Linguistic justice, the concept, ways of development

Prepared by the researche : Ftaich abdelilah –  faculté des langues et lettre et art , université ibn Tofail, Kénitra, Morocco

Democratic Arabic Center

Journal of cultural linguistic and artistic studies : Thirty-third Issue – September 2024

A Periodical International Journal published by the “Democratic Arab Center” Germany – Berlin

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Abstract

This article deals with the concept of linguistic justice in relation to the theoretical references framed by it and its relation to linguistic policy and the issues of multilingualism, the article is part of the sociology of linguistics which draws on the linguistic , political, economic and legal sciences and aims to crystallize the concept of linguistic justice and its applications in policies language.

The idea of linguistic justice is new to arab culture to a larg extent; including morocco in particular. This article attempts to crystallize this concept and incorporate it into the context of sociology and to show the application of justice to linguistic issues, which will necessarily address concepts such as language policy and multilingualism the main purpose of this article is to present the linguistic situation in order to approach linguistic justice in its roots, problems and virtual solutions.

It may be useful to say in its introduction that addressing the issue of linguistic justice is not easy because of the novelty of the term use and deliberation, or in terms of the concept, which is still surronded by some confusion and ambiguity.

However, despite the novelty of the term and its attractiveness, the researcher realizes that it is subject to study and identification, the scholar sees the issue of justice in its social and moral dimensions. It has occupied the wise men and philosophers since ancient times, the Greeks dealt with the philosophy of justice, and entered the civil situation or what the social situation is known according to the theories of social contract and political sociology, but intellectuals did not care about linguistic justice or its status as applied or applied to languages only recently.

It seems that the philosophers and the politicians were preoccupied with the issue of cultural justice or the priority of cultural rights before the term of linguistic justice, so it can be said that the question of languages has always been addressed in public discourse dealing with the concept of culture.

From this point of view, the subject of linguistic justice is new to the Moroccan cultural system, from a philosophical, legal and intellectual perspective it is in its embryonic stage. We do not exaggerate if we confirm that it is still in the process of crystallizing and forming even in the western liberal cultures themselves. The term was not mentioned in the arab world except in a few writings that revolve around the dissection of the linguistic justice has not been achieved so far and did not know the accumulation of theoretical knowledge of the great image of other contemporary knowledge in the context of globalization and the development of information technologies.

Therfore, we have to extend the concepts of linguistic, and language to study it, and to show the relations between them and their practice in pluralistic societies so that we cn overcome some of the classic definitions of those terms, which undoubtedly expanded research and saturated analysis over successive eras.

This implicitly imlies that we will highlight the applications of justice to linguistic issues, which necessarily necessitates addressing similar or neutral concepts such as linguistic rights, linguistic rights, linguistic citizenship, and linguistic tolerance these are terms that have become the surface of contermporary cultural and economic pluralism as they relate to different spheres of life.

The problematic questions associated with this article can be summarized as follows what is the extent to which the principle of linguistic justice is reflected in reality, and how do we compare different languages in their ability to absorb all the latest development in life ?

Is it not ironic that in the era of globalization, in which monolithic linguistic domination is devoted to the whole world, lites call for pluralism that leads to rupture instead of circumventing as strong arabic language that has the best reasons to challenge language domination.

I- Definition of the term linguistic justic

The scholarly approach prevailed, and the strictness of the scientific method necessitated that when the researcher carried out an issue or sought to highlight the phenomenon, whatever its nature, it would first define the concepts that  refer to the key terms to clarily the vision and dispel the fog of the path.

Ibn Manzoor says that: “justice is what he has in mind that he is upright” it means aquitable appreciation, recognition and respect for rights and what everyone deserves, which leads to giving one something and taking what is on it, that is justice is to give everyone his right, or to put things in their righful place.

Justice means that rights holders are entitled to rights because rights are vulnerable to attacks, violations and adversities because they are linked to the protection of the human self, and therfore we recognize that the administration of justice is not easy to deal with the circumstances of the meeting and the conditions of the repercussions of justice means in its popular and common use among people to stand at one distance towards the members of society without prejudice to one party at onether expense in accordance with predetermined rules and principles, namely equal opportunity in the distribution of income and wealth and resistance to all forms of class inequality, exploitation, poverty, and developing solidarity between the people of the homeland and perhaps does not exclude this description linguistic justice that we are analysing.

