Paper n.a.v. het 4de symposium van Re-Bel op 16 december 2010
Paper n.a.v. het 4de symposium van Re-Bel op 16 december 2010.
In the lead piece, Philippe VAN PARIJS summarizes the main claims of his most recent book (Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World, Oxford, 2011) and next spells out one of them: that a concern for linguistic justice as equal dignity justifies a linguistic territoriality principle, understood as a set of rules that constrains the use of languages in public communication and education.
Some of the commentators subscribe to this principle. Among them, Harry VAN VELTHOVEN places it in a historical perspective, François GRIN argues that the version of it that Van Parijs defends is not strong enough, especially with respect to the hegemony of English, and Jan VELAERS insists that border fixity is inherent in the principle and that the latter can be justified as much by a concern for social cohesion as by a concern for equal dignity.
Alain MASKENS, on the other hand, acknowledges that linguistic justice could justify a territoriality principle but argues that, in the Belgian case, it clashes with the demands of regional justice, with which a compromise will therefore need to be found. Henry TULKENS objects that a regime founded on fixed linguistic borders necessarily entails a denial of democracy. Finally, Helder DE SCHUTTER argues, that in the context of linguistic diversity which has now become the general rule, the linguistic territoriality principle is incompatible with the equal dignity of linguistic minorities.
In the final contribution, Philippe VAN PARIJS replies to these comments and sketches his vision of the linguistic future of Brussels, of the area surrounding it and of the Belgian federation.