Minority and Language Rights

The linguistic conjunction regime in the Catalan education system has been subject to several controversies over the years and we can see one position in favour and another against the model. In this article we identify the main arguments in the public debate for and against the system and analyse its normative basis in accordance with contributions of political theory on linguistic justice. Ultimately, our goal is to assess to which extent there is room for rapprochement or reconciliation between the arguments of the two positions. Our main argument is that both positions, which have employed fairly stable reasoning over time with a shared tendency to avoid explicit identity arguments, may have a certain margin for rapprochement. Some interpretations of the values that underline the arguments of both position, such as ideals of equal treatment of languages, equality of individual opportunities and the guarantee of pluralism, could support a linguistic conjunction system of in schools in which Catalan has a prominent role, Spanish enjoys sufficient recognition, and equal competence in both languages is guaranteed at the end of the school period.

A transcript and video of a TV interview with Sir Eric Pickles MP on 20 March 2017, in which he agrees that the first large-scale central government funding for promoting the Cornish language, delivered from 2010 to 2016, was a political ‘bribe’ to secure fiscal savings in other areas of government from his Liberal Democrat coalition partners. Includes some relevant background information.

The paper argues that the human rights enshrined in international treaties are not generally absolute. They are often qualified and subject to reasonable restrictions justifiable 'in an open and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom.'

ENGLISH: Toponymy and signage in Friulian: an overview of the present situation. Friuli is a historical region of Northeast Italy comprising most of the Autonomous Region Friuli Venezia Giulia. It presents a special linguistic situation because Friulian (a Rhaeto-Romance language), Slovene, German and Veneto speaking communities coexist alongside the Italian community. In addition to the national law n. 482/1999 which protects historical linguistic minorities, the Autonomous Region Friuli Venezia Giulia has issued various laws to protect the different linguistic communities of its territory. Some of these laws contain specific rules concerning toponymy and signage in Friulian language (Regional Laws 68/1981, 15/1996, 29/2007, etc.). This paper considers the consequences of and the problems pertaining to the enforcement of these laws by local authorities (Region, Provinces, Mountain communities, Municipalities): i.e. graphization and normalization of Friulian toponymy, typologies and modes of realization of the road signs in Friulian, the relationship between the standard and local variants of place names, bi- and multilingual road signs and the Italian Highway code, the effects on and reactions of the local communities. In particular herein is shown the data collected and the results of the project "Mappatura Toponomastica del Friuli" (Toponymic Mapping of Friuli), which the author carried out in all the municipalities (177) where the legal protection of the Friulian language is in place. The paper is accompanied by photographic documentation gathered throughout the region.  /  – 
ITALIANO: Situata all’estremità nord-orientale dell’Italia, la Regione autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia presenta una situazione linguistica peculiare, poiché – oltre all’elemento italiano – vi convivono comunità retoromanze (friulane), slave, germaniche e venete. Oltre alle leggi nazionali (soprattutto n. 482/1999 di tutela delle minoranze linguistiche storiche) la Regione autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia ha emanato varie leggi di tutela per le diverse comunità linguistiche del suo territorio, nelle quali compaiono norme specifiche sulla toponomastica. In questo contributo sono analizzati gli effetti e le problematiche legate all'applicazione di tali misure da parte degli enti locali (regione, province, comunità montane, comuni): processi di standardizzazione e normazione dei toponimi (grafia, morfo-fonologia, ecc.), rapporto tra varianti standard e varianti locali dei nomi, processi di ufficializzazione (o coufficializzazione) della denominazione friulana o slovena, segnaletica (bi- e trilingue) e codice stradale, gli effetti e le reazioni da parte delle comunità locali. In particolare sono illustrati i dati raccolti e i risultati del progetto "Mappatura Toponomastica del Friuli", che l'autore ha svolto in tutti i comuni (177) dove è prevista la tutela della lingua friulana. L'articolo è accompagnato da documentazione fotografica raccolta in tutta la regione.

