Towards a tool to analyze
linguistic justice:
Essential interdisciplinary parameters
Federico Gobbo
Amsterdam / Milano-Bicocca / Torino
Javier Alcalde
Scuola Normale Superiore

Contents
1. Linguistic justice within political philosophy
2. The Multiculturalism Policy (MCP) Index
3. Sociolinguistic parameters
4. Linguistic uneasiness
5. Conclusion

1. Linguistic justice
 Interdisciplinary approach: contributions from political
philosophy to economics and various fields of linguistics
 Diversity of approaches can lead to different objectives
and ultimately to divergent agendas
 On political philosophy, we focus on an empirical approach
that considers the respect of language rights unavoidable

Multiculturalism
 Linguistic justice as protecting language rights of minority
groups
 The aim is to allow them to use their language in the
public sphere to balance the injustice that would happen if
they had to shift to another language
 Typical examples of such minorities who deserve
language rights include the case of the Catalans in Spain
and the case of Quebec in Canada

2. The Multiculturalism Policy Index
 Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka
 It monitors multiculturalism policies in 21 Western
democracies
 3 points in time: 1980, 2000, 2010
 3 minority groups: immigrant groups, national minorities
and indigenous peoples

2. The Multiculturalism Policy Index
 Theory: Kymlicka’s “multicultural turn” since the 1960s in
public policies regarding ethnocultural diversity
 Results: the average MCP score across the countries
has increased from 1980 to 2000, and from 2000 to 2010
 Conclusion: Results confirm the theoretical predictions by
Kymlicka’s school of thought

MPC Index - methodology
 It measures the presence or absence of a range of policies
 Each indicator is related with a policy dimension where
(liberal-democratic) states face a choice about whether or
not become supportive of minorities
 8 policies for immigrant groups (e.g. multicultural education)
 6 policies for national minorities (e.g. official language status)
 9 policies for indigenous peoples (e.g. land claims)
 These policies are equally weighted

2.1 National minorities
 Federal or quasi-federal territorial autonomy
 Official language status, either in the region or nationally
 Guarantees of representation in the central government or on
constitutional courts
 Public funding of minority language university/schools/media
 Constitutional or parliamentary affirmation of
multinationalism
 According international personality

2.2. Indigenous peoples
 Recognition of land rights/title
 Recognition of self-government rights
 Upholding historic treaties and/or signing new treaties
 Recognition of cultural rights
 Recognition of customary law
 Guarantees of representation in the central government
 Legislative affirmation of their distinct status
 Support for international instruments on indigenous rights
 Affirmative action

2.3 Immigrant minorities
 Legislative affirmation of multiculturalism
 Adoption of multiculturalism in school curriculum
 Inclusion of ethnic representation/sensitivity in the media
 Exemptions from dress-codes, Sunday-closing legislation
 Dual citizenship
 Funding of ethnic organizations to support cultural activities
 Funding of bilingual education or mother-tongue instruction
 Affirmative action for disadvantaged immigrant groups

2.4. MCP Index - strengths
 Use of data. It can be used to test explanatory
hypotheses on an empirical basis
 It’s systematic. It can be used to compare among
countries and also across-time
 Data are freely available. It can be adjusted by
researchers, according to their own definition of MCP

2.4. MCP Index - weaknesses
 The ‘list’ of equally weighted policies is questionable
 There is no specific hypothesis stating which multicultural
policies are the fundamental ones
 Some terms are not defined (e.g. guarantees of representation)
 Only data for 21 Western countries and only in 3 points of time
 Variables tend to be dichotomous and with inconsistency
 Inexactitudes regarding the accuracy of the data
 The standard is low. It gives a value of 1 if a country “has met or
exceeded the standard outlined in the indicator”

2.4. MCP Index - weaknesses
 Lack of sociolinguistic parameters
 On language planning it only considers formal status planning
 There is nothing about corpus planning nor language acquisition
 There is nothing about informal or non-formal language planning
 Language vigour is not considered at all
 Our argument: The inclusion of sociolinguistic parameters in
the evaluation of language policies can improve our
understanding (and measurement) of linguistic justice

3. Sociolinguistic parameters
 Overcoming the Westphalian model, sociolinguistics
has been recently applied to situations of languages in
contact and speakers' complex repertoires
 Complex sociolinguistic situations, e.g. where 3 or more
speech communities share the same territory
 The aim is to reduce the linguistic inequalities among
the members of the speech community so that
individuals are at ease in their use of their language

4. Linguistic uneaseness
 “A situation in which speakers feel that their pragmatic
linguistic competence is not fitting the communicative
requirements of the linguistic act they are about to
perform” (Dell'Aquila, Gobbo and Iannàccaro, 2017)
 This is operationalised as a gap between the
(socio)linguistic competences of the individual and the
(socio)linguistic expectations of the community of
reference

Scale of Linguistic Easiness
Position Consequences Causes
1 Enjoy a strong social
position
Knowledge of all in-group code(s), mastery of the
Wunschprache
0 No consequences Knowledge of all in-group-code(s), ignorance of the
Wunschsprache
-1 Unease in (some)
formal situations
(partial) ignorance of the high-variety
-2 Unease in (some) in-
group relations
(partial) ignorance of in-group code(s)
-3 Out-grouping,
respected
Ignorance of all the codes within the community,
mastery of the Wunschsprache
-4 Out-grouping, severe Ignorance of all the respected codes within the
community and the Wunschsprache

Conclusion
 An interdisciplinary approach of linguistic justice allows to
improve the measurement of language rights by considering
direct and indirect tools
 Directly, through the official, overt policies that can be measured
through tools such as the MCP Index
 Indirectly, through the unofficial, covert policies that can be
measured through tools such as the Scale of Linguistic Easiness

Thank you!