Social Inclusion and Multilingualism: Linguistic Justice and Language Policy

Abstract

Multilingual or linguistically heterogeneous societies are increasing around the globe. Socio-political processes, like Europeanization and globalization, are responsible for this expansion. Universal norms and standards for language use and identity are spreading, mediated by international organizations and charters. In this view, multilingualism can be seen as a challenge to national social cohesion, though it remained undisputed before the development of global multi-level governance. In many places, languages of traditional territorial minorities have been recognized and given official status, leading in some cases to new forms of local, regional, and national governance. Furthermore, the proliferation of multilingualism is boosted by a variety of forms of mobility, where mobility is understood as physical migration or new forms of virtual mobility connected to digital networks. Mobility in this sense underpins the linguistic and transnational identity of the migrants who bring new languages with them. One of the questions in need of analysis is the circumstances and conditions that lead to the inclusion/exclusion from society of specific linguistic groups with shared linguistic features. This thematic issue wants to address the apparent schism between multilingualism and social inclusion as well as the language policy and planning pursued by supranational institutions, states, and societal organizations in their efforts tackle it. In this issue, the focus of study of linguistically diverse societies will be on the closely interrelated dependencies which impact language policy and planning.