• The paper examines aspects of a key question in Bulgarian public education: rethinking and restructuring multicultural education through new experiments with bilingual education for ethnic minority pupils whose home language is not Bulgarian. This means attention in the main to the literacy needs (and language rights) of ethnic speakers of Turkish and Romani, seeing them as “emergent bilinguals,” and as marginalized minorities, in need of “literacy with an attitude” (Finn, 1999), firmly grounded on their own home language, Mother Tongue First! I argue that the time is ripe, after 26 years of ‘transitional’ chaos within capitalist ‘democracy’ restored on the ruins of Bulgarian socialism, for a paradigm shift in language policy in the schools, also rethinking multicultural education for identity-building and mutual tolerance within the context of class conscious pedagogies for social change. In Bulgaria, such multicultural values face a formidable challenge given the powerful anti-Ottoman narrative on which Bulgarian national history and modern identity are grounded.

Citizenship in Turkey is one of the major instruments of nation-building.
The legal framework that Turkish citizenship rests on is universal and equal. The
non-Muslim minorities – the Armenians, the Greeks and the Jews – however are
granted special group rights in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. Despite the protection
of minorities and their rights in the treaty, the non-Muslim minorities, from
time to time, had been superceded by the universal norms of citizenship in Turkey.
This study discusses the history of the Jewish minority with a focus on the development
of citizenship in Turkey. The history of the Jews as a minority group and
as citizens is illustrated by way of a chronological methodology encompassing a
broad range of events, laws, ideas and movements spanning Early Republican
Period up to present-day Turkey. In line with the conventional classification utilized
by many studies of Turkish politics, the historical projection developed on the
citizenship and minority status of Jews in Turkey is categorized into three periods:
the Early Republican Period (1923–1945), the Multi-Party Democracy Period
(1945–1980) and the Post-1980 Period covering more recent developments.

This paper surveys the issue of language in the context of human and minority rights. Research focus is on the language rights. The main objective of the paper is to examine the nature, substance and the function of the language rights. Also I am trying to find answer whether  language rights are  part of human or/and minority rights? To achieve this goal I am analysing the research question from the normative perspective of political science and tradition of liberal thought as well as from the practical perspective of the international law dealing with the protection of human and minority rights. The mixed normative and practical approach, with the special focus on the function of the language in the modern nation-states and post-nation states is contributary to the research objective. Althought there is not universally accepted definition of the language rights and the theory is still evolving, there is a general agreement that the language rights include: the right on free language use, right to perserve the language identity, right to be educated in the mothers language and the right to use the language in the communication with the public institutions. Currently language rights cant be equated with the human rights. Minority language rights can be seen as the initial mechanism for accomodation of language diversity in the societies. The holders of the language rights are the individuals, but these rights have collective dimension. The language has the value and serves the instrumental and symbolic function for the individual, group and state. In this article I argue that the language rights belong not only to the majority but also to the minorities within state. Garanted language rights should be promotion-oriented and should have official-language regimes. The substance of the language rights should be then the fair and justice acommodation of the language diversity. There is a need of the development of the international standard of language rights which will be context based.

Despite India's status as the world's largest democracy and increasing turnouts in many of the countries of South Asia, recent elections raise concerns about the threat to democracy in the form of majoritarianism. Many of the countries of South Asia are extremely diverse and (mainly) informal mechanisms of accommodation of minorities have been deployed. At the same time concerns about the threat to minority rights in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have been strongly articulated. It is notable that those countries of South Asia, such as Sri Lanka and Pakistan, which have not accommodated their non-dominant groups, have witnessed high levels of conflict. India has been more accommodative, of both linguistic and religious minorities. However, it is precisely this process of accommodation that many in India now worry will be undermined by Hindu majoritarianism.

