ABSTRACT
Much of the current debate on language rights has focused on strategies for groups where there are speakers who are not able to use their own language in education, in contact with their state’s bureaucracy or within their legal system, and are thus disadvantaged (de Varennes 1996). Other work has campaigned to aid the survival of languages where speakers are few in number and diminishing, and it seems likely that the language will disappear when the older generation that speaks the language dies (Skutnabb-Kangas 2000). These language rights issues are, of course, linked to two macro-political phenomena that have afected individuals in many ways beyond the purely linguistic and which have been hard to counter in any sphere. The first issue derives from the growth of the nation state, the penetration of state institutions into every aspect of citizens’ lives and the state authorities’ preference, if not requirement, for the ensuing contact to be in the state language. The second issue derives from the intensity of the interconnectedness, the velocity of flows, the networks and systems of interaction and exchange (Held et al. 1999: 27) of the modern world. Few groups are so isolated that their members do not know of events and attitudes outside. Their community desire to participate in these networks and flows is likely to be to the detriment of group specificity and in particular to the survival of languages that do not have the written forms needed for education and which are not currency in the exchanges.
