Language Rights

Research on Language Rights has produced an enormous—and unwieldy—corpus of literature. Moreover, such work is often controversial and contested, in part because of the need for scholars from different disciplinary traditions to coordinate their concerns and integrate conflicting paradigms. Now, to enable researchers and advanced students to make sense of this vast literature, and the competing scholarly approaches, Routledge announces Language Rights, a new title in its Critical Concepts in Language Studies series.

Research on Language Rights has produced an enormous—and unwieldy—corpus of literature. Such work often has limitations because scholars from different disciplinary traditions have seldom coordinated their concerns or integrated the conceptual traditions of particular fields. To enable researchers and advanced students to make sense of this vast literature, and the disparate scholarly approaches, Routledge announces Language Rights, a new title in its Critical Concepts in Language Studies series. In four volumes, the set draws on a wide range of disciplines, including language policy, political theory, education, law, philosophy, anthropology, economics, minority studies, deaf studies, and Indigenous cosmologies. The editors have assembled both normative texts and studies of their practical applications over the past century in a wide range of countries, as well as more diverse interventions and interpretations.

(‘Language Rights, Past and Present: From Minority Rights to Linguistic Human Rights’) presents some of the basic concepts in language rights and traces developments from treaties and national constitutions to human rights principles, and conditions for the maintenance of languages.

(‘Multilingualism, Education, and Language Rights Granted or Denied: Policies and Politics’) explores the tensions between homogenizing nation states and the status of indigenous and minority languages in education.

(‘Language Rights: Global and Regional Integration and Diversity Maintenance’) assesses ongoing trends of regional and global integration and questions the prospects for the world’s languages in the light of economic and cultural constraints, and the weaknesses of the international human rights system.

With newly written, comprehensive introductions to each volume, and to the collection as a whole, Language Rights is destined to be welcomed as a vital research and pedagogic resource.