Minority empowerment is a relatively new approach on research and policy-making in the field of minority studies. At its core lies the ideal to remove the marginalisation of minorities by providing room for them to take agency on their own behalf. One policy that has been identified as having the potential to rapidly affect marginalised communities is the implementation of a Universal Basic Income; a monthly amount paid equally to all residents of an area without any means-testing or conditions. This working paper explores how these two fields of research can connect and identifies the key areas of everyday life that could be affected. This includes focus on employment, education, relationships and family life, community work, and government intrusion and social stigma; core elements for any individual and society, including minority communities. The analysis section finds that UBI has the potential to alter all of these aspects, but only if it is used to increase the existing standard of welfare and government services and not as an opportunity to reduce government spending by cutting the vital existing programmes.

Multilingual education is an essential matter of public concern for modern societies shaped by migration and it remains an important research issue. This article sheds light onto the implementation of autochthonous and allochthonous minority languages such as Danish, Romany, Russian, and Turkish into the German educational system. To observe how these languages are implemented the following aspects are analyzed: official legislation with respect to the consideration of these languages in the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, their status as a foreign language or a heritage language at school, the situation of teacher education at universities, and the professional development of adequate curricula and learning material. The findings do not only show severe differences between the categories autochthonous and allochthonous but also within them. Potential causes for these differences are discussed and consequences for official legislation as well as for the minority speakers themselves are figured out for a sustained language education at school.

No credible claims can be made that the role of language – specifically Malay – has been entirely overlooked by those studying conflict dynamics in South Thailand. Nevertheless, those concerned with religious factors dwarf the number of studies interrogating language issues. Without suggesting that language represents some sort of silver bullet solution to this complex conflict, I argue that anyone pursuing peaceful, political resolutions to Thailand's southern impasse must be more informed about language policy, monolingual mind-sets, and linguistic justice, namely how linguistic repertoires and linked to inequality. My interests in this paper are theoretical (rather than empirical). The first of this paper's two substantive sections describes the nature of Thailand's (diverse) linguistic landscape and how the language policies pursued by Bangkok resemble those of other states between South and Southeast Asia. In light of Bangkok's policies towards southern Malays resemble those that impacted Lao and Khmer-speaking Buddhists in the northeast provinces, I suggest that some dynamics in South Thailand need to be de-exceptionalized. In the section the follows, I interact with recent treatments of how language and religion are involved in constructions of ethno-nationalisms, and linguistic injustice that leads to inequality among linguist minorities. I conclude suggesting reasons for anyone seeking peaceful political resolutions in South Thailand – where a nation linguistic minority possesses close connections to the Malay cosmopolis – needing address the politically sensitive issue of Thailand's (deeply entrenched) monolingual mind-set and discriminatory language policy that has led to widespread language loss.

Contact between culturally distinct human groups in the contemporary ‘glocal’  -global and local- world is much greater than at any point in history. The challenge we face is the identification of the most convenient ways to organise the coexistence of different human language groups in order that we might promote their solidarity as members of the same culturally developed biological species in the globalization era.

Processes of economic and political integration currently in motion are seeing increasing numbers of people seeking to become polyglots. Thus, English is establishing itself as the usual world supra-language, although it coexists with other lingua francas that are widely used in certain parts of the globe.

All this communicative reorganization of the human species may very well pose new problems and aggravate existing tensions as regards language and identity. It would seem that these processes comprise at least four major conceptual dimensions which must be taken into account above all else, as they are both widespread and, left unaddressed, may lead to significant social instability. These dimensions concern linguistic recognition, communicability, sustainability and integration.

While accepting the utility of having an inter-national language, the keystone of the system is clearly that it must ensure the linguistic sustainability of each group. The basic principle is likely to be functional subsidiarity, i.e., whatever can be done by the local language should not be done by another one which is more global. As in the quote from Paracelsus  --“the dose alone makes the poison”-- contact between languages is not ‘poisonous’ per se, but when the correct dose is exceeded it can prove harmful to the language whose position is weaker. A multilingual and communicated humanity is possible.

