Normative Language Policy
Ethics, Politics, Principles

This book proposes an integrated framework for investigating the ethics of language policy in liberal democracies in a global era.

Leigh Oakes (Author), Yael Peled (Author)

9781107143166, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 December 2017

200 pages, 7 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.6 x 1.5 cm, 0.4 kg

'Effective language policy must unite the findings of disinterested empirical research with the more general and cross-contextual insights of political philosophers. This book represents one of the first sustained attempts at finding common and complementary ground here.' John Edwards, St Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia

Language politics in the new global era presents policymakers with significant ethical challenges. How should the reality of English as a global language influence the normative considerations underpinning national language policies? What moral arguments justify the imposition of national languages in an era of increased immigration and ethnolinguistic diversity? What role is there for non-dominant varieties in a globalised world? Building on the emerging notion of 'normative language policy', this book proposes an integrated framework for the study of such questions, combining recent normative work on language in political theory and philosophy with empirically-derived insight from the fields of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics. The case of Quebec forms the backdrop of the study, providing a particularly illuminating setting for investigating the common moral challenges that face contemporary polities seeking to maintain distinct linguistic identities, in an irreducibly diverse world increasingly dominated by English as a global lingua franca.

1. Introduction
2. Language policy and planning in Quebec: a brief overview
3. In defence of the vernacular: French in the age of global English
4. Linguistic citizenship: identity, integration and interculturalism
5. Pluricentric linguistic justice in Quebec: beyond the monocentric ideology
6. Normative language policy in a complex world.

Subject Areas: Globalization [JFFS], Sociolinguistics [CFB], Linguistics [CF]