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Language rights in historical andcontemporary perspectivePaul Bruthiaux aa Asian University , Chonburi, ThailandPublished online: 27 Jan 2009.

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Language rights in historical and contemporary perspective

Paul Bruthiaux*

Asian University, Chonburi, Thailand

(Received 29 May 2008; final version received 20 August 2008)

This paper presents a reconceptualisation of language rights, drawing onhistorical sources and contemporary practice. It shows that early advocates ofrights saw these as limits on the state’s ability to deprive citizens of basic liberties.Only later did the concept come to include the requirement that the state beproactive in providing selected groups with specific assistance, including in areassuch as language use and language education. The paper challenges the view thatlanguage rights constitute entitlements based in moral imperatives, to be providedby a proactive state regardless of cost. It further argues against the very concept oflanguage rights by suggesting that language-related assistance is qualitativelyequivalent to other aspects of social policy aiming at promoting the public goodthrough systematic evaluation of costs and benefits. From this perspective, ‘rights’are in fact claims on public resources, to be negotiated along with all other claims.While the pursuit of language rights often stems from moral outrage in the face ofexclusion and inequity, exclusive reliance on morality at the expense of systematicassessment of costs and benefits risks making current conceptualisations oflanguage rights irrelevant to policymakers.

Keywords: language rights; mother tongue education; language minorities;language policy; economic development

Introduction

On those all too frequent occasions when a shooting results in random deaths in a

public space such as a campus or a shopping mall in the US, public and private

comments and reactions range from statements of faith in the power of prayer to deal

with tragedies of this type to anguished musings on some possible causes for them.

At some point, all reactions refer back to the much-quoted Second Amendment to

the US Constitution, which reads:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of thePeople to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Whether this statement should be interpreted broadly as guaranteeing private gun

ownership under any circumstances or narrowly as linked to a ban on the federal

government disbanding citizens’ militias of the sort that fought British troops in the

early days of the American Revolution, in one respect at least, the wording is clear: in

the eyes of the Founding Fathers, a ‘right’ meant a legal guarantee that citizens could

count on being protected from unwelcome interference in their affairs by the state.1

*Email: bruthiaux@gmail.com

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Vol. 30, No. 1, February 2009, 73�85

ISSN 0143-4632 print/ISSN 1747-7557 online

# 2009 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/01434630802510139

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As the opening sentence of the Bill of Rights, appended to the US Constitution in

1791, makes clear:

. . .further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added in order to preventmisconstruction or abuse of (the government’s) powers.

The document goes on to ban government restrictions on freedom of speech,

religion, and assembly, and on the ability of citizens to petition for redress. The

document also offers legal protection against government abuse of its powers to

search and seize, incriminate, and punish.

Rights and the state in historical context

May (2005) rightly notes the limitations of a ‘presentist’ approach to language rights,

and by implication (I presume) of a ‘presentist’ approach to rights in general.

Looking back, therefore, we need to see the Founding Fathers themselves as part of

an English intellectual tradition that predates the Enlightenment by at least a century

in seeking to shield citizens � at least those citizens who enjoyed access to anything

worth shielding � from capricious intrusion by the state (Hill 1996). To many, it

seems, the state was little more than an institutionalised protection racket, to be

circumvented or appeased until its abuses became unbearable or, as Hill argues, those

abuses began to impinge on the growth of property-owning capitalism. In

seventeenth century England, sources of abuse included the notoriously corrupt

church courts, distinct from � and often in conflict with � the common-law courts,

and charged by tradition with enforcing rules not only on religious belief and

practices but also on social behaviour, as in the ban on working on a holiday and,

more ominously, on vague crimes such as conspiracy against the government. With

no presumption of innocence until proved guilty and with benefit of clergy widely

abused by the privileged (including those relatively few who could read), these courts

routinely abused their power to excommunicate those it found guilty, resulting not

only in anguish over the risk of eternal damnation but more immediately in the

crippling inability to engage in trade, be employed, sue or give evidence in a court of

law, recover debts, give bail, or give or receive a legacy. Although the rulings of the

church courts were often ignored by compassionate sheriffs, they attracted the ire of

early advocates of what would later become known as ‘rights’, among them poet and

civil servant John Milton (1641, cited in Hill 1996), who excoriated the courts for:

. . .their extortions, their open corruptions, the multitude of hungry and ravenous harpiesthat swarm about their offices, . . .their trade being, by the same alchemy that the Popeuses, to extract heaps of gold and silver out of the drossy bullion of the people’s sins . . .

