Language justice and privileges

Niina

20/05/2024

Hi all! This post will be a bit different than what I have written before. And a bit more academic. A little while ago, I wrote an essay about language justice and language privileges. Because languages are quite central when traveling, I thought I could also cover the same subject here. Multilingualism is just increasing in the world. Therefore, it would be good to discuss more about what this means in practice, what kind of problems people can face because of multilingualism, what kind of power imbalances are related to languages, and whether there is anything we could do all together to make the world fairer.

I know, big questions. Of course, I cannot answer them profoundly in this text, but just something to think about.

My background for the whole essay is that I have struggled quite a lot with languages.  I have been abroad a few times and experienced environments where I needed to communicate in a language I did not know very well. It was hard! I felt pressure (after all, I put myself voluntarily in the situation), stress, and being judged. It would have been great if people had understood better my efforts to speak with them in their language.

For some time, I have been looking for something scientific (and comforting) to explain to me what is going on and what we could do better so people like me would not feel like shit (or even worst, like Emily in Paris!) when traveling. Then I heard about Philippe van Parjis and his ideas of language justice.

Lingua Franca

In short, what van Parjis proposes to the solution of the multilingual world, is acceleration of lingua franca. And the lingua franca is undoubtedly English (Van Parjis, 2011, 9-11). If more people spoke English, more people could experience more different and meaningful encounters. This could improve their understanding of the world and increase empathy(van Parjis, 2011, 24-26, 31). Common language would also make it possible for more people to participate in global conversations and politics. Van Parjis talks a lot about the language politics of the European Union and how it is often more effective to speak one shared language instead of delivering information in all the official languages of the member states. Even if it would be nice to treat all languages equally (van Parjis, 2011, 28-31, 117-132, 181-182).

Van Parjis also understands the downsides of a lingua franca. The native speakers of English are free riders in the multilingual world. They do not need to waste their time and effort to learn a language to participate in the conversation. To solve this, van Parjis proposes a “language tax” for people who do not need to carry the burden of learning (van Parjis, 2011, 50-86). Also, the acceleration of English does not decrease the importance of learning local languages, which are like local lingua francas (van Parjis, 2011, 133-174).

Piller, however, points out that the main point of van Parjis’s writing is the notion of privileges. The native people of languages have privileges over the non-native speakers. Understanding these privileges is the first step to fairer language use (Piller, 2016, 206-208).

I agree with the importance of understanding privileges. That could help people to understand the difficulties non-native speakers go through to learn languages. That said, especially in van Parjis’s book, it is easy to understand that only English-speaking people are the privileged ones. In reality, all native speakers need to be careful to understand their privileges when talking to people who do not speak their language as natives.

Power related to language choices

The choices of language reflect the privileges. According to van Parjis, participants usually choose the language best known by the person who knows the particular language the least when the only criterion for the choice is to make the communication as efficient as possible. He calls this maxi-min language. Using it should minimize the exclusion in the conversation and make it more efficient for all parties (van Parjis, 2011, 14). However, in some situations, other power dynamics can affect the choice. If one participant is more powerful than another, the language chosen can be their stronger one even if the maxi-min would be the better language of the less powerful person (van Parjis, 2011, 19). Nowadays the maxi-min language is often English.

There are also power differences between languages. Piller talks about the hierarchy of languages and de Swaan’s theory of the language pyramid. In the pyramid, languages are divided into peripheral, central, super-central, and hyper-central languages. Most of the languages belong to the peripheral languages spoken by small groups of native speakers. Central languages are often the nations’ official languages used in media and education. The super-central languages are a group of languages that are commonly spoken internationally. On top of them is the hyper-central language: English. To reach more people, individuals need to learn languages that are on the next steps of the pyramid (Piller, 2016, 14-18). The higher on the pyramid the languages are, the more native speakers enjoy the privileges over speakers of other languages.

These power dynamics are important to understand. The native speakers of languages that are higher in the hierarchy may not have the same pressure to learn languages as the native speakers of languages lower in the hierarchy (Piller 2016, 12-14, 17-18). This causes imbalanced power structures when choosing languages. There will be fewer choices for the maxi-min language. The people who know more languages need to adapt to the needs of those who know less. Therefore, former people find themselves more likely in uncomfortable situations where they need to communicate in a language they are not so confident. 

