1986), there
is a discussion of how economic activities have low ethnic specificity. It is unusual
for a company to employ only members of the Slovenian minority, whose small size
as a community hinders the production of all the knowledge and skills required in
modern economic activities. For this reason companies are usually mixed, both in
terms of employment and capital. It was Hočevar who introduced the concept of
language specificity in a particular field, which is dependent on the various costs
involved in learning a new, dominant language spoken by the historically majority
population. And of course, this endeavour may be in conflict with efforts to maintain
the minority language. These ideas are of course more relevant to activities where
language, information and close contact with the larger population play a central
role.
Regardless of the fact that a number of Slovenian authors have carried out
research on the connection between language and economy, there have been no
research projects that take a comprehensive approach to this connection in Slovenia.
The available literature tends to discuss indirectly the role of language and culture in
the economy, for instance, Pogorelec (1983), Nećak Lük (1993), Novak Lukanovič
440 D. Limon et al.
(2002) and Osojnik (2004). Slovenia was not a participant in the ELAN project
(Hagen 2006), which looked at the influence of foreign language knowledge on the
economy in 15 European countries. The results of such research would indicate
the connection between, on the one hand, language knowledge and use and, on
the other, the economic success of various companies in Slovenia, which would
then facilitate comparison with other European countries. In this article we make
use only of the results of research projects carried out by the Institute for Ethnic
Studies in Ljubljana (see below). These have drawn attention to the significance of
economic factors in relation to the choice and use of language in the workplace
and represent a basis for further, in-depth research into the role of language in the
Slovenian economy.
5 The Connection Between Language and Economy

in Ethnically Mixed Areas of Slovenia: Some Selected
Research Results
There are two ethnically mixed areas in Slovenia where bilingualism is formally
guaranteed at the institutional level (the territorial principle): Prekmurje (Slovene-
Hungarian) and Slovene Istria (Slovene-Italian) (see Fig. 1). In the 2002 census,
6243 people declared themselves as Hungarian, representing 0.32% of the popula-
tion of Slovenia. Since 1953, the official statistics has shown a gradual decline in
the number of Hungarians in Slovenia. It is worth noting here that the whole area
along the Hungarian border is identified as one of constant depopulation. Two trends
can be observed here: (1) the reduction in the number of Hungarians in Slovenia is
connected with low natural growth (the age structure of the Hungarian population
compared to Slovenia as a whole is distinctly unfavourable) and the increase in the
number of mixed marriages and (2) an increase in the number of members of the
Hungarian community who live outside the ethnically mixed areas (the 2002 census
showed 17% of Hungarians living outside these areas, compared to only 5.7% in
1961). In the 2002 census, 2258 people declared themselves as Italian, representing
0.11% of the population of Slovenia. The 2002 census showed 19% of Italians living
outside the ethnically mixed areas.
In each of these two areas, a minority language has the status of an official
language and financial resources for the realisation of bilingualism are guaranteed
by the constitution. The legal provisions regarding the use of the languages of the
two recognised minorities in specific geographic areas of the country include laws
and regulations covering public institutions, local government and judicial bodies,
guaranteeing Italian and Hungarian equal status with Slovene. Moreover, Article
17 of the Civil Servants Act (Republika Slovenija 2007) states that: “For public
sector posts where, in line with the law, the language of the national minority
has to be used as an official language, then knowledge of that language is a
condition of employment”. And Article 28 of the Public Sector Salary System Act
(Republika Slovenija 2009) states that employees who in their work use both the
Fig. 1 Ethnically mixed areas in Prekmurje and Slovene Istria. Source: Institute of Ethnic Studies,
Ljubljana, 2016
majority and minority language are entitled to a “bilingualism bonus”.14 Legislation

in specific areas repeats the constitutional provision that Slovene is the official
language on the whole territory of the country and Italian or Hungarian in the
areas where “autochthonous national communities” live, as well as further defining
and clarifying to what extent and how the official language should be employed
within certain bodies. For instance, laws relating to culture, education, healthcare,
14 Article 28 (Bilingualism bonus)
(1) The bilingualism bonus shall pertain to public servants and judges, public prosecutors and state
attorneys who work in municipalities where the Hungarian and Italian ethnic communities live
and where Hungarian or Italian is an official language, if knowledge of the language of the ethnic
community is a condition for performing the work or function.
(2) The size of the bonus specified in the preceding paragraph shall amount to:
– Between 12% and 15% of the basic salary for teachers and other expert staff in primary and
secondary education, teachers and other expert staff at nursery schools and journalists at the RTV
Slovenija public institute
– Between 3% and 6% of the basic salary for other public servants
– Up to 6% of the basic salary for judges, public prosecutors and state attorneys
(3) The size of the bonus specified in the first and second indents of the preceding paragraph shall
be stipulated by the director, and that of the bonus specified in the third indent shall be stipulated
by the judicial council for judges, by the personnel commission for public prosecutors and by the
State Attorney General for state attorneys, on the basis of the level of knowledge of the language of
the ethnic community required and the actual use of the language during the performance of work.
442 D. Limon et al.
pharmacies, courts, the prosecution service, the police, the media, etc. specify the
need to employ the official minority language when dealing with the public. Specific
sectoral laws also define how knowledge of the minority language can be proven by
public sector employees: with a secondary school certificate, a certificate from an
educational institute or with proof of active knowledge of Hungarian or Italian in the
case of the official media. There are also instances (healthcare, education) where the
instruments of the employing organisation define the required level of knowledge of
a specific language and how meeting this condition is verified for a particular post.
In other areas (e.g. the police), the employer provides training for acquisition of the
relevant minority language.
The bilingualism bonus is funded from the national budget and is paid to
individuals filling particular public sector posts where they come into direct contact
with the public, including in education15; it represents a financial incentive to
learn and use the two local official languages at work. In this context, language
diversity (knowledge of two minority languages) has a direct economic value. It
is worth citing here research data on bilingualism in the ethnically mixed areas
that indirectly touched upon the relationship between language and economy. The
results of research carried out among the majority and minority populations between
1991 and 1997 within the project “Ethnic identity and inter-ethnic relations in the
Slovene ethnic space”16 showed that the use of two languages in the workplace is
more likely among members of the minority and that ethnic Slovenians usually use
only Slovene. Empirical data also showed a connection between the bilingualism
bonus and strategies of language adaptation, with convergence being found where
the bonus is paid. Where the bonus is not present, use of the minority language tends
to occur only in informal contexts, where there is a strong subjective component.
Members of the Italian and Hungarian minorities attach much greater weight to
knowledge of the minority language for employment than do members of the
Slovenian majority (Novak Lukanovič 2002).
In 1997, as part of this project, a survey was carried out in Prekmurje on a non-
random sample of those identified as shapers of public opinion.17 Some of the
questions asked enable us to indirectly ascertain the economic value of language.
We asked respondents whether knowledge of two languages (majority and minority)
should be a condition of employment in certain areas of work. The majority
(69.8%) agreed that it should be a condition of employment in the public sector
15 For a detailed discussion of bilingual education in Slovenia and attitudes towards it, see Novak
Lukanovič and Limon (2014).

16 The longitudinal and multidisciplinary project of the Institute for Ethnic Studies, Ljubljana, led
by Dr. Albina Nećak Lük, “Ethnic identity and inter-ethnic relations in the Slovene ethnic space”
carried out in Prekmurje in 1991, 1994, 1996 and 1997 and in Slovene Istria in 1994 and 1996
17 The survey was aimed at 131 people whom we identified as shapers of public opinion. Ninety-
six of them took part: 40.6% described themselves as Slovenians, 47.9% as Hungarians, 7.3% as
both Slovenians and Hungarians, 3.1% as members of other ethnic groups, and 1% did not want
to define themselves ethnically (Medetnični odnosi in narodna identiteta v mestu Lendava/Lendva:
sumarni pregled rezultatov, 1999).
Table 1 Responses to the question “Do you think that employees who carry out work in two
languages should receive extra payment?” in relation to ethnicity (N = 96)
Slovenians Hungarians Hungarians and Slovenians Other, no reply Total
Yes, the work 43.6% 58.7% 42.9% – 49.0%
is more
demanding
and requires
more
preparation
No 30.8% 26.1% 42.9% 75.0% 31.3%
Conditionally 15.4% 13.0% 14.3% 25.0% 14.6%
(if they have
extra tasks
because of
this,
depending on
the nature of
the work)
Other 7.7% – – – 3.1%
No reply 2.6% 2.2% – – 2.1%
Total 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
where staff come into contact with members of the public. 5.2% of respondents
thought a passive knowledge should be a condition of employment in the public
administration, while 13.5% thought that knowledge of Hungarian was desirable
but should not be a condition of employment; 6.3% thought that knowledge of two
languages should not be a condition for any post, and 2.1% thought that it should be
so only in educational institutions.
We were also interested what the attitude was to the bilingualism bonus (see
Table 1).
Just less than a half of the respondents (49%) thought that the bilingualism
bonus was justified, since bilingual work was more demanding and required more
preparation. 14.6% thought that the payment was only conditionally justified, i.e. if
it meant that employees faced extra work. Regardless of the fact that members of
the Hungarian minority were slightly more in favour, the bilingualism bonus did not
have convincing, majority support among shapers of public opinion.
Similar questions were asked some years later in a survey on “Bilingualism in
Slovenia”18 carried out between 2005 and 2007. The research data offers some
insights into how bilingualism, both individual and institutional, is viewed by
members of the local minority. The study included 146 respondents from Slovene
Istria and 145 from Prekmurje. There were no statistical differences between the
two areas with regard to age (around half in both areas were from the 50+ age
group, and only around 10% were under 30) and gender (61% women in Istria,
18 Project
“Bilingualism in Slovenia” of the Institute for Ethnic Studies, Ljubljana, led by Dr. Sonja
Novak Lukanovič, carried out between 2005 and 2007
444 D. Limon et al.
Table 2 Responses to the Slovene Istria Prekmurje

question: “Do you think that
workers in the ethnically Yes No. 63 91
mixed areas who carry out % 43.8 62.3
their job in two No No. 67 45
languages—Slovene and % 46.5 30.8
Italian, or Slovene and Don’t know No. 14 10
Hungarian—should receive
% 9.7 6.8
extra payment?”
Total No. 144 146
% 100.0 100.0
67% in Prekmurje). On average, respondents from Prekmurje had a higher level

of education. In Istria 76.7% gave Italian as their first language or mother tongue,
but almost 20% said that they had two “first languages,” while one respondent
claimed three (Italian, Slovene and Croatian). By contrast, in Prekmurje 84.1% gave
Hungarian as their first language, and no one said they had more than one. The great
majority of respondents (82.2% and 93.1%, respectively) had lived in the area since
birth, which is probably significant with regard to their views on bilingualism in
everyday life. The great majority of respondents in both areas agreed that knowledge
of the two local languages—majority and minority—should be a condition for
employment in the ethnically mixed area, regardless of the position involved. Most
respondents (Istria 85%, Prekmurje 69%) agreed that there should be financial or
other sanctions against failure to set up a bilingual structure, including employing
the appropriate staff and offering bilingual information. However, there was less
agreement regarding the additional compensation for bilinguals in the workplace
(see Table 2).
In Prekmurje, 62.3% approved of the payment, while 30.8% disapproved (Don’t
knows, 6.8%); in Istria, on the other hand, only 43.8% agreed with the payment,
while 46.5% disagreed (Don’t knows, 9.5%). The level of opposition came as a
surprise to the researchers. Further analysis showed that in Prekmurje, the field
in which the respondents were employed had a significant influence on their
attitude. For instance, among those employed in educational institutions (25.9% of
respondents in Prekmurje and 28.2% in Istria worked in “education and culture”),
there was very strong support, while the majority of those working in small
trade, agriculture and industry were against the payment, as were those in areas
like insurance, retail and banking where they interact regularly with the public.
Basically, those who do not receive the extra payment for their work are much
more likely to think that others should not receive it either. This finding confirms
other surveys, such as that by Nećak Lük et al. (2000), which showed very strong
support for the payment by those employed in educational institutions, in contrast
with other fields of employment. However, in Istria the picture was different, and the
respondents’ areas of employment did not seem to have the same kind of influence
on their views. Whether the greater prosperity of Slovene Istria compared with
Prekmurje (in 2005, GDP per person in the coastal region was 56% higher than
Table 3 Responses to the Slovene Istria Prekmurje

question “Do you think that
No. % No. %
knowledge of both languages,
Slovene and Hungarian/ Yes 126 88.1 129 89.0
Italian, should be a condition No 9 6.3 11 7.6
of employment in the Don’t know 8 5.6 5 3.4
nationally mixed areas?” Total 143 100 145 100
in the statistical region that includes Prekmurje) has any influence here is difficult
to judge.
The results highlighted a difference in the two ethnically mixed areas with
regard to evaluating the use of the minority language (Hungarian or Italian) in the
workplace. A statistically significant correlation between the way language was used
at work19 and agreement that those who used both languages at work deserve extra
payment20 was apparent among the respondents in Prekmurje (Pearson chi-square,
p-value = 0.016; p < 0.05, N = 140), but not in Slovene Istria (Pearson chi-square,
p-value = 0.873, p > 0.05, N = 139). The stance adopted may be influenced by
education level and, consequently, the kind of post held by the respondent. If we
take, for instance, two posts in schools, secretary and assistant cook, both are
public sector posts in education; however, the former demands knowledge of the
majority and the minority language, and so the holder of the post is entitled to the
bilingualism bonus, whereas the latter does not require such knowledge and so does
not lead to entitlement to the bonus. The fact that respondents in Prekmurje had on
average a higher level of education may be one of the reasons for the higher level of
support for the bonus. There is also an indirect influence on attitudes towards this
payment from the different educational model present in the two ethnically mixed
areas (cf. Čok 2009).
At the same time, the majority of respondents in the survey agreed that
knowledge of the two languages should be a condition of employment in the
ethnically mixed areas, regardless of the post involved (see Table 3); this would,
of course, create the conditions for the implementation of bilingualism in all areas
and every profession. The data shows more agreement with obligatory bilingualism
in the workplace but also shows less agreement with the bilingualism bonus. This is
probably a consequence of the fact that the bonus is paid only to selected posts in
the public sector.
The more recent “Study into the national, cultural and linguistic diversity of the
population in the nationally mixed area of Prekmurje” (2014), as well as analysed
reports from municipalities, administrative units and Hungarian “self-governing
19 The question “How much was the minority language used in the workplace?” had three possible
answers: The right amount, Too little and Don’t know.

20 The question: “Do you agree that staff members who carry out work in both languages should
be paid extra?” had the following possible answers: Yes, No, Don’t know.
446 D. Limon et al.
national communities” on the realisation of bilingualism,21 showed that institutional

bilingualism is realised in practice (and encompasses external communication with
citizens, as well as internal communication between colleagues) but that often
language use leans towards the majority language. It is particularly concerning that
in contact with these bodies and institutions, the younger generation more often
uses the majority language. Members of both minority and majority communities
must have not only the opportunity but also the possibility (an adequate level of
language proficiency) and motivation to use the minority language (Medvešek and
Bešter 2016).
With regard to Grin and Moring’s (2002) parameters of vitality,22 we can say
that in Slovenia’s ethnically mixed areas, the legal provisions provide a basis for
operational bilingualism (although there is research evidence indicating that, in
practice, these provisions are often inadequately implemented and that the use of
Slovene is dominant—see Nećak Lük 2000: 139–141 and Medvešek and Bešter
2016). The bilingualism bonus represents a specific mechanism promoting the use
of the minority language. This may mean an additional motivation for individuals
to become bilingual. However, regardless of the financial investment needed by the
state to ensure bilingualism,23 a point is reached where even additional investment
does not necessarily produce better results in terms of increased language compe-
tence or the use of the minority language in different domains. In other words, the
financial investment has its limits.
Regardless of the financial level of resources required from the state in order to
realise bilingualism,24 there comes a point when the use of language in different
contexts and language competence do not increase in line with the investment
(the effectiveness boundary). This means that every policy approach, even if it
increases the scope of investment, reaches a point beyond which it cannot go. To
help it beyond that point, other socio-political factors need to come into play. With
regard to this, the majority population play a decisive role: its attitude towards and
21 Reports on bilingual functioning were submitted by the Hungarian self-governing national com-
munites of Pomurska, Dobrovnik, Moravske Toplice, Šalovci; the municipalities of Dobrovnik,

Hodoš, Lendava, Šalovci, Moravske Toplice; and the administration units of Lendava and Murska
Sobota.
22 Grin and Moring’s (2002) model connects vitality with language behaviour. It includes parame-
ters aimed at improving the position of a language, especially a minority one; the parameters are
divided into three groups, which include possibilities/skills, opportunities and wishes/attitudes.
23 The decree on cofinancing of municipalities in nationally mixed areas for 2016 (Republika
Slovenija 2016) shows that the bilingual functioning of municipal administrations and bodies
in Koper, Izola, Piran and Ankaran (Slovene Istria), plus Lendava, Moravske Toplice and
Dobrovnik, Šalovci and Hodoš (Prekmurje), as well as the functioning of “self-governing national
communities” in these municipalities, costs 1,613,800 euros per year. In addition, according to
media reports, the bilingualism bonus costs approximately an additional 4 million euros per year
(Slovenske novice 2013).
24 By the realisation of bilingualism, we mean not only institutional bilingualism but also bilingual
education, which represents the foundation for guaranteeing bilingualism. The organisation and
materials for bilingual education represent the greatest financial cost.
acceptance of the minority and the minority language. For this reason, analysis of
cost-effectiveness with regard to institutional bilingualism cannot take into account
only the involvement of the minority but also of the majority population. Frequently,
studies dealing with the economic aspect of minority languages focus on the
financial support aimed at the preservation of that language. But, the success of
bilingualism is not dependent only on such investment but on the whole social, with
all the objective and subjective factors that are involved.
One shortcoming regarding functional bilingualism in the workplace in the
public sector is that although the bilingualism bonus assumes knowledge of the two
languages, the level of knowledge required is not precisely defined. This means that
an individual interacting with a particular institution may find that staff member’s
mastery of the minority language is inadequate for effective communication and
therefore switches to Slovene. Our research shows that the level of competence
in the minority language is a key factor influencing the realisation of sustainable
bilingualism in ethnically mixed areas (see also Novak Lukanovič 2003 for an
overview, as well as Medvešek and Bešter 2016: 177–178).
The results of our research indicate that problems also arise in the private
sector, which is less well-regulated with regard to bilingualism. On the basis of
the Consumer Protection Act (Republika Slovenija 2004b), the Ministry of the
Economy issued a set of rules governing language use by companies in contact
with customers in the ethnically mixed areas.25 In addition to Slovene, companies
are supposed to offer in the minority language basic information about products
and services, prices and conditions and opening times. However, it is not clear
to what extent these rules are followed in practice. Moreover, while municipal
documents26 state that companies must have bilingual signs and inscriptions,
nowhere is it stipulated that these companies must adopt a bilingualism policy in
their statute, business plans, business reports, employment documentation and their
overall activities. In fact, companies with headquarters outside the ethnically mixed
areas claim that they do not have to adhere to bilingualism, although opinions among
business managers on this subject matter differ, as do legal interpretations. The use
of the minority language or the need for the knowledge of the minority language
appears only in those companies that have business relations with the neighbouring
country where the minority language is the national language (i.e. Hungary and
Italy).
In the ethnically mixed ethnic areas of Slovenia, the value of language is strongly
marked by both the symbolic and economic dimension (Novak Lukanovič 2003,
2004). Empirical research data27 indicates that those surveyed do not ascribe great
25 Decree on the use of the minority language by companies in communication with consumers in
areas populated by the Italian and Hungarian minority (Republika Slovenija 2008)
26 For example, the statute of the Municipality of Lendava/Lendva (Republika Slovenija 1999),
Article 71
27 Research was carried out by the Institute for Ethnic Studies, Ljubljana, in 2005–2006 in areas on
the Slovene/Italian (Nova Gorica/Gorizia), Slovene/Austrian (Gornja Radgona/Bad Radkersburg)

and Slovene/Hungarian (Lendava/Monošter) borders. Two inclusive criteria were applied: urban
448 D. Limon et al.
importance to knowledge of the language of the neighbouring country in terms of the

increased social status of the speaker, or because it opens opportunities for training
and study. Knowledge of the “neighbouring” language is important in relation to
employment in that country because it makes it easier for an individual to adapt
to the different environment and to be more successful. In all the border areas,
regardless of age, the survey participants perceived the linguistic/cultural diversity
of an area in different forms of cooperation, be it in the sociocultural or the economic
sphere. The results showed a strong link between language and economy, with
the “other” language representing an important, even fundamental condition for
successful business cooperation along the border. This is confirmed by the fact
that most participants support learning the language of the neighbouring country
at school, which influences language/education policies in the countries concerned.
Even though an individual’s knowledge of the language of his neighbours opens
up that neighbouring world and contributes to the understanding of similarities
and differences, the participants in the survey focused particularly on the economic
aspects. The knowledge of the minority language in an ethnically mixed area, which
is also the language of the neighbouring country and which the individual can learn
as L1 or L2, has an added value in that it facilitates mobility and widens employment
opportunities both in the home country and in the wider European space.
6 Conclusion
Economy in the widest sense directly and indirectly influences different language
behaviours: from maintenance of a language or a shift away from it to various strate-
gies of linguistic accommodation. Language and culture are important components
that may influence the economic success of individuals and economic growth; they
are also an important indicator of individual satisfaction, influencing quality of life.
In a multicultural society, language planning and policy serve to shape the society
in the social and economic sense. For a multicultural and multilingual environment
to function to the satisfaction of all, individuals must have the right to speak in their
own language in as wide a range of contexts as possible. It is the role of the state to
facilitate this in both the public and private sectors.
In the two constitutionally defined ethnically mixed areas of Slovenia, the
language-economy connection contributes to the maintenance of linguistic diver-
sity and facilitates intercultural communication. An appropriate language policy,
particularly as it applies to language education, gives the minority language an
added value in that majority language speakers can see its usefulness. In fact,
it is economically relevant, since it facilitates access to certain posts and may
area and age of learners. Group interviews and a survey were carried out. The sample included
7 schools, with 350 students age 14–15, as well as 355 parents, to uncover intergenerational
differences.
ensure a higher salary (in the public sector through a bilingualism bonus). Such
economic advantages may have a positive influence on the attitude of majority
language speakers towards the minority language. Thus economic factors (as well
as socio-political factors, such as whether or not the relevant minority population is
stigmatised or discriminated against) have an impact on the vitality of the minority
language.
However, our empirical research has raised a number of questions that still
require answers. One is how to better bridge the obvious gap between the legal
provisions and practice. It is obviously essential that members of the minority
take advantage of their rights with regard to institutional bilingualism at every
opportunity, but our research shows that the younger generation are increasingly
failing to do this, preferring to use Slovene in their official interactions (Medvešek
and Bešter 2016: 180). The reasons for this can be speculated on, but further
research is required before solutions can be offered. Another question is how to
encourage members of the majority to learn the minority language. In the case of the
two areas we have looked at, it is important to note that these are also border areas,
which means that what counts as a minority language in Slovenia derives part of its
strength and value from being spoken in the neighbouring country. This may provide
an economic motivation (seeking employment, doing business) for members of the
majority to learn the language, although this is more likely in the case of Italian
than Hungarian, because of the relative sizes of the respective economies and levels
of trade. However, if the only motivation is an economic one, then in many cases,
it is probably a better investment for the individual to learn English or German,
which are likely to open a lot more doors. For a more balanced bilingualism
to thrive, members of the majority need other sociocultural reasons to learn the
minority language. This may be as simple as watching the television stations of the
neighbouring country or shopping there (both of which are widespread practices in
Slovene Istria) or being actively involved in intercultural activities and exchanges;
the latter is something that the bilingual education institutions in these areas can
actively promote.
Other unresolved questions relate to the bilingualism bonus described above:
whether the financial incentive it offers is sufficient to motivate people to become
functionally bilingual (there is a large gap between those working in education,
who may receive between 12% and 15% of their basic salary, and public servants,
where the bonus ranges from 3% to 6%); whether it is cost-effective; and why it
does not enjoy greater support in the ethnically mixed areas. Moreover, it is clear
that just because a post is officially labelled as requiring bilingual skills, this does
not necessarily mean that those skills are consistently used: it is quite possible that
members of the minority, for a complex of reasons (including, perhaps, the level
of knowledge of the minority language of the person they are interacting with),
may prefer to use the majority language. Another issue in connection with this
pay supplement is how the recipient’s level of bilingual skills is assessed, when
it is assessed and whether the emphasis is on active or passive knowledge. And a
final, important point: the bonus is a public sector mechanism—in the private sector,
450 D. Limon et al.
bilingualism is only promoted through legislation and regulations, which may not
be consistently enforced.
As noted earlier, institutional bilingualism has been respected and implemented
in the ethnically mixed areas of Prekmurje and Slovene Istria for several decades.
The state invests considerable amounts in bilingual education and in facilitating
bilingualism within the public administration and other bodies. Furthermore, from
the individual point of view, bilingualism may have a clear economic value with
regard to employment or business. On the other hand, the continuing vitality of
bilingualism depends on much more than the money invested and the economic
motivation of individuals and businesses: there is a complex of sociocultural and
socio-political factors that also plays an important part.
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Language and Translation Policies
in Context of Urban Super-Diversity
Reine Meylaerts
1 Introduction: Language and Translation Policies
Since the French Revolution, the link between language and the state has gradually
become more important: language relations became more and more politicized.
In 1794 deputy Barère declared: “La monarchie avait des raisons de ressembler
à la tour de Babel; dans la démocratie, laisser les citoyens ignorants de la langue
nationale, incapables de contrôler le pouvoir, c’est trahir la patrie... Chez un peuple
libre, la langue doit être une et la même pour tous” (quoted in Perrot 1997:
162).1 During the subsequent European democratization processes of the nineteenth
century, language became more than before a state matter. Citizens2 were expected
to speak, to understand, and to identify with a shared language, often the so-
called national language, which had to ensure their democratic right to control the
authorities and to communicate with them, to understand the laws made in their
1 The monarchy had its reasons to resemble to the tower of Babel; in democracy, leaving citizens
ignorant of the national language, incapable of controlling the authorities, is to betray the
fatherland . . . For a free people, language must be one and the same for all (my translation from
French).
2 Citizenship is traditionally used in its “broad political meaning that refers to individual mem-
bership, rights and participation in a polity” (Bauböck 2006: 15). Obviously, this conventional
definition of citizenship is challenged by migration, multiculturalism, and multinationalism. We
therefore need an expanded definition of citizenship, separated from the nation-state, in terms of
“active citizenship” as “any kind of productive contribution that the individual makes to society”
(Bauer 2010: 129). On citizenship and immigration, see Joppke (2008).
R. Meylaerts ()
KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa
e-mail: reine.meylaerts@kuleuven.be

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1_15
456 R. Meylaerts
name, to vote, to receive and understand official documents, to create feelings of

national belonging and national identity, etc. In other words, democratic authorities
increasingly felt the need to design dedicated language policies.
Language policy is a concept that has been defined in many different ways.
One definition that is very useful for studying the relation between language
and citizenship is the one proposed by Bernard Spolsky. According to Spolsky
(2012: 5), a language policy encompasses language practices (“the actual language
practices of the members of a speech community”), language beliefs or ideology
(“the values assigned by members of a speech community to each variety and
variant and their beliefs about the importance of these values”), and language
management (“efforts by some members of a speech community who have or
believe they have authority over other members to modify their language practice”).
The interrelationship between the three is stressed by the fact that language
management must be consistent with language practices and beliefs in order to
have real effects (Spolsky 2012: 222). As already indicated, this definition, and
especially its distinction between the three interrelated components, promises to
be very helpful for studying the conduct of the government or administrative
authorities vis-à-vis language. For democratic authorities, e.g., making language
management consistent with (sometimes conflicting) language practices and beliefs
is crucial to ensuring reciprocal communication between the political center and its
dependent language communities. On the other hand, language beliefs and language
practices may affect language management. That is to say, this definition is helpful
in analyzing the dynamic (and sometimes conflictual and paradoxical) bottom-up
and top-down interaction between the three components of language policy.
The democratic ideal of one language for one people in one nation-state has
however always remained just that: an ideal. All over the world, people are
multilingual and mobile. As a consequence, the establishment of national languages
for states created so-called linguistic minorities: before then “there was no majority
to define minority” (Wright 2004: 219, see also Wickström 2014: 1–2). These
minorities may have conflicting language beliefs and may ask authorities for
language management to be adjusted to their specific beliefs and practices so as to
reflect their difference from other groups within the same state. “As the 20th century
wore on, many national minorities pushed to maintain their own identity, often
represented through language, and institutions ( . . . ) and states [became] more open
to the principle of pluralism, as evidenced by the recognition of the existence
of minorities (including linguistic minorities) through the application of different
remedies in different situations” (González Núñez 2014: 17). As a consequence, the
issue of language rights was put high on the agenda.3 Language rights or linguistic
rights have also been defined in many ways.4 For the present discussion, we define
language rights narrowly as “the right [of an individual] to use her or his mother
3 A discussion of the vast literature on this topic would lead too far here. For an overview, see De
Schutter and Robichaud (2015).