In asking, rhetorically:

What stirs the Englishmen . . .sooner to rebellion, than violent and heavy hands upontheir goods and purses? (194)

Milton gives voice to a widespread view of the state as a repressive and exploitative

force, to be resisted or at least ignored whenever possible.

A century and a half later, this view of the state as a largely burdensome institution

motivated radical thinkers such as the English writer and politician John Wilkes (Cash

2006). To the popular cry of ‘Wilkes and liberty’ and the (contemporary, and very

American) ‘No justice, no peace’, Wilkes was instrumental in bringing about a ban on

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the practice of issuing ‘general warrants’, on the strength of which a political opponent

could be arrested for the vaguest of reasons (as Wilkes himself was in 1763), giving the

King’s emissaries ample time to search his house for incriminating evidence, invariably

leading to further deprivation of liberty. In 1772 Wilkes also began to argue for the right

to resist ‘impressment’, or being forcibly enlisted in the King’s army or navy (Hill 1996).

By century’s end and on both sides of the Atlantic, ‘rights’ were thus understood as

concerned with the preservation of ‘liberty’ through legally enforceable statements of

what the state should not do.

The notion that the fundamental liberties of citizens should be protected from

systematic abuse by agents of the state remained central to the twentieth century

concept of ‘human’ rights. Grounded in the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials of 1945, the

concept marked a turning point in that it constituted the first concerted challenge to

the pre-eminence of the nation-state and its absolute right to shelter from

international scrutiny as it deals with its citizens in any way it chooses within its

own territory (de Varennes 2001; Wright 2001). Here too, the emphasis was still on

spelling out what the state should not do, as in prohibitions on forcing prisoners of

war into unpaid work, using torture to extract information or confessions, arbitrarilyseizing land to which individuals or groups have formal or informal title, or, more

recently, discriminating in the workplace against specific groups or individuals on the

basis of gender or sexual orientation.

Although the provision of these rights and their benefits presupposes a relatively

passive state, the process is rarely cost-free. As in all matters involving social

relations, disputes sooner or later arise and a legal machinery must be put into place

to enable enforcement, arbitration, and, if necessary, prosecution. Few today would

argue that the process should not involve public institutions or that costs should not

be shared by all in some equitable manner. Indeed, calls for the state to be not merely

an arbiter but also a provider are not entirely new. As the enclosure of common land

gathered pace in sixteenth century England as part of what was to become an

agricultural revolution, the state responded to the extreme social dislocation and

hardship enclosures were causing by requiring in 1552 that parishes register those

considered poor, and through the ‘Poor Law’ of 1601 that they provide minimally for

their welfare (Hill 1996). However, resistance by parishes to having to bear this cost

led to further expulsions of unsettled populations beyond parish limits and the

creation of a semi-permanent vagrant class complete with its own folk culture,narratives, and related professions including itinerant labourers, artisans, and

performers.

From ‘negative’ to ‘positive’ rights

A view of rights, whether constitutional, civil, or human, as essentially concerned

with protection from unwelcome interference by the state in the affairs of individuals

and groups is echoed in the literature on language rights. In this growing body of

work, rights of this type, labelled ‘negative’, are seen as markers of an earlier age in

which the state confined itself to the role of arbiter, not initiator, and even less a

provider. These rights are routinely contrasted with ‘positive’ rights, or legally

enforceable statements of what a proactive state should do (see, for example,

Blommaert 2005; Skutnabb-Kangas 2000, 2001).2 More rarely, this includes therequirement that the provision of rights, and in particular of language rights, achieve

intended results (Grin 2005).

