Linguistic Justice

Politics, Philosophy & Economics

Volumn 1, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 59-74

  Van Parijs, Philippe ^a  

^a UNIVERSITÉ CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN   (Belgium)

Author keywords

bilingualism; David Gauthier; globalization; linguistic diversity; minority rights; public goods

Indexed keywords

EID: 85004415470     PISSN: 1470594X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1470594X02001001003     Document Type: Article

References (8)

1. See, for example, François Grin and François Vaillancourt, ‘The Economics of Multilingualism’, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 17 (1997): 43-65; François Grin, Compétences et récompenses. La valeur des langues en Suisse (Fribourg: Editions universitaires, 1999).
2. The same holds, mutatis mutandis, within the framework of the ‘real-libertarian’ conception of justice presented and defended in Philippe Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All. What (if Anything) Can Justify Capitalism? (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) and Philippe Van Parijs, ‘Real Freedom, the Market and the Family. A Reply’, Analyse & Kritik 23 (1): 106-131. The fact that possessing a mother tongue different from the dominant one may constitute a handicap makes undominated diversity less likely to obtain spontaneously (thus justifying that some resources be specifically targeted at dominated linguistic communities), while employment rents will be more than proportionally appropriated by people with more valuable linguistic assets (and their maximin redistribution through the highest sustainable basic income will, therefore, benefit more than proportionally those with less valuable linguistic assets). In neither case does linguistic justice need to be treated separately.
3. In Philippe Van Parijs, ‘Free Riding versus Rent Sharing. Why even David Gauthier Should Support an Unconditional Basic Income’ in Ethics, Rationality and Economic Behaviour, edited by F. Farina, F. Hahn, and S. Vanucci (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996): 159-181, I used this story to illustrate and motivate one potential application of David Gauthier's principle of maximin relative benefit, to which I return shortly.
4. I sketch two families of possible arguments of this type in Philippe Van Parijs, ‘The Ground Floor of the World. On the Socio-Economic Consequences of Linguistic Globalisation’, International Political Science Review 21 (2000): 217-233.
5. Jeffrey Church and Ian King, ‘Bilingualism and Network Externalities’, Canadian Journal of Economics 26 (1993): 337-345.
6. Jonathan Pool, ‘The Official Language Problem’, American Political Science Review 85 (1991): 495-514.
7. David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 271–272.
8. Abram de Swaan, ‘The Evolving European Language System: A Theory of Communication Potential and Language Competition’, International Political Science Review 14 (1993): 241-255; Abram de Swaan, ‘The World Language System’, unpublished manuscript, January 2001.