Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/34.12

EDITOR: Tove Skutnabb-Kangas
EDITOR: Robert Phillipson
TITLE: The Handbook of Linguistic Human Rights
SERIES TITLE: Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Wiley
YEAR: 2022

REVIEWER: Marijana Javornik Čubrić

SUMMARY
The handbook comprises 712 pages and it is divided into an introduction and five parts. The volume contains 52 articles written by 62 authors. Notes on contributors are provided before the introductory part. In the introduction, written by the editors Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and Robert Phjillipson, a concise overview of the handbook is offered. The editors emphasise that there is a very extensive literature on language rights, but this Handbook is the first one on language rights as human rights, labeled as linguistic human rights (LHRs). The importance of LHRs for achieving social and linguistic justice is in the interest of both majorities and minorities. With this in mind, the editors hope that the Handbook will contribute to combating the linguistic marginalisation, injustice and linguistic and cultural genocide that are widespread in contemporary world (3). In the introductory part the editors firstly define some of the basic concepts when discussing LHRs, such as mother tongues MTs), indigenous, tribal, minority and minoritised people (ITMs) and their languages (ITM Languages). They briefly discuss linguicism and linguistic genocide and the issue which language rights should be included in LHRs.
Part I, entitled Approaches to Linguistic Human Rights draws on various disciplines, such as international law, sociolinguistics, political theory, economic policy and historical linguistics. In the first article Robert Dunbar argues that although there is an identifiable body of rights in international law that can be described as linguistic human rights, there are also some significant gaps in this body of rights. He explains that the major international human rights treaties contain such rights, but do not confer rights to activities such as education or transportation through the medium of a non-official language. It also addresses the role of English as the global language for linguistic human rights. In his article entitled Language Policy Implications of 'Global' English for Linguistic Human Rights Robert Phillipson connects English to economic and political factors that are marginalising other languages and threatening their linguistic human rights, claiming that LHRs for all languages other than English need urgent support.
International Standards for Linguistic Human Rights are presented in Part II which mostly deals with the international standards for LHRs as defined by the United Nations Organisation, but also provides a European perspective and describes linguistic human rights in the work of the World Federation of the Deaf. The first article, however, sheds light on some shortcomings of linguistic rights such as the weak support for maintaining diversity in the face of disappearing languages, the frequent inability of minority and indigenous persons to communicate with authorities in their own languages and the one-sided promotion of major languages for economic and geopolitical reasons. Regarding linguistic human rights in the work of the UN, in his article Fernand de Varennes states that linguistic human rights at the United Nations can best be described as a 'work in progress' due to a lack of a comprehensive picture of understanding linguistic human rights.
Part III offers case studies about violations of linguistic human rights in different parts of the world. The first case study deals with resistance to the violations of linguistic human rights by the speakers of the Inuit languages (Inuktut) in Nanavut, Canada. The second article by Andrea Bear Nichols analyses linguicide and historicide through a narrative from one of the Canadian First Nation peoples, the Maliseets. Jon Reyhner describes linguistic human rights for indigenous people in the USA following the adoption of the three Native American Languages Acts (1990, 1992 and 2006), as well as current efforts to support the revitalization of indigenous languages in the USA. Minglang Zhou analyses linguistic human rights of minorities in China, noting that LHRs in China have seen improvement in some areas and regressions in other ones in the last few decades. Gerald Roche's article focuses on LHRs in Tibet and his own advocacy work in relation to the languages of Tibet. Jaffer Sheyholislami discusses to which extent language policies and practices provide support for Kurdish as a minoritized language in four states where Kurds live: Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Csernicskó and Kontra explain the plight of native speakers of Hungarians in Ukraine, while Ahmed Kabel explains linguistic human rights and politics of dignity in North Africa. The chapter written by Yirga G. Woldeyes examines the factors influencing English linguistic imperialism in Ethiopia, claiming that “English hangs like a sword of Damocles over LHRs in Ethiopia. It represents symbolic, structural and ideological power that disempowers communities from the improving of, in and through their local languages.” (401) Two articles are devoted to LHRs in India; the first one, written by E. Annamalai focuses on judicial interpretations of the law to safeguard linguistic minorities in India, while the second one, written by Shivani Nag deals with the relationship between LHRs and higher education in India from her own experience as a person whose mother tongue is Kangri. the article which concludes Part II analyses Romani emancipation and LHRs, providing some remarks on Romani people, the Romani language, the Romani movement, usage of Romani in education and the position of the Romani language on Europe's ethnolinguistic scale.
Part IV, entitled Case Studies: Implementing Linguistic Human Rights opens with an article by Markku Suksi about a linguistic human rights success story, which is the constitutionally established bilingualism of Finnish and Swedish in Finland. Another article devoted to Finland deals with the linguistic human rights of indigenous Sámi in the Finnish education system. In his article Jarmo Lainio deals with the practical implementation of LHRs in Sweden for its national minority languages, concluding that recently there has been willingness to compensate for the centuries of discrimination of the national minority languages in Sweden. The following articles analyse the implementation of linguistic human rights in Canada, Latin America, Southwest USA, Russia, Nepal, India and New Zealand.
The last part of the Handbook entitled Cross-cutting Issues in Linguistic Human Rights addresses issues such as the role of interpreting and translation in promoting linguistic human rights, the relationship between language testing/assessment and LHRs, promoting LHRs through language documentation, the rise of multilingual Internet, linguicism as deprivation of the victim’s LHRs, struggles to achieve at least some basic LHRs and linguistic justice. The concluding article, written by the editors and entitled Afterword: Pursuing Linguistic Human Rights, reminds us that we indeed live in troubled times, that few governments are committed to actively support marginalised languages, that the UN has admirable goals and documents, but it is powerless to affect what member states actually do. The last article ends with a powerful message: “Many recipes for saving the planet are encoded in the small ITM languages and the cosmovisions of their speakers.” (686)