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Soon, of course, individuals and groups learn to request just the mix of

intervention and non-intervention on the part of the state that serves their interests,

and an acceptable point of equilibrium between the two becomes a negotiable issue (a

point to which I return later). A classic case is the vociferous insistence by a majority

of Americans that the US government enforce what they see as their constitutional

right to bear arms while protecting them from the often lethal consequences of

enjoying (if that is the word) that right.

This self-interested ambivalence is not particularly new. In his trenchant

comments on eighteenth century values and practices, Smollett (1766/1981), a close

contemporary of Adam Smith, misses few opportunities to inveigh against the

monopolistic tendencies of the powerful in France and Italy and the debilitating

burden this places on potential prosperity at all levels of society:

The truth is, the nobility of Genoa, who are all merchants, from a low, selfish, andabsurd policy, take all methods to keep their subjects of the Riviera in poverty anddependence. With this view, they carefully avoid all steps towards rendering that countryaccessible by land; and at the same time discourage their trade by sea, lest it shouldinterfere with the commerce of their capital, in which they themselves are personallyconcerned. (196)3

Yet when it suits him, even this articulate advocate of free trade recognises the need

for a benevolent state to intervene in specific areas of economic and public life, to the

benefit of persons such as himself and inevitably at some cost to the community. In

many cases, Smollett has the wellbeing of the whole of society at heart:

The highways (of France) seem to be perfectly safe. We did not find that any robberieswere ever committed, although we did not see one of the marechaussee from Paris toLyons. You know the marechaussee are a body of troopers well mounted, maintained inFrance as safe-guards to the public roads. It is a reproach upon England that some suchpatrol is not appointed for the protection of travellers. (68)

At times, however, Smollett’s self-serving calls for state protection would be music to

the ears of any twenty-first century lobbyist:

I have mentioned the prices of almost all the articles in house-keeping, as they are paidby the English (at Nice) . . .I am certain the natives do not pay so much by thirty per cent.Their imposition on us, is not only a proof of their own villany and hatred, but a scandalon their government; which ought to interfere in favour of the subjects of a nation(Britain), to which they are so much bound in point of policy, as well as gratitude. (163)

‘Negative’ rights, ‘positive’ rights, and language rights

In his review of the historical evolution of language rights in Europe, Ruiz Veytez

(2001) traces the phenomenon back to the growing stature and reach of nascent

nation state and the increasingly close association between nation and language. An

early but significant example is the 1536 Act of Union of England and Wales, which

deprived Welsh of its official status in favour of English. Yet, Ruiz Veytez also argues

that the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia shows nation states paying increasing attention to

the religious rights of the many groups in the borderlands that were gradually falling

under their control, a trend confirmed throughout the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries, from the 1814�1815 Congress of Vienna to the founding of the League of

Nations following World War I. However, it was not until the 1920s that language

rights began to be incorporated into international accords. Moreover, this concern

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for the language rights of minorities reflected its eighteenth century philosophical

origins in that it consisted largely of ‘negatively’ guaranteeing the exercise of these

rights free of interference from the state but also, initially at least, without its active

participation. For several decades, Ruiz Veytez argues, linguistic activism, that is,

proactive moves to ‘positively’ support the linguistic practices of minorities, were left

to churches and educational institutions associated with them, political parties, trade

unions, and a range of ethnicity-based social and cultural groups.

In broader perspective, this gradual shift from a ‘negative’ to a ‘positive’ approach

to language rights in the course of the twentieth century and especially from the

1960s onward should be seen as part of the growing role played by the modern state

in ever more aspects of public and, increasingly, private life, including the provision

of universal education, medical care, and retirement and other benefits, funded

through taxation and dispensed through an increasingly large and powerful

administrative apparatus.

