Do ONE of the questions below. The length requirement of paper is 3,000 words (not including references, assignment titles, or any appendices)
Essay Titles LG474 linguistic rights.
1. Develop a case study of one or more national, group or minority language rights situations. A comparison is recommended, though a single detailed case may be accepted. Your paper should
- Identify a sociolinguistic issue or problem.
- Describe it in detail.
- Frame it in terms of language rights.
- Refer to specific national or international instruments (constitutions, legislations, declarations, resolutions, conventions etc.).
- Consider existing language planning or policy efforts or remedies critically; if you cannot find existing ones aimed at your situation, consider ones that have been tried or recommended elsewhere, and examine how they might be applied.
- If possible, recommend a practical course or courses of action. What obstacles can you anticipate to these?
2. Identify a situation in which recent or ongoing conflicts involve issues of language and identity.
- Describe the conflict situation briefly and clearly. ("Conflict" involves violence and is more serious than simply e.g. a clash of rights, which could be treated under #1 above)
- Identify the divisions between major ethnic, national, religious or other groups and their associated language varieties.
- What is the status of the language varieties which are linked closely to the conflict?
- What is the recent history of their development and use?
- How is language involved alongside other human rights issues in the conflict?
- What national or international legal instruments are relevant to language rights in the situation?
- Are there similar or parallel situations as far as the role of language in the conflict? What happened or is happening in them? (Keep this part of description brief, unless the essay plans to compare two situations at similar length.)
- What are likely outcomes of the conflict? What impact would they be likely to have on language rights and use?
- If possible, recommend a practical course or courses of action. What obstacles can you anticipate to these?
3. Develop a case study of indigenous peoples' language rights and problems. A comparison is recommended, though a single detailed case may be accepted.
- Explain why the group(s) you are considering qualify as "indigenous" under accepted definitions, instead of e.g. a minority or autochthonous group (which would be treated under #1 above).
- Describe the extent of language endangerment in your case(s).
- Make efforts to apply standard indicators or measures of endangerment (eg Fishman's GIDS, Fishman 1991; UNESCO Language Endangerment Framework, 2003; Extended GIDS, Lewis & Simons 2009) to your case(s). NB: A case for which you can offer few or no answers is not a useful choice as the main focus of your essay.
- What preservation or revitalization efforts have been attempted in the indigenous communities you study? What successes and set-backs have occurred?
- Place these descriptions in a language rights perspective by
(a) identifying specific national or international instruments that provide a base for the language rights of the indigenous people you study, and
(b) documenting to what extent the host nation(s) observe or comply with these instruments.
- Drawing on the language rights literature, consider critical responses to language preservation or revitalization efforts, either made directly for the indigenous communities you study or for comparable contexts.
- If possible, recommend further courses of action. What obstacles can you anticipate to these?
4. Some LR problems are the focus of specific instruments aimed at them (e.g. ECRML on traditional European minority languages), and thus these instruments may exclude other deserving problems (e.g. the ECRML excludes recent immigrant languages and dialects of dominant languages). Using case studies, outline such a gap and develop an argument of how it could best be addressed - either by creative application of existing rights and instruments, or through the development of a new instrument. Be aware that the latter is much more difficult and unlikely to succeed in practice. All solutions require you to specify and define terms and categories as precisely as you can (you may draw on existing legal or institutional definitions or those supplied by academics writing on the topic).