What concerns us in the the concepts of justice in this endeavor are those that focus an the grounds that justice is a pattern of social or political relations undr which every person or group is treated on an equal basis, based on the prevailing system of values in society.

Accordingly, linguistic rights should be distinguished between the personal rights of individuals and collective rights belonging to ethnic or national groups living under one state. Thus, specialists in the legal field continue to fin dit difficult to make, linguistic rights a separate branch within the legal and political disciplines. Therfore, they approach this article with legal concepts, particularly  the rights of minorities which include linguistic rights. It also leads us to say that linguistic justice among individuals, the mechanism by which justice is achieved between the language that establish the public landscape of a state by adopting a pluralistc language policy that recognizes the right of every language group to use its language in the geographical space it occupies within the state or along the presence of speakers on the basis of linguistic distribution of members of society on the basis of recognition of equal rights and duties, and on the basis of linguistic cultural contract between the state and the citizen.

One of the first to be exposed to the term linguistic justice in the field of political philosophical studies is philippe Van Parijis, and then to neighboring knowldege sectors.

In his opinion, Parijis that linguistic justice is based on the pillars are:

• Recognition of linguistic deversity within the boundaries of the state, and the symbolic affirmation of the equality of languages.
• Adopting a common language that communicates among all citizens of the country, called Parijis “lingua Franca”
• The possession of citizens of the state residing in the regions of minorities courage and humility to learn the official local languages according to the principle of regionalism in those territories.
• Adopting the principle of regional linguism, which is based on the recognition of the right of each linguistic group to use its tongue within the borders of its territory.

For his part, Parigis saught linguistic justice for europe and for the world he had prepared for this purpose, he illustrated the images of injustice related to linguistic diversity, the most important of which was the hegemony of english in europe and the world. He also presented a set of principles which he considered to be applicable and capable of achieving, the premise is that justice linguistic.

Language is a participative and distributional justice designed to preserve dignity and equality between languages, which leads to:

• To manage the diverse linguistic situation in the society smoothly, wisely and objectively so as not to raise the sensitivity between the center and the margin.
• The recognition of the other and the adoption of thier rights must not be treated as temporary or special settlements of certain problems. Rather, they must be considered as basic obligations and rights required to achieve justice. In essence do not look for grounds stability.
• The prevalance of stability in society, which positively reflects on the overall development of the nation-state.

The complement this concept, the concept of language should be devoid of definitions that have been emphasized as the optimal means of communication that express a particular identity as not the expression of the conscience that enters into the concept of idealism, but rather the same conscience.

This means that the language carries in its assemblage, its vocal system and so on the history of the group that speaks and its relations with the other groups, and the nature of these relations and the place of the speakers among the geographical movements and vital activity.

All this leaves traces and imprints in the language that is the first source of  knowledge acquisition and control investment and conversion and significant determinant in the identification of the individual so that the language is not fixed, but change and turn over time.

II- The philosophical reference of linguistic justice:

If we try to determine the framework governing the idea of linguistic justice we fin dit takes reference from the fields of knowledge, many of which are entirely human and social sciences, and we will note that the interest of politicians in the issue of justice and linguistic rights of communities living in the space of the state of the new one dates back to the nineties of the last century and the decade the first of the third millennium, this issue has not received this care only after many conflicts of linguistic origin in many regions of the world as the search for linguistic homogenity usually associated with the establishment of nation-states after the dasappearance of the phenomenon of colonialism and the interest began to crystallize in a political theory dealing with language according to a democratic vision pluralism that recognizes diversity and preserves the  unity of society and the state.

In addition to the above, the positions presented on the issue of linguistic diversity and the proposals that tried to solve its problems in order to achieve harmony within the nation state fall into a broader and more comprehensive format called the post-modernist trend, which resulted in state- building operations and the transition to multi-lingual and multicultural citizenship, in which justice was founded on two pillars: freedom, and equality in the individual and collective cultural language rights of all citizens of the state.