Il contributo presenta una panoramica delle elaborazioni teoriche e delle forme di organizzazione e mobilitazione riguardanti il riconoscimento e l'affermazione della specifica identità culturale del Friuli e le correlate istanze di autogoverno territoriale e rivendicazioni e azioni di tutela dei diritti linguistici. Dall'inizio del secolo scorso sino al giorno d'oggi è possibile individuare con una certa continuità forti connessioni sia in termini ideali che sul piano pratico ed operativo tra quelle istanze, rivendicazioni e azioni e la dikmensione europea.Si tratta di legami assai rilevanti anche sul piano simbolico, perché mettono in discussione, rovesciandolo come un calzino, quel pregiudizio che vorrebbe le rivendicazioni linguistiche, identitarie e territoriali come “localismo” e “chiusura”, e corrispondono a specifiche forme e modalità di partecipazione, da parte del Friuli “che vuole essere Friuli”, al processo di integrazione continentale e di adesione ai suoi principi e ai suoi obiettivi di pace, cooperazione, sviluppo e convivenza: di “unità nella diversità”.

Case Study on Local Activists’ Struggle for Bilingual Place-name Signs in the Town of Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár

Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár is the second largest city of Romania and it is the cultural and economic centre of Transylvania. The city has a long history of multiculturalism, where Hungarians, Romanians, Germans, Roma and Jews have lived together during long centuries. While in the 1960-1970s, the town’s Hungarian population represented 42 per cent of the total population, as the result of rapid industrialization and communist government-orchestrated integral migration of ethnic Romanians from other regions of the country, the ethnic composition of the city has been changed drastically within the last 40 years. Due to the former communist regime’s strategy, that had the aim to change the ethnic composition of the city, the population of the city has tripled in less than thirty years, and today the Hungarian community represents 16% of the total population. However, Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár is the home of the 2nd biggest Hungarian community (approx. 50,000 people) of Romania. Given that in Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár the local authorities and the Court are ignoring the prescriptions of art. 131 and art. 76 of Law No. 215/2001, and during the last 15 years no bilingual place-name signs have been installed at the entrances/exits of the city till present, a local advocacy group has decided to take steps in order to solve this long-lasting illegality.

International law does not define terms 'minority' and 'minority language.' Yet various treaties protect minorities and minority languages. The paper unpacks the concepts 'minority' and 'minority languages' in international law and assesses who can be protected under the banner 'minority.'

lonia and the “dret de decider”, in Filippo Andreatta and Emanuele Castelli (eds), Solutions and Failures of Identity-based Conflicts. The Autonomy of Trentino-South Tyrol in Comparative Perspective, Trento, FBK Press, 2014, pp. 115-135, in https://books.fbk.eu/pubblicazioni/titoli/solutions-and-failures-in-identity-based-conflicts-the-autonomy-of-trentino-south-tyrol-in-comparative-perspective/

The article provides a historically-grounded analysis of Turkey’s domestic laws and policies in the area of minority rights. Based on an analysis of Turkey's historical policies and constitutional scheme, and the reforms adopted in the early 2000s to fulfill the EU's accession criteria in light of international standards on the protection of minorities, the article proposes solutions based on Canada’s minority protection regime. It argues that the new laws constitute much belated—if still welcome—steps toward granting some fundamental rights to members of some minority groups that leave much more to be done to achieve respect and protection for all minorities.

Contrary to the widespread assumption that Belgium is a bilingual (French/Dutch) country, German is also an official language in Belgium. The German-speaking part of Belgium achieved its cultural autonomy in 1970, which made the approximately 73,000 German-speaking Belgians one of the best protected minorities in Europe. This achievement cannot be understood without reference to the Flemish emancipation and the transformation of the original conception of Belgium as a unitary nation, built on the foundation of shared values, into a federal nation with autonomous communities according to linguistic principles.

