Justifying Educational Language Rights (original) (raw)

Review of Research in Education, 2014

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the bases for language minority rights – that is, the language rights that might be attributable to linguistic minorities– in modern liberal democracies. It draws on developments in international law and in some national contexts to outline what those rights might comprise and their potential impact on the provision of language education. However, the article also highlights how difficult it is for such rights to be established, let alone maintained. This is because of an ongoing skepticism towards language rights, which are deemed to be collective rights and, as such, are often viewed as militating against the individual tenets of human rights as they have developed post-Second World War. An advocacy for language education rights, most notably, via the provision of bilingual education, is also seen as potentially delimiting the engagement of students with the wider world and, particularly, English as the global language and standard-bearer for new cosmopolitan identities. Both coalesce to delimit the possibilities of more pluralistic, plurilingual, educational approaches to linguistic minority students, although they do not entirely foreclose them.

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