ABSTRACT
In recent years, Linguistic Human Rights (LHR) as a sociolinguistic phenomenon has come under heavy critique from a number of dif ferent directions.2 Pennycook (1998) points to the potential problems of working with a universal notion of rights; Blommaert (2001) argues that LHR approaches do not gel with what we know about language in society , correspond to experiences with linguistic pluralism, nor are they empirically sustainable. Stroud (2001), as does Freeland (2002, 2003), critiques the notion of LHR by pointing to the essentialist assumptions of language and identity that underlie it, as well as its problematic assumptions on the working of the nation-state. Other work shows that the assumption that speakers of minority languages need legal protection from encroaching languages of power sometimes distorts the reality on the ground; ex-colonial languages can be productively appropriated by minority speakers into local multilingual repertoires to serve a range of local functions (e.g. Stroud 2002; Blommaert, this volume). In this chapter, we add to this litur gy of problems by ar guing – with examples from Southern Africa – that the LHR paradigm is in principle unable to get to grips with the very problem it is meant to address, namely the linguistic barriers which hinder equitable political participation for linguistic minorities. This is because the notion of linguistic human rights is framed within a liberal understanding of citizenship which does not ef fectively
knit language into general principles of good governance and citizenship. Janoski (1998) in discussing citizenship identifies four types of rights: legal, political, social (e.g. access to health care and education), and participation rights. Prevailing historical and ideological conditions have intersected with the notion of rights, resulting in ‘traditional’, ‘liberal’ and ‘social democratic’ approaches to rights (McGroarty 2002: 25, after Janoski op cit.). The effects of globalization and the spread of the western liberal paradigm in conjunction with development aid and capitalism, have given heaviest weight to a liberal interpretation of rights (particularly in recent practices in Africa). Subsequently , we shall ar gue that within a LHR context, citizenship rights are de facto restricted to legal and political rights, and where their more practical manifestation is required, in the social and particip-atory contexts, there is a singular lack of planned provision. The results are in evidence in US language planning (see W iley 2002), in Australia (Moore 2002) and in recent developments in the language planning of the Pan South African Language Board (P ANSALB) (Heugh forthcoming).