In recent years, language rights have been increasingly debated and legislated

(see, for example, Skutnabb-Kangas 2000). In his review of the debate, May (2005)offers a selection of examples of the state-sponsored promotion of minority

languages including that of Sami, a minority language of northern Norway, in the

local legislature, the courts, and education. Similar developments are taking place in

relation to Inuktitut, a minority language of Northern Canada, now accorded

co-official status with English and French in its homeland despite having only about

25,000 speakers.4 However, probably the most frequently, most publicly, and most

fiercely debated right to be ‘positively’ guaranteed by the state and enjoyed by

citizens is the ability to benefit from education provided in the language the students

understand best.

There is today powerful evidence of the benefits of receiving instruction in a

familiar language, and it is on this basis, and in the context of economic development

more specifically, that I have argued for the provision of early instruction in local

languages as one of a number of key policy tools designed to lift the largest numbers

possible out of poverty (Bruthiaux 2002, 2008).

Reasons why parents and early education instructors so often believe that early

instruction should be provided in a dominant but unfamiliar language are exploredby Pacini-Ketchabaw and Armstrong de Almeida (2006) in the context of immigrant

communities in Canada. They conclude that dominant language discourses are

present covertly in the views of both parents and instructors and that over time these

discourses acquire the rigidity of unquestioned ideology. These findings broadly

support the earlier analysis of Tollefson (2002), who argued that the downgrading of

local languages in education is not an unfortunate, accidental outcome of the

allocation of scarce resources but a deliberate attempt by dominant interests within a

society to marginalise some students while granting privileges to others. A historical

insight into this process is provided by Maurais (1997), who shows that a seemingly

benevolent policy that claimed to leave language choice to parents in the highly

multilingual borderlands of the former Soviet Union was in fact specifically designed

to rally parents by default to the cause of Russian as the language of Soviet

modernity at the expense of local languages, to be seen as symbols of a bygone age

and of local cultures in supposedly terminal decline.

Indeed, the debate on the provision of education in a familiar language has deep

historical roots. Musau (2003) notes that several education commissions in Kenya

recommended the use of dominant local languages in the first three years of primary

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education as early as 1949, a preference that was repeated after independence though

rarely implemented, in part because of the cost of providing instruction in over 40

languages, and because of the combined dominance of English and Kiswahili. In

England, the debate goes back at least to the late seventeenth and early eighteenth

centuries. Rarely one to warm to the ways of France and never to those of the

‘Roman church’, Smollett (1766/1981) comments that a typical mid-eighteenth

century Frenchman receives ‘the most preposterous education’ consisting in large

part of being taught ‘ . . .to say his prayers in a language he doesn’t understand’ (57).

Earlier still, Daniel Defoe (1712, 1728, cited in Vickers 1996) had advocated a

radical departure from the outmoded curriculum of ‘the Universities’ (that is, Oxford

and Cambridge) and their practice, inherited from medieval times, of ‘ . . .locking up,

as I have call’d it, all science in the Greek and Latin’ (56).5 Instead, Defoe advocated

a switch to the methods he had seen pioneered by his own mentor, Charles Morton,

in his private ‘dissenting academy’ just outside the church-controlled heart of

London. Among other revolutionary changes, Defoe stressed the importance of

delivering instruction in English, still the low prestige language of the age but one

that combined maximum comprehension by students with minimum pretension by

teachers. Of one particularly successful student (sounding suspiciously like himself),

Defoe comments that:

He run thro’ a whole course of Phylosophy, he perfectly compass’d the study ofGeography, the use of maps and globes; he read all that Sir Isaac Newton, Mr. Whiston,Mr. Halley had said in English upon the nicest subjects in Astronomy and the secrets ofNature . . .In those 4 years and half he was a mathematician, a geographer, anastronomer, a philosopher, and, in a word, a compleat schollar: and all this withoutthe least help from the Greek or Latin. (56)

The main reason for this success, Defoe argued, was that:

