ABSTRACT
This essay on Van Parijs’s Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World (2011) takes the form of a one-way conversation with the author concerning his two major public policy recommendations: Helping rather than objecting to the surge of English as the world lingua franca (notably as L2) and protecting native languages (L1) by giving the political authority of the area of concentration of the L1 coercive power over language use in the public domain (official language, language of instruction, language of contracts for example). I shall weave that conversation around two reactions: Yes and But.
