Linguistic discrimination
Encyclopedia
Linguistic discrimination is discrimination
based on native language, usually in the language policy
especially in education
of a state that has one or several linguistic minorities.
Critics denounce linguistic discrimination as a violation of linguistic rights
. Discrimination against minority language is an aspect of linguistic imperialism
.
While linguistic discrimination was common in Europe
during the formation of nation states in the 19th century, it was countered by opposing trends of linguistic protectionism and language revival
in the 20th century.
Discrimination
Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category. It involves the actual behaviors towards groups such as excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group. The term began to be...
based on native language, usually in the language policy
Language policy
Many countries have a language policy designed to favour or discourage the use of a particular language or set of languages. Although nations historically have used language policies most often to promote one official language at the expense of others, many countries now have policies designed to...
especially in education
Education policy
Education policy refers to the collection of laws and rules that govern the operation of education systems.Education occurs in many forms for many purposes through many institutions. Examples include early childhood education, kindergarten through to 12th grade, two and four year colleges or...
of a state that has one or several linguistic minorities.
Critics denounce linguistic discrimination as a violation of linguistic rights
Linguistic rights
Linguistic rights are the human and civil rights concerning the individual and collective right to choose the language or languages for communication in a private or public atmosphere...
. Discrimination against minority language is an aspect of linguistic imperialism
Linguistic imperialism
Linguistic imperialism, or language imperialism, is a linguistics concept that "involves the transfer of a dominant language to other people...
.
While linguistic discrimination was common in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
during the formation of nation states in the 19th century, it was countered by opposing trends of linguistic protectionism and language revival
Language revival
Language revitalization, language revival or reversing language shift is the attempt by interested parties, including individuals, cultural or community groups, governments, or political authorities, to reverse the decline of a language. If the decline is severe, the language may be endangered,...
in the 20th century.
Examples
- the Coptic languageCoptic languageCoptic or Coptic Egyptian is the current stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century. Egyptian began to be written using the Greek alphabet in the 1st century...
. At the turn of the 8th century, CaliphCaliphThe Caliph is the head of state in a Caliphate, and the title for the ruler of the Islamic Ummah, an Islamic community ruled by the Shari'ah. It is a transcribed version of the Arabic word which means "successor" or "representative"...
Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan decreed that ArabicArabic languageArabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
replace Koine GreekKoine GreekKoine Greek is the universal dialect of the Greek language spoken throughout post-Classical antiquity , developing from the Attic dialect, with admixture of elements especially from Ionic....
and Coptic as the sole administrative language. Literary Coptic gradually declined such that within a few hundred years, and suffered violent persecutions especially under the MamlukMamlukA Mamluk was a soldier of slave origin, who were predominantly Cumans/Kipchaks The "mamluk phenomenon", as David Ayalon dubbed the creation of the specific warrior...
s, leading to its virtual extinction by the 17th century. - Language policy of the British Empire in IrelandIrelandIreland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, WalesWalesWales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
and ScotlandScotlandScotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
. CromwellOliver CromwellOliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....
's conquest, the long English colonisationPlantations of IrelandPlantations in 16th and 17th century Ireland were the confiscation of land by the English crown and the colonisation of this land with settlers from England and the Scottish Lowlands....
and Great Irish Famine made IrishIrish languageIrish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
a minority language by the end of 19th century. It had not official status until the establishment of Republic of IrelandRepublic of IrelandIreland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
. In Wales speaking of the Welsh languageWelsh languageWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
in schools was prohibitedWelsh NotThe Welsh Not or Welsh Note was a punishment system used in some Welsh schools in the late 19th and early 20th century to dissuade children from speaking Welsh...
. Scottish Gaelic also had not official status until the end of 20th century. ScotsScots languageScots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster . It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language variety spoken in most of the western Highlands and in the Hebrides.Since there are no universally accepted...
was often treated as a mere dialect of English. - BasqueBasque languageBasque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
: Public usage of Basque was prohibited in Spain under Franco, 1939 to 1965. GalicianGalician languageGalician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...
and CatalanCatalan languageCatalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
have similar histories. - KurdishKurdish languageKurdish is a dialect continuum spoken by the Kurds in western Asia. It is part of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian group of Indo-European languages....