4 See Skutnabb-Kangas (2012).
Language and Translation Policies in Context of Urban Super-Diversity 457
tongue in various contexts (e.g., in dealing with the authorities, local, regional or
state-wide), orally or signing it, in writing, or all of these” (Skutnabb-Kangas 2012).
Moreover, in this dealing with the authorities, we will focus on access to services,
(local and regional) administration, health care, and social welfare, at the exclusion
of the judicial domain. If a service is provided only in the national language(s),
members of linguistic minorities may have no access to these services and thus be
victims of discrimination.
When language becomes a barrier to equal access, translation can play a
role in overcoming the language barrier and securing equality of access. These
translation choices (or the absence thereof) become policies of their own in terms of
translation. In other words, language policies of necessity imply translation policies.
To summarize it with a slogan, the basic argument sustaining this paper is that in
today’s complex, multilingual democracies, there is no language policy without a
translation policy. Translation policies (TPs) will be analytically approached here,
after Spolsky, as sets of translation management, practices and beliefs or ideology.
The term “translation management” refers to legal efforts by the authorities to
initiate, impose, or refrain translation practices. “Translation practices” refers to
the actual interlingual activities ensuring communication between authorities and
people. “Translation beliefs or ideology” refers to the values assigned by members
of a language group to translation and their beliefs about the importance of these
values. The dialectical interrelationship between the three components is stressed
by the fact that translation management must be consistent with translation practices
and beliefs in order to have real effects.
Yet, apart from some generalizing statements and random samplings, these
translation policies have not been subjected to a systematic investigation for their
own sake nor in their relation with language policies. Such studies are necessary,
however, if we want to understand the key role of translation policies in language
policies in today’s multilingual societies. The analysis of the creation and evolution
of translation policies fills an important gap in our knowledge about language
rights, the relationship between the citizen and the state, the treatment of allophone
minorities, their political and societal integration5 and their social inclusion, and
their internal cohesion and cultural identity.
Moreover, the role of language and translation policies has increased expo-
nentially after 1945. Never before have populations been so diverse in terms
of culture, ethnicity, religion, and language. According to the United Nations
2013 International Migration Report, globally, there were 232 million international
migrants6 in 2013. Of these, nearly 59% lived in the developed regions. Between
1990 and 2013, the number of international migrants worldwide rose by over 77
5 Integration is a concept with many definitions. For this paper, the working definition of integration
is a process where individuals and society are brought closer through increased participation in the
public life of the state.
6 International migrants are equated either with the foreign born or with foreign citizens. See United
Nations (2013).
458 R. Meylaerts
million or by 50%. Worldwide, international migrants accounted for a relatively

small share of the total population, comprising about 3.2% of the world population
in 2013, compared to 2.9% in 1990. In the North, however, international migrants
constituted 10.8% of the total population in 2013 compared to 1.6% in developing
regions. Therefore, “how political officials deal with the movement and engagement
of people over the next few decades will be just as important as how they deal with
the movement and use of money, ideas, goods, and boundaries” (Hochschild and
Mollenkopf 2009: 34).
The majority of these migrants concentrate moreover in today’s metropolis.
“It is obvious that the right to preserve one’s cultural identity and to maintain
one’s mother tongue has its most immediate institutional relevance in those urban
zones where migrants are typically concentrated” (Kraus 2011: 28). In these cities
diversity will become the new norm; everyone will belong to a minority. The result
of this exponential increase in diversity has been described by Steven Vertovec
(2007) as “super-diversity,” causing unprecedented forms of social and cultural
diversity in the large urban centers of the world (Blommaert 2013: 193). In London
alone, there are now more than 300 languages spoken (Blackledge 2005: 65).
According to the New York commissioner for migrants, Fatima Shama Mansouri,
the concept of foreigner does not exist anymore in New York. The city has 8.4
million inhabitants from 193 different countries, and they speak 176 different
languages. 40% of New Yorkers were not born in New York, and 60% are second-
generation migrants (Akinyi May 2012). That is to say that cities face enormous
challenges in terms of language and translation policies without always having the
full legal power to conduct language and translation management on their own.
2 Language and Translation Policies in Flanders
In what follows, and as an example of the importance of language and translation

policies in contemporary society, I will concentrate on the region of Flanders, a
region that has been historically dominated by language struggles and by the shifting
power relations between the languages and cultures in place (see also below). Today
Flanders is part of a larger political unit, the federal state of Belgium. Belgium was
created as a unitary state in 1830 but between 1970 and 1993, through successive
state reforms, the country evolved into a federal state composed of communities
and regions, each of them having a separate government and parliament.7 The
federal state is competent for the army, foreign affairs, the judicial system, social
security, the public finances, and important parts of public health and home affairs.
7 In Flanders, the community and regional institutions were merged into one parliament and one B.
The concept of “community” refers to the persons that make up a community

and to their language and culture. Belgium has three communities: the Flemish
Community, the French Community, and the German-speaking Community. The
Flemish Community exercises its competences in the Flemish provinces (the north)
and in Brussels, the French Community in the Walloon provinces (the south,
except the German-speaking communes) and in Brussels, and the German-speaking
Community in the German-speaking communes (the east). Based on the concepts
of “people,” “language,” and “culture,” the communities have competences for
culture, education, the use of languages (see also below), and “matters relating to
the individual which concern on the one hand health policy (curative and preventive
medicine) and on the other hand assistance to individuals (protection of youth, social
welfare, aid to families, immigrant assistance services, etc.)” (Belgian Government
2016). Next to the communities, there are three regions, based on the concept of
“territory”: the Flemish Region in the north, the Brussels-Capital Region in the
center, and the Walloon Region in the south. The regions have competences in the
domain of economy, employment, agriculture, energy, environment, etc.
So within this complex structure, the communities are responsible each on their
territory for the policy agenda in terms of language and translation in the domain
of local and regional administration, health care, and social welfare. That is why,
for our focus on language rights as defined above, we don’t need to take into
account all the various levels of power in Belgium but can stick to the level of
Flanders. Flanders’ biggest metropolis, Antwerp, is an example of a super-diverse
city. As of this writing, almost half of the Antwerp population (44.5%) is of foreign
origin.8 The city counts today (2015) some 165 nationalities (Bestuur 2015: 1),
and according to some sources, more than 100 different languages are spoken
in Antwerp (Antwerpen Stad). The challenges originating from the gap between
the mobility and multilingualism of Antwerp’s populations and the territorial and
monolingual principles of the language and translation management that regulates
these populations’ access to (or exclusion from) public life and services are
enormous. What that means for assuring language rights for allophone minorities,
for the role of translation in their political and societal integration and their social
inclusion will be the object of what follows. In order to understand the context of
today’s language and translation policies, we first need to be informed about the
linguistic makeup of Flanders in a historical perspective.9
8 According to the Lokale Inburgerings- en Integratiemonitor 2015, “of foreign origin” means that
the current or first nationality of a person is not Belgian or that the first nationality of mother or
father is not Belgian (Bestuur 2015: 3).
9 On the importance of the temporal aspect, see Wickström (2014: 228).
460 R. Meylaerts
2.1 The Linguistic Makeup of Flanders
Although Dutch was originally the language spoken in Flanders,10 between the
sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, French has been an integral part of the linguistic
makeup of the region, especially as the language of the nobility and upper classes
and the main language of higher social relations, science, culture, education, press,
and local administration (Willemyns 2002: 386). Dutch, or rather an amalgam
of dialects, remained the local language of the common people for all informal
situations. The creation of Belgium in 1830 gave an extra boost to French as the
official language of the new state. Although Article 23 of the Constitution in 1831
stipulated that language use was free, it also specified that language use could be
regulated by law for acts of public and judicial authorities.11 Given the importance
of a shared language for democratic citizenship, the first government indeed rapidly
regulated language use in legal, judicial, and administrative matters by making
French de facto the official language of the new state.
In other words, notwithstanding the fact that linguistic freedom was a consti-
tutional right, Belgian authorities realized the importance of designing dedicated
language rules to regulate communication with the new Belgian citizens. As a result,
within the new Belgian constellation, the Flemish speakers “became minorities due
to political changes, for which the single individual as a rule was not responsible”
(Wickström 2014: 1–2). From 1850 onward, i.e., rather soon, some Flemish groups
(comprised mostly of perfectly bilingual French-Dutch speakers) started to oppose
institutional monolingualism. But it would take almost one century before this
struggle, the so-called Language Question, would give Dutch and not French
the status of official language in Flanders. Important dates of laws applying the
territoriality principle12 de facto but without official delimitation of the territory
are 1932 (on the use of Dutch in administration and in primary and secondary
school in Flanders) and 1935 (on the use of Dutch in all courts in Flanders).
The linguistic boundary was officially established by law in 1963. As a result,
Belgium was subdivided into four language areas: the Dutch-language area, the
French-language area, the German-language area, and the bilingual Dutch-French
area (the 19 municipalities of Brussels). The 1966 “Laws on the use of languages
in Administrative Affairs” regulated language use according to the following
principles: each local and regional service uses only the language of its area in its
inner services, in its relations with other services of its language area, with the public
and with individuals. The central services address the local and regional services
10 Since the eleventh century, Old Dutch (also called Old Low Frankish) was the term used for the
collection of dialects spoken in the Low Countries (the territory that of the actual Netherlands,
Flanders, and some other regions). See Quak (1997 : 37).
11 “Art. 23. L’emploi des langues usitées en Belgique est facultatif; il ne peut être réglé que par la
loi, et seulement pour les actes de l’autorité publique et pour les affaires judiciaires.”
12 Applied to language, the territoriality principle means that the official language of an individual
is not a matter of personal choice but of the territory she or he lives in.
and the public and individuals in the language of their area (Belgian Government
1966). Today, on the Flemish territory, the status of the territorial languages has
thus completely shifted. The former dominant language, French, has become the
autochthonous minority language, whereas Dutch has become the institutionalized,
official language. As already said, this is important to understand today’s language
and translation practices, management, and beliefs in Flanders and its cities.
Next to the Francophone minority,13 there are, of course, allophone immigrants
or foreigners14 in Flanders. The number of foreigners increased continuously during
the last 20 years and especially so in the last few years. In 2013 there were some
467,882 foreigners living in Flanders. This is 7.3% of the population. In Antwerp
their concentration is much higher: in 2014 19.5% of Antwerpians were not Belgian.
31% are Dutch (for whom there is no language problem),15 8% Moroccans, 7%
Italians, 6% Turkish, and 5% French. However, many Moroccan and Turkish
nationals have become Belgian citizens in the last few years, so if we include people
whose first nationality is not Belgian or who have a non-Belgian parent, we reach
17.5% of the Flemish population. In a city like Antwerp, this percentage is, as
already indicated, much higher (44.5%). The largest groups of foreign residents are
Moroccans (ca 39,000) and Turkish (ca 13,000). According to recent projections, in
2020, 55% of the Antwerp population will be of migrant background (Express.be
18 May 2010). These figures do not take into account asylum seekers or illegal
residents, who however remain under 1% of the Belgium population.16
2.2 Language Practices in Flanders
Within this group of foreigners, it is of course hard to gauge who precisely speaks
Dutch and who does not. The Survey Integration 2008 (Decoster 2012: 31) analyzed
the self-reported linguistic competence for Turkish and Moroccans, who are among
the biggest groups of allophones in Belgium. Whereas 51% of Moroccan and 41%
of Turkish respondents indicate they understand letters or flyers in Dutch, about
13% of the Turkish and 14% of the Moroccan respondents indicate they understand
very little of these. Almost 60% of Moroccans and 46% of the Turkish indicate they
13 Since the last language count was held in 1947, it is impossible to know how many Francophones
live in Flanders. Since they are mainly found in municipalities around Brussels and along the
linguistic border with Wallonia, their number will be rather low.
14 Persons who are living legally and prolongedly in Belgium and who at birth didn’t have Belgian
nationality or of whom at least one of the parents didn’t have Belgian nationality.
15 On the similarities and differences between Dutch and Flemish, see van den Toorn et al. (1997).
16 In 2014, there were 17,213 applications for asylum of which 4805 or 36.6% were granted refugee
status. This is less than 1% of the Belgian population. During the so-called asylum crisis of the
last few months, Belgium received 22,266 asylum applications between January and September
2015, of which 4621 20.7% were granted refugee status. Again this is less than 1% of the Belgian
population (Office of the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons 2015).
462 R. Meylaerts
understand a lot when people address them in Dutch, but 9% of both groups say
they understand very little. Although 50% of immigrants report they speak mostly
or always Dutch, 32% seldom or never speak it. Among Turkish respondents, 34%
always or almost always speak Dutch, but 32% seldom or never do. Within the
family, 63% of Turkish and 55% of Moroccan respondents seldom or never speak
Dutch with their children, and with the partner or parents these percentages are even
higher. In Antwerp,17 in 2012–2013, 39% of the inhabitants did not speak Dutch at
home. Also, 39.4% of the pupils in Antwerp’s primary schools did not speak Dutch
at home (the average in Flanders was 14%). In secondary school, this was 31.8%
(the average for Flanders was 9.8%). In 30% of the schools in Antwerp, there are
more allophones than Dutch speakers.
3 Translation Policy in Flanders
Having indicated that Flanders is by no means a one- or even two-language region,

we can begin to explore translation policies in this linguistically diverse region.
How do Flemish authorities provide access to local and regional administration,
health care, and social welfare for their allophone inhabitants? I will first identify
the different translation policies in terms of translation management in Flanders and
then indicate how they coincide or not with translation practices and translation
beliefs, and then I will reflect upon the aims and effects of such policies in terms of
integration of allophones. That will help us understand how translation plays a role
in the larger aims of language policy.
3.1 Translation Management in Flanders
At the top, and following the 1966 laws on language use in administrative affairs,
the agenda is set by the Flemish Government and Parliament which are since
1970 competent for linguistic legislation in the Flemish Community.18 In legal
terms, Flanders is called the “homogenous Dutch region.” This term sets the tone
for a translation management that is at odds with the multilingualism of people
actually living in Flanders.19 Following the Flemish Decree of 30 June 1981, all
communication between the Flemish authorities (local services, regional services,
17 Forall these percentages, see Bestuur (2015: 25–26).

18 Let me stress once again that the federal government has no competences in this domain (cf.
supra); the Flemish Parliament and Government are the highest authorities here.
19 Of course, as already indicated, this monolingual ideal accounts in principle for many other
regions or states, e.g., the Netherlands, France, and Germany, just to name a few; see Meylaerts
(2011).
services of the Flemish Government) and the inhabitants is submitted to non-

translation. For relations with individuals, for public messages, for public signage,
for forms, in official meetings, etc., Dutch is the only legal language. So, e.g., a
French or Turkish speaker living in Ghent does not have the legal right to have his
tax form translated into French or Turkish. Similarly, in their oral or written contacts
with the Flemish authorities, inhabitants of the Flemish territory can only use Dutch.
An inhabitant of Antwerp applying for a building permit can only do so in Dutch;
an application in French, Arabic, or English will not be accepted. There are a few
exceptions though. (1) Citizens can obtain a certified translation of a certificate,
a declaration, an authorization, etc. if (and only if) they are able to indicate the
necessity of it. (2) In tourist centers or international airports, announcements may
be translated into other languages. (3) In order to welcome foreigners who come to
live in Flanders or to attract foreign investors, the Flemish authorities have also the
right to translate in foreign languages. Still, it is undoubtedly this non-translation
management as enshrined in the 1966 laws on language use in administrative affairs
and in the 1981 Flemish Decree that forms the legal guarantee for Dutch to remain
the only official language in the “homogenous Dutch region.” From a historical
perspective (and here we touch already upon translation beliefs), it is perceived
by many autochthonous Flemings as the logical end point of the long struggle for
making Dutch the official language in Flanders.20
What does this mean for immigrants and their language rights? In its “Flemish
assimilation and integration Decree” of 7 June 2013, the Flemish Government
defined the Flemish integration policy as “the policy which, with mutually coor-
dinated initiatives, responds to situations and dynamics that are related with the
consequences of migration; its goal is independent and proportional participation,
accessibility of all services, active and shared citizenship of all and obtainment of
social cohesion.”21 Fully in accordance with their non-translation management, the
Flemish authorities consider language learning, i.e., learning Dutch, as a key condi-
tion for the integration of allophone minorities (Homans 2014: 21). Knowledge of
Dutch is seen as the best way to reach a socially cohesive society and is considered
as having a strong emancipating effect. Therefore, most newcomers22 have to sign a
20 For a historical overview, see Préaux (2012).

21 “Art. 2. 14◦ integratiebeleid: het beleid dat met onderling afgestemde initiatieven inspeelt op de
situaties en dynamieken die verbonden zijn met de gevolgen van migratie, met als doel zelfstandige
en evenredige participatie, toegankelijkheid van alle voorzieningen, actief en gedeeld burgerschap
van eenieder en het verkrijgen van sociale samenhang” (Vlaamse Regering 2013; all translations
from Dutch are mine).
22 A citizenship course is compulsory for foreigners who are 18 years or older, registered in the
national register, live in a municipality in Flanders, and have for the first time legal residency for
more than 3 months. It is also compulsory for Belgians who are 18 or older, who are not born in
Belgium, and who have at least one parent who is not born in Belgium and who is for the first time
not longer than 12 consecutive months registered in the national register. See also Homans (2014:
26).
464 R. Meylaerts
citizenship contract (inburgeringscontract), including the obligation to follow Dutch

language courses. The objective of the basic “Dutch as a second language course”
is to reach in as short a time as possible a basic Dutch language level as stepping-
stone to a follow-up course (Regering 2013: Art. 29). Two important observations
need to be made here. First, although Flemish authorities define active and shared
citizenship as one of their goals, their reductive and monofocal implementation of
language learning does not do justice to the complexities of the super-diverse world
which are “intensely polycentric” and in which “learning ‘a language’ is never
enough” (Blommaert 2013: 195).
The traditional notion of citizenship (always related to institutionalized tra-
jectories of integration) suggests that integration into one aspect of social life—
the administrative and public culture of the nation-state acting as host to the
immigrant—is sufficient for the immigrant to lead a successful life. This is soci-
olinguistically ludicrous, and it also runs counter to what is in actual fact expected
and/or demanded from immigrants. We expect them not just to pass the mandatory
language test administered by the administration in charge of immigration but
also to be fluent in the register of education, of labor, of gender, of age, and
so forth—we expect them to be “fully” integrated into every niche we detect
in society. Failing that, immigrants will perpetually be regarded as dis-citizens
(Blommaert 2013: 195).
Moreover, according to Grossi and Vaerewyck (2008: 30), the Flemish authorities
opt too much for a multistage multilingualism: an exclusive Dutch foundation on
which one can build other languages. This means that a simultaneous multilingual-
ism, in which Dutch is combined with other languages, is eliminated. In addition, for
this multistage multilingualism, only economically interesting languages (English,
French, Spanish, German) are supported, whereas other home languages (Arabic,
Turkish, Farsi, etc.) are not supported. Whoever grows up multilingually, especially
in these immigrant languages, thus first needs to unlearn his/her “bad” simultaneous
multilingualism in exchange for a multistage multilingualism. Second, this reductive
implementation of language learning goes hand in hand with non-translation.23
Although research has shown that translation does not prevent language learning
(e.g., Hlavac 2011: 7) and thus does not hinder integration (Gülmüs 2007), it
continues to be “one of the more pervasive fictions generated by the media
representations” of translation in the public sphere (Tipton 2012: 199). To date,
no causal link has been shown between translation and refusal or failure to learn a
language (González Núñez 2016: 235–246).
23 Flanders is no exception at this point. Also in the UK, e.g., translation and English-language
learning are presented as opposites; see Buckley (2012).

