National and ethnic minorities

This chapter explores whether modern nation-states can or should formally accommodate the language varieties spoken by national and ethnic minorities within their borders and, if so, in what contexts and/or to what extent? The privileging of state-sanctioned, national languages, an allied predilection for cultural and linguistic homogeneity, and the consequent public delimiting of the use of other minoritized language varieties in the public domain, have also been reinforced by developments in international law, particularly post–World War II. The sociolinguist Heinz Kloss captures this distinction in his use of the terms “tolerance-oriented language rights” and “promotion-oriented language rights.” Developments in international law for national minorities are at once both encouraging and disappointing. Polyethnic rights are intended to help ethnic minorities to continue to express their cultural, linguistic, and/or religious heritage, principally in the private domain, without it hampering their success within the economic and political institutions of the dominant national society.