But such a scenario romains largely theoretical, because the competition between linguistic entites in societies remains a reality that can not be concealed or denied. Language policy becomes a philosophy that works to balance conflicting language groups. These linguistic and national mosaic in the absence of social justice and awarnesses civilizational and social factors should be a factor in the threat of national security and destabilization.

In the middle of the 20th century, the world began to grow up to the struggles of oppressed peoples and nations that sought to eliminate backwardness in various fields and to achieve the social justice that was absent in the colonial era, such as replacing the colonial language with the language of the colonizer which consists of the entity of the independent state that its languages have an official presence free of folklore, and celebrate it as a mere heritage of the festivals, which means that multilingualism becomes a way to celebrate cultural diversity.

These ideas are echoed within a general philosophical framework known as distributive justice, which was based on aristote view that evil was produced by poor distribution, thus plays an essential role in the stability of developed societies it encompasses all areas that improve human life and dignity, especially in the political and social spheres. Distributive justice is the basis of social justice, under which justice is viewed as a political theory rather than a moral philosophy, thanks to John Rawls fingerprint and the enrichment of W. Kymlicka.

The theory of cultural rights presented by W. Kymlicka is the most important one in which an approach is adopted that tries to answer the absence of cultural justice or cultural injustice. It is axiomatic when evaluating the normative foundations for the protection of tongues to address the issue of linguistic justice through theories of justice.

It should be noted here that language policy levers create a plan to regulate the use of staff languages by clearly defining common language functions, defining the roles of languages with an etnic dimension, and opening language functions to avoid confrontations or decomposition. It is well known in this context that this language policy is the result of a community project, and how the society determines its future based on the institutions that are available to it. This policy must be based on the principles of total national cultural identity, local or regional ethnic diversity, and knowledge which is meant to learn foreign language, which should not become a break from identity, but a means of transmission of knowledge and the benefit of thought, which did not know how to benefit from all that is crowded around him, although it has a model in his heritage.

III- multilingualism and linguistic justice

The analyst will find the components of societies and their different structures, wheter in terms of ethnicity, affiliation or otherwise, that it is difficult to find a society characterized by absolute unilateralism is a fact and characteristical all societies and every rational language policy should work to confirm, refine and guide rather than fight it.

Although pluralism in most human societies is a feature of a living society, as various types of  interrelationship appear to be interrelated and stable, it sometimes seems fragile and time- limited due to the friction generated by linguistic conflict. Which arises among language groups to adopt or impose the use of a language on many speakers in other languages.

There is no doubt that this policy of dictation and pressure, wheter it is the expected result of a pre-planned or inevitable language policy dictated by other emergency social factors, is the legacy of a number of chalenges to the integrity of the social structure. Linguistic rationality put in her vision and calculated his strategy is linguistic justice that takes into account the rights of language groups and respect for the common language adopted by the state.

Therfore, we tend to define multilingualis as a group of languages that exist in a different society of the system and the structure lived side by side and used by a particular group, and that the occurrence of that coexistence either natural or by friction or colonization or all that leads to the emergence of more in use within the community, unbalanced monogonal language causes the reactions go to the extent of taking positions in the opposite direction. It is also necessary to point out that pluralism is a feature of unity and reunification not a project to tear apart all components of society that are reflected in its fabric.

David Crystal imagined the time when English would dominate the world and become the only language of communication, and concluded that this would be the greatest disaster mankind has known in history. The strange thing is that the question of the extinction of languages does not mean the disappearance of a communication apparatus, but rather the disappearance of a nation and the loss of a culture, and the loss of data for psychologists and specialists interested in the relationship between language and thought, and thus the loss of the ethics of the group speaking and all that gives us an idea of their experiences in their lives and their perception reality and the world.

Thus, every language of death deprives us of discovering a specific pattern of organizations of the human mind as they combine linguistic, psychologiacal and cognitive components because they carry within in the characteristics unique and rare extract from the momentum of human heritage. Hence the phenomenon of loss of language of appearances that do not differ very much the reality of the extinction of animals and rare species of birds or plants.