3.2 Translation Practices and Beliefs in Antwerp
Obviously, in practice, complete non-translation is a utopian principle: even if

monolingualism is a basic principle in states like France, Germany, and the
Netherlands, “outside of school, these countries have been forced to introduce
language services to take account of immigrant needs in communicating with courts,
bureaucracies, and health services” (Alba and Foner 2009: 282). In practice, most
contemporary authorities therefore resort to ad hoc translation measures which
tone down a regime of complete monolingualism (see also Meylaerts 2011). We
see similar things happen in Flanders and especially so in super-diverse cities
like Antwerp. Surveys have revealed that civil servants themselves are convinced
of the fact that the non-translation, Dutch only management is untenable and
counterproductive for good governance (Decoster 2012: 171). It should not come
as a surprise then that translation practices and translation beliefs in Antwerp
(both city and province) were not consistent with Flemish translation management.
Translation practices, in the form of local, bottom-up initiatives started at the end
of the 1990s, a decade ahead of their legal implementation and recognition by
Flemish authorities. This is a good example of translation practices and beliefs
preceding translation management. Indeed, social workers in the city (and province)
of Antwerp were one of the pioneers in this respect. Practices mainly took the
form of community interpreting and translating.24 Community interpreting and
translating grew out of a number of beliefs shared by social workers and civil
servants25 about local needs and concerns about inclusiveness, diversity, shared
and active citizenship, civic integration, and customer-friendliness. Social workers
who increasingly had to deal with allophone clients to whom they were not able to
provide adequate services because of the language problem, appealed to integration
services or local authorities for adequate measures. Civil servants in local services
moreover quickly became aware that not only recent immigrants but also older
ones need sometimes community interpreting and translating because in emergency
and stress situations (like illness) linguistic competence seriously deteriorates or
because in many contexts very specific jargon is used. Community interpreting and
24 “Community interpreting takes place to enable individuals or groups in society who do not speak
the official or dominant language of the services provided by central or local government to access
these services and to communicate with the service providers. Typical community interpreting
settings are social services such as e.g., welfare, housing, employment or schools; medical settings
such as child care centres, hospitals, mental health clinics; or legal settings such as prisons, police
stations or probation offices” (Hertog 2010: 49). As far as translation is concerned, the community
translator translates informative documents: texts in Dutch produced by public authorities or
social services for an allophone target audience. The community translator also translates official
documents: lawful documents for public bodies or services. These official translations usually have
to be legalized by a court.
25 All the following beliefs and practices were presented in a special issue of Provinciaal Domein
Welzijn, the journal of the province of Antwerp on Sociaal Tolken en Vertalen in Antwerpen
[Community Interpreting and Translating in Antwerp] (Antwerpen 2011).
466 R. Meylaerts
translating was (and still is) seen by them as part of a more encompassing integration
strategy with important return on investment: a more efficient and purposeful and
thus cost-reducing provision of services, making allophones not only aware of their
rights but also of their obligations. Community interpreting and translating was also
claimed to be in compliance with Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights26 and Article 23 of the Belgian Constitution27 which states that everyone has
the right to a dignified life, including among others the right to work; the right to
social security, health protection, and social, medical, and legal assistance; and the
right to cultural and social development.
In—a quite belated—response to these bottom-up translation practices and
beliefs of social workers and civil servants in the city and province of Antwerp
(see Antwerpen 2011), the relevant governance level, i.e., the Flemish Parliament
and Government, started to adapt legislation. Flemish translation management of
the last 10 years shows indeed traces of a growing but still limited awareness of the
need for a more elaborate translation management which is more consistent with
translation practices and beliefs on the ground. In 2009, the “Flemish assimilation
and integration Decree” advanced community interpreting and translating as legal
instruments to support the oral and written communication of public services in
Flanders in their contacts with foreigners. However, the actual implementation of
community interpreting and translating as legal instrument started only in 2012.
Its goal is (1) to give access to all citizens, including those who speak insufficient
Dutch, to social and public services and assistance and (2) to enable all citizens,
including those who speak insufficient Dutch, to exert their rights and perform
their duties.28 The organization and provision of community interpreting and
translating are in the hands of nine dedicated services: Babel. Flemish Interpreting
Phone29 provides telephone interpreting for the whole of Flanders; the Social
26 “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without
distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion,
national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made
on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which
a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation
of sovereignty” (United Nations 1948).
27 “Art. 23: Ieder heeft het recht een menswaardig leven te leiden. ( . . . ) Die rechten omvatten
inzonderheid:
1◦ het recht op arbeid ( . . . ); 2◦ het recht op sociale zekerheid, bescherming van de gezondheid en
sociale, geneeskundige en juridische bijstand; ( . . . ) 5◦ het recht op culturele en maatschappelijke
ontplooiing” [Everyone has the right to a dignified life. ( . . . ) These rights include in particular: 1
◦ the right to work (...); 2 ◦ the right to social security, health protection, and social, medical, and
legal assistance; ( . . . ) 5 ◦ the right to cultural and social development] (Juridische Dienst van de
Kamer van volksvertegenwoordigers 2014).
28 Definition as given by the Kruispunt Migratie – Integratie. Expertisecentrum voor Vlaanderen
en Brussel [Crossroad Migration—Integration. Expertise centre for Flanders and Brussel] which
is part of the Agentschap Integratie en Inburgering [Agency Integration and Citizenship], an
organization that supports the Flemish integration policy. See Kruispunt Migratie – Integratie.
Expertisecentrum voor Vlaanderen en Brussel (2014).
29 Babel. Vlaamse Tolkentelefoon
Translation Bureau Brussels Reception30 provides telephone interpreting for asylum

seekers and community interpreting and translating in Brussels; seven additional
community interpreting and translating services serve each one of the five Flemish
provinces plus the cities of Ghent and Antwerp. According to the “Integrated Action
Plan Integration Policy 2012–2015,”31 community interpreting and translation are
explicitly seen by the Flemish authorities as instruments for assimilation and
integration (Decoster 2012: 13). However, the use of community interpreting and
translating is quite hedged: it cannot be claimed or organized by an individual;
all demands should depart from a civil servant, a service, or an administration.
Allophone immigrants thus have no affirmative right to claim a translation. They
are completely dependent on the decision of the civil servant or service itself (Roels
et al. 2013: 140).
How do these most recent legal provisions relate to current translation practices
and translation beliefs? In terms of practices, every year, the number of community
interpreting and translating interventions increases, from 790 in 2005 to an average
4000 a year for the province of Antwerp in the period 2011–2014.32
As Fig. 1 shows, STA, the community interpreting and translating service
of the city of Antwerp, alone has more community interpreting and translating
interventions to cover than the whole of the province of Antwerp (TOPA). The same
trend prevails when considering the number of hours of community interpreting and
translating provided (see Fig. 2). As already said, todays’ super-diverse cities face
number of tasks 2014
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000
STA TOPA
Fig. 1 Number of CIT tasks per year. Author’s calculations
30 Sociaal vertaalbureau van Brussel Onthaal

31 “Geïntegreerd actieplan integratiebeleid 2012–2015” (see Decoster 2012)
32 All the quantitative data are courtesy of the Kruispunt Migratie—Integratie. Expertisecentrum
voor Vlaanderen en Brussel [Crossroad Migration—Integration. Expertise centre for Flanders and
Brussel]. I wish to thank Mr. P. Rillof, policy coordinator language and diversity, for providing me
these materials.
468 R. Meylaerts
5000
4500
4000
3500
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
number of hours 2011 2012 2013 2014
TOPA STA
Fig. 2 Number of hours CIT per year. Author’s calculations
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
2011 2012 2013 2014
TOPA STA
Fig. 3 Percentage of unanswered demands per year. Author’s calculations
enormous challenges in terms of linguistic diversity without always having the full
legal power to conduct language and translation management on their own. In the
case of Antwerp, the legal frame for community interpreting and translating had to
be implemented by the Flemish authorities and came long after the first practices
had been initiated by civil servants and social workers (cf. supra).
Figure 3 shows the percentage of unanswered community interpreting and
translating demands. The reasons for not providing a community interpreting and
translating service are that there may be no interpreter available, that the language
asked for cannot be provided, or that a demand was annulated by the user (meaning
the service or the civil servant not the allophone foreigner) or the interpreter.
Although the trend is decreasing, the relative proportion of unanswered demands
in relation to the tasks that are effectively carried out is quite high, especially in
Other
2%
Public service
9%
Reception asylum
seekers
12%
Health
20%
Education
18%
Mental welfare
10%
Family and social welfare
22%
Reception integration / Citizenship

7%
Fig. 4 Number of tasks. Author’s calculations
the city of Antwerp (STA). Considering the fact that only services and officials, not
the individual foreigners themselves, are allowed to ask for community interpreting
and translating, the number of foreigners who have no access to services because
of linguistic barriers must be much higher than the number of unanswered demands
(see also below).
Sectors that used community interpreting and translating most in 2014 are family
and social welfare (22% of all tasks), health care (20%), and education (18%) (see
Fig. 4).33
33 As is shown by González Núñez (2014: 85–136), there is no explicit international or EU law
obligation for states to provide translation in public service or health-care settings. The most
explicit obligations to translate under international and EU law (e.g., Directive 2010/64/EU) are to
be found in criminal proceedings, but this domain is beyond the scope of the present paper (see
González Núñez 2014).
470 R. Meylaerts
3.3 Translation Practices and Beliefs in Flanders
How do the most recent legal provisions relate to actual translation practices
and beliefs in Flanders? Community interpreting and translating is a very recent
service, so data are again scarce but telling. From May 2012 to June 2013, a
qualitative study was carried out on the use and effects of community interpreting
and translating in health care, education, employment, and public services in three
different regions in Flanders (Roels et al. 2013).34 Respondents were directors
and professionals of these services as well as the allophone users benefiting from
community interpreting and translating. Among other things, the study illustrated
the need for community interpreting and translating: more than 50% of the services
included in the study had daily contact with allophone clients, and the remaining
part had at least weekly contacts (p. 26). The most frequently demanded languages
were Farsi, French, Russian, Standard Arabic, and Turkish (p. 101). From the
perspective of the foreigners themselves, most allophones reported having daily
to weekly contact with Dutch-speaking organizations. Also, most communication
difficulties arose in hospitals, social services, public services, and schools (p. 113).
In any case, the needs were reported higher than the number of effective demands
for community interpreting and translating. Organizations chose communication
in Dutch as their first option. Their second alternative was to communicate in a
lingua franca like French or English. Only if these two options revealed impossible,
did they turn to community interpreting and translating. In light of the previously
observed unanswered demands, we can assume thousands of foreigners being every
year excluded from access to public life and services.
Sector wise, the data presented by Roels et al. (2013) endorse those gathered by
the Crossroad Migration—Integration. Expertise centre for Flanders and Brussels
(see above). Hospitals stood out as daily users of community interpreting (p. 28),
confirming the importance of community interpreting and translating for the health-
care sector. Likewise, community translating was much less used in employment
services, where a quite strict non-translation policy prevails, as per the Flemish
linguistic laws (p. 39). Public administration and social services, especially those
around Brussels (where French is one of the official languages) were also more
tempted to follow the strict policy of non-translation as imposed by the linguistic
legislation for Flanders (p. 47). Some municipalities in the Brussels periphery even
have no agreement with one of the dedicated community interpreting and translating
services, others do but do not use them (p. 80). Some civil servants even refused to
use any language other than Dutch (p. 48) and were especially fearful of French
becoming dominant (p. 89). This kind of beliefs and practices has again to be
understood in relation to Flanders’ linguistic history (see above).
34 The three regions were Ghent, West Flanders, and Flemish Brabant. Although Antwerp was
not included and thus the numbers themselves do not apply to Antwerp, the tendencies shown by
the study can be deemed representative also for the province and (even more so) for the city of
Antwerp.
In sum, according to Roels et al. (2013: 120), the use of community interpreting
and translating has no uniform application. It is an arbitrary process, leading to
unequal treatment of allophone clients (p. 140). There is a big difference in the
treatment of foreigners on all levels (p. 140). These foreigners themselves are
passive subjects without any right of decision: only services and officials, not the
individual foreigners themselves, are allowed to ask for community interpreting
and translating. While most of the organizations have witnessed an increase in
the number of allophone clients and their languages (p. 180), a higher percentage
of allophone clients does not lead automatically to a higher use of community
interpreting and translating (p. 140). Although all users are convinced of the
advantages, the use of community interpreting and translating is still insufficient,
particularly in a super-diverse, multilingual, and urban context. Among the reasons
raised for the limited use of community interpreting and translating are first the
restrictive legal framework of language legislation and second the cost (p. 190)—
services have to pay themselves for community interpreting and translating.35
Obviously, the cost of translation in public services is an often used argument, also in
other contexts than Flanders.36 However, these complaints do not take into account
the cost of non-translation, nor the indirect benefits of public translation.37 Indeed,
international research has shown that “investment in language services is far less
than the direct and indirect costs of not providing language services” (Quan and
Lynch 2010: 15, quoted in González Núñez 2014: 321).
In light of the situation just sketched and bearing in mind the scarcity of data,
to what extent can translation be perceived as a tool for linguistic rights, for
inclusion or integration of linguistic minorities in Flanders and Antwerp? According
to Roels et al. (2013), some public servants or officials believe that community
interpreting and translating empowers allophones to learn Dutch and can thus have
a positive effect on integration (Roels et al. 2013: 94) but the facilitating function
(granting linguistic rights) of community interpreting and translating is seen as more
important than the integrating function. This integrating function is rather perceived
as a derivative, secondary, and positive effect. Given the limited use and arbitrary
application of community interpreting and translating in contrast with the high
percentage of foreigners who have translation needs (see above), it comes as no
surprise that the integration goals and standards as set by the Flemish Government
35 The province of Antwerp, e.g., provides community interpreting by certified interpreters in 34
languages for some 45 A C/hour of which 2/3 is reimbursed afterward to the service who has made
use of it.
36 So, e.g., in the UK, the annual cost for translation and interpreting services was estimated at
more than 100 million pounds sterling; see Easton (2006).

37 Studies in the USA have revealed that the use of professional interpreters in hospital reduced
length of stay of patients and that the failure to provide CIT resulted in financial claims against
health-care providers. See (González Núñez 2014: 321). With regard to the EU, Gazzola and Grin
have shown that non-translation (monolingual English) would be less effective and probably more
expensive than multilingualism (Gazzola and Grin 2013).
472 R. Meylaerts
are not confirmed by the (again scarcely available) integration statistics.38 Let
me give some examples related to the city of Antwerp where this is particularly
revealing.
In 2014 unemployment rates of foreigners were significantly higher than for
Belgians: 21.4% for people from the Maghreb vs. 6.5% for Belgians. Among
the reasons given by companies for not engaging foreigners, lack of linguistic
competence is prominently quoted (Grossi and Vaerewyck 2008: 44). In 2012–2013,
35.7% of the primary school pupils in Antwerp whose home language was not Dutch
had at least 1 year of school delay, compared to 18.4% among those who spoke
Dutch at home. In secondary school this increased to 63.7% (vs. 41.8%). In his 2007
policy document on education the Flemish minister of education stressed early and
good learning of Dutch at elementary school while respecting the home language as
the best way to integration and equality of opportunities. But as already indicated,
the minister only takes into account languages that are seen as economically
interesting (English, German, French, Spanish). Other home languages are not
supported. Somebody who grows up multilingual in these languages has thus first
to unlearn and to forget his “bad” simultaneous multilingualism in exchange for a
step-by-step multilingualism. Finally, 26.1% of the children born in Antwerp were
born in a deprived family (vs. 11.2% in Flanders); of these children, the mother was
in 73% from not EU origin whereas only in 14.9% of Belgian origin.39
That is why according to organizations like “Vluchtelingenwerk Vlaanderen”
[Refugee Work Flanders], the authorities do very little for people who are not
yet able to speak Dutch. Due to the strong focus on language acquisition and
its concomitant non-translation policy, the authorities do not invest enough in
interpreting and translation services. Interpreters and translators are needed, but not
always available or used. According to Vluchtelingenwerk Vlaanderen, an intensive
support at the start means that refugees will become independent faster and better
(Vlaanderen 2012: 60).
4 Conclusion
“How shall we tackle the challenges that multilingualism entails for urban politics?
Where can we look for the foundations of an approach to the new heterogeneity that
is both open to the legitimate articulation of diversity and able to overcome the risks
of fragmentation?” (Kraus 2011: 33). The answers to these questions largely remain
open. Since the core of active and participatory citizenship is based on linguistic
resources, authorities need to be sensitive to the role of translation in assuring
language rights for minorities and in rethinking notions of unity, integration,
cohesion, and belonging in multilingual contexts. “By just political standards, cities
38 Official instruments for measuring integration have only been in place since 2012!
39 All these data were taken from Bestuur (2015).
concerned with how to confront a diverse citizenry should open up to introduce

varying combinations of a multilingual repertoire at the level of their institutions”
(Kraus 2011: 34).
More in particular, there is a big need for a more consistently applied and well-
founded approach when making decisions regarding the use of (various forms of)
translation. Therefore a policy framework that supports organizations in developing
an adequate and optimally multilingual supply of services is needed. Taking into
account the demographic reality of the super-diverse city, this policy framework has
to start from the goals and specificity of the organization, the sectorial differences
in terms of view and approach, the internal and external context of the organization,
and the changing diversity and concentration of the allophone clients (see also Roels
et al. 2013: 199). Given the complexity of factors that co-determine the success
or failure of any translation policy, there is no one-size-fits-all translation policy
(see also González Núñez 2014: 333). In any case, in order to develop performant
language and translation policies in today’s multilingual societies, there is a big
need for interdisciplinary and empirical research that can inform policy makers on
how to take informed decisions for securing language rights, active and participatory
citizenship, and inclusion and integration of all.
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Language Policies for Migrants in Italy:
The Tension Between Democracy,
Decision-Making, and Linguistic
Diversity
Sabrina Machetti, Monica Barni, and Carla Bagna
1 Introduction
Carla Bagna
The topic of Language Policy and Linguistic Justice highlights the strong interest
in the relationship between the dimension of language policy and planning and the
effects they can produce in a given area and in a given population.
The aim of the chapter is to show how in Italy—where the weakness and/or poor
application of language policies is having, as will be explained below, fairly serious
effects in various social contexts—the emphasis is on the Italian language alone, as
a result of an exclusively monolingual attitude. What is more, this attitude is at odds
with the linguistic composition of the country, historically characterized by contact
between various languages and cultures. It took a long time for Italian to become
established as the language spoken by all Italians, and it continues today to coexist
together with dialects, regional varieties, and the languages of historical minorities
(De Mauro 1963, 2006).
To understand the reasons for this policy, in which linguistic and cultural
diversity is not recognized, let alone valued, treated in a wholly instrumental
way, and therefore totally denied, the paper will refer to a number of examples
of medium- and long-term projects regarding migrants living in Italy which have
been implemented in recent years. In addition, we will speculate on possible future
scenarios for Italy, which, like other European nations, are affected by the presence
of refugees fleeing from events such as war and violence and asylum seekers.
S. Machetti · M. Barni · C. Bagna ()

Università per Stranieri di Siena, Siena, Italy
e-mail: machetti@unistrasi.it; barni@unistrasi.it; bagna@unistrasi.it

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1_16
478 S. Machetti et al.
The context investigated in this chapter shares a number of similarities with what
has been happening at a European level, where the monolingualism is recognized
by everyone as an unreal condition, but linguistic and even cultural diversity is often
reduced to a principle repeated ritualistically in all resolutions (Kraus and Sciortino
2013), a value incapable of producing a programmatic frame that would provide us
with a set of consistent guidelines fleshing out political criteria for the protection of
diversity in society (id.).
The frame of reference for the work is principally that of applied linguistics
(Davies and Elder 2004) and the sociolinguistics of migrations and of superdiversity
(Vertovec 2007; Blackledge and Creese 2010; Blommaert and Rampton 2011).
These disciplines consider the phenomenon of migration to be decisive in the change
and restructuring of local and global linguistic space, due to the increasingly diverse
and unpredictable tensions and outcomes that the languages and cultures of migrants
provoke in that space when they come into contact with native languages and
cultures.
Linguistic diversity, endemic to every European nation irrespective of the
presence of migrants and of their languages and cultures, is acquiring more and
more the features of superdiversity, a condition defined “by a dynamic interplay of
variables among an increased number of new, small and scattered, multiple-origin,
transnationally connected, socio-economically differentiated and legally stratified
immigrants who have arrived over the last decade” (Vertovec 2007: 1024).
This needs to be managed socially, educationally and in the workplace, and
through the adoption of a political framework that addresses issues of efficiency
and social justice as well.
Linguistic diversity and superdiversity are therefore pertinent to questions of
language policy and its measures. These concerns not only the languages and
cultures of migrants but also the languages of the states in which migrants live,
the linguistic minorities and dialects.
Language policies inevitably and directly impact on the setup of a society,
because they are also linked to a series of rights—of “native” speakers and “non-
native” speakers alike—that need to be safeguarded and guaranteed. When this does
not happen, the resulting tension has negative effects on the democratic life of a
given society, with democracy being understood here as the condition, whereby
each of its members guarantees an equally concrete possibility to participate in
and to play an active and conscious role in the decisions and actions of the entire
community. Among these possibilities, a fundamental one is that of education and
training, which is channeled through the right to expression and therefore to the
languages that make such expression possible.
Democratic participation necessarily entails and requires integration, and the
link between participation and integration prompts a reflection in this chapter on
the outcomes generated by Italy’s linguistic diversity policies with regard to the
effective possibilities for migrants to integrate into the country, both at present and
for future generations.
Language Policies for Migrants in Italy: The Tension Between Democracy,. . . 479
It is therefore necessary to refer to a theoretical framework that lies beyond the

boundaries of applied linguistics and of sociolinguistics and which looks to the ideas
developed in the field of language economics (Gazzola et al. 2016). This area of
study highlights, among the many questions it deals with, how fluency in the official
language of the host country has a positive effect both on migrants’ income and
employability.
Once again in an effort to situate our reflections within a not exclusively linguistic
framework of reference, the chapter will consider the extent to which Italian
language policies are or are not capable of guaranteeing the possibility to participate
in the democratic life of the country and therefore to have a genuine opportunity
to integrate. In this case too, economic theory can be of assistance, especially the
economic theory of clubs (Wickström 2014). According to this theory, the citizens
of a country define the conditions for residency and citizenship of migrants, and the
club view gives the moral justification for the policy. Such a principle would appear
to hold good whether the model adopted is republican (which seems to justify a
policy requiring a migrant to enter into a contract undertaking to adopt the language
(and culture) of the new country in order to get a residence permit), a moderate
liberal model (in which a contract is only required for citizenship), or a liberal
model (in which no contract is required, but incentives are relied on to achieve the
same goal). The short-term result is thought to be the same in all three regimes:
the migrant generation is integrated into the new country. Developing this analytical
framework would contribute to address the key question of the consequences of each
integration model for later generations.
2 The Italian Political Context and the Role of Migrants

in Italy
Carla Bagna
After years during which the phenomenon of foreign migration in Italy was
perceived and treated as one of the systematic and permanent presences—because
in the 1980s and 1990s significant numbers of migrants settled in Italy—debate
on migration and migrants is currently dominated by the themes of the speed and
instability of migration flows and concern about social security (Barni and Bagna
2016). The number of migrants—foreigners with a regular residence permit of at
least 1 year—in Italy rose from 1,388,153 in 2000 to 5,000,000 at the end of 2015
(8% of the population). Besides the permanently resident foreign population (the
second generation now accounts for over 20% of the foreign population resident
in Italy), there are an ever-increasing number of refugees (over 100,000 in 2015,
Consiglio Italiano per i Rifugiati 2015) and asylum seekers (around 84,000 in
2015); they represent the continually fluctuating proportion of migrants, but they
are equally significant in terms of linguistic and cultural diversity.
This demographic situation, characterized in recent times by great fluctuation,

has unquestionably been one of the causes of the change in the discourse on
migration that has been taking place in Italy, but it is certainly not the only one.
Another is the effects of the economic crisis and the weak signs of recovery (with a
lower GDP in 2016), which encourages the perception that migrants are a threat to
the jobs and social security of the host community. Another factor that has prompted
a similar change is the manipulation of the issue by some political parties. Despite
not being in the slightest bit interested in the concrete opportunities for migrants to
integrate into the host society, they are ready to use the migration issue at the drop
of a hat for propaganda purposes, especially in the run-up to elections, unjustly
accusing migrants of being the cause of the majority of the nation’s problems.
Migrants bring their languages and cultures with them, but although linguistic
and cultural diversity are key features of the EU language policy (see, among
others, Council of Europe 2012; European Commission 2008a) and, in many EU
documents, linguistic diversity and multilingualism are considered as a priority, in
Italy they are increasingly seen, just as they are in other European countries, as a
problem (Blommaert et al. 2012).
Mainstream political discourse still revolves entirely around the problems asso-
ciated with a situation perceived as an emergency (accommodating and managing
new arrivals and refugees, inserting migrants into the Italian labor market without
this being a threat for Italians, etc.). At the same time, the “official” discourse
on linguistic and cultural diversity seems currently to be very weak, totally
unresponsive to the thinking developed on these themes since the beginning of
the 1990s within a debate that began in the academic world but never remained
circumscribed within it. For example, studies in applied linguistics focusing on the
relationship between “immigrant languages,” the languages of numerically larger,
stable groups with intentions of putting down roots within a local community, and
“migrant languages,” languages “passing through” (Bagna et al. 2003), have had
a very weak, if not inexistent, impact on Italian language policy and planning. In
other words, the many studies of the distribution and role of immigrant languages
(Istat 2014; Bagna and Barni 2006) have not yet had an adequate influence on
policies that can be implemented in educational contexts and at the level of language
planning. The weakness of the discourse on linguistic and cultural diversity does not
however seem to be due to an absence of political initiatives with consequences
for the management of the linguistic diversity of migrants. Instead, as in the
majority of European countries, it seems to be due more generally to a lack of a
proper political framework (Kraus and Sciortino 2013). Back in 1998 an important
law on immigration in Italy, the Turco-Napolitano law, ratified the recognition of
the linguistic and cultural diversity brought to Italy by migrants and considered
appropriate management of such diversity to be a key element for integration. There
has been no lack of legislative norms about immigration since 1998, and they all
make reference to the need to recognize, manage, and value the linguistic and
cultural diversity of migrants (MIUR 2007). However, none of them fit into the
framework of a clearly directed and coherent policy upheld at a national level.
One of the most recent studies conducted across European countries in the field
of multilingualism (Extra and Yağmur 2012) places Italy among those countries
that display a worrying refusal of linguistic and cultural diversity, especially linked
to the presence of migrants. The Language Rich Europe survey analyzes different
contexts, such as the Italian education system, where, as we shall see, all language
policies at school are aimed at disseminating and promoting the Italian language,
as if the integration of pupils of foreign origin at school, as well as their attainment
in the different subjects, must involve them shunning their linguistic repertoire and
concentrating exclusively on learning Italian.
The absence of a proper political framework in Italy is also undoubtedly linked
to the country’s particular linguistic situation. As already mentioned, it has a fairly
young linguistic history regarding Italian as the language spoken by Italians. The
endemic and historical multilingualism that has always characterized the country
has never been adequately valued, partly out of linguistic insecurity (Vedovelli
2010), and it is currently viewed almost as a danger due to the arrival of immigrant
languages. Fear of the other and of diversity has quickly turned into fear of the
languages and cultures of the other, with a denial and rejection of linguistic and
cultural diversity rather than recognition and appreciation.
Linguistic insecurity has certainly been one of the factors resulting in the
prevalence of a monolingual attitude in different spheres of Italian society. For
example, although the Italian Constitution does not refer to Italian as the only
national language, the emphasis on it is evident in many sectors of public life,
from education to the workplace. Article 6 of the Italian Constitution—“The Italian
Republic protects by appropriate measures the linguistic minorities”—refers to the
historical linguistic and cultural diversity of Italian citizens, but language policy is
always implicitly directed toward monolingualism.
The policy adopted for historical linguistic minorities is solidly grounded in
legislation (Dell’Aquila and Iannaccaro 2004), but the impact of such norms
remains weak, at least if measured in terms of factors that do not merely concern
funding. Italy also lacks legislation which relates the defense of historical linguistic
minorities with more recently established ones. This can once again be explained,
in our view, by the lack of a unitary political framework. Italy’s situation is specific
and anomalous in this respect: Italy is a country with a high degree of linguistic
diversity, relating to the Italian language and the contact within a large number of
different languages and dialects as well (De Mauro 1963, 2016): a country with
a history of emigration and, more recently, of immigration but which is unable to
produce effective models of action in terms of language planning, in particular in
the public sphere and in education and training contexts.
As a consequence, and as already mentioned, the diversity resulting from the
presence and use of immigrant languages and the management thereof, instead of
being regarded as enriching, also with a view to pursuing Europe’s common political
objectives, generates widespread concern about social cohesion and integration. The
norms on immigration that contain references to linguistic diversity are generally
applied very weakly, except in those cases where the nation’s security is in danger,
and the tendency at the state level is to avoid explicit initiatives and to opt for
“veiled” actions instead.
Some of the most significant and paradigmatic actions have been initiated by
municipalities (in 2008 and 2009, as described in Barni and Vedovelli 2012), strictly
related to specific contexts (Caretti and Mobilio 2016):
– The removal of images and signs of language contact through media campaigns,
bills, etc. and the implementation of local regulations. Immigrant images and
signs were not seen as a sign of the rooting and investment of a migrant
community in a given territory (and therefore a condition of dialogue between
languages and cultures) but as a risk for the host community.
– The limitation of the presence of immigrant languages in commercial signs
and the introduction of an Italian language test for those starting a business.
Bilingual commercial signs become compulsory in the case of signs for a
business conducted by migrant people, and the Italian language has to be more
prominent than immigrant languages.
– The setting of a basic language proficiency requirement in Italian (A2 level),
considering the Italian language not as an opportunity but exclusively as a barrier
for linguistic and cultural integration in the host community. This point will be
analyzed in detail in one of the following section.
– The possibility to use immigrant languages only in certain contexts and working
sectors, such as in cultural mediation and in educational contexts where immi-
grant languages are taught (i.e., academic programs in Chinese, Arabic, Japanese,
etc.).
In each of the previous actions, we can see that the focus is exclusively on
protecting and promoting Italian as the national language, a language perceived and
considered as a decisive and virtually exclusive element for social integration and
inclusion of the migrant population.
To analyze the attitude of Italian policy makers toward immigrant language in
greater detail, we will consider three different phenomena that have occurred in
Italy in recent years. They were selected both for their degree of significance and
because they are representative of three spheres of society in which the theme and
presence of migrants have a certain weight and importance: the education system,
the field of research, and the one concerning the possibilities for integration into the
workplace and into society as a whole. The phenomena we will consider are the
following:
– In education, the teaching of Italian to migrant children and the impact in Italy
of EU projects known as FEI projects (European Fund for the Integration of non-
EU immigrants, 2007–2015) explicitly linked to migration policies and aimed at
promoting the social, linguistic, and cultural diversity of the migrant population
in European countries.
– In the field of scientific research and thought, the main results of some recent
Italian research aimed at investigating the visibility and vitality of immigrant
languages in Italy. In particular, we will refer to the results of a macro- and
micro-linguistic analysis aimed at describing, at the same time, the “static”
visibility (the role of immigrant languages in the Linguistic Landscape) and the
vitality of languages (the presence and use of immigrant languages in an area),

as discussed in Barni and Bagna (2009). Our analysis will demonstrate a gap
between scientific research results and language policy and planning in Italy and
a lack of attention to immigrant languages, to the detriment of multilingualism.
– As regards employment opportunities for migrants and their possibilities for
social integration, we will consider the case of the test for long-term permits
introduced in Italy by a ministerial decree in 2010 as a rare example of
explicit language policy on migration. As we will show, the justification of
the introduction of the test is the Common European Framework of Reference
for Languages (CEFR, Council of Europe 2001); its use was and is supported
only by rhetoric and policy statements that do not take into consideration the
consequences regarding the procedures planned for the implementation of the
test and the social impact (Barni 2012a; Masillo 2013, 2015, 2016).1
3 The Italian Educational Context
Sabrina Machetti
3.1 Migrant Children at School
Even though the notions of multilingualism and plurilingualism are central to the
CEFR, the CEFR and its values have been used in the Italian school system to
push for monolingualism: migrant children have to know the language of the host
country, and many Italian teachers continue to think that immigrant pupils should
forget or limit the use of their languages, because they believe that not to do so will
slow down their educational progress enormously. The use of the CEFR in Italy has
therefore been chiefly instrumental, i.e., to emphasize the fundamental role of a level
of competence in Italian among pupils from immigrant families. In many cases, low
proficiency is pointed to as the main cause of poor performance at school. Such
an attitude is fairly common and widely shared across Europe as well, as shown
by a recent report of the European Commission (2008b: 20), which stresses that
“students with a migrant background score systematically less well than domestic
students, notably because of insufficient command of the language of instruction.”
1 A very interesting analysis of the social impact of language testing and assessment is proposed
by Shohamy (2006) and by McNamara and Roever (2006). In particular, McNamara and Roever
present topics concerning what is possibly one of the most complex dynamics in testing—that is,
the many, and sometimes hidden, layers of social implications and biases that can be found in
language tests.
As regards foreign languages learning and teaching in primary school, the

