Language as a Symbol of Group Worth

Hello everyone!

After our last reading, "A politics of language: language as a symbol in the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its aftermath" by David Marshall, I think it would be really interesting to discuss language as a symbol of group worth, especially in relation to ethnic groups and relative group worth. I'm reading Horowitz, to whom Marshall refers frequently, in my Ethnic Conflicts class, and Horowitz asserts that language is "a potent symbolic issue because it accomplishes a double linkage. It links political claims to ownership with psychological demands for the affirmation of group worth, and it ties this aggregate matter of group status to outright careerism, thereby binding elite material interest to mass concerns" (Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 222).

Following this, I wonder how language policy and planning can attempt to address linguistic claims, which symbolize group worth. As Horowitz asks, "how does a policymaker divide up the "glorification" of the national language?" Can we split symbols? Is there a policy that the USSR could have adopted that would have appeased all of ethnic groups and their divergent languages?

Just some food for thought.

- Caitlin