. . .the Master or Tutor . . .read all his Lectures, gave all his Systems, whether ofPhylosophy or Divinity, in English; had all his Declaimings and Dissertations in theEnglish tongue. And tho’ the Scholars from that Place were not Distitute in theLanguages, yet it is observ’d of them, they were by this made Masters of the EnglishTongue, and more of them excelled in that particular, than of any School at that Time.(37)

In effect, what Defoe describes here is mother tongue education in which knowledge

of the privileged languages of the time (Greek and Latin) acquired additively as a

complement to essential instruction delivered in the (then) low-prestige home

language (English). For ‘English’, substitute any number of local languages widely

understood by school-age children in many low-income countries but accidentally or

deliberately shut out of primary education in preference for ‘locking up’ instruction

inside prestigious but poorly understood dominant languages such as English, and

Defoe’s 300-year-old comments instantly acquire modern relevance.6

Language rights and cost�benefit analysis

Representative literature on ‘positive’ language rights is in broad agreement that

whether at the national, regional, or local level, it is incumbent on modern public

authorities to provide essential services in those languages that best serve each

community, though with the key proviso that this should apply only ‘where numbers

warrant’ (May 2005, 325) or are ‘sufficiently large’ and ‘reasonably concentrated’

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(de Varennes 2001, 21). As Jane (2001) notes, freedom of choice cannot be absolute if

groups expect the state not only to guarantee that freedom but also to actively

support each choice by incurring a cost shared by all. In practice, language rights are

conditioned by quantifiable requirements. Anything else, Jane adds, ‘would lead to an

extremely expensive situation that no state could possibly afford’ (12).

Commenting somewhat gloomily on the dramatic increase in the number of

official languages within the European Union (EU) � from 11 in 1995 to 23 in 2007

resulting in 1.5 million pages being translated each year, a recent report on managing

multilingualism in the EU (Commission of the European Communities 2007) warns

that demands for regional languages that enjoy official status in member states to be

granted the status of official EU languages would result in an inordinate increase in

complexity and cost and that quality must inevitably suffer if quantity is allowed to

develop unchecked. As the writer of the report comments, ‘it must be clear to all

concerned that quality has its price’ (18). The key points here are that: (1) discussions

of language rights cannot be divorced from constraints on their delivery; and (2) both

costs and benefits can be measured, or at least estimated.7 A corollary of both will

therefore be that policy decisions regarding language rights to be based on solid

research findings.

For example, Francis (2005) subscribes to the view that minority language

speakers should be educated in the language they understand best. However, he

stresses that this policy recommendation should be based not on moral or

constitutional imperatives but on research findings on cognitive development. In a

study of the costs and benefits of providing a public service to an immigrant

community in its own language, Stevens, Thorogood, and Kayikki (2002) report on a

policy aim to lower the frequency of smoking among a Turkish-speaking population

in north London, where 74% of men and 45% of women were smokers and

knowledge of the health effects of smoking was low. Following a publicly financed

campaign involving skits, posters, and leaflets in Turkish, the researchers recorded a

6.4% net reduction in the number of smokers at an estimated cost of intervention of

£105 per life year gained. Conversely, focusing on the link between language use and

economic development, Chiswick, Patrinos, and Hurst (2000) and Deumert, Inder,

and Maitra (2005) show that by impeding communication, linguistic fragmentation

and limited language proficiency in the dominant language constrain wider

participation in potentially beneficial economic activity, in Bolivia and South Africa

respectively. Although these findings do not offer justification for promoting the

dominant language in theses societies (Spanish and English respectively) at the

expense of local languages, they constitute precisely the kind of empirical basis on

which language policy must be based if it is to be socioeconomically transformative

and not merely rhetorically stirring.

Indeed, caution should be exercised when faced with a discourse of language

rights based largely in morality or even legislation. In his survey of 187 constitutions

worldwide, Faingold (2004) notes that constitutional dispositions on language not

only vary widely but also imperfectly predict policy and practice. While India’s

constitution recognises many majority and minority languages, it leaves a number of

significant local languages unprovided for. By contrast, though Australia’s federal

constitution provides for languages no better than that of a pariah state such as

Myanmar, it has in practice strong, pluralistic language policies, albeit with wide

variation across Australian states.

