Language and Minority Rights: Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Politics of Language

The second edition addresses new theoretical and empirical developments since its initial publication, including the burgeoning influence of globalization and the relentless rise of English as the current world language. May’s broad position, however, remains largely unchanged. He argues that the causes of many of the language-based conflicts in the world today still lie with the nation-state and its preoccupation with establishing a 'common' language and culture via mass education. The solution, he suggests, is to rethink nation-states in more culturally and linguistically plural ways while avoiding, at the same time, essentializing the language-identity link. This edition, like the first, adopts a wide interdisciplinary framework, drawing on sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, sociology, political theory, education and law. It also includes new discussions of cosmopolitanism, globalization, the role of English, and language and mobility, highlighting the ongoing difficulties faced by minority language speakers in the world today.

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

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

Review :
"This is a very important book and should be required reading for students, scholars, policy makers and others interested in linguistic pluralism." - CHOICE