This article discusses the minority rights of Iran’s Azerbaijani Turks and human rights violations in its majority Azerbaijani-populated provinces of Iran by the Iranian central government. With the conclusion of the second Russo-Persian War (1826-1828) and the signing of the Turkmenchay Treaty, Azerbaijan was divided into north and south, with the massive region of Southern Azerbaijan becoming part of northwestern Iran. Since then, relations between Southern Azerbaijanis and the Iranian government have been unstable. This article focuses on Tehran’s discriminatory policies towards Iran’s Azerbaijani Turks in the fields of education, media, culture, and environment from 1990-2010.

This paper contrasts the practices of interpreting and implementing official documents that regulate multilingual policies in Vojvodina (Autonomous Province of Serbia) to the experi-ence of multilingualism in everyday situations. The issues of multilingualism on paper as op-posed to everyday life are discussed within the framework of multiculturalism from a meth-odological perspective of social anthropology. The main topics of the research deal with mi-nority-majority interactions. Without the ambition to systematically investigate multilingual practices, the author’s aim is to point out certain ambiguities and shortcomings of regulating official language use in a multicultural setting such as Vojvodina. The general goal of the re-search is thus to make a link between the empirical cases of multilingual policy-making and the theoretical concept of multiculturalism.

Cinnte go raibh na h–údair ag léiriú faoin saol fíor-dheachair ina ré féín, ach, níl mórán stair acu faoi na deacrachtaí nó an miotaseolaíocht sna gluain roimhe sin, i gcomparáíd leis an chuid is mó den tír. Is iad scéaltaí comhaimsirtha i gcoinne samhlachtaí nó ceardanna araibh acu. Is léír go raibh an iomarca seansanna acu iad a bhaint faoi na mbáíd is an fheirmeoireacht. In áit iad sin, léireann siad i dtreo a caitheamh aimsire, an tscéalaíocht, agus an tsuim a bhí acu i gnó a comharsanna is ar gnó na chuairteoirí. Tá siad sin go sóiléír i Peig agus Allagar an hInse.

International human rights law does not currently define a minority. For instance, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protects minority rights in article 27 without defining the term minority. The Human Rights Committee did not define the term in the Diergaardt case.2 Nor did the African Commission define the term ‘minority’ in Malawi African Association and Others v Mauritania.3 The term minority was not even defined by the Kenyan High Court in IL Chamus v The Attorney General and Others.4 Yet various human rights instruments protect minorities.

Is liberalism really compatible with nationalism? Are there limits to linguistic nation-building policies? What arguments justify the imposition of national languages? This book addresses these questions by examining the linguistic disputes in Catalonia and Flanders, two major cases of sub-state nationalism. The book connects two strands of arguments: the political arguments around contested linguistic policies, drawing on a rich set of primary and secondary sources, and the theoretical arguments around liberalism and nationalism. The study also compares the historical trajectory and political dynamics of Catalan and Flemish nationalism. It shows that the relationship between language and nationhood is politically constructed through state nation-building and minority activism. The findings highlight the relevance and pervasiveness of nationalism in contemporary social and political life. This book will appeal to scholars and upper-level students interested in nationalism, contemporary political theory, the politics of language, and comparative territorial politics.

This article offers a study of narratives of ethnic  identity among  young Ruthenians  in Serbia. The analysed data comes from in-depth interviews and questionnaires conducted in 2016 with nine informants studying at the University of Novi Sad. The narrative approach has proven to be  most  suitable,  especially  when  trying  to  understand  the  individual  perspective  of  one’s ethnic  and  linguistic  identity. In  order  to  understand  Ruthenians  as  an  ethnic  minority  in Serbia,  the  study  also  provides  a  brief  overview  ofthe  historical  context,  including information  on  Ruthenian  migration  from  Transcarpathia  to  Vojvodina  in  the  eighteenth century,  their  strategic  positioning  towards  the  nation  states  they  have  lived  in,  their  Greek-Catholic denomination as a factor distinguishing them from other ethnic communities, as well as the intersubjective understanding of their ethnic identity. Vojvodina, the northern region of Serbia, where they  live,  is a  multicultural and  multi-confessional province, which  has proven to  be  both  an  opportunity  and  a  challenge  for  this  community.  The  historical  overview  also presents how they have obtained their minority rights since their migration to the region.