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Closer to the ideological fringes, however, what is best described as a blank check

approach to language rights typically leads to calls for these to be provided on the

basis of moral justification alone and with little regard for contingencies such as cost�benefit calculations. The foundational Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights

(UNESCO 1996), for example, lists no fewer than 52 specific language rights but only

at the very end under the heading of ‘Additional Dispositions’ and almost as an

afterthought does it note that:

International funds must be set up to foster the exercise of Linguistic Rights incommunities which are demonstrably lacking in resources. (13)

In his otherwise meticulously researched book on language in the EU, Phillipson

(2003) mentions the financial implications of his detailed policy recommendations

just twice, once labelling the cost of implementing EU-wide language learning as

‘considerable’ (147) and once describing the cost of promoting Esperanto throughout

the EU � his proposed remedy for what he sees as the detrimental effects of the

spread of English in Europe � as ‘modest’ (190). Going further, Skutnabb-Kangas

(2001) claims equal validity in the matter of language rights for the ‘rational’ and the

‘emotional’ on the grounds that this is ‘something that Eastern thinkers have known

for millenia’ (211), thus � it seems to me � propelling the debate on language rights

into a sphere where few policymakers will likely follow. Mysticism has its virtues, but

it is no substitute for evidence.

To be sure, there is a need to blend what I have called ‘a call to arms’ (Bruthiaux

2006, 327) and a methodical approach to implementation. Regrettably, Skutnabb-

Kangas’ unwillingness to consider opt-outs from what she regards as ‘unconditional’

obligations on states to guarantee language rights (Skutnabb-Kangas 2001, 210) risks

marginalising more poised but equally passionate voices on whom greater tolerance

of and provision for linguistic diversity depend for their initial impetus. In practice,

focusing exclusively on outcomes, however devoutly these may be wished, runs the

risk that few except fellow-ideologues will take heed. Certainly, dismissing dissenting

voices on the grounds of ‘naivety’ (Skutnabb-Kangas 2001, 214) or ‘hypocrisy’

(Skutnabb-Kangas 2001, 212) advances the cause not a jot.

Back towards the ideological centre, meanwhile, where calls to arms are

translated into politically acceptable and fiscally responsible policies, the argument

can be made for language rights not merely on the basis of moral argument but

because their implementation constitutes good policy. This case is made most

convincingly by Grin (2005), who argues that though cost�benefit analysis is

especially challenging in matters of language and costs are generally better under-

stood than benefits, all language policy measures must be made amenable to

evaluation. As Grin notes, the optimal level of linguistic diversity is neither zero nor

infinite and, crucially, can be calculated, albeit imperfectly. Grin also argues that

protecting minority languages is justifiable on redistributive grounds because denying

such protection amounts to a transfer of economic potential from the dominated to

the dominant and that this transfer should be computed before policy decisions are

made and implemented. Although this line of argument may leave those in search of

rhetorical thrills unfulfilled, absence of cost�benefit analysis in this field of public

policy would strike policymakers of all stripes as highly suspect.

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Language rights and language needs

So where does this leave the notion of language rights? To address this question,

some contextualisation is in order. Let us consider a hypothetical low-income

country. During the twentieth century, the country underwent colonisation by a

neglectful and exploitative power, sustained military attacks by another, and even

genocidal internal strife. Today, it is experiencing rapid economic growth. The

country is multiethnic and multilingual, with rural populations widely dispersed

throughout the national territory and only coming into contact in a few urban

settings, mostly in the capital, which dwarfs all other urban centres in size and power.

