[The Volokh Conspiracy] Review:

[Jacob Levy]

A while back I recommended a book in which I've got a chapter-- Patten and Kymlicka, eds., Language Rights and Political Theory. Over at Pedantry, Scott has posted the first part of what promises to be an epic three-part review essay. It's interesting stuff. I'll note that it's perfectly true that the volume does not have any contributions from linguists or sociolinguists other than Stephen May. The purpose of the book is, quite explicitly, to introduce normative political theoretical analysis to a topic that is, after all, very widely written about by linguists and sociolinguists. Joshua Fishman and his students have been at it for a very long time, and they know many things we don't. They've also been known to throw around some pretty sloppy normative-policy claims, and to ally uncritically with language preservationism as a cause with little attention to either what its costs are or to the surrounding structure of ethnic politics. By contrast, the normative-theory literature on ethnicity and multiculturalism hasn't yet paid much attention to language as a distinct phenomenon. The book is an introductory attempt to remedy both problems. It's certainly not meant as a replacement for the study of sociolinguistics. I'm looking forward to seeing parts 2 and 3... -- Posted by Jacob Levy to The Volokh Conspiracy at 8/18/2003 10:49:17 AM Powered by Blogger Pro