In 2006, a Māori claim to the Waitangi Tribunal argued that the Crown was in breach of its constitutional obligations towards the Māori language in that it “has not adequately ensured the claimants can exercise tino rangatiratanga and kaitiakitanga over systems of transmission of cultural knowledge including the transmission of Te Reo Māori”  (Waitangi Tribunal, 2006, p. 40).  The Tribunal found that the New Zealand state – and not Māori themselves – primarily controlling Māori language policy has been a constitutional violation.  The New Zealand parliament has accepted the Tribunal’s recommendation.  This paper takes a closer look at what is, or can be, understood by the Waitangi Tribunal’s determination that protection of the Māori language should be determined in large measure by Māori ideas.  In particular, it identifies and problematises how the New Zealand government proposes to implement the Tribunal’s recommendation by suggesting that the New Zealand government’s response relies on specific cognitive representations (Rosch, 1975).  This probelmatisation is warranted, because upon closer inspection, the Tribunal’s determination actually hosts vague wording and semantic and syntactic ambiguities (Solan, 2012), meaning the government’s proposed interpretation is not the only possible one.  The paper also draws strongly on critical language policy theory to expose matters of justice and power that advantage some Māori and disadvantages others, including hegemony, ideology, and the application of social categories (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2002; Tollefson, 2006).

Questo contributo intende proporre alcune riflessioni teoriche e alcuni esempi pratici sul rapporto che, per una determinata comunità caratterizzata dall'uso di una lingua in condizione di minoranza e pertanto definibile come “minoranza linguistica”, intercorre (o quanto meno può intercorrere) tra la propria specificità, la sua (eventuale) tutela e lo sviluppo non solo culturale e civile ma anche sociale ed economico della comunità stessa e del corrispondente territorio. La lingua propria  è un patrimonio e una risorsa in sé e per sé, ma soprattutto con il suo riconoscimento giuridico e la sua promozione essa può costituire sotto il profilo economico un autentico e inimitabile  valore aggiunto. La sua tutela, pertanto, non è soltanto una “cosa” buona e giusta, ma è anche una “cosa” conveniente: un buon affare, un buon invenstimento.

In the framework of linguistic or national minorities in Europe, the Friulian case can be considered, from several points of view, an exemplary one. This applies not only to the historical development of its minoritisation and to the steadiness of its claims to recognition and protection but also to the way, during the last decades, that the community has been trying to promote its language and concretely affirm those fundamental rights related to the use of the language itself, through laws and actions of language policy and planning.The contribution aims to present the Friulian case, illustrating the evolution of legislation and policies and identifying their impact on the language itself, its formal and informal use, its social presence, the community’s legitimation, self-representation and delimitation, and the establishment of language rights.It is an interesting path with noteworthy results. It is also a discontinuous itinerary, with ups and downs, in which most of the protection rules (Law 482/1999 and the Regional ones 15/1996 and 29/2007) have not found real application.Therefore, the language is still excluded from several fundamental contexts and, despite some encouraging data coming from the most recent sociolinguistic research, its public use and its presence in education and in the media are still victims of old prejudices, which inspire the contradictory choices of political and institutional decision-makers.Friulian is at the same time a resistant and emerging language and a strongly minoritized one.