The country is bisected by a major river, which, though it has sustained local

populations for centuries, is not navigable for most of its course and therefore not �or not yet � available as a major development resource. As a combined result of

difficult geography and a weak and impecunious state, no bridge has ever been built

to facilitate communication between the two halves of the country the river creates.8

On one side of this mighty river lies the thriving capital, with adequate road

connections to its hinterland, a recently upgraded airport, and reasonable access to a

seaport. Servicing this fast-growing urban centre and supplying a significant share of

the country’s export income is a patchwork of small farms and related service

businesses. On the opposite side of the river lives a substantial rural population

similar to that found across the river but at present lacking the communication

infrastructure that would bind its economy to that of the capital and its convenient

access to national and international markets. Here, then, are two comparable

populations, each with the potential to raise themselves out of poverty. Yet, as a

result of historical and geographic accident, one finds itself plugged into a fast

developing national economy while the other stagnates.

To a development economist, indeed, to a responsible, functioning government, it

is self-evident that this isolated population should be helped to connect to the

national economic grid through investment in modern transportation infrastructure

including a modern bridge. This can be justified on the grounds of equity because

poverty-reducing opportunities should in principle be made available to all groups

within a society irrespective of historical accident. But it can also be justified as

demonstrably sound national development policy, in that economic growth is not a

zero-sum game and greater wealth is likely to accrue to the entire national

community (not to mention its international trading partners) through increased

exchanges among a growing number of participants (though equitable distribution of

that wealth is of course another matter). But while it is clear that the currently

disadvantaged population has a need for improved access to the heart of the national

economy, does it also have a right to that access?

Development economists and others involved in development work would, I

think, agree that desirable though improved links between this isolated community

and economically vibrant parts of the country may be, cost�benefit analysis will be a

required component of the process, including feasibility studies, evaluations of

economic and environmental impact, and so on. This does not guarantee, of course,

that the process will be fair and corruption-free, capital will always be allocated

wisely, or benefits will be shared equitably. But the key point is that this project is

simply one more claim on national resources and that it will need to be considered as

part of national development policy along with all other claims. Inevitably,

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negotiations will take place and (hopefully equitable) compromises will be reached.

After all, this is exactly what politics � the art of the possible � is about.

In my view, this type of cost�benefit approach should be extended to language

rights. Yet, the very fact that the case needs to be made at all highlights a debilitating

weakness at the heart of the current debate on those rights. Indeed, it may be that

sole reliance on moral argument as the foundation for language rights, far from being

a sign of irreversible social progress, is in fact a pointless excursion down an

unsustainable intellectual path or worse (for a discussion of the potential for

exploitative manipulation lurking behind the discourse of language rights, see

Edwards 2003). Today, a view is emerging of language rights not so much as moral

imperatives (though this often provides initial impetus for action) but as means to

greater prosperity, that is, I noted as sound policy. This case, as I noted earlier, is

made most strongly by Grin (2005), who argues that minority language protection

(and, by my reading, the provision of language rights in general) must ultimately be

justified on the grounds of technical feasibility, allocative effectiveness, and

distributive fairness, in addition to any moral basis that may be advanced by

claimants and their supporters. Moreover, Grin stresses that this process should not

be an exercise in political window dressing but that

. . .the standards of ‘convincing-ness’ aimed at must be demanding and uncompromis-ing. More bluntly, . . .establishing the relevance of minority language protection andpromotion as part of ‘diversity management’ generally requires more than the moraljustifications that usually serve as a basis for the standard rights-based arguments. (451)

To language rights advocates raised on stirring declarations of absolutes, this may be

a disappointingly utilitarian suggestion. To policymakers and the better sort of

politicians, it must seem entirely reasonable.

Although Grin’s critique of the current language rights orthodoxy would gain, I

feel, from being expressed more forcefully, it is a welcome development. Yet, it seems

to me that this orthodoxy should be challenged one crucial step further. Ultimately, if

the implementation of language rights must take into account, as Grin argues,

feasibility, effectiveness, and fairness, then where does this leave the broader notion of

‘positive’ rights?