More thoughts about the privileges

I see similarities between understanding the privileges of native speakers in the local society and the wider adaptation of newcomers to the host societies. According to theories such as Berry’s Acculturation model, a host society has a role in helping the adaptation process of the newcomers (Berry, 1992, 69-85). Similarly, native language speakers could support the people learning their languages. Often the responsibility of the adaptation as well as learning the language is left to the newcomers even though the environment and the people part of it have a role in the process (see e.g. Kim, 2017). Coincidentally, the adaptation theories also include the learning of language as part of the adaptation process (Kim, 2017). Thus, in the context of migration, the locals could help the whole adaptation process by acknowledging their language privileges.

How can we understand the privileges in practice? Partly the point of language justice is understanding the complexity of learning languages. It takes time and effort (van Parjis, 2011, 12, 50-82). Understanding the complexity of learning would mean, for example, realizing that not everyone learns languages similarly. The same learning method may be effective for one person but cause stress for another. Also, some people may have obstacles such as dyslexia, which makes the learning of a language very hard. You would not know that when meeting them. This is why the learner should have the power to choose when and how they practice instead of the environment dictating the ways of learning. The responsibility of the environment (and people part of it) is to recognize the efforts of the language learners and avoid judging non-native speakers when they are still on their journey of learning.

When we talk about language justice and language diversity, we should remember that, at the end of the day, languages are always spoken by people. Linguistic fairness is also fairness between people. This is reflected in two ways. Firstly, languages are part of people’s identity (Piller, 2016, 12). Being disrespectful towards a language might feel personal for its speaker. Secondly, even if equality between languages is a beautiful idea, it should never override the equality of people. This is where understanding privileges and the power related to language choices come into play. For example, using English can be a way to treat all the participants of the conversation equally even if it would mean neglecting equal respect for languages or appreciation of language diversity. This is probably why van Parjis proposes the acceleration of English so everybody can participate in the conversation equally.

Lastly, I know what some of you must be thinking about: if the spread of English is accelerated, will it threaten the other languages? Will English kill other languages? As a history student, I have a couple of takes on this. Firstly, language diversity will never lose its importance, at least not completely. Even if just historians, people will still read the old texts in their original languages(e.g. Conrad talks about this in his book: 2016, 221). Secondly, history can also show that multiple languages have survived over time. For example, Finland is an excellent example of a multilingual society where several languages have existed together for centuries. Surely, some languages have gone extinct, but multilingualism has survived. This should give us hope that the same can continue in the future if we want to.

In a nutshell, people of different languages have always met each other and needed to find ways to communicate together. Why do we find that hard today? Individuals can speak more than one language, or have we lost that skill? My guess is the ideology of nationalism, which puts the national languages on a pedestal and creates intolerance towards other languages. Do we feel that English can threaten our languages because there is a threat or is it all just the intolerance caused by nationalism? I believe that we do not need to worry about the status of national languages (protected by national law). At least not in our lifetime. 

That is all I have to say about this subject. Thank you for reading this far! Sorry for the slightly bitter undertone of this text (heh!). I am also aware of my privileges as a person who has always returned home and has not permanently immigrated. I have not felt that much pressure to assimilate which has also affected my motivation to learn languages. That said, hopefully, I could give you something to reflect on. Especially if you are like me, who has struggled with languages, it can be interesting to know how the language policies of the world could be fairer. If you enjoyed this, I could write more similar stuff about themes such as cultural shock and adaptation to a new society or something. Let me know what you think in the comments!

References:

Berry, J. W. (1992) “Acculturation and Adaptation in a New Society.” International Migration 30, no. s1: 69-85. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2435.1992.tb00776.x.

Conrad, S. (2016). What Is Global History? Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Kim, Y. Y. (2017). “Cross-Cultural Adaptation”. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication.

Parijs, P. van. (2011) Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World. Oxford University Press, Incorporated.

Piller, I. (2016). Linguistic diversity and social justice: An introduction to applied sociolinguistics. Oxford University Press.

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Hi all! Welcome to my blog!

I’m Niina, I come from Finland (out of all places in the world) and I really like travelling. I’ve been lucky to do all sort of cool things in many different countries.

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