Italian school system provides only English language teaching and learning. Italian
regulations state that English is the only language envisaged for this phase of
education, and it is taught once or twice a week. Unfortunately, in the majority
of cases, it is taught by non-native English teachers with very low proficiency in
English and poor training in English teaching methodologies (Votg and Tsagari
2014). That situation changes slightly in lower secondary school, where the teaching
of English is accompanied in some cases by that of French and of other languages
such as Spanish and German, where, that is, the “extra English” option (more
English, but only English) is not chosen. The number of other languages taught,
such as Chinese, Russian, and Arabic, is limited. Chinese, Russian and Arabic are
not taught as languages of groups permanently residing in Italy but as languages
that might be useful in the future of students. Except in some very isolated cases,
immigrant languages are never offered at school, either to migrant students or
to native students. Over the years the impact of educational language policies,
involving teachers and language testers as well, has been very negative: the use
of the language of origin has been stigmatized also within the family.2 Every year,
the tests of the institute INVALSI (Istituto Nazionale per la Valutazione del Sistema
Educativo di Istruzione e di Formazione), linked to a system of external evaluation to
assess students’ skills in Italian and Mathematics, provide data that are interpreted
very ideologically in relation to the proficiency of pupils of foreign origin. These
pupils, in fact, are invariably seen as those with a very low proficiency and as
the main reason for any slowdown in classroom learning. Therefore the situation
described is connected and in turn generates a tension between actual plurilingual
uses and monolingual standards, between pupils using language(s) to achieve many
different things and the reification of language into “correct” language at school,
that is, the one to be valorized and accepted.
3.2 The European Fund for the Integration of Non-EU

Migrants
The defense and promotion of Italian as a tool for social integration were particularly
evident in the so-called European Funds for the Integration of non-EU immigrants
(FEI) projects realized in Italy from 2007 to 2015. The FEI projects, based on
allocating EU funds to the national policy, aimed to implement activities to support
more correct and complete information on the phenomenon of migration and
enhance positive aspects of migration and the value of diversity. One of the main
2 Bagna et al. (2006, 2017) outline how the promotion within the school and family of the language
of origin of migrant pupils could be one of the reasons why the proficiency in Italian of those pupils
improves very fast. At the same time, this proficiency could be at the same level as the Italian native
pupils’ proficiency (considering the same classroom, same age, same school years, etc.).
objectives of the FEI projects was teacher training in teaching Italian to migrants
and the training of volunteers in linguistic and cultural mediation activities (in
many cases interpreted in the narrower sense of translation and/or interpretation,
as described by the CEFR).
Italy, like many other European countries (Kraus and Sciortino 2013), allocated
the EU funds to the implementation of several micro-projects, which represented
in many areas of Italy a real opportunity to respond to migrants’ needs, not only
language-related ones. However, these micro-projects were unfortunately funded
without a proper theoretical framework being in place, as can be seen from the
continued misuse of keywords such as integration, inclusion, linguistic diversity
development, linguistic vitality improvement, etc. Many of these terms were used
either as catch-all labels or with vague and ambiguous meanings, without an
adequate awareness of their deep meaning and of the consequences that could ensue
from the use of one term or another. An emblematic example of this is the way
in which the term integration was used interchangeably with the word inclusion
in many FEI micro-projects. Here too, the lack of a framework of reference was
a clear sign of the absence of a proper Italian political framework able to meet
the country’s specific needs and to be complementary to supranational linguistic
policy choices. The FEI projects have failed because of a lack of a clear national
policy aimed at promoting and reproducing the best project results on a large scale.
This is demonstrated by the fact that the Ministry of Internal Affairs, responsible for
managing the FEI funds in Italy, still does not have a data bank of the micro-projects
run between 2007 and 2015 and of the relative outcomes and results. The projects
have not even been validated.
The FEI projects also focused almost exclusively on the teaching and learning of
the Italian language and mediation activities at the local level. Immigrant languages
were included only as a “necessary” tool in texts that had to be made available in
different languages, and not as key elements in shaping individual and collective
identities, and, as such, to be valued and boosted. We are referring here to texts
produced for educational contexts, health, migration policies, and safety in the
workplace, in many cases directly translated from a very formal Italian language.
The result is that these texts are too complex and poorly understood as well.
Even if the texts’ translation aims at improving their understanding, these texts
are mainly used to “protect” and delineate the power of Italy and of the Italian
institutions promoting a course, a service for migrants, or whatever, not to promote
a contact between the Italian and the immigrant languages. A good example is
represented by the leaflet “Casa Sicura,” translated in English as “Safe Home,” and
the leaflet “Sicurezza al lavoro,” translated as “Safety at Work.” These pamphlets
are available in eight languages, including Arabic and Chinese, but the translation
is unsatisfactory ambiguous because the content is very hard to understand, just
as it is for native Italian speakers reading the Italian version. Evidence of this is
that the number of workplace accidents in Italy is still very high; they involve both
Italian and foreign citizens and in many cases can be directly attributed to a lack of
knowledge of elementary regulations about safety in the workplace and the use of
machinery (INAIL 2016).
We can also refer to the “Accordo di integrazione tra lo straniero e lo Stato”

(agreement on integration between foreign [i.e., non-EU] citizens and the state—
the agreement became law in Italy on 11 November and came into force on 12
March 2012). This law, following on from an article contained in the 1998 Turco-
Napolitano law, imposes a specific integration program for new arrivals in Italy. It
establishes that the agreement is to be written in Italian and the foreigner’s home
language, but it also specifies that if translation into this language is not available,
then the languages to be used will be English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese,
Albanian, Russian, and Filipino (Tagalog). This is one of the few points where
reference is made to immigrant languages, and this is quite unjustified considering
that these are the main immigrant languages in Italy, that is, languages belonging to
the repertoire of migrant groups permanently resident in the country.
Another, and exclusively instrumental, reference to immigrant languages is made
by the agreement in relation to the so-called knowledge of society (KoS). The
agreement is deemed to be completely satisfied when the migrant demonstrates
knowledge of the main rules of the host community. To acquire this knowledge—
relating entirely to the Italian context and where the knowledge of duties clearly
prevails over rights—videos with a running time of more than 10 h were made
available to migrants! Each video had a version in an immigrant language, but the
function of each language was only instrumental, and therefore the goal of acquiring
concepts linked to the knowledge of society was exclusively linked to the Italian
context and to the defense of the Italian national language and identity. A recent
research project funded by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and conducted by the
Universities for Foreigners of Perugia and Siena (Machetti and Rocca 2015, 2017)
led to the creation of two kinds of material: a guide to the KoS test, for migrants,
and a series of video materials (1 h in total), accompanied by a text in five languages
(English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic). However, the emphasis is only on the
Italian language, and the use of the five immigrant languages is relegated to a written
translation of the Italian.
4 Immigrant Languages in Italy: The Gap Between Research

and Language Policy and Planning
Monica Barni
The effects of the increase of linguistic diversity in Italy, determined also by the
incredible growth over recent years in the number of foreigners resident in the
country, have attracted the attention of many linguists interested in describing the
changes brought about by the presence of many languages in a given linguistic
space and in evaluating the impact of such changes on the language policies of
a given area. Despite the goals of such research, their impact on choices and on
Italian language policies has to date been virtually nil. As many research projects in
this field point out, this marked growth in studies has been accompanied by a total
lack of recognition of the languages of origin of foreign citizens in official political
discourse. For example, policy makers seem to complete the main results of the
linguistic landscape (LL) studies conducted in Italy since 2000. The main objective
of these researches was to ascertain whether the increase in the number of migrants
in Italy since the turn of the century was modifying the Italian linguistic space. The
first question prompted by this sociodemographic change was: what impact has the
significant number of people arriving in Italy with different languages and cultures
had on the linguistic makeup of the country?
It could be interesting to comment on how the Italian studies in this field are
conducted. As reported by Barni and Bagna (2015), the first step of such studies was
to decide how to map linguistic diversity (Barni 2008). Yet it became immediately
apparent that simply counting the number of immigrant languages on the basis of
demographic data in different locations (e.g., areas of residence, neighborhoods)
was insufficient: the correlation between nationalities and languages was unable
to account for a complex and dynamic situation in which the national language
(Italian) coexisted not only with dialects and regional minority languages but
also, and increasingly so, with the languages of immigrants. In order to get to
grips with this complex scenario, some research projects first observed data for a
period of time and then used a methodological model based on a multidimensional
approach (cross-relating a number of dimensions: the visibility of languages; the
presence of groups; linguistic uses, gathered by means of audio/video recordings
and self-declarations; the role of communities and interaction in a given local area).
This proved to be theoretically and methodologically innovative and efficient and
effective in recording changes in Italy’s linguistic landscape. In that investigation of
the presence, visibility, and actual use of languages in social interaction contexts,
the LL became one of the strands of research (Barni and Bagna 2008, 2009, 2010).
Although the LL is a vast and pervasive domain of communication, to which all
speakers are constantly exposed, and which can therefore amplify an individual
communicative occurrence of a linguistic expression, the presence of languages
around us is often neglected in terms of language planning and awareness of their
role (Gorter 2006). But, an epiphenomenon of the presence of diversity that many
scholars started to perceive was the increasing presence of different languages in
the LL, in particular Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, and Bengali: previously invisible
languages, alphabets, and signs began to be displayed, especially in big cities. The
LL was becoming a powerful (though not exclusive) indicator of diversity and was
reflecting the visibility of languages very dynamically and more quickly than the
time required for new words of foreign origin to be included in dictionaries.
Stimulated and impressed by the visual power of the LL, one of the primary
objectives of Italian studies in this field was to measure the presence of immigrant
languages in public communication and urban spaces. Data regarding the web of
messages and texts produced in public spaces—in cities and towns, and, within
them, streets, squares, and so on—were gathered and analyzed. The predominant
text types in such contexts were mostly commercial signs and advertising posters,
billboards, announcements, personal messages, graffiti, restaurant menus, and the
like. The main focus of these studies was the use of language(s) in its written
forms in public spaces. More specifically, the aim was to investigate if and how
the presence or otherwise of different groups of people in a given area correlated
with the presence of their languages in the LL. Yet mapping the languages in the
LLs for the first time prompted a more probing inquiry into the status of immigrant
languages. Indeed, scholars searched for evidence to confirm the hypothesis that
the notional equivalence of immigrant communities and immigrant languages does
not indicate the real degree of vitality of immigrant languages in the areas where
immigrants reside. One example is the Esquilino neighborhood in Rome: the most
visible language here is Chinese, but the largest proportion of foreigners resident in
the area are Eritrean, for whom one cannot speak of linguistic visibility.
Another objective of Italian research in this field was to understand the dynamics
of the LL and the roles played by the different factors influencing the visibility of
languages in LLs, such as the linguistic composition of the area, the size of the
city, the magnitude of the immigrant communities and their degree of “rootedness,”
local employment opportunities, the presence of migration channels and migration
status/community organizations, local public policy toward immigrants, etc. The
“language facts that landmark the public space are social facts that, as such, relate
to more general social phenomena” (Shohamy et al. 2010: xiv). Thus the mapping
surveys (repeated over the years) of some cities (Rome, especially the Esquilino
neighborhood, Siena, Florence, Ferrara, Arezzo, some parts of Turin and Milan)
made it possible to describe the new, complex, and dynamic nature of the Italian
LL, taking into account the many variable factors that contribute to molding it. In
collecting the data, a number of general and some specific problems and choices
had to be addressed, including the problem of sampling, the definition of the unit of
analysis, and the categorization of signs.
For the mapping, specific software for georeferencing objects in a given territory
was designed and implemented, combined with linguistic data processing software
(Barni and Bagna 2009). These innovative technologies made it possible to gather
a wider range of material in a shorter period of time. Georeferencing also enables
data to be analyzed both synchronically and diachronically. Synchronically, because
it permits the comparison of different portions of the data and the territory surveyed
in one homogeneous survey campaign. Diachronically, because data gathered in a
single location at different times can be superimposed in order to show changes and
highlight dynamics (Bagna and Barni 2006).
In collecting the data, the researches did not just count languages, for every
“static” manifestation of a language in the area surveyed; they also collected and
analyzed linguistic and extralinguistic factors. A qualitative approach (interviews)
was also required to interpret the observed phenomena.
This became more evident when examining the relationship between the lin-
guistic landscape and language presence and vitality in specific urban areas.
In interpreting the complexity of the different LLs under observation, the view
expressed by Landry and Bourhis (1997: 34) that “the linguistic landscape may
be the most visible marker of the linguistic vitality of the various ethnolinguistic
groups living within a particular administrative or territorial enclave” immediately
proved to be inadequate. The data collected and analyzed in various cities in Italy
confirmed the hypothesis that there is no direct relationship between the visibility
of a language in an area and its vitality, especially for immigrant languages. This
relationship depends on numerous linguistic, extralinguistic, and contextual factors:
political, economic, etc. The situation is different in the areas of historical linguistic
minorities (Dall’Aquila and Iannaccaro 2004), where the relationship between
linguistic visibility and vitality varies according to the area considered (the German
minority in the province of Bolzano and the minorities present in Calabria are poles
apart in terms of visibility and vitality).
Even if research in this field has expanded greatly, and the results show a very
complex linguistic scenario, and LL studies are linked to the broader discussion
about policy and language policy, in Italy the impact was and continues to be very
low. As we noted previously, policy makers seem to ignore studies and their results,
and the attitude toward immigrant languages in Italy is quite negative.
5 Proficiency Tests of Italian as Foreign Language: An

Explicit Language Policy Choice?
Sabrina Machetti
As we know, multilingualism characterizes people’s daily interactions, but lan-

guages continue to be regarded as bounded systems associated with bounded
communities, just as “proper” language is bounded, pure, and composed of struc-
tured sounds, grammar, and vocabulary. In the case of migrants, one, two, or more
languages and also mixtures of languages are used in their daily communicative
exchanges, but they are asked to be competent in the official language of the host
country. In Europe, the language descriptors against which they are assessed are
mainly the ones proposed by the CEFR, even though they were not designed for
migrants.
Language tests are increasingly being used as policy instruments for declared
and undeclared policies (Shohamy 2006), and we may affirm that in some cases
it has been the presence of a shared standard such as the CEFR (2001), drawn up
under the auspices of a prestigious European-level organization like the Council of
Europe and adopted by the European Commission itself in its language policies,
that has made this possible. The CEFR has been used to justify political choices,
such as the control of immigrant flows. The introduction of the CEFR has given
rise to a series of chain reactions that start in the political sphere but have important
consequences in education and society.
As Barni (2014) outlines, the political use of the CEFR is increasing but without
any reflection on what its adoption means. Local lack of competence is interpreted
purely in terms of the pretexts. It is used to justify decisions of all types: its
contents are extrapolated without reference to context and adapted to the needs of
the moment.
In Italy, a good example of the political use of the CEFR and its levels and
descriptors is the ministerial decree of 4 June 2010, which mandates the introduction
of a test of knowledge of Italian for those requesting a long-term EU foreign
residence permit. The reason behind the introduction of the test, as the preamble
to the decree states, is the CEFR (“Whereas the Common European Framework of
Reference for Languages approved by the Council of Europe . . . ”), but its use is
supported only by rhetoric and policy statements that do not take into consideration
the consequences relating to the procedures planned for the implementation of the
test.
Thanks to an agreement signed in November 2010 between the Ministry
for Internal Affairs and the Ministry for Education (MIUR), CTP/CPIAs (Adult
Education Centers) have become the places where tests of knowledge of Italian are
arranged, administered, and evaluated.
Following this decision, many teachers without skills and training in language
testing and assessment started to write tests and establish markers and assessment
scales, etc. (Masillo 2015). Teacher training in Italy, both preservice and in-service,
does not make provision for devoting specific attention to issues of evaluation, nor
are there any activities involving the construction of language tests. As a result,
hundreds of different tests and hundreds of different markers, all obviously “in the
name of the CEFR” (Barni 2014), have been produced.
After 4 years of application of the ministerial decree and the first evaluation of
the agreement results (as of February 2015), the exam had been taken by 483,473
foreigners and 8 out of 10 passed. The busiest prefecture was Milan, with 59,666
foreigners being summoned, followed by Rome, Brescia, Bologna, Bergamo, and
Florence; the situation is as follows (Masillo 2015):
– Considerable doubts exist about the fairness, validity, and reliability of the tests
produced: the subjectivity and specificity of individual local realities have clearly
influenced the construction of the assessment tools adopted. It follows that the
decentralized administering of tests represents a penalizing factor for test quality
and standardization, as it is a possible source of measurement error (Henning
1987; Bachman 2004).
– At a national level, there is heterogeneity in the pass rates. This raises yet
further questions not just regarding validity but above all about the reliability
and comparability of the tests designed and administered in the different exam
centers around the country. An imbalance exists in the level of difficulty of the
tests, and the test formats have scarce comparability.
– The ministerial evaluation scheme was found not to be in line with the theoretical
model of language and linguistic competence proposed in the vade mecum
(MIUR 2010) taken as the test criterion.
– The low acceptability of the ministerial criteria (consistency and appropriate-
ness) is borne out, on the one hand, by the tendency of the raters to interpret and
apply the assessment criteria in different ways and, on the other, by the use of
other parameters of reference to supplement the ministerial ones (Wang 2010;
Wu and Ma 2013).
– Relevant to this critical reflection is also the decision made explicit in the
ministerial decree of 4 June 2010 to exclude oral production from the set
of pertinent features for describing and ascertaining the L2 Italian language
competence of foreign citizens resident in Italy who apply for a permanent
residency document. As Barni observes (2012b: 146), excluding oral production
skills “makes the tests, however they have been produced, inherently invalid in
evaluating the objective for which they had been established,” as oral production
is a natural and more developed component in the competency profile of the
targets of the ministerial A2 test, besides being an integral part of the model of
communicative and language competence that the test claims to assess.
A second problematic area, again on the level of proficiency in the language of
the host country, concerns the lack of consideration of the plurilingual dimension
of the competency profile of the final user of the proposed procedures and likewise
of the effective communicative uses of the language being verified (Barni 2014).
Masillo (2015) outlines, on the basis of construct and content analysis of these tests,
evident incongruences between the object of the evaluation and the communicative
needs of the migrants and so too between the content of the tests and the assessment
goals theorized at a ministerial level (MIUR 2010). The construct of the ministerial
A2 test is based, as tends to happen in procedures of this kind, on the standard variety
of the host-country language, without considering other—sometimes hybrid—
language varieties of the candidates (Shohamy 2009).
The linguistic repertoire of African English-speaking immigrants in Italy is a
good example of these varieties. Discussing some studies about the repertoires of
Ghanaians and Nigerians before and after their migration to Italy, Berruto (2009: 24)
observes that different patterns of repertoire restructuration are sketched out. “They
may consist either in a simplification of plurilingual and diglottic (or triglottic)
repertoires or in a complexification of monolingual repertoires.” Likewise, Machetti
and Siebetcheu (2015) observe that the linguistic repertoire of Cameroonian
immigrants in Italy is composed of different language varieties: French, English,
Italian, Camfranglais, Pidgin English, Cameroonian local languages, and Italian
dialects. Their language uses are consistent with the idea of a continuum of
linguistic and communicative competence, considered as the opportunity to manage
communicative acts using the different language resources at their disposal, but are
not consistent with the “standard” language against which they are assessed and
given a permit to remain in Italy.
Test design is embedded in policy processes, and it is only through policy
processes that the design can be challenged or updated. Academic researchers are
not necessarily very good at influencing policy debates, and in Italy as well, as things
currently stand, policies in this sector appear to be prevalently influenced by other
considerations. Language tests are in fact used exclusively “to determine whether
a specific group of immigrants, the non-European ones, will be granted a regular
permit to stay which can be described as a type of control over this group’s social
inclusion” (Masillo 2015: 211).
6 Conclusions
Carla Bagna, Monica Barni, and Sabrina Machetti
As suggested by Kraus and Sciortino (2013), the realm of language offers an

excellent opportunity for scrutinizing the effective consequences of the integration-
cum-diversity discourse, and the analysis conducted in this chapter bears this out,
providing some interesting ideas for reflection on the Italian situation.
In the case of Italy, the absence of a solid and agreed political framework impacts
negatively on policies concerning the Italian language, historical minorities, and
new linguistic policies regarding migrants. The latter are sometimes contradictory
as well, and linguistic diversity, instead of being protected and valued, is flattened
out into a series of language requirements aimed “at hindering migration and/or
integration rather than facilitating integration” (Pulinx et al. 2014: iii).
The phenomena considered in this chapter confirm the existence of education
policies that concentrate entirely on preserving and promoting Italian projects, in
which the valorization of the linguistic and cultural diversity of migrants is not
considered to play a key role in democratic coexistence but in which such diversity is
treated as a problem, as something that is hard to manage; a “linguistic schizophre-
nia” with, on the one hand, a quite significant number of studies emphasizing
a scenario of multilingualism in the country, and the role and economic impact
of the presence of different languages in a given territory, etc., and on the other
hand, an evident weakness in language policy and planning regarding migrants and
immigrant languages; and finally, instruments for ascertaining language competence
and a knowledge of the norms of civil life in Italy that are of dubious validity and
reliability, their sole function being to ascertain whether a requirement has been
fulfilled or not. In the Italian regulatory framework in particular, the connection
between language competence, tests, and integration is interpreted in a way that
we judge to be simplistic and bureaucratic and without any reflection about the
choices made and the consequences such choices might provoke (Barni 2012b:
140). Languages, in fact, rather than being seen as added values for social inclusion
and interaction/integration in the host community, are simply reduced to being an
obstacle to access to civil rights, an instrument in the hands of governments whose
intentions are not simply to ascertain the language competence of the resident
foreigner but to use it as a pretext for limiting their stay on national territory
(Shohamy 2001, 2006, 2009). Knowledge of the language, understood as cultural
form and as a constituent part of the identity of an individual, should represent
an extra possibility, an added value, for the foreigner’s social integration (Barni
2012a). To employ language competence as a stratagem serving a policy directed
at regulating, or rather, limiting, migratory flows is something different. Tackling
integration, understood in terms of “a two-way process of mutual accommodation
by all immigrants and residents of Member States” (Niessen and Huddleston 2010:
78), should fall within the objectives and be one of the concerns of a national policy,
with a view to reaching out to those who have migrated to Italy. If, conversely, the
issue of integration is constantly dragged into debates about national security, or

