ABSTRACT
One of the strengths of the chapters collected in this volume is that collectively, they address not only the issue of language rights, but also, discourses about language rights, and how these discourses work to further or obstruct particular social actors’ claims in the linguistic marketplace. In one way or another, all of them reveal the way that discourses about language rights are essentializing ones. They essentialize languages, identities, and the link between languages and identities. Put another way , discourses about language rights do not capture the complexity of the linguistic practices, experiences and forms of identification of their ‘target’ populations (‘speakers of language X’). Even the formulation ‘speakers of language X’ oversimplifies the processes involved in language shift, language maintenance and language revitalization in multilingual contexts, for in such contexts, there are complex answers to questions such as, “What does it mean to ‘speak language X?’” or “Who counts as a speaker?” or “How are criteria of linguistic ‘ownership’ linked to criteria of social or cultural ownership?”