However, the forms presented by this understanding of language and linguistic justice on the ground are difficult to achieve procedurally given the disparity between languages in various aspects, the number of speakers in each of these languages, their qualifications, their ability to absorb scientific and social developments, re-represent them and the historical heritage of some of them, and the balance that works to enhance their ability to confront current civilizational challenges, because the power of language is of the power of its speakers.

Neverthless, these questions are on obstacle and a major obstacle to the linguistic justice desired in a particular society. The leading global experiences in our modern world have shown many of the gaps that have accopanied the application of this justice, as we have done in Switzerland, Canada, Belguim, Russia, Turkey and Spain and others.

Therefore,despite the abundance of legal texts regulating the lingyustic space in these countries, the dominance of one language over the other languages remains an undeniable reality, an issue that refers us to the problem of justice in its principles.

VI- Politics and linguistic justice

Linguistic policy is the official language that plans to create a particular language in multilingual societies, making a particular language an official language in the power of law and the constitution. But the question is : what is the relationship between language policy and linguistic justice ?

There is no doubt that we are close to each other, because a multiligual society may dominate one language ever another without law or protection of unfair law and inequality, and thus persecute social minorities or at least feel injustice because they are deprived of their language. Part of the community is dysfunctional because of the lack of equal opportunity to learn the languages of the society or to feel marginalized by one of them in which a class speaks, or does not take a position worthly of it, which requires it to ask the authorities to intervene and often struggle for its language the presence of two or more languages at two contradictory levels or the presence of one of them in a higher position may prompt the political authority to seek linguistic balance or linguistic justice.

This will require the development of a language policy based on the management and treatment of language in the national state to establish a common language for all. It will be circulated in accordance with other languages within the same society. This community will preserve its unity and existence without conviction.

So do not which is injust to some components of the society and some of its structures and institutions. Hence, we recognize that linguistic management in the light of linguistic justice does not mean abandoning the common language that is supposed to be accepted by the political, economic, social and cultural circles.

Moreover, the language policy aims to develop programs, projects and laws for the languages of the community so that one does not advance or develop at the expense of the other, the multilingual society needs to determine the relationship between the languages spoken, that is the common official national language dialects and other foreign languages.

The linguistic policy aims to creating linguistic reality in a way that suits modern civilization and new systems, planing to build the relations desired in the state and its relations with the world and the other. Its objectives are to reduce contradictions and facilitate communication. And communication within the state or between linguistic groups. There is no doubt that this policy will establish justice among different linguistic groups, and find their differences and conflicts before they exist and even if they exist. It also aims to use two or more languages in all cases, or to limit it to a specific language. This determination is clear by legal provisions specifying the language used in the various community areas.

On the other hand, the adoption of an adult language policy takes into account the multiple linguistic features and works to contain a scientific plan based on recognition and embodiment on the ground by programs and plans that make one feel the realization of citizenship based on respect for linguistic identity. Which would result in a socially stable state. We do not attempt to reduce all societal promblems by their diversity and complexity in the linguistic question. Rather, our purpose is to show the importance of the linguistic factor in such cases. Therefore, we must safeguard the major questions that concern the collective consciousness of nations.

The pivotal role of language in social life and its value as a means of reaching the highest centers of power and influnce, as well as its symbolic value in the formation of social elites and in the consolidation of ethnic identity provides the speakers and linguistic and political groups an appropriate atmosphere for the success of their linguistic planing is no doubt that linguistic justice will be a fruitful outcome and it will solve many problems of linguistic origin in society.

References

• Cooper, R. (1989). Language planning and social change. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• De Korne, H. (2010). Indigenous language education policy: Supporting community-controlled immersion in Canada and the US. Language Policy 9(2), 115-141.
• Fishman, J. (1980). The sociology of bilingual education. Lectures at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Cited in N. Hornberger (1988). Bilingual education and language maintenance. Providence, RI: Foris Publications.
• John Edwards, Language, Society and Identity (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1985);
• John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).
• Kymlicka, W. et A. Patten (sous la dir.) (2003). Language Rights and Political Theory. Oxford : Oxford University Press.
• Spolsky, B. (2004). Language policy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Tollefson, J. (1991). Planning language, planning inequality. London, UK: Longman.
• VAN PARIJS, Philippe. 2011. Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World.Oxford University Press.