Linguistic Justice Scrutinized

We humans are linguistic beings . We are endowed with the ability to speak and to understand what others say . It is to this ability that we owe our potential for civilization, for behaving with each other in a civilized, fair way . Or, at least, it is to this ability that we owe the reasonable hope that we possess such a potential . However, once there is more than one language, more than one code for facilitating communication, and once people mastering distinct languages interact with one another on a regular basis, a language is not only a medium for sharing information, instructions, and reasons . It is also a means of exclusion, hierarchy, domination, and unfairness . In today’s world, interaction between people who do not possess the same native language has reached an unprecedented level . This fact I regard not only as irreversible but also as bound to further gain in importance in the coming decennia . At the same time, and largely for related reasons, human populations are becoming increasingly interdependent – throughout the world and more intensively within Europe. They are, therefore, in ever greater need of finding civilized ways of sharing a continent and a planet . And this requires being able to talk and listen more intensively, more effectively, and more cheaply than ever before . For reasons spelt out at the onset of my Linguistic Justice, there is no promising way of achieving this except through the democratization of competence in one natural language, and this language will be something that can be called ‘English’ .1 Since this indispensable lingua franca is very unequally close to the native languages of European citizens and of human beings generally, its dominance creates sizeable inequalities that can legitimately be regarded as unjust . The bulk of Linguistic Justice consists in discussing them in a systematic way and in proposing strategies for neutralizing or alleviating them .