Keywords: Friulian language, Friulian community, language rights, language planning policies, legislation, Friuli, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy, Europe

The language ecologies of Indigenous Australians are changing rapidly. Fewer people are speaking traditional Indigenous languages as their first language, while more are speaking new Indigenous languages as their first languages. At the same time, the diaspora of speakers of Indigenous languages in cities such as Darwin, Alice Springs and Adelaide is growing, as people seek better access to services. is means that the chances for communities to maintain their traditional Indigenous languages are rapidly diminishing.
Language is used both to communicate ideas (communicative rights) and to express associations (identity rights).  Communication rights include the right to access information in a language one understands. People cannot make the most of self-determination if they do not have access to the best information to make the best decisions for themselves and their family, because it is only presented in a language they do not understand. 
Since the beginning of the self-determination policy, identity rights have been strengthened. Governments and communities are investing in Indigenous language revival, and in emblematic gestures such as naming places with Indigenous names and using Indigenous languages at public events. However, with respect to communication rights, the picture is patchier.  Major polices, such as the Intervention, were implemented without proper consideration of communication needs. Subsequently, interpreter services in Indigenous languages have expanded, and governments have made more effort to put information in Indigenous languages. But children still have only limited access to education in their mother-tongue along with proper explicit teaching of English. e move to monolingual English immersion education has been accompanied by the reduction of opportunities for remote Indigenous communities to obtain tertiary training (whether as teachers, interpreters or health workers) in their home communities. These two factors have greatly reduced the opportunities for people living in remote Indigenous communities to access information in order to make the best decisions for themselves and their families. At the same time, the aims of giving children good access to English, and to the content of education, have not so far been achieved.

This article presents a comparison between three regional laws, namely the contents of Law 26/2007 for the protection of the " Slovene linguistic minority " , Law 29/2007 for the protection of the " Friulian language " and Law 20/2009 for the protection of the " German-speaking minorities " adopted by the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region in Italy. The analysis is based on the framework of diversity management theories and the related functions of minority legal protection and decentralization models. The author concludes that the system of minority protection in FVG is asymmetrical, as the regional legislation has a similar structure but is separate for each group. The differences regard also the protection of minority languages and their dialects as well as the legal sources and subjects.

Through Nicholas Al-Jeloo's exhibition, the general Fairfield community is able to witness the immense pride of the Assyrian people and the celebration of Persistence & Existence. The Assyrians are a key community in Fairfield. This exhibition showcases how the contemporary life of the Assyrian people is deeply rooted in the past and traditions of Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria.

Résumé :
Sur le sol dominicain cohabitent plusieurs langues qui n’ont pas le statut qu’elles méritent
selon leur importance dans le cadre linguistique mondial. Quelques-unes y sont présentes
quelques siècles (notamment le français et le créole des migrants haïtiens), d’autres y sont
depuis plusieurs décennies, voire depuis plus d’un siècle, (c’est le cas de la communauté
anglophone qui demeure au Nord et le Sud-est du pays).
Par le biais de l’analyse des différents politiques linguistiques menées au long de l’histoire
dominicaine, on élucidera dans une premier temps les motifs pour lesquels ces langues sont
restées isolées et restreintes à leurs communautés respectives ; et dans un second temps la
situation actuelle de ces communautés linguistiques.
La question que l’on doit dès lors se poser est celle de savoir quels sont les enjeux
sociopolitiques auxquels elles doivent faire face, ou qu’elles doivent surmonter, au regard de
des politiques linguistiques menées à termes pour les successifs gouvernements dominicains.

Mots Clefs :politique linguistique ; diglossie ; langues minorisées ; enclaves linguistiques

La Carta Europea para las Lenguas Regionales o Minoritarias del Consejo de Europa cumple 25 años desde su aprobación en 1992. Con este tratado internacional se produce un avance en la protección y en la promoción de buena parte de las lenguas minoritarias europeas. Con todo, desde su entrada en vigor (1998) todavía queda mucho trabajo por hacer en la superación de una innegable desigualdad social, incluso en los países que lo han ratificado. En este artículo ofrecemos un balance de estos 25 años, desde una sociolingüística crítica e intencionadamente subjetiva.