Presentation at the X Days Language Rights "Valutare le politiche linguistiche: Quali obiettivi, criteri, indicatori?" JDL2016 / GDL2016 University of Teramo, 14-16 dec 2016.

1. Towards a tool to analyze
linguistic justice:
Essential interdisciplinary parameters
Federico Gobbo
Amsterdam / Milano-Bicocca / Torino
Javier Alcalde
Scuola Normale Superiore

2. Contents
1. Linguistic justice within political philosophy
2. The Multiculturalism Policy (MCP) Index
3. Sociolinguistic parameters
4. Linguistic uneasiness
5. Conclusion

5. 1. Linguistic justice
 Interdisciplinary approach: contributions from political
philosophy to economics and various fields of linguistics
 Diversity of approaches can lead to different objectives
and ultimately to divergent agendas
 On political philosophy, we focus on an empirical approach
that considers the respect of language rights unavoidable

6. Multiculturalism
 Linguistic justice as protecting language rights of minority
groups
 The aim is to allow them to use their language in the
public sphere to balance the injustice that would happen if
they had to shift to another language
 Typical examples of such minorities who deserve
language rights include the case of the Catalans in Spain
and the case of Quebec in Canada

7. 2. The Multiculturalism Policy Index
 Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka
 It monitors multiculturalism policies in 21 Western
democracies
 3 points in time: 1980, 2000, 2010
 3 minority groups: immigrant groups, national minorities
and indigenous peoples

8. 2. The Multiculturalism Policy Index
 Theory: Kymlicka’s “multicultural turn” since the 1960s in
public policies regarding ethnocultural diversity
 Results: the average MCP score across the countries
has increased from 1980 to 2000, and from 2000 to 2010
 Conclusion: Results confirm the theoretical predictions by
Kymlicka’s school of thought

9. MPC Index - methodology
 It measures the presence or absence of a range of policies
 Each indicator is related with a policy dimension where
(liberal-democratic) states face a choice about whether or
not become supportive of minorities
 8 policies for immigrant groups (e.g. multicultural education)
 6 policies for national minorities (e.g. official language status)
 9 policies for indigenous peoples (e.g. land claims)
 These policies are equally weighted

10. 2.1 National minorities
 Federal or quasi-federal territorial autonomy
 Official language status, either in the region or nationally
 Guarantees of representation in the central government or on
constitutional courts
 Public funding of minority language university/schools/media
 Constitutional or parliamentary affirmation of
multinationalism
 According international personality

11. 2.2. Indigenous peoples
 Recognition of land rights/title
 Recognition of self-government rights
 Upholding historic treaties and/or signing new treaties
 Recognition of cultural rights
 Recognition of customary law
 Guarantees of representation in the central government
 Legislative affirmation of their distinct status
 Support for international instruments on indigenous rights
 Affirmative action

12. 2.3 Immigrant minorities
 Legislative affirmation of multiculturalism
 Adoption of multiculturalism in school curriculum
 Inclusion of ethnic representation/sensitivity in the media
 Exemptions from dress-codes, Sunday-closing legislation
 Dual citizenship
 Funding of ethnic organizations to support cultural activities
 Funding of bilingual education or mother-tongue instruction
 Affirmative action for disadvantaged immigrant groups

13. 2.4. MCP Index - strengths
 Use of data. It can be used to test explanatory
hypotheses on an empirical basis
 It’s systematic. It can be used to compare among
countries and also across-time
 Data are freely available. It can be adjusted by
researchers, according to their own definition of MCP

14. 2.4. MCP Index - weaknesses
 The ‘list’ of equally weighted policies is questionable
 There is no specific hypothesis stating which multicultural
policies are the fundamental ones
 Some terms are not defined (e.g. guarantees of representation)
 Only data for 21 Western countries and only in 3 points of time
 Variables tend to be dichotomous and with inconsistency
 Inexactitudes regarding the accuracy of the data
 The standard is low. It gives a value of 1 if a country “has met or
exceeded the standard outlined in the indicator”

15. 2.4. MCP Index - weaknesses
 Lack of sociolinguistic parameters
 On language planning it only considers formal status planning
 There is nothing about corpus planning nor language acquisition
 There is nothing about informal or non-formal language planning
 Language vigour is not considered at all
 Our argument: The inclusion of sociolinguistic parameters in
the evaluation of language policies can improve our
understanding (and measurement) of linguistic justice

16. 3. Sociolinguistic parameters
 Overcoming the Westphalian model, sociolinguistics
has been recently applied to situations of languages in
contact and speakers' complex repertoires
 Complex sociolinguistic situations, e.g. where 3 or more
speech communities share the same territory
 The aim is to reduce the linguistic inequalities among
the members of the speech community so that
individuals are at ease in their use of their language

17. 4. Linguistic uneaseness
 “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” (Dell'Aquila, Gobbo and Iannàccaro, 2017)
 This is operationalised as a gap between the
(socio)linguistic competences of the individual and the
(socio)linguistic expectations of the community of
reference

18. Scale of Linguistic Easiness
Position Consequences Causes
1 Enjoy a strong social
position
Knowledge of all in-group code(s), mastery of the
Wunschprache
0 No consequences Knowledge of all in-group-code(s), ignorance of the
Wunschsprache
-1 Unease in (some)
formal situations
(partial) ignorance of the high-variety
-2 Unease in (some) in-
group relations
(partial) ignorance of in-group code(s)
-3 Out-grouping,
respected
Ignorance of all the codes within the community,
mastery of the Wunschsprache
-4 Out-grouping, severe Ignorance of all the respected codes within the
community and the Wunschsprache

19. Conclusion
 An interdisciplinary approach of linguistic justice allows to
improve the measurement of language rights by considering
direct and indirect tools
 Directly, through the official, overt policies that can be measured
through tools such as the MCP Index
 Indirectly, through the unofficial, covert policies that can be
measured through tools such as the Scale of Linguistic Easiness

20. Thank you!