ABSTRACT
Taiwan is a linguistically diverse country with a history of debates about language policy. Political philosophers have tended to neglect debates over language policy, although this has started to change in recent years. Political philosophers have tended to neglect debates over language policy, although this has started to change in recent years. This chapter describes a framework for thinking about what justice implies for language policy. In Taiwan, the pre-eminence of Mandarin has been justified on both instrumental and non-instrumental grounds of justice. The preeminence of Mandarin might be defended on non-instrumental grounds of justice through an argument that Mandarin is a neutral solution to the society's linguistic diversity. On the other hand, many would question the "neutrality" of Mandarin in the Taiwanese context. The adoption of Mandarin as the language of state in the late 1940s coincided with a large immigration of Mandarin-speakers from the mainland, especially in the aftermath of the Communist takeover on the mainland in 1949.