even finds its way into legislation proposing public security measures, it follows
that the concept of integration loses the features of reciprocity and receptiveness
which belong to it, taking on those of defense and closure (Béacco et al. 2014).
Regarding the test purpose, is the choice to link the labor market access to the
A2 level in Italian fair and ethical? In our opinion, achievement and proficiency in
Italian should be linked to a broader vision of language learning and teaching (e.g.,
envisaging courses at levels A1, B1, and B2). We are referring to a process that can
implement and meet the needs of a wider migrant audience of citizens illiterate in
their L1, citizens for whom achieving an A2 level in Italian without literacy training
is an unattainable mirage. In addition, the improvement of an already basic Italian
to a proficient level would certainly go a long way to meeting the needs of many
foreign citizens. Proficiency in Italian can in fact represent a guarantee for access
to the higher education system, progress in the workplace, and more conscious
integration in the host community.
Further research is necessary in order to design initial proposals and examples for
the adoption of different types of multilingual tests in specific contexts. According
to Shohamy (2011), multilingual tests are more construct valid, as they enable
the manifestation of fuller knowledge in integrated ways, thus highlighting the
advantages, rather than the problems, that multilingual users have. Currently, the
construct underlying these assessment approaches and/or scales (e.g., the CEFR)
is of language as a closed and finite system that does not enable other languages to
“smuggle in.” For this reason, the introduction of language tests in certain languages
delivers messages and ideologies about the prestige, priorities, and hierarchies of
certain language(s), and not others, leading to policies of suppression of diversity.
Evaluating the plurilingual repertoire of immigrants taking into consideration
multilingual tests could probably promote their language diversity and allow for
observation of their effective competence in the individual languages they use.
The phenomena discussed in this chapter open up various perspectives, especially
if we consider not so much and not only what were described as their short-term
results but the results for future generations. This is also in consideration of the fact
that, at the time of writing, the ius solis is not in force in Italy, and migrant children
born and brought up in Italy can only gain Italian citizenship when they reach the
age of 18, and they must in any case apply for it. The effects of the phenomena
that we have considered and of the associated linguistic policies, effects, and
policies that concern the family of origin—for example, obtaining of a long-term
residency permit after passing an A2 level text—cannot be automatically transferred
to successive generations, who in many cases are pressing for a more active role,
also and if only because they were born and brought up in Italy. Are there any
supplementary linguistic policies for the new generations able to guarantee them, in
the future, the concrete possibility of gaining access to and really participating in the
opportunities that the host society offers? Will the republican model, widespread in
Italy and in many other European countries, according to which possession of the
language of the host nation is considered essential for genuine integration, continue
to work for generations after the one that initially entered into the pact?
Another issue that the phenomena explored in this chapter leaves open is that of
the link between linguistic competence and the migrant’s income and employability.
Chiswick and Miller (2014) focus on the consequences for immigrants of acquiring
destination language proficiency, with an emphasis on labor market outcomes.
Their research underlines “the importance of dominant language proficiency to
immigrants labor market outcomes, the differences in these labor market outcomes
across groups, the potential differences in labor market outcomes depending on the
context in which the destination and origin languages are used, and the changes over
time in the economic returns to language usage” (88). Examining the relationship
between adult migrants’ language skills and their integration in the European labor
market, Gazzola (2017) achieves very similar results: generally speaking, a good
employment status is strictly related to good and very good skills in the official
language of the host country, both for EU and non-EU migrants. More research is
needed in this field, however, and more context-related research, especially referring
to countries like Italy, where people are affected by the recession. It is also true
that if proficiency involves something compulsory (test or language courses), it is
dubious whether it will be passively accepted by migrants and have positive effects
for their integration. As Pulinx et al. (2014: 31–32) observe, “language proficiency
continues to be regarded as an important sign of integration, in addition to its
practical usefulness in daily and working life. It may be that through the training
provided for them, adult migrants reconfigure their language repertoire and make
a large place in it for the new language, which can become just as much part of
their identity as their languages of origin. However, they may also become more
proficient in the language but not identify with it or adopt it as really part of their
repertoire: meeting obligations (compulsory courses or tests) in terms of knowledge
of the ‘national’ language does not always guarantee that the persons concerned will
accept this new means of communication.”
In conclusion, we would like to try to offer a more optimistic view of the
phenomena analyzed, evaluating that in Italy we do have a few cases (including
permanent ones) of what Liddicoat and Baldauf (2008: 11), discussing “language
planning in local contexts,” propose: to view language planning not just in terms
of top-down governmental decision-making but also in terms of local, individual,
educational, and community action on language. As Liddicoat and Baldauf suggest,
language policy and planning are not the property of those who hold the institutional
power to affect their decisions but could be realized by the development of a
fruitful interplay between the macro and the micro language planning work and
top-down and bottom-up initiatives. In this sense, the work by some Italian regions,
such as Emilia Romagna, Lombardy, and Tuscany—done also in collaboration with
individuals such as volunteers—is excellent examples of language planning: in these
regions, the FEI funds were used to promote the training of teachers, teaching of
Italian, training of linguistic mediators, the production of materials about integration
for use in offices dealing with the public, job centers, and doctors’ surgeries and by
employers. Such language planning work could definitely have a positive influence
on the creation of a language policy and planning on a national scale.
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Esperanto and Linguistic Justice:
An Empirical Response to Sceptics
Cyril Brosch and Sabine Fiedler
1 Introduction
We are witnessing an increase in academic debate surrounding the design of fair and
democratic international linguistic communication. While most contributions to this
debate concentrate on the use of English, some scholars also engage in discussion
of alternatives to English. Recurrent arguments for and against the use of a planned
language such as Esperanto can be encountered in these debates (cf. Fiedler 2015a).
Authors making the case for planned languages emphasize their contribution to
equal rights in international communication, their positive impact on the learning of
other foreign languages, and their cost-saving potential in comparison with English.
Arguments against planned languages include their negative image and limited
communicative functions. Some researchers have made predictions regarding the
possible developments in the linguistic structure of Esperanto in the case of its
official adoption, taking the historical trajectory of ethnic languages as a model.
Esperanto’s eurocentrism, its alleged isolation from culture, and the existence or
non-existence of native speakers are among the features that are controversially
discussed in the literature.
In the debate on language policy, the monograph by philosopher and political
economist Philippe Van Parijs, Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World
(2011), has become an important point of reference. A large number of reviews and
a special issue of the journal Critical Review of International Social and Political
Philosophy (18/2, 2015) are testament to its special resonance. Several of the authors
of the latter deal with Van Parijs’s concept of an accelerated dissemination of
English as a lingua franca, while others focus on the territoriality principle proposed
C. Brosch · S. Fiedler ()

Universität Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
e-mail: cyril.brosch@uni-leipzig.de; sfiedler@uni-leipzig.de

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1_17
500 C. Brosch and S. Fiedler
as a counterbalance to it. Van Parijs’s excursus on the planned language Esperanto,

however, has been widely ignored in discussions on the book.1 In this article we
intend to close this gap with a critical examination of his take on the planned
language.
Van Parijs is, of course, not the only critic of Esperanto. Several authors point
out the European character of the language as an impediment to its international
adoption (recently, e.g. De Mauro 2014; for a survey, see Fiedler 2015a). Bruthiaux
(2002) also made dour predictions concerning the development of the linguistic
structure of Esperanto, were it ever to be adopted worldwide:
(...) were the language to spread and indigenize in a variety of settings, the price of greater
diffusion would most likely be loss of uniformity and a gradual increase in morphological
variation. (p. 137)
( . . . ) this quintessentially planned and maximally simplified language would require con-
stant intervention on the part of its promoters and guardians because, as its communicative
and geographical range expands, the forces that shape all languages in use are bound
to take its current structural configuration in unpredictable directions to the point where
variation will begin to develop in parts of the system. In addition, the predicted increase
in communicative and geographical range of the language would lead to unavoidable
diversification of its lexical inventory, a process that must either threaten the much-vaunted
regularity of the language if unplanned or hinder adaptation to local conditions if planned.
(p. 145)
As these quotations show, Van Parijs is neither the first nor the only sceptic
of Esperanto in this vein. Nevertheless, the criticism in his monograph Linguistic
Justice for Europe and for the World (2011: 39–46) is the focus of this chapter, as it
presents the most detailed critique of Esperanto and one that—due to the book’s
popularity—will likely often serve as the point of departure for discussions on
Esperanto today and in the future.2 When we discuss and quote his criticism in
the following, it should be understood as referring simultaneously to other sceptics
as well.
Van Parijs’s criticism of Esperanto, a slightly modified version of a section in
his 2004 article on the planned language, is part of his appendix to Chap. 1, “Three
alternatives to lingua franca convergence”, which, in addition to Esperanto (pp. 39–
46), is concerned with technical solutions to the international language problem
(“Babel Fish”, pp. 38/39) and lingua franca pluralism (pp. 46–49).
In the section on Esperanto, Van Parijs raises objections to the main advantages
of the planned language—its neutrality and simplicity. As regards Esperanto’s
neutrality, he focuses firstly on the European roots of the language and secondly
predicts that the asset of being nobody’s mother tongue will diminish in the future,
1 For exceptions see the reactions of Larsen (2012), Kimura in Kimura and Fiedler (2013: 95–
97), Derks (2014), and Fernández Asensio (2014), who do stress interlinguistic aspects, but whose
readerships are restricted to a small group of people due to the language and/or place of publication.
2 Coming from the pen of a renowned philosopher, Van Parijs’s arguments can be expected to fall
on fertile ground. See, for example, their repetition by MacKenzie (2014) and the reply to it by
Fiedler (2015b).
Esperanto and Linguistic Justice: An Empirical Response to Sceptics 501
given further spread of the planned language, as this would inevitably lead to
a scenario in which Esperanto was increasingly learned as a mother tongue and
would thus become as unfair as English. Concerning simplicity, Van Parijs (2011:
43) acknowledges that “syntactic and morphological rules are exception-free in
Esperanto”, and it is therefore undeniably easier to learn than English and other
languages. Due to mechanisms “well documented in natural languages”, however,
regular forms will be “gradually driven into obsolescence by the shorter and less
regular ones”. In addition, with its use in all contexts, Esperanto will have to
enlarge its vocabulary and therefore “massively borrow from English”, so that it
will eventually consist of “a slim core of Esperanto roots that can be learned in a
matter of days and a huge periphery of borrowings”.
Van Parijs acknowledges that the arguments citing Esperanto’s lack of equidis-
tance apply more readily to English, which is much less “neutral” than Esperanto.
In his opinion however the advantages are simply so insignificant in the long run
that they “can be easily overridden by efficiency considerations” (42). Van Parijs is
here referring to the use of English, which “is already the mother tongue of a few
hundreds of millions of human beings and a second language for several hundreds
of millions more” (l.c.). We do not wish to get into the questionable argument of
the efficiency of English here,3 but rather to concentrate on the question of whether
Van Parijs’s reasoning, which downplays the neutrality and simplicity advantages of
Esperanto, holds up to scrutiny. To this end, we provide evidence drawn from case
study and corpus analysis research.4
Our discussion of Van Parijs’s reservations about Esperanto in Sect. 3 is
structured as follows: Section 3.1 addresses the European character of Esperanto
and the consequences this has for learners with non-European mother tongues
acquiring the language. Section 3.2 discusses Van Parijs’s prediction that Esperanto
will grow to consist of ever more English due to massive borrowing. Within this
context, three areas of investigation promise to provide insights. These are the use of
other-language elements in Esperanto communication (also called code-switching)
(Sect. 3.2.1), principles of word formation, above all, terminology planning (Sect.
3.2.2), and the treatment of foreign vocabulary in translations (Sect. 3.2.3). Section
3 Firstly,as Fernández Asensio (2014: 129) has already pointed out, Van Parijs’s concluding
statement on Esperanto that “considerations of linguistic fairness narrowly conceived [ . . . ] must
yield to efficiency considerations” (46) is a negation of everything he writes in his book on
linguistic justice. Secondly, the presence of hundreds of millions of L2 speakers of English has
neither come without effort nor does it last forever: the costs of learning English as a foreign
language are born again and again with each new generation of children or adults who learn
English. These costs are borne exclusively by non-native speakers, while native speakers benefit
directly from the position of their language, as also Van Parijs concedes (2011: 50–53).
4 The data used in this study has been obtained as part of an ongoing large-scale project on the use
of lingue franche including the planned language Esperanto (www.mime-project.org). Esperanto

communication is analysed in a large variety of settings (higher education, everyday talk, scientific
conferences, tourism) with a focus on speakers’ communicative behaviour and strategies such as
language alternation (code-switching), metacommunication, repairs and ludic behaviour, wordplay,
the role of accents, and other features.
3.3 deals with the position that native Esperanto speakers presently hold within
the community and what, if any, conclusions may be drawn from this relating to
Van Parijs’s prediction of their rapid increase in number in case of Esperanto’s
worldwide dissemination. Before analysing Van Parijs’s appendix on Esperanto,
however, we will give an introduction to the main characteristics of Esperanto and
its use (Sect. 2).
2 A Preface on Esperanto and Its Use as a Lingua Franca
Planned languages (also called “universal languages”, “artificial languages”, or

“constructed languages”) are language systems that have been consciously created
according to definite criteria by an individual or group of individuals for the purpose
of making interlingual communication easier (cf. Schubert 1989a; Wüster 1931,
1955). The traditional classification of Couturat and Leau (1903 and 1903+1907/
2001) is based on the relationship of planned language systems to ethnic languages,
especially with regard to their lexical material. The authors distinguish between (a)
a priori systems, (b) a posteriori systems, and (c) mixed systems. While the majority
of a priori languages form their phonological and lexical systems on the basis
of philosophically motivated classifications of human knowledge, an a posteriori
system borrows lexical material from specific ethnic languages and adapts it to its
structure. Within the a posteriori systems, an autonomous (or schematic) subgroup
can be found with a high degree of regularity in inflection and word formation.
Esperanto is representative of this type. It is the only planned language project (of
more than 1000) that has succeeded in becoming a fully fledged language. This is
due to its structural properties (cf. Janton 1993[1973]; Nuessel 2000; Wells 1989)
but above all to extralinguistic factors (cf. Blanke 2009).
Esperanto was published as Lingvo Internacia (“international language”) in
Warsaw in 1887. Its author, the oculist and polyglot Lazar’ Markovič Zamenhof—in
English usually Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof (1859–1917)—from Białystok used the
pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto (lit. one who hopes), which subsequently became
the name of the language itself. Zamenhof’s idea, still shared today by many, but
not all Esperanto speakers, was to overcome interethnic hostility and ignorance not
only by facilitating communication but also by allowing everyone to stand on equal
ground without the distinction between “big” and “small” languages or between L1
and L2 speakers.
Esperanto has 28 phonemes, written by 28 letters of the Latin alphabet without
q, w, x, and y and with ĉ [Ù], ĝ [Ã], ĥ [x], ĵ [Z], ŝ [S], and ŭ (u as the second
part of diphthongs).5 The accent is always on the penultimate syllable. Designed
5 Phonemics and phonotactics were not designed to achieve greatest ease but to be able to embrace
as much international vocabulary from Greek, Latin, Romance, Germanic, and Slavic source
languages as possible.
as a written language, Esperanto has nevertheless attained a consistent normative

pronunciation (see Sect. 3.3.2).
From a typological point of view, Esperanto is an agglutinative language with
isolating features (Piron 1981; Wells 1989). Its morphology is based on the
combination of invariable and for the most part monofunctional elements. Most
of them are bound but can still be used as word bases (e.g. -ebl, a suffix indicating
possibility, as used in farebla “feasible”: eble “perhaps/maybe”). The polyfunctional
endings of the verb (comprising word class, tense, and voice) can be seen as an
inflectional trait.
Open word classes are marked by characteristic suffixes: -o for nouns (e.g.
telefono “telephone”), -a for adjectives (telefona “telephonic, telephone-”), -e for
adverbs (telefone “by telephone”), and -i for verbs in the infinitive (telefoni “to make
a phone call”). Nouns and adjectives (with obligatory agreement) are inflected for
number (-j marks the plural) and case (-n marks the accusative, which has additional
adverbial functions). Verbs have an indicative with three tenses (-is for past, -as for
present, and -os for future), an irrealis (-us) and a volitive (-u). Active and passive
participles, comprising anteriority, contemporality, or posteriority, are formed by
adding the elements -int-, -ant-, and -ont- and -it-, -at-, and -ot-. Compound tenses
are formed by esti (“be”) and a participle. They are used to express modal and
aspectual nuances (e.g. la letero estis forsendota “the letter was about to be sent”)
but are often avoided for stylistic reasons. As in English, the standard pronoun used
for the second person, vi, does not distinguish number.
The basic word order is subject-verb-object-adverbials, but the overt marking of
subject, object, and other constituents allows for variation of this order to express
distinction of topic, comment, and focus. Unlike, for example, English, Esperanto
consistently distinguishes between transitive and intransitive verbs. Agreement is
mainly driven syntactically.
The main means of word formation are determinative composition (e.g. poŝ-mon-
o “pocket money”) and derivations with very productive affixoids (e.g. malsanulejo
“hospital”, consisting of mal- “opposite”, san- “sound, healthy”, -ul- “person”, -ej-
“place”, so literally a place for ill persons, similar to German Krankenhaus). Many
word formations, however, are lexicalized, such as lernejo (“place of learning”),
which does not denote any place of learning but the place/institution where children
go to be educated, i.e. school. With regard to roots, synonymy and homonymy are
far less prevalent than, for example, in English. Sometimes there is, however, com-
petition or coexistence between motivated endonyms and international exonyms, as
between malsanulejo and hospitalo (see Sect. 3.2.2). There are a certain number
of phraseological units, both translated and motivated intrinsically from the history
and culture of the Esperanto speech community (see Fiedler 1999, 2015d).
In order to help the reader to gain further insights into the linguistic system
of Esperanto, we have prepared the following text with interlinear morpheme-by-
morpheme glosses. The text is a passage from an online book review.6
6 Cf. http://www.liberafolio.org/2015/de-putin-al-krimeo-2013-du-legindaj-jurnalismaj-libroj
Ambaŭ libroj estas verkitaj en la stilo de ĵurnalisma raportaĵo, stilo, kiun la profesia
ĵurnalisto Kniivilä senteble bone regas: Legante la librojn, oni havas la impreson, ke oni
vojaĝas kune kun Kniivilä tra Rusujo kaj Krimeo kaj persone ĉeestas la intervjuojn, kiujn li
faras kun diversaj homoj, de simplaj civitanoj ĝis politikaj aktivuloj.
[Both books are authored in the style of a journalistic report, a style the professional
journalist Kniivilä masters noticeably well: Reading the book one has the impression that
one travels along with Kniivilä across Russia and Crimea and that one is personally present
at the interviews he conducted with various people, from ordinary citizens up to political
activists.]
(special abbreviation: NO = noun)
A comparison of Esperanto dictionaries documents the lexical expansion of the

language. While Zamenhof’s Unua Libro (1887) included 904 roots, the presently
used quasi-authoritative monolingual dictionary La Nova Plena Ilustrita Vortaro
(DucGoninaz 2002) comprises approximately 17,000 roots (with 47,000 entries
in total). A comprehensive pedagogical description of Esperanto is Wennergren’s
(2005) Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko (Complete Handbook of Esperanto
Grammar). There is a considerable body of academic literature on Esperanto and
planned languages, which is, however, often ignored. This is due partially to the
language barrier, as the majority of literature on planned languages is written in
Esperanto.7 Methods to access scholarly literature on interlinguistics are given in
Blanke (2003, 2015).
Planned as a second language for everybody, Esperanto does not rely on the
judgement of native speakers to establish the norm (see Sect. 3.3.2 below). Instead,
7 According to statistics given by Blanke (2015: 206) based on an analysis of the languages of
publication of works on interlinguistics registered in the bibliography of the Modern Language
Association (volumes 1999–2008), the following languages are used: Esperanto (71.0%), German
(10.9%), English (4.0%), French (2.0%), Italian (1.5%), and Russian (1.3%).
the Fundamento de Esperanto (Zamenhof [1905]1991) fills this role. It comprises a

basic grammar in five languages (i.e. the grammatical part of the first textbook Unua
Libro) (Zamenhof 1887), a list of official vocabulary items (Universala Vortaro
“universal dictionary”) (Zamenhof 1894), and stylistic exercises. The Fundamento
was accepted as the invariable (but augmentable) normative base of the language
during the first world congress of Esperanto in Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1905. In this
regard Esperanto is comparable to Sanskrit, whose basic grammar by Pān.ini has
been stable for over 2000 years (see Maurus III 2014).
The spread of Esperanto started in Russia and Germany and, after 1900,
continued on in the rest of Europe, especially France (see Garvía 2015: 77–
81). Today it is also spoken outside of Europe—to varying degrees, with local
centres in the USA, Brazil, China, and Japan. The most important association,
the Universala Esperanto-Asocio (UEA) (Universal Esperanto Association), which
organizes annual world congresses,8 is in official relations with the United Nations
and UNESCO. In addition to individual members in more than 120 countries, 70
national Esperanto organizations are affiliated with it today. The overall number
of Esperanto speakers, however, is very hard if not impossible to assess (see Sect.
3.3.1).
The Esperanto speech community is very heterogeneous in terms of ideological
and sociological categories. For the majority of speakers, the planned language is
not seen as a “foreign” language. Speakers identify with Esperanto as an equitable
means of communication and with the culture of the community formed by its
artistic (especially literary) production, common crises (like the persecutions by
Hitler and Stalin, cf. Lins 2016/2017), and achievements (such as the support by
UNESCO resolutions in 1954 and 1985).
Teaching the language is of utmost importance for its dissemination. There have
been enormous changes in recent years with regard to the methods applied and
the resources available. Above all, electronic aids to teaching and learning have
proliferated,9 so that Van Parijs’s (2011: 44) description of Esperanto learners
as “studious pre-TV, pre-internet devotees confined to grammar manuals and
vocabulary lists” is far from reality. It is also noteworthy that learning Esperanto
has a propaedeutic effect; it facilitates subsequent learning of other languages, as
numerous studies have consistently confirmed (for an overview, see Brosch and
Fiedler 2017; see also Tellier 2012 with further literature).
To be sure, in comparison with other languages, especially English, the actual
use of Esperanto is limited both in terms of the number of interactions and
the functional domains in which communication is realized. Esperanto is well
established as a language of everyday conversation, not only during the manifold
congresses and meetings—a specific trait of the community—10 but also as a family
8 The World Congress in Lille, France, in 2015 was attended by approximately 2700 participants.
9 Esperanto is increasingly learned in online courses that are offered free of charge (e.g. lernu.net,
livemocha, lingolía, duolingo, and EsperantoLand).
10 The Esperanto calendar for May through September 2015 published in the magazine Esperanto
3, 2015 pp. 66–67 informs about 53 several days’ events in 24 countries.

language of international couples (sometimes including their children; see Sect.

