Final published version
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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - The speaking citizen
T2 - language requirements and linguistic neoliberal colonialisms
AU - Fortier, A.-M.
PY - 2022/7/31
Y1 - 2022/7/31
N2 - This article concerns contemporary common-sense politics around language, integration, and citizenship that pervade Western European countries, where language is at the basis of a new model of citizenship – jus linguarum. I situate jus linguarum as the product of two seemingly different logics: the logics of neoliberalism and the logics (and legacies) of colonialism. I argue that jus linguarum obscures the fact that ‘national language’ is a historically constructed category with roots in imperialism, and allows for the disappearance of other categories, such as whiteness and middle-classness. The chapter shows how a form of ‘provincialised national languages’ arise from the tensions between the inevitability of multilingualism in today’s global world, on the one hand, and the insistence of one-nation-one-language, on the other. The analysis of jus linguarum developed in this paper forces a new understanding of citizenship where regimes of seeing and regimes of hearing combine in definitions of citizenship and citizens, through intersecting inequalities of language, race, and class.
AB - This article concerns contemporary common-sense politics around language, integration, and citizenship that pervade Western European countries, where language is at the basis of a new model of citizenship – jus linguarum. I situate jus linguarum as the product of two seemingly different logics: the logics of neoliberalism and the logics (and legacies) of colonialism. I argue that jus linguarum obscures the fact that ‘national language’ is a historically constructed category with roots in imperialism, and allows for the disappearance of other categories, such as whiteness and middle-classness. The chapter shows how a form of ‘provincialised national languages’ arise from the tensions between the inevitability of multilingualism in today’s global world, on the one hand, and the insistence of one-nation-one-language, on the other. The analysis of jus linguarum developed in this paper forces a new understanding of citizenship where regimes of seeing and regimes of hearing combine in definitions of citizenship and citizens, through intersecting inequalities of language, race, and class.
KW - Language
KW - languaging
KW - linguistic colonialism
KW - national language
KW - verbal/audial hygiene
KW - class and race inequalities
KW - jus linguarum
U2 - 10.1080/13621025.2022.2091226
DO - 10.1080/13621025.2022.2091226
M3 - Journal article
VL - 26
SP - 447
EP - 453
JO - Citizenship Studies
JF - Citizenship Studies
SN - 1362-1025
IS - 4-5
ER -