ABSTRACT
Why should it matter for social justice what language people speak? Philippe Van Parijs’ book provides three convincing reasons why. First, a common language enables persons deprived of fair opportunities to make their claims understood by others and to join deliberations about political responses to unequal opportunities. Second, people whose native language is a widespread lingua franca enjoy undeserved advantages because they do not need to invest into learning another language and – more significantly – because they have privileged access to jobs and markets for which skills in the lingua franca are needed. Third, if the speakers of a dominant language expect all others to communicate with them in that language, this asymmetry undermines equality of respect and dignity in a way that can only be overcome through protecting weaker languages rather than assimilating their speakers into a dominant one.