3.3). It also finds application as a language for special purposes.11 In connection
with Esperanto congresses, the language is also used for tourism and, to some
extent, for administration and debates. There are a limited number of initiatives
using Esperanto in business, such as publishing houses run by Esperanto speakers.
As regards Esperanto as a language for academic teaching and research, the
interlinguistics seminars at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, at the
University of Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, and the Akademio Internacia de la
Sciencoj (AIS) (“International Academy of Sciences”) (cf. Gobbo and Fößmeier
2012) should be mentioned. Esperanto is used extensively as a means of literary
production (both original and translated) (cf. Sutton 2008; Minnaja and Silfer 2015).
In recent years Internet platforms like YouTube have given a big boost to short
films, but initiatives for theatre or longer movies have remained largely ephemeral.
Domains like advertising, legal and institutional language use are likewise largely
undeveloped due to the lack of a significant market or usage in state administration.
Linguistically, the use of the language in the various domains mentioned above has
not led to a development of clear-cut registers or functional styles in Esperanto. In a
similar vein, according to our experience, the differences between oral and written
language use are much smaller in Esperanto than in ethnic languages. However,
specific investigations of these topics have yet to be carried out.
In sum, communication in Esperanto can be described as intercultural and
intracultural at the same time (see Fiedler 2002). People from all over the world
consciously form an exclusive community. This condition determines attitudes and
behaviour found among Esperanto speakers, which include among other things
their highly cooperative approach to communication with large proportions of
metacommunication, negotiation of meaning, and tolerance of accents (see Brosch
2015b and Sect. 3.3 below). They also show a considerable degree of linguistic
loyalty, which manifests itself in the avoidance of code-switching (see Fiedler
2015c, d), a high rate of repairs, and a less pronounced let-it-pass principle than
in English used as a lingua franca (see Fiedler 2017b). There is also a strong
predilection for verbal humour and other creative uses of the language. These
features indicate that Esperanto does not only function as a lingua franca like
international English,12 but also as a source of identity construction. As one speaker
put it: “Even if Esperanto is a tool, it is nevertheless much more than a tool”.13
11 Blanke and Blanke (2015) list 24 specialized Esperanto organizations and 37 disciplines with
specialist publications.
12 On the problems of the definition of the term “lingua franca”, see Brosch (2015a). For the sake of
convenience, we use the term lingua franca here in its traditional fuzzy meaning, although English
would be better called a “vehicular language” in Brosch’s framework, as there is a considerable
body of native speakers.
13 “Ankaŭ se Esperanto estas ilo, ĝi tamen ankaŭ estas pli ol ilo”. From an interview of Brosch with
an Italian woman living in Germany in the summer of 2015, 27:40–49 (see Sect. 3.1).
3 Reservations About Esperanto’s Neutrality and Simplicity
3.1 The European Character of Esperanto
Van Parijs (2011: 40) states that the neutrality of Esperanto can only be understood
in a weak sense, in that it must be learned by everyone (“it is the native language of
nobody and would be a secondary language for everybody”), but not in the stronger
sense regarding its relationship to ethnic languages:
[ . . . ] Esperanto is very far from being neutral in the demanding sense of being equidistant
from all existing languages. It belongs unambiguously to the Western group of Indo-
European languages, with identifiable Latin, Germanic, and Slavic ingredients in very
unequal proportions. Even within Europe, with Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Maltese, and
Basque as part of the picture, it cannot make any claim to ‘neutrality’ in this strong sense.
The eurocentrism of the language, often cited as Esperanto’s major drawback

(Bruthiaux 2002: 137; Calvet 1999: 274), has never been denied by any serious
esperantologist, to the best of our knowledge. According to Janton (1993[1973]),
the Romance languages provide approximately 75% of the Esperanto vocabulary,
especially Latin and French, about 20% of its roots are of Germanic origin, and
the rest are derived from various other sources, especially Slavic languages. Recent
investigations (Parkvall 2010; Jansen 2010) confirm that Esperanto is basically a
European language, especially with regard to its vocabulary. However, they also
refer to some characteristics that contradict this picture and to some that are
typologically so general that they cannot be attributed to any reference language
(Jansen 2010: 282). Being a nontonal agglutinative right-branched language with
28 phonemes, a fixed word accent, accusative alignment, and a basically SVO word
order, Esperanto does not only resemble most European languages but also many
non-European ones, as these traits are globally very common (75% of all languages
are right-branched, and in nearly 40% we find SVO word order—cf. Dryer and
Haspelmath 2013). From this one can conclude that Esperanto’s eurocentrism is
mainly confined to its lexis and pragmatics. Esperanto has an autonomous word
formation system and a flexible word order, which allows its speakers to be self-
confident and productive in their language use. These features can be used and
appreciated by all speakers, including those of non-European languages. Li (2003:
38), for example, accepts the argument of eurocentrism to a certain degree only,
stressing the perspective of a non-European language learner:
One could perhaps bring up the notion of ‘language distance’ ( . . . ) and argue that speakers
of European languages tend to have an advantage learning Esperanto compared with, say,
speakers of a typologically distant language like Mandarin Chinese ( . . . ). If Esperanto is
Eurocentric, the same holds true—and much more so—for a target language like English,
which is considerably more complex with regard to all its linguistic subsystems. An
optimistic estimate suggests that for speakers of an Asian language, it takes no more than
one year of intensive study to reach communicative competence in Esperanto, whereas for
speakers of a European language, that same level of competence may be attained within
about six months ( . . . )
Grin (2008) emphasizing the economic benefits of the adoption of Esperanto

repudiates Van Parijs’s criticism with a drastic comparison:
This argument (van Parijs 2004) is, however, easily dismissed. Its gist is that owing to the
essentially Indo-European origins of its vocabulary, Esperanto is not really fair. However,
since it remains demonstrably more accessible than any natural language, and given that
its adoption would at a stroke eliminate billions of Euros of unfair transfers annually,
rejecting it in favour of English is rather like claiming that feudalism is superior to social
democracy on the grounds that social democracy can never totally equalise opportunities.
(p. 81; emphasis in original)
In a discussion of these topics, the attitudes of Esperanto users with non-

European native languages should be examined. In a series of interviews conducted
by Brosch in 2015 of 25 Esperanto speakers, the 4 of them from outside Europe14
were asked about their opinions on the criticism of Esperanto being eurocentric.15
They mostly agreed that the language is more difficult to learn for certain groups of
speakers because of their linguistic background:
Kaj mi trovas ke Esperanto estas tre malfacila lingvo por ĉinoj, (ĉu ne). Ankaŭ prononce
[And I think that Esperanto is a very difficult language for the Chinese, (isn’t it)? Also in
terms of pronunciation] (22)
Ankaŭ mi parte konsentas. Fakte Esperanto ne estas vere internacia lingvo, esperanto
estas eŭropostila lingvo. Multaj vortoj venas de eŭropaj landoj. [ . . . ] Por ĉinoj memori la
vortoj(n) estas ege malfacilaj, lerni Esperanton estas ege malfacilaj; kvankam la gramatiko
estas facila, tamen memori vortoj estas malfacila16 [I also agree on this partly. In fact,
Esperanto is not really an international language, Esperanto is a language in the European
style. Many words come from European countries. [ . . . ] It is very hard to remember the
words, learning Esperanto is very difficult; although the grammar is easy, but it’s difficult
to remember words] (23)
At the same time, however, they expressed their conviction that Esperanto is not
owned by any particular nation:
Ĉiu scias, ke Esperanto estas sennacia afero, do neniu – nek Obama, nek François Hollande,
nek Merkel – diros, ke Esperanto estas lia afero, aŭ ŝia afero, tute ne. Do la afero estas
konata. [Everyone knows that Esperanto is something non-national, so nobody—neither
Obama, nor François Hollande, nor Merkel—will say that Esperanto is their business, not
at all. So the thing is known.] (21)
14 The respondents were an approximately 45-year-old Congolese man (interview no. 21), an
approximately 50-year-old Japanese man (22), an approximately 50-year-old Chinese man (23),
and an approximately 50-year-old Indian man (24).
15 In interview 24, for example, the question ran as follows: “Ofte oni aŭdas en Eŭropo, precipe
ankaŭ de neesperantistoj, ke Esperanto estas, ĉar ĝi estas eŭropa aŭ ĉar ĝi estas tro eŭropeca, ke ĝi
fakte estas nur unu plia koloniisma lingvo por la ekstereŭropanoj [...] Kio estas via opinio pri tiu
sinteno?” (In Europe one can often hear, especially from non-Esperantists, that Esperanto is, as it
is European or has European character, that it is in fact only another colonial language for people
outside Europe [ . . . ] What’s your opinion about this attitude?).
16 All examples are presented in the original, without corrections or comments. Uncertain elements
are given in round brackets.

Mi persone ne kredas, ke la afero samas kiel franca, kiel angla; ne, la afero estas tute
malsama. [ . . . ] [I personally don’t think that the case is the same as French or English;
no, the case is totally different ...] (21)
[Esperanto] Estas nenies propraĵo. Do afero estas mia afero, do vi ne povas diri, ke estas via
propraĵo; estas nia propraĵo. [(Esperanto) is nobody’s property. So the thing is my thing, so
you can’t say that it is your property; it’s our property] (21)
Mi ofte sentas ke Esperanto estas sufiĉe eŭropa lingvo, sed mi ne opinias, ke ĝi estas
koloniisma. Koloniisma estas ekzemple la angla; kaj Esperanto havas iom aliajn ecojn,
(bone). Kaj en la nuna mondo ni uzas la anglan, ĉu ne, kaj ĝi estas eĉ pli forte koloniisma
ol Esperanto. Do estas iom strange ke oni kritikas, ke Esperanto estas (iel) koloniisma.
Oni devas kritiki pli koloniismajn @(lingvojn)@.17 [I often feel that Esperanto is a rather
European language, but I’m not of the opinion that it is colonialist. English, for example,
is colonialist; and Esperanto has somewhat other properties, (good). And in today’s world
we use English, don’t we, and it is much more colonialist than Esperanto. So it’s a bit
strange that one criticizes that Esperanto is (somehow) colonialist. One has to criticize more
colonialist @ languages@] (22)
In addition, a number of answers show that respondents are aware of the problem
that Esperanto might be too European:
La franca estas por la Franca, la angla estas por Usono aŭ Britio, la afero estas konata, kaj
esperanto estas nenies propraĵo. Nun ni devas ĉion fari por ke la afero estu internacia, en
ĉiuj aspektoj de la afero [French is for the French, English is for the USA and Britain, the
thing is known, and Esperanto is nobody’s property. Now we have to do everything so that
the matter be international, in all aspects of the matter.] (21)
Kaj estas mia konvinko, ke Esperanto estas la propraĵo de la mondo – eĉ se la afero estas
iniciatita de iu eŭropano, sed tio ne gravas [And it is my conviction that Esperanto is the
property of the world—even if it was initiated by a European, but this doesn’t matter.] (23)
Tio estas ofte esprimita akuzo – se tiel diri – ankaŭ en Barato. Ĉar ni estas ja postkolonia
lando, estas sufiĉe da suspektemo pri ĉiuj projektoj, aparte de la deknaŭa jarcento, pri
kiuj oni parolas aŭ propagandas nun. [ . . . ] Mi nur povas montri al geamikoj tra la tuta
mondo, neanglaparolantoj, neokcidentanoj [ . . . ] Ne temas pri plia imperiisma projekto,
[ . . . ] efektive jam de cent jaroj pli-malpli sufiĉe, pli-malpli sukcese la movado provas fari
la lingvon pli inkluzivan, pli neeŭropecan, sen perdi la facilecon de komunikado, sen perdi
ĝian bazan instrumentan flankon. [These are charges that are often brought forward—so to
say—even in India. As we are after all a postcolonial country, there is enough suspicion
about all projects, especially of the 19th century, which are spoken about or propagated
now ( . . . ) I can only show friends all over the world, who don’t speak English, who are
not from the Western world ( . . . ) We are not speaking about an imperialist project ( . . . ) in
fact, for more than 100 years the movement has tried more or less sufficiently, more or less
successfully to make the language more inclusive, more non-European without losing the
easiness of communication, without losing its basic instrumental side.] (24)
Contravening the alleged disadvantages for speakers with non-Indo-European

mother tongues is the fact that Hungarians are among the most active and competent
Esperanto speakers.18 At present, the dissemination of Esperanto is demonstrable
17 @ symbolizes laughter.
18 Herewe do not primarily refer to the growth in Esperanto speakers between 1990 and 2011
according to the Hungarian population censuses (see http://www.ksh.hu/nepszamlalas/docs/tables/
by the number of members in the respective Esperanto associations in, for example,
Brazil, China, and Japan,19 and by the dissemination of the language in Africa.20
These developments contradict the assumption that different preconditions to learn
the language hinder its further spread.
It is incontestable that Esperanto is mainly European with regard to its vocabulary
and pragmatics and that this aspect makes it differently accessible. This argument
ignores the fact, however, that all other non-regional lingue franche in use today are
European to a much higher degree. This criticism would be valid only if there were
a language without regional bias aspiring to become a global lingua franca, which
is not the case.21 Needing 12 months instead of 6 months to reach communicative
competence (see Li’s quote above) is certainly unfair from a Chinese perspective
but almost ridiculous in comparison with English. To learn English people have to
invest years of strenuous study as well as enormous financial means (e.g. for stays
abroad), and they will still communicate with difficulty and fail to produce texts as
linguistically refined as those written by native speakers, possibly leading to feelings
of inferiority (cf. Ammon and Carli 2007).
3.2 English Influences on Esperanto
In section (b) “Simplicity”, Van Parijs mentions two reasons that Esperanto will not
remain such an easy-to-learn language it is today. The first is the general tendency
of languages to develop towards shortening and irregularity:
A written formal-learning-controlled language — such as Esperanto has been, unlike natural
languages, from its birth — can be expected to be shielded against such creative adjustments
and hence less responsive to the functional pressures that prompt them. However, once
turned into a really living language — and especially once learned from childhood onward
— it can be expected to be subjected to similar pressures, with the longer, more regular
forms being gradually driven into obsolescence by the shorter and less regular ones. (Van
Parijs 2011: 43)
As Van Parijs obviously equates “a really living language” with the property
of being “learned from childhood onward”—a precondition on which we do not
agree—this first aspect will not be addressed here. The relationship between further
regional/00/00_1_1_4_2_en.xls) but, above all, to the many Hungarians in leading functions in all
parts of Esperanto culture both now and in the past.
19 Cf. the following statistics about the number of members in the concerning national
Esperanto associations, collected from the yearbooks of UEA: https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Membronombroj_de_UEA
20 See the magazine Esperanto N◦ 1290 (April 2015), a special issue on Esperanto in Africa,
especially the article “Esperanto hejmiĝas en Afriko samkiel en aliaj kontinentoj” (“Esperanto
is becoming at home in Africa in the same way as on other continents”) on p. 78, in which African
speakers compare Esperanto with colonial languages.
21 Eco (1997: 330–332) points out that any a posteriori language is inescapably biased but that the
alternatives like English are of course not less biased.

dissemination of Esperanto and the increase in native speakers is the focus of Sect.
3.3.
The second reason Esperanto will lose its simplicity is, according to sceptics,
a massive borrowing from English that will inevitably start upon Esperanto’s
application in a larger variety of fields. Van Parijs (2011: 43) points out the
following:
Secondly, if Esperanto is to be made suitable for all contexts, it will need to beef up its
lexical stock massively. Its internal resources make it possible to create an indefinite number
of words by combining roots, but these long compounds have to compete with shorter
imports from other languages, especially from those languages widely known among
Esperanto speakers. ( . . . ) Consequently, like all Western languages today, Esperanto will
massively borrow from English, possibly more than other languages because of its smaller
initial stock. Hence it will not take that long for the dictionaries of Esperanto to start looking
as bulky as those of other major contemporary languages with a slim core of Esperanto roots
that can be learned in a matter of days and a huge periphery of borrowings. (p. 43)
The English language has an enormous impact on people’s lives today, and it
has also left its mark on their respective native tongues. This influence can be
felt across all levels of the linguistic system but especially with regard to lexical
borrowing. Dictionaries of English loans have been compiled for many individual
languages and beyond (cf. Carstensen et al. 2001; Görlach 2001, 2002). English
imports are not restricted to individual words and terms, however, but include larger
units such as phraseological units like greetings, discourse markers, catchphrases,
and other types of prefabricated constructions as well as text patterns, discourse
norms, and speaker attitudes (Fiedler 2014, 2017a). On the one hand, it does not
seem probable that these developments spare Esperanto, a language whose speakers
are known for their plurilingual repertoire, but on the other hand, there are a number
of both intralinguistic and extralinguistic features peculiar to Esperanto and its
speech community that should be considered in this context as they are indicators
that Esperanto is and will be influenced by English to a considerably lesser degree
than other languages.
In our examination of how plausible Van Parijs’s prognosis of an anglicization of
Esperanto is, we will concentrate on three topics that can shed light on this process:
(1) code-switching, (2) the creation of terminology, and (3) the treatment of foreign-
language material in Esperanto translations.
3.2.1 Code-Switching
Language alternation has been intensively investigated in a number of different

fields in recent decades,22 and research has led to the dissemination of a number of
terms, including code-switching, code-mixing, code-crossing (Rampton 1998), and
code-meshing (Canagarajah 2009). We will use code-switching here as a general
22 For an overviews of the research topic, see, for example, Gross (2006), Mahootian (2006), and
Gardner-Chloros (2013).
term to refer to all types of systematic alternation between two or more languages
during oral or written discourse. Code-switching is of interest for this study as the
frequency and variety of code-switching sequences might be an indicator of the
extent to which speakers of a language are inclined to incorporate other-language
material (cf. Jones 2005; Myers-Scotton 2005).
The section is based on a study of code-switching in Esperanto that draws on
data of naturally occurring, spoken communication comprised of 38 recordings
(about 40 h) (Fiedler 2015c, cf. footnote 4). The various speech events (spontaneous
everyday conversations, panel and working group discussions, interviews and
outings) represent recent occasions in which Esperanto presents the default language
(or the unmarked choice according to Myers-Scotton 2005). The data set includes
several occurrences of intersentential code-switching, i.e. code-switching between
utterances and sentences (cf. Mahootian 2006: 512; Muysken 2000; Matras 2009:
101), as examples [1] through [3] show:
[1] Ni dankas nian ŝoforon por la klarigo. Merci, Philippe. Mi volas ( . . . ) (Lille,
29 July 2015, French speaker) [We thank our driver for the explanation.
Merci, Philippe. I would like to ( . . . )
[2] Mesdames et Messieurs, les représentants de la ville de Lille et de la région.
Altestimataj reprezentantoj de la urbo Lille kaj de la regiono (Lille, 26 July
2015, Swiss speaker) [Ladies and gentlemen, representatives of the city of Lille
and of the region]
[3] Bonvenon en Francio! (“Welcome to France”, continuing in French: The
quality of my Esperanto is not high, which is why I continue in French) (Lille,
26 July 2015 Lille, French speaker)
In [1], the tour guide during an excursion interrupts her commentary in Esperanto
to thank the bus driver, who obviously does not speak Esperanto, for some
information he gave. Her code-switch to French is caused by the change of the
addressee. Blom and Gumperz (1972) call instances that are motivated by variables
such as changes with regard to topics or interlocutors transactional or situational
code-switches. This distinguishes them from metaphorical code-switches by which
a speaker expresses his/her momentary intentions, attitudes, and emotions.
In [2], the representative of the International League of Esperanto-Speaking
Teachers ILEI at an international Esperanto congress uses a bilingual mode most
likely to express her esteem for the French hosts. In a similar way, in [3], the
Mayor of the French town of Boulogne-sur-Mer addresses the participants of the
World Esperanto Congress in Lille with a greeting in Esperanto. Switches of
this kind are frequently implemented in greetings for reasons of politeness, “to
pay attention to the interlocutor’s positive face” (Motschenbacher 2013: 69). In
these speech sequences, the use of the other language is symbolic and strictly
speaking communicatively unnecessary. As Kimura (2015) describes in his inves-
tigation of language strategies in a German-Polish border region, a few words
in the addressee’s language are already sufficient to achieve the desired effect
of successfully promoting cooperation and solidarity, and the mode is especially
appreciated in the case of asymmetrical relationships, i.e. with “small” language
such as Polish in Kimura’s study, or Esperanto in our case. Uses like these can be
observed occasionally at international Esperanto meetings.
The majority of examples in our data, however, represent intrasentential code-
switches, i.e. single words or phrases inserted into an utterance or sentence. This can
be motivated by lexical gaps, as examples [4] and [5] show. As Esperanto is used as a
secondary language, instances of code-switching in this function are not surprising.
Even fluent speakers can occasionally be found to lack a word on a specific topic or
to have problems in retrieving a lexical item that they know.
[4] nun eble mi bezonos helpon por trovi mian duan prezentaĵon, de la desktop, se
eble (Lille, 30 July 2015, English speaker)
[Now I might need some help to find my second presentation, from the
desktop, if possible]
[5] A: (on communication among youths) La homoj hodiaŭ estas eh kiel oni povas
esprimi vago?
B: pigra
A: pida, ili
B: PIGRA
A: Ili estas pigra pigraj kaj ne volas skribi kaj skribi al la estraro, sed
simple faras kaj sendas. (accompanied by the gesture of pressing a computer
key) (Havana, 21 November 2015, 11:32, Cuban speakers)
[A: (on communication among youths) People today are hmm how can we
express vago?
B: pigra
A: pida, they
B: PIGRA
A: They are pigra (= lazy) and don’t want to write and write to the board, but
simply do and send (accompanied by the gesture of pressing a computer key)]
Our analysis suggests that code-switching is not widespread in the Esperanto
community. In Table 1 we have collected some data on code-switching from
different sources. In the data set described above, 81 occurrences of code-switching
were found. This is a low number compared to data that have been obtained in other
analyses.23 Klimpfinger (2009: 353), investigating code-switching in English as a
lingua franca, identified a total of 104 code-switches in 8 speech events (12 h). A
study by Reershemius and Lange (2014) used the German data of the GeWiss project
(2009–2013) and found 305 potential language alternation phenomena in 80 h of
recorded speech.24 In an analysis of code-switching in Jersey Norman French, Jones
(2005) found 177 code-switches in 20 h of recorded speech.
23 We are aware that data obtained from different code-switching studies are not directly
comparable because of differences in design, participants, and genres.

24 GeWiss is a research project on spoken academic language. It provides a corpus of audio
recordings and transcriptions of academic communications (lectures and examinations) in German,

Polish, Italian, and English as an empirical foundation for comparative research. Cf. http://gewiss.
uni-leipzig.de.
Table 1 Number of code-switches in various sets of data

Language Hours Code-switches Code-switches/hour
GeWiss German 80 305 3.8
(Reershemius and
Lange 2014)
Klimpfinger ELF 12 104 8.67
(2009)
Jones (2005) Jersey Norman French 20 177 8.85
Fiedler (2015c) Esperanto 40 81 2.0
Code-switching in Esperanto is used in a smaller variety of functions than in

other languages. In addition to the function of expressing politeness or appealing
for assistance when searching for a word, which was described above (examples [1]
through [5]), our corpus includes sequences in which speakers code-switch in order
to provide the most appropriate term for a notion. This is sometimes the case with
administrative vocabulary that cannot be readily expressed in Esperanto. In [6], a
talk between two German speakers, it would not have been difficult for A to find an
Esperanto equivalent for Sprachenzentrum, but this would not have been as accurate
as the German term.25 Referring to Poplack (1980), Gardner-Chloros (2013: 196)
calls this mot juste switching.
[6] A: Mi instruas Esperanton ĉe la universitato. ( . . . ) La Universitato de S. havas
kurson de Esperanto por komencantoj ( . . . )
B: En kiu kadro, en kiu fakultato?
A: Estas tiu Sprachenzentrum. ( . . . ) Fakte estas amuza historio (interview
18 June 2015, 09:27)
[A : I teach Esperanto at the university. ( . . . ) The University of S. has an
Esperanto course for beginners ( . . . )
B: In which framework, in which faculty?
A: It’s this Sprachenzentrum. ( . . . ) In fact, there’s a funny story ( . . . )]
To a lesser extent, Esperanto speakers sometimes insert other-language material
to enhance the expressiveness of their speech or with the intention of evoking
humour (cf. Fiedler 2015c). Studies on code-switching in English as a lingua
franca focus on interlocutors’ use of expressions from their mother tongues that
are used with the motivation to highlight their national identity and signal their
culture (cf. Pölzl 2003; Klimpfinger 2009).26 Examples of occurrences of code-
25 Sprachenzentrum (language centre) is the term that is generally used at German universities to
designate the departments that are responsible for teaching foreign languages to students of non-
philological subjects.
26 Pölzl (2003) points out: A very straightforward way of making their cultural identity (with focus
on primary culture) salient in discourse is the use of lingua franca speakers’ ‘original voice’, i.e.
their L1. (p. 4)One way to achieve this [= to signal their individual cultural identity – S.F./C.B.] is
by the use of their L1 within ELF. This code option is profoundly linked to ELF users’ basic need
switching of this type have not been found in our data for Esperanto. Such behaviour
would be considered counterproductive in speech events held in Esperanto, where
interlocutors highlight above all their Esperanto identity.
The relatively low number of instances of code-switching in Esperanto can
be attributed to speakers’ attitudes, especially their linguistic loyalty and group
solidarity, features that have developed as a reaction to the low socio-political
position of the planned language. Esperanto speakers are motivated to show that
their language is a fully fledged means of communication that allows them to
communicate without recourse to other-language material. A switch to another
language or one’s mother tongue might be misinterpreted as a failure to retrieve
a word in Esperanto and as a sign of linguistic incompetence.
Inserting English words and phrases into one’s speech for reasons of prestige,
which can be observed to occur frequently in communication today (Onysko 2007;
Androutsopoulos 2013; Fiedler 2014), is stigmatized in Esperanto, though it would
hardly lead to misunderstanding given the typical speakers’ extensive knowledge
of foreign languages. This attitude is often reflected in a number of linguo-critical
contributions in Esperanto journals. For example, the author of the following article
criticizes code-switching as snobbishness:
Unu el miaj korespondantoj estas samideano el Budapeŝto, kiu skribas longajn leterojn en
ne malbona Esperanto, sed li havas la kutimon spici siajn epistolojn ne nur per abundo da
neologismoj, sed ankaŭ per anglaj vortoj kaj esprimoj. Jen kelkaj ekzemploj.
(1) “La unua espero estas, ke la registaroj/: the Governments:/ . . . fine rekonos kaj
ekfavoros Esperanton.”
(2) “Se paroli pri la ‘koloritaj ĝentlemanoj’/ : coloured gentlemen:/ . . .
(3) “ . . . kiel la bona olda / : the good old:/ Majstro Zamenhof . . . “
(4) “We are in the same shoes!”
(5) “Se vi estas tiome ‘punctilious’ pri la interpretado ( . . . )”( . . . )
Kial, do, la budapeŝta leterskribanto kaj tuta aro de aliaj esperantistoj havas la emon trudi
anglaĵon al siaj samideanoj ? Mi povas proponi kialon, kiu estas tre memevidenta : la
snobeco. Homo, kiu lernas fremdan lingvon volas uzi ĝin por parade montri sian ofte nur
supraĵan lingvoscion. Ŝajnas, ke hodiaŭ la angla lingvo, estante ĉe la apogeo de sia sukceso,
nutras la kulturan kaj edukan superecon de tiuj snoboj. ( . . . ) (La Brita Esperantisto majo-
aŭgusto 1980)
[One of my pen pals is a fellow thinker (= Esperanto supporter—S.F.) from Budapest who
writes long letters in an Esperanto that is not bad, but he has the habit of spicing his epistles
not only with lots of neologisms, but also with English words and expressions. Here are
some examples:
(1) “The first hope is that governments ( . . . ) finally recognise and favour Esperanto.”
(2) “When speaking about the ‘coloured gentlemen’ ( . . . )”
(3) “as the good old Master Zamenhof ( . . . )”
(4) “We are in the same shoes!”
(5) “If you are that punctilious about the interpretation ( . . . )” ( . . . )
to identify with what they consider their language, and this is in most cases –as with the individual
speakers in this data – their primary language. (p. 20)
So why is the pen pal from Budapest and a whole group of other Esperantists so inclined
to impose English stuff on their fellow thinkers? I can propose a reason which is self-
evident: snobbishness. Someone who learns a foreign language wants to use it to show off
his/her often only superficial language knowledge. It seems that today the English language,
standing at the height of its success, nourishes the cultural and educational superiority of
these snobs.]
The article illustrates the widespread disapproval of the use of other-language

material (and especially English words and phrases) that characterizes the Esperanto
speech community as it appeared in our study. Against this background the relatively
low level of code-switching sequences is unsurprising. Our findings suggest a
correlation between speakers’ attitudes and code-switching, which is consistent with
a number of studies (cf. Myers-Scotton 2005: 25; Jones 2005).
3.2.2 The Creation of New Lexis
As described in Sect. 2, there are two basic methods of word formation in Esperanto.
§ 11 of the Fundamento describes the construction of complex words by endogenous
means:
Compound words are formed by the simple junction of roots, (the principal word standing
last), which are written as a single word ( . . . ) Grammatical terminations are considered as
independent words. E.g. vapor’ŝip’o, “steamboat” is composed of the roots vapor, “steam”,
and ŝip, “a boat”, with the substantival termination o. (Zamenhof [1905]1991: 60)
§15 regulates the adoption of international words:

The so-called “foreign” words, i. e. words which the greater number of languages have
derived from the same source, undergo no change in the international language, beyond
conforming to its system of orthography. — Such is the rule with regard to primary
words, derivatives are better formed (from the primary word) according to the rules of the
international grammar, e. g. teatr’o, “theatre”, but teatr’a, “theatrical”, (not teatrical’a), etc.
(Zamenhof [1905]1991: 60)
The two methods of word formation were exemplified by the lexical units
malsanulejo and hospitalo in Sect. 2. Let us examine another pair of words to
gain more insight into the two principles and speakers’ attitudes towards them.
In a publication (Fiedler and Liu 2001), a festschrift comprising 43 articles by
authors from 19 countries, several papers dealt with computer linguistics, so that
the term corpus played an important part. It was noticeable that its Esperanto
equivalent korpuso was used mainly by European authors, who were obviously
familiar with it or a similar form from their mother tongues, whereas the endogenous
and self-explanatory tekstaro (from tekst- “text” + -ar-, a sufixoid with the meaning
“collection” + -o Noun) was especially frequent in contributions by authors from
Table 2 IT terminology in English, German, and Esperanto (cf. Nevelsteen 2012)

English German Esperanto
Provider Provider provizanto
Software Software programaro
Internet Internet Interreto
E-mail E-Mail retpoŝto/retmesaĝo
Cell phone/mobile phone Handy poŝtelefono
Browser Browser retumilo/foliumilo/TTT-legilo
Chat room Chatroom retbabilejo
Mailing list Mailingliste dissendolisto
Server Server servilo
Video projector Beamer projekciiloa
a Simplified analysis of the Esperanto terms (-o marks the noun): proviz-ant-o “the providing
one”, program-ar-o “application collection”, Inter-ret-o “between-net”, ret-poŝt/mesaĝ-o “net

mail/message”, poŝ-telefon-o “pocket telephone”, ret-um-il-o “net-doing instrument”, foli-um-il-
o “page-doing [=browse] instrument”, TTT-leg-il-o “WWW-reading instrument”, ret-babil-ej-o
“net chat place”, dis-sendo-list-o “asunder send list”, serv-il-o “serving instrument”, projekci-il-o
“projecting instrument”
Asia, to whom the Latin-derived internationalism was not of any help. Of course,
the editors of the book accepted both versions.27
In this context a closer look at IT terminology, a domain that is closely associated
with fast lexical innovation,28 can be revealing. On the one hand, as mentioned
before, there are of course influences from English that result in the use of inter-
national words, i.e. words formed according to §15 of the Fundamento grammar,
such as spamo (spam). On the other hand, a large stock of very frequent terms
from this domain has been endogenously formed. This makes them immediately
comprehensible, even for the layman (see Table 2).
As Table 2 shows, Esperanto word formation is highly productive. Other
languages, e.g. German, include many direct loans from English. These show
only minor assimilations, for example, in spelling (capitalization of nouns) and
phonology (cf. mail in English [meIl] and German [me:l]).29 In addition, pseudo-
English terms (false anglicisms) are created because of the image improvement that
English vocabulary brings about in other national languages.30
27 It is noteworthy in this context that the corpus of Esperanto (compiled by B. Wennergren in
2002/2003) has the title Tekstaro de Esperanto and not Korpuso de Esperanto.
28 Esperanto terms are collected in the project Komputeko (http://komputeko.net/index_eo.php). In
addition, the proceedings of KAEST (Konferenco pri Aplikoj de Esperanto en Scienco kaj Tekniko
“Conference on the Application of Esperanto in Science and Technology”) (http://kaest.ikso.net/)
and the scientific journal Scienca Revuo are important sources for technical terminology.
29 This often makes German speakers feel insecure as to how these words are to be pronounced.
30 Similar developments can be observed in other languages. See, for example, Furiassi’s (2010)
collection of pseudo-anglicisms in Italian and Furiassi and Gottlieb (2015).