EVALUATION
Linguistic rights are an increasingly important category of human rights. Many linguistic rights are contained in a number of international agreements, treaties and conventions. The commitment to non-discrimination on the basis of language has become a standard of linguistic legislation on national and international levels. Due to that, many linguistic rights are formulated in a negative way as non-discrimination prescriptions (Galdia, 398). Any discrimination based on language or linguistic factors came to be known as linguicism. As a concept, linguicism arose in parallel to other –isms, such as racism, sexism or ageism. Although the word linguicism is not as frequently used as, for example, the forementioned –isms, it would probably not be unfamiliar to most people who would be able to identify it as some form of discrimination based on the use of language. In this volume, the editors define linguicism as “ideologies, structures and practices which are used to legitimate, effectuate, regulate and reproduce an unequal division of power and resources (both material and immaterial) between groups which are defined on the basis of language” (10). Some authors suggest that linguicism is a powerful theoretical construct, which can be used as an umbrella concept to capture the full range of linguistic discrimination issues and stress that social factors associated with linguistic discrimination are important to shed light on otherwise potentially unheard voices in linguistic discrimination scholarship (Nguyen & Hajek, 187). This volume is a significant contribution to linguistic discrimination scholarship and it significantly raises awareness about problems related to linguicism, lack of linguistic justice and numerous violations of linguistic human rights around the world.
The handbook is exceptionally valuable for understanding and appreciating the concept of linguistic human rights and their significance for social and linguistic justice. It is well organised, illuminating and highly interesting in its entirety. It can therefore be warmly recommended not only to lawyers and students of law, but to all those interested in the protection of linguistic rights of all people and some form of linguistic justice.

REFERENCES
Galdia, Marcus. Lectures on Legal Linguistics, Peter Lang Edition, 2017.
Mattila, Heiki E. S. Comparative Legal Linguistics. Language of Law, Latin and Modern Lingua Francas, 2nd Edition. Routledge, 2013.
Nguyen, Trang Thi Thuy and Hajek, John. ''Making the case for linguicism: revisiting theoretical concepts and terminologies in linguistic discrimination research'' International Journal of the Sociology of Language, vol. 2022, no. 275, 2022, pp. 187-220. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2021-0028

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Marijana Javornik Čubrić is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb. She holds a PhD in legal linguistics. She has authored several LSP textbooks and is interested in legal linguistics, LSP, terminology and curriculum development.