Recall the widely discussed distinction reviewed at the start of this paper between

‘negative’ rights, or guarantees that the state not interfere unduly in the affairs of

citizens, and ‘positive’ rights, or requirements that the state do intervene to bring

about outcomes of tangible benefit to specific groups. While the provision of

‘negative’ rights normally leads to little more than occasional organisational and

judicial costs, the provision of ‘positive’ rights may entail substantial costs that

cannot be imposed blindly on current and future generations but must be factored

into the messy process of allocating resources as equitably as possible. If this is true,

then ‘positive’ rights (including language rights) are not rights at all but reasonable

requests by specific groups that their needs be taken into account when the allocation

of resources is negotiated across a society.

As Edwards (2003) writes, ‘enshrining something called a right is not a trivial

matter, and . . .one of the most important requirements is that the currency not be

cheapened’ (554). Yet examples abound of the widespread use (or in my view, misuse)

of the terms ‘right’ in modern sociopolitical discourse to refer to claims by specific

groups or their advocates for benefits that, however socially or morally justifiable,

carry a delivery cost that cannot simply be ignored in the interest of assuaging moral

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outrage. These include the ‘right’ to a job, the ‘right’ to free medical care, the ‘right’

to retire in early middle age on a publicly funded pension, and many more.

Naturally, the details of how responsibility for providing essential services should

be shared between state and market will vary across political and ideological

landscapes. Few today would contest that the modern state must play an active role

in the provision of such necessities as housing, jobs, food, primary education, or

medical services, often as a primary source of finance or administrative support, and

always as a legislative and judicial force. However, calling entirely reasonable claims

for essential services ‘rights’ actually weakens the case of the claimants themselves

because it makes them appear self-interested and willfully oblivious to the fact that

public policy cannot be conducted solely on the basis of their own interests backed by

ringing declarations of moral purpose. And if ‘rights’ are in fact claims (however

legitimate), then the claimants are themselves lobbyists (some disrespect intended). If

a rationale exists for claiming preferential treatment for, among other things,

language as part of the nationwide allocation of resources, then it is entirely proper

that a ‘language lobby’ exist to make the case on the basis not of grandiloquent

declarations of moral principle but of data-based evaluations of costs and benefits.

But as long as the debate on ‘language rights’ is allowed to remain the preserve of

moralists, there is little chance that the work of socially concerned linguists,

educators, and language policymakers concerned with language rights will have

tangible and lasting influence.

Notes

1. In this paper, I use the terms ‘government’ and ‘state’ interchangeably.2. Unhelpfully, the unfavourable connotation carried by the term ‘negative’ skews preferences

towards ‘positive’ rights. Further confusion sets in when ‘negative rights’ are seen (forexample, Blommaert 2005) as consisting of the state actively denying its citizens theenjoyment of their ‘positive’ rights. A more helpful terminological choice, I suggest, wouldbe to describe the role of the state as arbiter not as ‘negative’ but as ‘neutral’.

3. Smollett’s syntax, spelling, punctuation, and italics are reproduced from the 1766/1981original.

4. As pointed out by a reviewer, the number of (self-identified) speakers of Inuktitut reportedin the 2001 Canadian census (www12.sta.ca) was somewhat lower than claimed by May inhis 2005 paper. May’s point stands, however.

5. Defoe’s original syntax, spelling, punctuation, and italics are reproduced from Vickers(1996).

6. It should be pointed out that the value of providing basic education in a child’s dominantlanguage is not self-evident. For two recent expositions of each side of the argument, seeWatson (2007), who articulates the case for mother tongue early education, and D’souza(2006), who argues that no clear link can be discerned between mother tongue earlyeducation and socioeconomic gain.

7. A reviewer points out that a cost/benefit approach to language rights should not beunderstood purely in accounting terms but should take in broader societal issues, includingthe risk of geopolitical strife resulting from language rights being denied. However, there isno a priori reason not to subject that risk to cost/benefit analysis, since some of the costsand benefits are likely to be psychological and financial as well as linguistic.

8. Observers of Southeast Asia may notice a passing resemblance between this hypotheticalcountry and Cambodia and between this hypothetical river and the Mekong, spanned tothis day by not a single bridge within Cambodian territory. Comparable examples include,for example, the Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa).

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