ABSTRACT

In Linguistic Justice, Philippe Van Parijs proposes three principles of justice that should be applied in order to produce just outcomes related to language. More precisely, he begins by arguing in favor of the creation of a lingua franca for Europe and for the world. Such a global tool would allow people to communicate across the world and would increase peoples’ utility in many ways. This is not however the main reason for accelerating the spread of English as a lingua franca. There are more important reasons. The first one is that this global language will create a global justificatory community. The second one is that it

will contribute to make the distribution of wealth from the rich to the least well off politically feasible. The rationally appealing ideal of a just world justifies the creation of a tool, a global lingua franca, that would contribute to changing people’s intuitions about their duties of international and global justice.