The slashes between the Esperanto expressions indicate the existence of several
variants, which might be in competition until the speech community makes a
specific decision. An example from the past is the Esperanto word for “computer”.
After a period of time in which three terms, komputilo (komput- “compute” + -il
“instrument”), komputoro (komputor- + -o Noun), and komputero (komputer- + -o
Noun), were used simultaneously, the endogenously formed komputilo supplanted
the other two forms. At present, discussions concern the most suitable expression
for “smartphone”, with the expressions komputila telefono, saĝtelefono and simply
poŝtelefono (the usual term for “mobile/cell phone”) being in use.31 Another
version, smartfono, similar to the form that has gained acceptance in German (cf.
Smartphone), for example, is not widely accepted. Examples like these contradict
Van Parijs’s prognosis that “Esperanto will massively borrow from English, possibly
more than other languages” and that “long compounds [will] have to compete
with shorter imports” and will lose out to them. Transparency and immediate
intelligibility of terms seem to be of more relevance to speakers of Esperanto
than brevity. Because so-called international words are automatically part of the
language, as §15 of the Fundamento grammar says, Esperanto includes a large
number of words from English already and will probably do so in the future,
but definitely not more than other languages. Van Parijs’s argument about English
influence does not concern Esperanto in particular and is therefore not valid.
Another aspect that should be considered in this context, and one that has
obviously been overlooked (not only) by Van Parijs when he speaks of Esperanto
“once turned into a really living language”, is the fact that such a widespread use
of the planned language in many domains would likely coincide with a diminution
in the attractiveness of English. Why then, would Esperanto speakers be inclined to
borrow massively from this language?
3.2.3 The Treatment of Foreign-Language Material in Translations
Translation has always played an important role in Esperanto. Zamenhof and

other Esperanto pioneers translated important works of world literature soon
after the publication of the Unua Libro (e.g. Dickens’s The Battle of Life 1891,
Shakespeare’s Hamlet 1894, Gogol’s Revizor 1907, Goethes Iphigenie auf Tauris
1908, Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz 1918, [transl. by A. Grabowski]). Translations
helped to improve the expressive qualities of Esperanto. Our focus here is not on
the translation of literary texts however, as these might be, firstly, idiosyncratic
and influenced by individual authors and, secondly, peculiar in their treatment of
foreign-language material due to their fundamental aim to serve a specific artistic
31 Simplified analysis (-o marks the noun, -a the adjective): komputila telefono (“com-
puter telephone”), saĝtelefono (“clever/intelligent telephone”), and poŝtelefono (“pocket tele-

phone”). An additional version, karestelefono, interpreting the screen touching movement as
“stroking/caressing”, which is encountered from time to time, is probably rather intended to amuse
people.
Fig. 1 The proficiency level descriptors in the CEFR (English original)
expression. Elements in foreign languages can fulfil special functions in literary

works such as lending a special flavour to a text.
The text that our analysis concentrates on is presently one of the most influential
texts in foreign language teaching, the Common European Framework of Reference
for Languages (CEFR) published by the Council of Europe in 2001. As Alderson
(2007: 660) put it, “nobody engaged in language education in Europe can ignore
the existence of the CEFR”. It defines six levels of a learner’s communicative
proficiency, recognizing partial competencies in different kinds of language activi-
ties: reception (listening and reading), production (spoken and written), interaction
(spoken and written), and mediation (translating and interpreting) (from A1 to C2).
These descriptors provide a common basis for the elaboration of language curricula,
textbooks, and tests in Europe and beyond. The CEFR has been translated into 39
languages,32 and an Esperanto version was published in 2007.33
The English version, constituting the original together with the French version,
introduced the proficiency level descriptors as in Fig. 1 (Council 2001: 23):
The various translations deal with these terms in different ways. The Dutch and
German versions translate only the terms describing the user and leave the terms for
the individual levels in English (see the diagram from the German version in Fig. 2).
As these terms are frequently repeated in the CEFR, English terms permeate the
entire document.
The Esperanto version, see Fig. 3 (as well as, e.g. the Spanish and Macadonian
versions), provides a complete translation, in this way producing a text that is rather
independent from the language of drafting.
The CEFR pays much attention to phraseology. Phraseological units, such as
proverbs, expressions of folk wisdom, and communicative formulae are considered
“a significant component of the linguistic aspect of sociocultural competence” (p.
120). In chapter 5.2.2 on sociolinguistic competence, the following categories are
32 Cf. the CEFL homepage http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/education/elp/elp-reg/cefr_EN.asp [30

November 2015]
33 Cf. Komuna . . . (2007) (www.edukado.net/ekzamenoj/referenckadro)
Fig. 2 The proficiency level descriptors in the CEFR (German translation)
Fig. 3 The proficiency level descriptors in the CEFR (Esperanto translation)
described and illustrated by examples:

• Proverbs, e.g. a stich in time saves nine
• Idioms, e.g. a sprat to catch a mackerel
• Familiar quotations, e.g. a man’s a man for a’ that
• Expressions
When we compare the translations of the examples in the various languages, an

orientation to the English items becomes obvious. Not only do the various versions
present the same subtypes of phraseology, they also include phraseological units that
mirror the contents of the English examples, without considering whether these are
typical of the respective language. For instance, as regards German, the translators
have not decided on a well-known German proverb (Was du heute kannst besorgen,
das verschiebe nicht auf morgen) but on a translation of the English proverb A
stich in time . . . (see above): Gleich getan ist viel gespart.34 Further examples
exist in the translations of the CEFR into several languages (cf. Fiedler 2016). As
phraseology is the part of a language that is especially closely related to the culture
34 The expression is not included in reference books such as Duden 11 (Redewendungen) or
Röhrich’s (1991) collection.

of a speech community, these decisions strike us as disturbing. They are evidence

that the original language of a translated text is not irrelevant.35
In contrast to other translations, the Esperanto version includes examples of
phraseological units and expressions that are hardly related to the English items.
Instead they are part and parcel of Esperanto communication reflecting characteris-
tic traits of the community:
The Esperanto translation of the CEFR presents a text that is independent of

the English original both in terms of the metalanguage describing learners’ levels of
proficiency and the object language. A number of translations of scholarly work into
Esperanto in recent years reinforce the impression that the CEFR is not an isolated
case in this respect.36
Despite their limited scope, the three case studies on code-switching, creation
of new words, and translation provide valuable insights. They have shown that
the inclusion of English-language material is stigmatized and considered a failing
by the community. Esperanto speakers aim to present texts to their international
target readerships and audiences that can be understood without knowledge of other
languages. Our findings shed light on the realities of Esperanto today, i.e. its use
as an elective language by a small, heterogeneous, self-sufficient community of
highly educated people. Data on its application beyond this are rare. Where they
can be obtained they give reason to expect that changing conditions will bring about
changes in language use and attitudes (cf. Fiedler 2002: 75f.). However, predictions
about Esperanto’s future development have to start with critical assumptions based
upon the present situation, lest they consist of pure guess work. We will return to
this later.
35 The dominance of English is indisputable in this respect. While in 1997 about 45% of all
documents of the European Commission were initially drafted in English, the proportion has risen
to about 81% in 2013 (European Union 2014).
36 An example that confirms this assumption is the Esperanto version of R. Phillipson’s book
Only-English Europe? (2004), which contains lexical glosses and translations of all foreign-
language book titles and quotes. See also the reviews on the translations of N. Chomsky’s Imperial
Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World in Esperanto 4/2014 p. 90 and of Darwin’s The
Origin of Species in Monato 10/2009 p. 25.
3.3 Does the Esperanto Native Speaker Matter?
As we have seen in the previous section, Esperanto does not seem to be in

danger of becoming increasingly anglicized and irregular.37 This section addresses
Esperanto’s neutrality as an L2, i.e. as a language that has to be learned by everyone.
It is based on the supposition that a language cannot be a genuine lingua franca if
it is a native tongue for a subset of its speakers as these gain unilateral advantages
over non-native speakers (Fiedler 2010; Brosch 2015a).38 We shall examine whether
sceptics of Esperanto are correct when they argue that the existence of, and in
case of worldwide dissemination of Esperanto, the growth in the number of native
Esperanto speakers, the so-called denaskuloj,39 weakens its claims of relative
neutrality. Van Parijs (2011: 40–41) argues:
Even this far weaker claim [=the claim that Esperanto is neutral because it is a secondary
language for everybody], however needs to be qualified. First, even though the numbers
involved would not lift Esperanto out of the category of threatened languages, it is it no
longer strictly true that it is no one’s mother tongue (sic)[ . . . ]40 Secondly, if Esperanto were
to spread successfully, as its advocates hope, this would gradually cease to be a marginal
phenomenon. For Esperanto will then start being used in a growing number of contexts,
including by mixed couples in the upbringing of their children. Nothing would then prevent
it, after some generations, from thickening from a learned language for all its users into the
mother tongue of a significant proportion of them—as happened, for example, deliberately
to Hebrew in Israel, and less deliberately to Swahili in a large part of sub-Saharan Africa.
Even in this more modest sense, neutrality would then be lost again, and the whole process
of designing a neutral language would need to be relaunched from scratch.
Altogether, the existence or non-existence of native Esperanto speakers is a

topic that is, in general, controversially discussed in the literature, as Fiedler
(2015a) has shown. Many of the authors referred to in Fiedler’s survey consider
the existence of a sufficiently large number of native speakers to be a precondition
for communicative ability and expressiveness; if a language lacks native speakers,
it cannot be “natural” and efficient. This argument contradicts the position of many
other authors (e.g. Wright 2000: 246f.; Kraus 2008: 170; Fettes 2003; Christiansen
2006; Piron 2006: 2487; Li 2003; Phillipson 2003: 171–174) who highlight the fact
that Esperanto is nobody’s (only) mother tongue and has to be learned by everybody
37 Brugmann and Leskien (1907: 23–26) already predicted that Esperanto would become much less
regular as time goes by. 111 years later this still has yet to happen.
38 Strangely enough, the lack of neutrality due to the existence of native speakers is put forward
with regard to Esperanto, whereas it does not seem to be relevant in the case of English, a language
with about 400 million native speakers. On the contrary, advocates of English as a lingua franca
have recently claimed the neutrality of English (e.g. Hülmbauer 2011: 59; House 2014: 364).
39 Lit. “from-birth-person”, a shortening of denaska Esperantisto “esperantist from birth”. For the
terminology and further literature on this topic, see Fiedler (2012).

40 Here Van Parijs includes a reference to Arika Okrent’s article: “A Visit to Esperantoland” (2006),
in which she reports on meeting Kim Henderson, a Danish musician and Esperanto native speaker.
Unfortunately he disregarded other studies on this topic completely (see, e.g. Bergen 2001; Corsetti
1996; Corsetti et al. 2004; Lindstedt 2006; Sakaguchi 2006; Versteegh 1993).
as a second language as an important factor for equality in communication. Van

Parijs (2011: 40) himself points out: “( . . . ) Esperanto is neutral in a second ( . . . )
sense ( . . . ): it is the native language of nobody and would be a secondary language
for everybody.” However, he can also be quoted to represent the former opinion
when he speaks of “a natural language, that is a language for which there exists a
community of native speakers” (Van Parijs 2011: 40) and argues that “Esperanto is
hardly in a strong position to face the formidable hurdle it faces, precisely as long
as it is not the mother tongue of a significant group” (Van Parijs 2004: 121).
In the following sections, we deal with this contradiction and with the question
of whether the enormous increase in native Esperanto speakers that Van Parijs
predicts would really challenge the neutrality of the planned language. Because
the above controversial views as well as Van Parijs’s prognosis are based on the
tacit assumption that native speakers of Esperanto (i.e. the denaskuloj) have the
same status and influence as native speakers of an ethnic language, it is necessary
to start our examination with an analysis of the quantitative impact that native
speakers and denaskuloj have (Sect. 3.3.1). We will then discuss their role in
determining the norm in Esperanto (Sect. 3.3.2) and, lastly, the nature of the
advantages that denaskuloj have over people who use Esperanto as a secondary
language (Sect. 3.3.3).
As regards terminology, we will consistently use denaskulo (in plural denaskuloj)
here (see footnote 39) to refer to native Esperanto speakers, in accordance with
previous studies (Versteegh 1993; Fiedler 2012). This formal distinction has the
function of highlighting the principle difference between native speakers of an eth-
nic language, such as English, who mainly grow up in linguistically homogeneous
conditions, and children who are raised with Esperanto as a non-dominant native
language among others, such as the parent(s) language(s) and the language of their
environment.
3.3.1 The Quantitative Impact of Native Speakers and Denaskuloj
The number of denaskuloj is difficult to determine. Figures are rarely mentioned

in studies on the topic. Corsetti (1996: 265) points to there being 285 registered
families using Esperanto in January 1995. The number of 2000 denaskuloj claimed
by Corsetti et al. (2004) seems quite high, especially if we consider that for
denaskuloj, because they have several mother tongues to choose from, it is relatively
easy to give up the language when they are able to decide for themselves. This
usually occurs in adolescence, and studies show that about 50% of denaskuloj do so
(Papaloïzos 1992).
In a similar way, due to the lack of an established census, there are no reliable
data on the number of Esperanto speakers in the first place. A seminal collection
of papers on planned languages, Interlinguistics. Aspects of the science of planned
languages (Schubert 1989b), gives an impression of the broad range of estimates.
Here, one of the authors posits a number of “between 2 and 3.5 million” speakers
(Schubert 1989a, p. 157), another 500,000 (Schubert 1989a, p. 146). According to
the Ethnologue, the standard reference for living languages, Esperanto is the second
language of 2 million people, while according to membership-based statistics, the
number of Esperanto speakers amounts to only approximately 150,000 (Fettes 2003:
43). A modern approach to assessing the number of Esperanto speakers should
not ignore the major impact that the Internet has on the use of the language.41
Wandel (2015: 318) suggests an updated estimate of the number of Esperanto
speakers worldwide based on the number of people in Facebook indicating they
speak the language: “A simple calculation accompanied by reasonable refinements
leads to a number of approximately two million Esperanto users within the internet
community alone, probably significantly more worldwide.”
Comparing the high estimate of 2000 denaskuloj with the low estimate of
500,000 Esperanto speakers (Schubert et al., see above) gives a ratio of 1:250. The
number of native Esperanto speakers is insignificant, therefore, and this is yet more
pronounced when compared with English. If we take Crystal’s (2006: 424–426)
data on English prevalence to be accurate,42 then the ratio of L1 to L2 speakers for
that language is 1:3 (considering the ever-growing popularity of English as an L2
however, the ratio could perhaps surpass 1:4 in the future).
The fact that the worldwide spread of English as a lingua franca has not resulted
in a massive growth of native speakers outside of traditionally English-speaking
countries makes us sceptical that such a development would occur in the case of
Esperanto, given its widespread dissemination. On the contrary, the decision to use
Esperanto as a family language is an expression of language loyalty and speaker
identity, which is revealed by the fact that about two thirds of the denaskuloj have
parents belonging to the same nationality (Corsetti 1996: 266; Csiszar-Salomon
2009: 318). The planned language holds a high position in the values of Esperanto
speakers. They want to pass on its cultural values to the next generation, a behaviour
with parallels among other linguistic minorities that is not least of all a reaction to
underestimation from outside (Kimura 2012). Were Esperanto to disseminate widely
and become a lingua franca, these conditions—forming the basis for the education
of denaskuloj—would no longer exist. It is for the same reason that Van Parijs’s
reference to Modern Hebrew is to us unconvincing, as this language was revitalized
for the purpose of creating a national language and a means of identification.43
As we have seen, the proportion of Esperanto native speakers to L2 learners is
relatively low, especially compared with English, and there are indicators that in
case of a further dissemination of the planned language, it would decrease rather
41 Cf., for example, the addition of Esperanto to the languages in Google Translate in 2012, the
dramatic growth of the Esperanto community in social networks, number of learners subscribing
to online learning platforms (since May 2015, more than 1.6 million people started learning the
language on the internet platform Duolingo), and the development of the Esperanto Wikipedia
(with over 240,000 articles as of December 2017)
42 Crystal gives an estimation of 360–400 million L1 speakers and 1–1.1 billion L2 speakers.
43 Swahili does not seem to be a suitable comparandum either, as it is not only a lingua franca,
but, for example, in Tanzania the “national” language with a monopoly in mass media and in early
education.
than increase. We have to accept that absolute linguistic justice with regard to
nativeness is in principle neither attainable nor sustainable, as there will always
be international families using the lingua franca in the upbringing of their children.
This is as true for any language as it is for Esperanto. In terms of linguistic justice,
however, the significance of native speakers in a speech community cannot be
determined by means of quantitative aspects alone. The function and status of native
speakers must also be examined. The following section will accordingly focus on
the question of whether these are comparable for denaskuloj and native speakers of
ethnic languages.
3.3.2 Native Speakers, Denaskuloj, and the Norm
Native speakers enjoy a privileged position in ethnic languages. Having acquired

the rules of their language in the course of their primary socialization, they decide
on the basis of their intuition whether an utterance is correct or not. This is true
for native speakers as a whole. In individual cases there are differences, which are
ultimately the basis of language change.
The criterion of nativeness is widely accepted, although a number of studies
have put forward arguments in favour of a reconsideration of the concept of the
native speaker in recent years (e.g. Bonfiglio 2010: 9). Scholars within the discipline
English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) (e.g. Widdowson 1994; Jenkins 2007; Seidlhofer
2012) have stressed the alleged neutrality of English. They argue that intelligibility
is more important than native speaker prestige. As English is more often used
by non-native speakers than by native speakers, the argument goes, a type of
international English has developed that is shaped by its users and makes non-native
speakers the owners of the language. Such a development towards equality of L1
and L2 speakers and a more democratic use of English would be, in fact, desirable.
The controversial character of the debates on ELF, however, illustrates how deeply
rooted traditional ideas of the native speaker as the role model of foreign language
learning and use are. A look at editors’ style sheets, which often explicitly require
authors to have the language checked by native speakers, is telling of what reality
looks like, at least with regard to written communication.44
In Esperanto, denaskuloj do not enjoy a prestigious status in the speech com-
munity (Lindstedt 2010: 73) as they do not provide the criterion of linguistic
adequacy. It is not only their numerical disadvantage but also, perhaps above all,
the linguistic practices within the Esperanto speech community that makes their
ordinary status obvious. This can be illustrated by two examples. Firstly, while
it is common in ethnic languages to have language in publications checked by
native speakers, as described above, it would not occur to Esperanto authors to
look for a native speaker of the planned language to do proofreading. Of course,
44 For the difficulties of publishing in English encountered by non-native speakers, see Flowerdew
(2007) and Gnutzmann and Rabe (2014).

texts must be checked for correctness. For this task, however, experienced speakers
or representatives of a different mother tongue might be relevant consultants to
avoid mother tongue interference. Secondly, while native speakers are generally
considered reliable sources of information in linguistic studies, they can be ignored
in Esperantological research. As a case in point, a study on phraseology (Fiedler
1999) has shown that the phraseological knowledge that denaskuloj have does not
differ significantly from the knowledge of other fluent Esperanto speakers.
Are there important Esperanto writers among the denaskuloj? If we take ten well-
known or current authors of original Esperanto literature (all of whom were born
after the first cases of nativeness had been recorded), William Auld, Louis Beau-
caire, Marjorie Boulton, Jorge Camacho, Ertl István, Sten Johansson, Mao Zifu,
Claude Piron, Nicola Ruggiero, and Spomenka Štimec, it turns out that all of them
learned Esperanto only as adolescents or adults. Within a list of notable denasku-
loj,45 there is only one person who is known to be active in Esperanto literature,
Carlo Minnaja, a mathematician who also works as a translator and lexicographer.
A comprehensive systematic study on nativization in Esperanto is still a desider-
atum. Among the few studies that exist are Bergen (2001) and Versteegh (1993).
Bergen’s study has received considerable attention from language acquisition
scholars (see, e.g. Wray and Grace 2007). He uses a rather small sample, however,
and has been criticized by Lindstedt (2006) for a number of mistakes related to
his insufficient familiarity with Esperanto suffixes and his lack of experience with
different influences on Esperanto speakers. For example, the frequent reductions and
omissions that he finds can be attributed to the high speech rate of denaskuloj (see
Sect. 3.3.3) and missing accusative endings with L1 influences.46 Likewise, some of
Versteegh’s (1993) assertions are open to criticism. He argues that the existence of
people who acquire Esperanto as a mother tongue means that the speech community
has been creolized. This argument of a creolization of the planned language has
to be rejected as Esperanto’s function has not changed because of denaskuloj. As
Schubert (1989b: 11–12) points out, a pidgin that has turned into a creole language
is no longer used as a second language by its speakers, and the Esperanto speech
community is dominantly a second-language community.
According to our experience, denaskuloj speak ordinary Esperanto. They are not
necessarily the best speakers, although in general they speak Esperanto very well
because of their regular use of the language and active work in the community. In
45 Cf.https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listo_de_denaskaj_esperantistoj [1 December 2015]