: Kurdish remains banned in SyriaSyriaSyria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
Until August 2002, the Turkish government placed severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish, prohibiting the language in education and broadcast media. - VergonhaVergonhaLa vergonha is what Occitans call the effects of various policies of the government of France on its citizens whose mother tongue was a so-called patois, specifically langue d'oc...
, the term used for the effect of various policies of the French government on its citizens whose mother tongue was one of so-called patois. In 1539 with Art. 111 of the Ordinance of Villers-CotterêtsOrdinance of Villers-CotterêtsThe Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts is an extensive piece of reform legislation signed into law by Francis I of France on August 10, 1539 in the city of Villers-Cotterêts....
FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
(the language of Ile-de-FranceÎle-de-France (province)The province of Île-de-France or Isle de France is an historical province of France, and the one at the centre of power during most of French history...
) became only official language in the country. Since then the using of the languages of southern France (also called langues d'oc) as well as BretonBreton languageBreton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...
in education and administration was prohibited. The French government hasn't still ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority LanguagesEuropean Charter for Regional or Minority LanguagesThe European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is a European treaty adopted in 1992 under the auspices of the Council of Europe to protect and promote historical regional and minority languages in Europe...
. - RussificationRussificationRussification is an adoption of the Russian language or some other Russian attributes by non-Russian communities...
: Under the Russian EmpireRussian EmpireThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
there were some attemptsRussification of FinlandThe policy of Russification of Finland was a governmental policy of the Russian Empire aimed at limiting the special status of the Grand Duchy of Finland and possibly the termination of its political autonomy and cultural uniqueness...
in 1899-1917 to make RussianRussian languageRussian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
the only official language of FinlandFinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
. In the Soviet UnionSoviet UnionThe Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, following the phase of KorenizatsiyaKorenizatsiyaKorenizatsiya sometimes also called korenization, meaning "nativization" or "indigenization", literally "putting down roots", was the early Soviet nationalities policy promoted mostly in the 1920s but with a continuing legacy in later years...
("indigenization") and before PerestroikaPerestroikaPerestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
(late 1930s to late 1980s), Russian was termed as "the language of friendship of nations", to the disadvantage of other languages of the Soviet UnionLanguages of the Soviet UnionLanguages of the Soviet Union were hundreds of different languages and dialects from several different language groups.In 1918, it was decreed that all nationalities in the Soviet Union had the right to education in their own language. The new orthography used the Cyrillic, Latin, or Arabic... - suppression of KoreanKorean languageKorean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
during Japanese rule in KoreaKorea under Japanese ruleKorea was under Japanese rule as part of Japan's 35-year imperialist expansion . Japanese rule ended in 1945 shortly after the Japanese defeat in World War II....
, 1910 to 1945. - Anti-Chinese legislation in IndonesiaAnti-Chinese legislation in IndonesiaIndonesian law affecting Chinese-Indonesians were conducted through a series of laws, directives, or constitutions enacted by the Government of Indonesia that affected the lives of Chinese Indonesians or Chinese nationals living in Indonesia since the nation's independence. The laws were considered...
- Anti-Hungarian Slovak language law
See also
- Indigenous languageIndigenous languageAn indigenous language or autochthonous language is a language that is native to a region and spoken by indigenous peoples but has been reduced to the status of a minority language. This language would be from a linguistically distinct community that has been settled in the area for many generations...
- Minority languageMinority languageA minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory. Such people are termed linguistic minorities or language minorities.-International politics:...
- Official languageOfficial languageAn official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...
- Cultural assimilationCultural assimilationCultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New...
- Cultural genocideCultural genocideCultural genocide is a term that lawyer Raphael Lemkin proposed in 1933 as a component to genocide. The term was considered in the 1948 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples juxtaposed next to the term ethnocide, but it was removed in the final document, replaced with...
Literature
- Skutnabb-Kangas et al. (eds.), Linguistic human rights: overcoming linguistic discrimination, Walter de Gruyter (1995), ISBN 3110148781.
- R. Wodak and D. Corson (eds.), Language policy and political issues in education, Springer, ISBN 0792347137.