46 An interesting finding of this kind was reported first in 2008 and again discussed in 2015 in
the mailing list for parents of denaskuloj: Two children with English resp. French as their first
native languages were reported to omit or ignore the accusative in sentences with the word order
S-V-O, but not with other word orders, even in unlikely test sentences like Viron manĝas banano
(OVS) “a man is eaten by a banana”, while no such behaviour was shown in case of a child raised
with Russian and Esperanto. This can be interpreted as an overriding of the form-based alignment
in Esperanto by the position-based interpretation of the dominant languages. This of course is
possible only in SVO sentences. Further studies with controlled and homogeneous experiments
and more participants are however necessary to confirm this explanation.
essence, they speak the language as well as their parents do; these parents might
have an accent or other idiosyncratic speech patterns, which are then passed on.
Csiszar-Salomon (2009: 318–319), a native Esperanto speaker, points out:
Laŭ mia opinio la fakton, ke Esperanto estas “bona internacia lingvo” pruvas ĝuste tio, ke
dum internaciaj aranĝoj oni ne povas rimarki la denaskajn parolantojn de la lingvo, ĉar
ankaŭ nedenaskaj lingvolernantoj povas akiri saman, aŭ eĉ pli bonan nivelon ol denaskuloj.
[In my opinion, the quality of Esperanto as a ‘good international language’ can
be especially proven by the fact that at international meetings native speakers of the
language are not noticed, because non-native speakers can acquire the same or even greater
proficiency than native speakers.] (our translation)
As denaskuloj do not hold a privileged position in the community, feelings of

insecurity or inferiority in relation to native speakers, which are reported in the use
of other languages (Flowerdew 2007; Beyene et al. 2009; Švelch 2015), are hardly
known in Esperanto. The fact that Esperanto is in general acquired as a second or
foreign language, that it has to be learned by everyone, that consequently there are
always beginners, advanced learners, and highly proficient speakers, and that every
Esperanto speaker has gathered experience in language learning are characteristics
that constitute the speech community’s culture.
An example par excellence to demonstrate the difference between the native
speaker in an ethnic language and the denaskulo is the acceptance of accents.
Studies have shown many similarities between the attitudes of native and non-native
speakers towards non-native-speaker accents in English and especially towards the
status of accents (Jenkins 2007: 156–167; Beinhoff 2013: 31–35, 42–45). Even
those who support the idea of English owned by all who use it mentioned above
try to attain a native-like accent, with Standard British and US English as the
most reputable ones. Non-native speaker accents, especially of speakers from Asia
(including India) and South America and not least of those from one’s home country,
are generally rated negatively in the status dimension. It has also become clear
that native speaker and non-native speaker listeners alike have a relatively uniform
conception of a model pronunciation of English, which is, as Beinhoff concludes,
very similar if not identical to Standard British English. This norm of pronunciation
is hardly attainable for L2 speakers of English, whose accents are seen as deficient
and entail a devaluation of speakers—with significant differences depending on
the respective L1. The privileged position of the native speaker in linguistics and
language learning seems to be in accord with the high reputation that the native
speaker of a language enjoys among the general public. Accordingly, deficient
speakers of a foreign language are a popular butt of comedy and satire.
As described in Sect. 2, an important part of Esperanto’s linguistic norms is
documented as an invariable (“netuŝebla”) written standard in the Fundamento de
Esperanto (Zamenhof [1905]1991), which invalidates the basic mechanism found
in other languages of “what the majority of native speakers uses is correct”. As
a consequence, in Esperanto the native speaker is not the owner of the language.
Denaskuloj have to obey the rules of the Fundamento, whereas L2 learners can
refer to this norm self-confidently even towards a denaskulo. The Fundamento
has a skeletal character; as for phonology it includes only vague hints as to
pronunciation, leaving much room for variation. The phoneme /r/, for instance,
according to the examples given in the Fundamento can have the different phonetic
realizations seen in French, English, or Russian. Nevertheless, experience shows
that Esperanto speakers have developed a rather homogeneous way of speaking
(cf. also Wells 1989: 17–25). This impression has recently been confirmed by a
doctoral dissertation (Bourkina 2009). The study analyses attitudes towards accents
and pronunciation norms in Esperanto. In an online survey, 131 Esperanto speakers,
mostly from Europe, listened to short sequences (about 30 s) of 25 speakers
representing 18 different mother tongues (with some of them being bilingual with
Esperanto as an additional L1). The participants seemed to have a clear idea of a
normative pronunciation—which was narrower than the Fundamento (see above)
would allow for. For example, a uvular or retroflex instead of an apical r were
commented on negatively in the commentary section. However, from our research
perspective, the most interesting finding of the study was the mediocre result of
denaskuloj. Although Esperanto was one of their L1s, denaskuloj did not stand out
among the speakers rated; they fell rather near the middle of the group.
In Bourkina’s study, those speakers were rated best whose L1 could not be
determined by respondents. This “territorial” criterion of a model pronunciation,
found in Wells (1989: 26), was confirmed by a questionnaire study conducted by
Brosch (2015b):
ĉiu devas almenaŭ provi atingi neŭtran prononcon, kiu ne malkaŝas propran denaskan
lingvon [everybody has at least to try to attain a neutral pronunciation, which doesn’t reveal
their own native language] (W6)
Other participants referred to the ideals of the Esperanto community or even

expressed a positive attitude to the existence of accents in Esperanto:
pro sia universaleco Esperanto kompreneble ne havas iun devigan akĉenton [because of its
universality Esperanto of course doesn’t have any compulsory accent] (W7)
Kaj persone mi taksas tiun akĉenton tre ĉarma. :) [And, personally, I find this accent
very charming] (W1)
Mi ŝatas akĉenton de poloj. Kiam mi unue aŭdis prononcon de Esperanto en mia
lernolibro, ĝi estis elparolita de pola virino; ĝi allogis min. [I like the accent of Poles. When
I first heard the pronunciation of Esperanto in my textbook, it was pronounced by a Polish
woman; it attracted me.] (W8)
Opinions like these are rare with regard to non-native speaker accents of English,
as the studies mentioned above report. They are an empirical verification that in
Esperanto denaskuloj cannot be recognized by their accents and that it is definitely
not the denaskulo that decides on a target norm in pronunciation.
3.3.3 Advantages Enjoyed by the Denaskuloj
As we have seen, Esperanto denaskuloj are not comparable to native speakers of

ethnic languages, e.g. English, with regard to the influence they can (or in fact
cannot) exert on the L2 speakers of the respective language. Nevertheless, those
50% of denaskuloj who stay active in the community do at least have a head-start.
Similar to native speakers of ethnic languages, they have achieved fluent language
proficiency easily without investing the time and effort that L2 speakers, i.e. average
Esperanto speakers, must spend in order to achieve the same result. In general,
denaskuloj speak faster and react more spontaneously.47
The degree of unfairness is, however, considerably lower than in the case
of ethnic languages for two reasons. Firstly, as described above, a native-like
proficiency can be acquired in Esperanto relatively quickly. There are no sounds or
structures (e.g. tones) in this language the production of which must be acquired in
early childhood. Esperanto can be learned successfully by adults (Sakaguchi 2006:
143). Although there are still no reliable data on this,48 anecdotal evidence suggests
that the advantages of denaskuloj can be compensated for within months instead of
decades of learning.49
Secondly, the denaskuloj do not receive their formal education in this mother
tongue, as this is provided in the language of their environment.50 Their language
proficiency depends on their parents’ proficiency. Very often it is only one parent
who passes the language on.51 Denaskuloj might be fluent speakers, but depending
on their parents’ activity and interest, they may lack important background knowl-
edge about the history and culture of the speech community. This knowledge is
important for successful communication and must therefore be acquired afterwards
(see Fiedler 2012: 75). In contrast, native speakers of ethnic languages such as
English usually grow up in monolingual surroundings and receive their complete
education and socialization in this language.
Because effort required for language acquisition for denaskuloj is lower, they do
enjoy an advantage, but it is limited in nature. Being a denaskulo is not an advantage
at an institutional level as L2 speakers can easily catch up with or even outperform
them.
This fact, the limited number of the denaskuloj, the fact that for denaskuloj
Esperanto is only one mother tongue among others and, above all, the evidence
that—in contrast to the situation in ethnic languages—their use of Esperanto is not
norm-providing are all aspects that must be considered in any adequate description
47 This aspect was not explicitly discussed by Fiedler (2012) and needs further backing.
48 See however the overview of investigations on the topic related to the project Springboard
(Tellier 2012).
49 As Van Parijs (2011: 42) has put it: “the difference the choice of Esperanto would make in terms
of fairness has far less to do with making journeys to proficiency in the lingua franca more equal
than with making them much shorter”.
50 The situation can be compared with people who acquire their additional mother tongue in a
diaspora (such as the children of Polish migrant workers in Great Britain). In the case of Esperanto,
contact with peers is even more restricted. In a multilingual city such as Berlin, for example, there
are presently only two families with small children who are denaskuloj, whereas there are Polish
and Hebrew day care centres.
51 As the title of Corsetti’s (1996) paper reveals, it is fathers, above all, who speak Esperanto with
their children.
of native Esperanto speakers. Van Parijs’s prediction does not take them into
account and is therefore not based on a correct evaluation of the present role of the
Esperanto denaskulo. This makes his prognosis that Esperanto, given its widespread
dissemination, will develop “from a learned language for all its users into the mother
tongue of a significant proportion of them” and therefore lose its neutral and fair
character hardly reliable. If being a native speaker of Esperanto does not bear major
advantages, as we have seen it doesn’t, such a supposition is unfounded.
4 Conclusion
Analyses of Esperanto have recently included prognoses for the case of the
language’s worldwide adoption. An example is Philippe Van Parijs’s (2011: 39–
46) criticism. He downplays Esperanto’s neutrality, simplicity, and the fair and
democratic character of the communication due to these features, predicting their
disappearance in case the planned language is ever used in more domains and by
significantly larger numbers of people. This article has addressed three criticisms
levelled by Esperanto’s sceptics at the idea of Esperanto as an option for linguistic
justice. These are, firstly, Esperanto’s eurocentric character, secondly, the prognosis
of a massive influx of English vocabulary, and, thirdly, the prediction of an enormous
growth in the number of native Esperanto speakers.
There is no denying the fact that Esperanto—especially as regards its
vocabulary—is a European language and therefore not totally fair. Owing to its
autonomous word formation and flexible word order, however, it can be acquired
more easily and much more quickly than an ethnic language even by non-European
learners, as surveys show. A language that guarantees equal access in every way
does not seem to be feasible. More importantly, the focus on the origin and character
of the language disguises the fact that languages become means of international
communication not because of intralinguistic features, but rather because of power
constellations. These of course do not only include military and economic strength
but also the sheer quantity of speakers (“critical mass”) and soft power aspects like
the promise of modernization associated with English today (Bruthiaux 2002).
As for the second argument, the assumption of a growing anglicization of
Esperanto, data on code-switching, terminology planning, and experience from
translation reveal that speakers’ attitudes, including their group identity and sol-
idarity expressed by high degrees of language loyalty and highly developed
communicative awareness, have a bearing on the use and development of the
planned language. The findings suggest that the extent to which English exerts
influence on Esperanto is lower than for other languages.
Concerning the third argument, nativization, it has been shown that the status of
native Esperanto speakers cannot be equated with the status of native speakers of an
ethnic language. This is due to their limited number and the fact that Esperanto is
never a speaker’s single mother tongue and, above all, because native Esperanto
speakers do not decide on the standard of the language. The Esperanto speech
community is a community of second language speakers whose language use

represents the default case and the basis of linguistic development; nativization is an
exception. L2 speakers of Esperanto use the language self-confidently and creatively
on the basis of its norms and their experience in communication. The point of
departure for productive language use in Esperanto is therefore the Fundamento
de Esperanto and not, as is so often the case in ethnic languages, the question of
how a native speaker would express a certain idea in a particular situation.
We are aware that our findings reflect the way Esperanto is used today, in
the conditions of “a voluntary, non-ethnic, non-territorial speech community”, as
Wood (1979) once described its speakers, whereas Van Parijs and other sceptics’
objections refer to its potential wider adoption in the future. It is questionable
whether his prognoses are more than pure guesswork, however. Bruthiaux (2003: 9–
10), who himself made negative predictions about the development of the linguistic
structure of Esperanto (see above), in his discussion on the position of English as a
global language, points out:
[ . . . ] extrapolating from past developments in order to answer this question is unlikely
to help because [ . . . ] the dominance of English is partly a novel phenomenon in that no
language of wider communication has ever been shared by a group of speakers of such size
[ . . . ] The former role of Latin, for one, is unlikely to provide reliable pointers for several
reasons: first, because few records exist of the diffusion and vernacular use of the language
at the time; secondly, because little of the modern paraphernalia of institutional language
planning tools with which to influence the development and use of a language existed; and,
finally, because the language served as a tool for wider communication only for a small elite,
a situation that contrasts with the wider ownership of the language that now characterizes
English worldwide.
If reliable statements cannot be made about the future role of a language such
as English, predictions about the role and development of a planned language—and
one representing the unprecedented phenomenon of a consciously created project
that has become a fully fledged language in active use for more than 130 years—
seem to be entirely impossible.
Examining the present sociolinguistic realities of Esperanto, our study has pro-
vided evidence of a number of differences between Esperanto and ethnic languages,
such as English, used as a lingua franca. To gain insight into these differences,
profound knowledge of the planned language and its use in the speech community
is indispensable. Predictions made on the basis of our general knowledge of the
development of other languages can be misleading.
Acknowledgements The research leading to these results has received funding from the European
Community’s Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement No. 613344 (Project
MIME).
We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and to the editors of this volume for valuable
comments and suggestions.
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Index
A equality in, 126-134, 420-422, 499-506,

Ability, 16, 17, 155, 193–200, 211 523
Agency, 181–183, 185 interlingual, 126-134, 259-285, 499-506
Antwerp, 459, 465–470 international, 120-124, 216
Asymmetric, 15, 262, 266, 313, 331, 333, 403, in markets, 287-292, 306-307, 316-322,
413–415 330-331, 420-422
Community interpreting and translating,
465–471
B Compensation payment, 15, 46
Belgium, 95, 96, 102, 111, 266, 458–461 Consumer surplus, 32
Benefits, 10–12, 14, 22, 25–26, 32–35, 37, Core language, 350
45–47, 91–93, 110, 112, 114–117, Cost-benefit analysis, 12, 37, 48, 116, 235,
133, 154, 156, 158, 161, 166, 239–257
168, 169, 185, 234–243, 250–254, Cost-effectiveness analysis, 9, 37, 46
256, 259–285, 292, 421–422, 471, Costs
508 average, 27, 39, 247
Bilingualism, 80, 99, 109, 112, 124, 137, 266, embedded, 248–250
366, 418–419, 431, 441–443 explicit, 239, 243–245
fixed, 27, 33, 40, 249–250, 255, 292
marginal, 27, 239, 243
C opportunity, 38
Canada, 109, 111, 135, 180, 215, 233–257 simulated, 239–240, 245–250
Catalan, 85, 87, 88, 94, 95, 102, 108, 111, structure, 39–43, 51
112, 120, 123, 124, 181, 259–285, variable, 27, 38
324 Council of Europe, 135, 337, 394,
Citizenship, 78, 95, 97, 108, 155, 162, 189, 401, 419
204, 455, 460, 463–464, 479 Critical-mass rule, 43–44, 50
Code distribution, 370, 373
Coercion theory, 160–162, 165
Communication, 13–16, 22, 85, 91–100,
107–109, 111–116, 120–124, D
126–134, 181, 186, 204, 216, Decision criteria, 9, 43
244–245, 259–285, 287–292, Decision rule, 9, 43–44
306–307, 316–322, 330–331, 338, Demographic weight, 338, 341
365, 380, 420–422, 499–506, 523 Diglossia, 94, 166, 366

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1
538 Index
Dilalia, 366 External effect, see Externality

Disenfranchisement, 48, 112, 212, 313–333, Externality
342 negative, 23–25, 27
Distribution, 10–13, 24, 29, 30, 44, 46–48, 97, network, 25, 168, 169, 192, 265
104–107, 113, 137, 154, 158, 162, positive, 21, 265
167, 175, 178, 267, 288, 321, 325,
344–347, 351–352, 355, 395, 397,
411 F
Diversity Fairness, see Justice
ethnolinguistic, 288–289, 395–399 Federal structure, 49–51
linguistic, 7–9, 27, 83, 89–90, 101, Flanders, 102, 458–472
103–105, 114, 123, 195, 287–289, Foreign-language education, 317, 325
292–308 Free-riding, 30, 90, 169
super, 455–473 Friulian, 372
Dividing commonalities, 177–180
G
E Good
Education collective, 23–31
minority, 119, 405 (see also exclusion, 23, 29
Language/minority) individual, 23–25, 29, 33
Educational context, 480, 482–486 merit, 35–36
Efficiency, 9–13, 24, 46–49, 83, 85, 98, 117, non-rival, 39–41, 43
264–265, 268, 287, 435 non-spatial, 39–41, 43, 44
Efficient allocation, 7, 11 rival, 39–43
English, 25, 88–101, 115–116, 122, 128–131, shielding, 23–24
201, 209–227, 235–257, 266, 326, spatial, 39–43
331–333, 337–341, 345, 347–353, Gross domestic product (GDP), 88, 293, 300
355, 356, 365–366, 484, 510–511, Gross national income (GNI), 288, 293–307
525, 531
in Canada, 235-257
in the European Union, 88-101, 209-227, H
331-333, 337-341, 345, 347-353, Human capital, 17–20, 25, 111, 287–309
355-356 Human Development Index (HDI), 293–296,
as lingua franca, 201, 525, 531 299–300
Equity, 11–13, 46–47, 261, 268 Hungarian, 393–426, 433–434, 440–447
Equivalence principle, 11
Esperanto, 96–99, 112, 126–134, 499–531
European Charter for Regional and Minority I
Languages, 401, 419 Institution, 43, 45, 72–73, 113, 123, 124, 127,
European Network to Promote Linguistic 137, 153–167, 189–204, 338–343,
Diversity, 7 353, 372, 382, 419, 431–433
European Union (EU) multilingual, 403–409
Court of Justice, 225, 339 Integration, 70–72, 77, 177–178, 189–205,
European Commission, 210, 225, 227 216–227, 314, 321, 324–326, 386,
European Union External Action, 339 457–473, 478–494
institutions, 127, 332, 338–343, 353 Intensity of Local Language Use in
treaties, 56, 217–218, 323–324, 338–343 Education (ILLED), 288–289,
Evaluation, 7–12, 20, 32–38, 44–49, 190–194, 295–309
256, 313, 332, 343–344, 353, 484 International Association of Language
Exclusion, 136, 195, 201, 212–215, 226, 262, Commissioners, 7
318, 326, 381 International organization, 70, 337–338
External communication, 338, 341, 446 International planned language, 126
Index 539
International Trade Union Confederation regime, 72, 94, 115, 135, 201–202,
(ITUC), 337 212–214, 292, 313, 317–323,
326–327, 332, 337–344, 348–354
rights, 46, 48, 50, 67, 71–76, 78–82, 87,
J 90, 97, 106, 112, 113, 119, 126,
Justice 133–137, 154, 155, 161, 189, 191,
background, 162–166 200–205, 234, 237, 239, 257, 320,
cooperative, 92–93, 177–178, 180 400, 401, 404, 434,
distributive, 11, 153–154, 158, 321 skills, 18, 20, 111, 190–204, 209–215,
as egalitarian liberalism, 52 218–224, 259–285, 314–320,
as equal recognition, 103 322–326, 340, 384, 414, 415, 434,
as fair opportunity, 164 436, 494
as freedom, 71, 74, 77, 123, 168 status, 98, 259, 266, 289–291
linguistic test, 190–203, 482–484, 489–491
narrow approach, 153, 155–156, value of, 16–22, 116, 123, 201–205, 216,
160–169 291, 365–366, 432, 436–438, 442,
wide approach, 153, 155, 161, 169–170 447
site of, 158–160 working, 116, 225, 317, 337–359
social, 83, 108, 159, 160, 179, 180, 201 Language planning
sociolinguistic, 57, 363–389 acquisition, 31, 157, 313, 315, 318,
322–327, 331–333
measure, 31, 37–38, 43, 45
L status, 33, 110–111
Labor market, 18, 25, 35, 112, 290, 493 Language policy, 3–52, 66–67, 70–77, 79,
Labor mobility, 6, 313–333 81, 83, 85–90, 96, 101–105, 112,
Laisser-faire, 5, 9, 14 116, 120, 127, 135, 154, 156,
Language 165, 234–235, 259–285, 288, 289,
activism, 419, 425 291–293, 298, 299, 305–308, 313,
commissioner, 7 315, 323–329, 341–343, 359, 381,
economics, 6, 110, 479 433, 456, 457, 481
foreign, 6, 17, 112, 122, 129, 210–213, category, 43
218–225, 314–319, 323–327, Language-related good, 18, 22–32
330–359, 364, 374, 381, 414, 433, Lingua franca, 27, 30, 31, 69, 90–100, 111,
438, 440, 463, 484, 499, 501, 505, 117, 126–129, 136, 186, 200–201,
514–516, 518–521, 525, 527 210–215, 291, 317, 326, 331–332,
migrant, 480 384, 499–506
minority, 13–14, 21, 24, 29–31, 34–37, Linguistic disenfranchisement, 212, 313–333
44, 72–78, 80–82, 84–86, 111–113, Linguistic environment, 17–20, 26–28, 32, 33,
166–167, 190, 195, 202, 234–257, 153–157, 161–170, 179, 323, 363
261, 265–266, 291, 308–309, 324, Linguistic gap, 348, 376–379
325, 394, 400, 419–420, 433–435 Linguistic governance, 134, 136–137
national, 95–97, 99, 106, 112, 130, 131, Linguistic injustice, see Justice
189, 217, 320–327, 331, 375, 379, Linguistic insecurity, 367, 481
435, 455, 481 Linguistic minority, 13, 36, 82, 87, 104,
official, 21, 46–50, 68, 77, 82, 94, 101–102, 233–257, 261, 324, see also
115, 189, 192, 199–200, 212, Language, minority
216–217, 234–239, 253–254, Linguistic norm, 527
288–293, 308, 313–314, 317–327, Linguistic outcome, 32, 155, 161, 165, 166,
330–332, 337, 339–340, 400, 402, 170
433, 441, 460, 463 Linguistic repertoire, 13, 17–20, 32, 33, 107,
practice, 456, 461–462 178, 365–366, 383, 386–388, 491
procedural, 339, 348, 349, 353 Linguistic unease, 367, 368, 376–381
540 Index
M R
Market failure, 9, 10, 26, 93 Redistribution, 30, 31, 47, 48, 105, 339–340
Migration, 50, 104, 121, 180, 189–205, 262,
313–333, 384, 457, 479–480, 484
Mobility, 6, 26, 81, 89, 313–333, 364, 381–388 S
Monolingualism, 72, 73, 75, 80, 92, 105, 119, School delay, 472
460, 465, 481, 483 Scitovsky paradox, 35
Motility, 364 Self-respect, 84, 167, 170, 202
Multilingualism Social capital, 15, 17–20, 24, 422
individual, 27 Social value, 27
societal, 27, 155, 162, 381 Staff regulation, 343, 345
Statistical analysis, 337–354
Statistical distribution, 344–345
N Status effect, 34–36
Nationalism, 87, 194–195, 203 Subsidiarity principle, 115, 121
Neutrality, 98, 128, 130, 193, 195, 500, 501,
507, 522, 525
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), T
337 Territoriality principle, 68, 90–91, 322–323,
326, 393, 416, 460, 499
Trade-off between efficiency and equity, 11,
O 48
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Transfer payment, 12, 243, 249
Development (OECD), 337 Translation
belief, 457, 465
management,457–458, 462–465
P non, 463–465, 470–472
Pareto efficiency, 11–12, 46, 98 policy, 200, 457, 462
potential, 11–12, 46 practice, 457, 465
Pareto improvement, 11–13, 98 Transylvania, 393–426
Parity of esteem, 93, 167, 201–204
Path dependency, 32
Percentage rule, 44, 50 U
Personality principle, 78, 234, 393–395 Uncertainty
Policy analysis, see Policy evaluation and hope, 183
Policy evaluation and hopeful cooperation, 186
first-best, 31, 46 and predictions, 275–282
second-best, 37–38 Unemployment, 387
Policy maker, 5, 7, 11, 12, 37, 43, 49, 482 United Nations (UNO), 337, 505
Political competence, 195, 197–204
Political theory, 70, 81–82, 88, 89, 154,
156–158, 174–176, 183, 185, 191 V
adaptive, 176, 185 Voluntary interaction, 24
Production process
external, 17
internal, 17 W
Propensity to pay, 30–34, 37, 49 Well-being, 97, 98, 168, 169, 287–309
Public economics, 9, 10, 24, 32, 44 Willingness to pay, see Propensity to pay
Public policy, 10, 18, 23, 134, 135 World Trade Organization (WTO), 337
Public service, 27, 109, 403, 466 Wunschsprachen, 370, 371

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Language Policy and

ISBN 978-3-319-75261-7 ISBN 978-3-319-75263-1 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018946648

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018

Printed on acid-free paper

Part I Introduction and Overview of Literature

Part II Political and Philosophical Perspectives

Part III Economic Approaches to Language Policy and Linguistic

Languages, Human Capital, and Well-Being in Sub-Saharan Africa .. . . . . 287

Part IV Sociolinguistic Views and Applications

Bengt-Arne Wickström, Torsten Templin, and Michele Gazzola

1 Setting the Stage: Why We Need More Economics

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 3

from a positive and a normative perspective. Particular importance is given to

1 Foran overview, see Vaillancourt (1983) and Grin (2003).

First, a certain level of involvement of the State in the linguistic environment is

Another example is provided by a “Position Statement” of the British Academy

Knowledge of quintessentially economic concepts such as “competitiveness”

Labour Mobility in Europe”).

raphy is provided by Gazzola et al. (2016).

of LPP, see Jernudd and Nekvapil (2012).

see, among others, Gee and Handford (2012).

Although this book aims at giving attention to the importance of an approach

as May and Hornberger (2008).

1.1 Economic Concepts and Language Policy

In the tradition of Western liberalism, any public or collective interference in the

consequences. Common examples are environmental problems or monopolistic structures. The

See also Ng (2004).

discussed in some detail in Sect. 4.

1.2 An Illustrative Example

(2016) for references.

freely chooses how to educate their own offspring.

language dynamics, see Sect. 4.3.

(1993) or Dalmazzone (1999) as well as the discussion in Sect. 3.2 below.

is unfair because of the asymmetric communication situation, even if the learning

1.3 A Vade Nobiscum Through This Chapter

general government budget, to which everyone contributes in a fashion that is independent of

both desirable and undesirable distributional implications. For an evaluation of

2 The Economic Value of Language

Language per se as a collection of utterances and rules describing how to combine

2.1 Language, Abilities, Human, and Social Capital

to communicate easily with other individuals certainly belongs to social capital,

Table 1 Determination of language-related individual preferences

Table 2 Determination of language-related individual productivity

2.2 A Classification of the Economic Value of Language

In addition to most people agreeing that learning languages is a worthwhile activity

Table 3 Consumption values attached to languages

Table 4 Production values Value structure II

traditional economic division between tastes, Table 3, and productive abilities,

are clear examples of autocentric values. Language as a determinant of a person’s

3 Language-Related Goods and the Justification

In an economic analysis, the benefits of a certain policy have to be traced to

Table 5 Classification of Dimension Individual Collective

allocation. From a distributional perspective, there can also be a justification for

3.1 Language-Related Individual Goods

and many more. This does not—generally—justify a public policy in favor of

3.2 Network and Other Externalities

The concept “externality” designates degrees of rivalry of goods whose consump-

knowledge of the potential migrants. The compulsory teaching of many different

3.3 Language-Related Collective Goods

Collective goods are rarely provided through individual initiatives. Intermediate

as seeing bilingual advertisement posters, listening to radio programs in different