But why is this true? I am not contesting that it is true or not- just asking why we assume it to be so. In my view, the reason it's wrong to discriminate against gender or race or sexual orientation is because they aren't conscious choices that people make. They are born with their gender or race or sexual orientation and cannot change it because they are biological features. However, language is not the same deal. People are not born with a certain language, though to some extent it is determined by the family they are born into and where they are born. Also, people have the ability to learn new languages throughout their lives. You do not have to be a baby, learning in an immersive environment, in order to pick up a new language. Therefore, is it really discrimination if employers don't want to hire people who don't speak the same language as the rest of their employees? Or if they can't receive certain political benefits because they cannot understand the language that political documents are written in? After all, they do have the choice to learn that language if they want to.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Minority Language Rights
I think one of the biggest things that we have assumed in this class, and that linguists seem to assume in general, is that everyone has an inherent right to learn and use their language and that every language and thus, language speaker, is equal. Therefore, we shouldn't discriminate against someone just because they speak a different language or especially because they speak a minority language.
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I've often wondered the same thing. Ultimately, though, it's a slippery slope if we think of language in purely instrumentalist terms. To a certain extent (some more so than others) "essential" aspects of identity are somewhat mutable. We think discrimination based on biologically unchangeable factors is bad, i.e. race, gender (transgendered people?), sexual orientation (many argue that sexual orientation is a choice), etc. What about religion? I think the belief that everyone has the right to their religion is a pretty strong, largely unchallenged norm, yet there's nothing biologically essential about religion.
ReplyDeleteI see your argument about religion- but I think there are plenty of real-world examples of discrimination against certain religions that are perfectly acceptable. While it may not be ok to shun everyone who looks Muslim or whatever other religion, a Catholic school could reasonably refuse to hire them simply on the basis of their religion. If they really wanted the job at the Catholic school, they have the choice to change their religion. The same goes, I think, for speakers of minority languages.
ReplyDeleteI think, like Max said, we are starting to go down a slippery slope here. Religion, and language, while not being something we are biologically born with, are often very ingrained within us. Going back to Bourdieu's concept of habitus, these two factors contribute to a deeply ingrained set of values and perceptions about the world that subconsciously affect how we act. Additionally, religion and language are very important to people's identities. For some, they might be easy to change - for many, change would be asking them to give up a crucial means of personal expression. I argue that asking them to change their religion or language is a violation of a human right to freedom of expression. I think that you can require someone to speak a language in addition to their native language (as long as everyone has equal accessibility to learning-tools!) and that someone who wanted to teach at a religious school would need to know as much as possible about that religion, but that not hiring someone on the basis of language or religion is blatant discrimination.
ReplyDeleteI can see the point of slippery slope but I still think that the situation is understandable. Furthermore, changing religion is not really comparable to learning a new language in that you do not "lose" your original language by learning another one, whereas you can only hold one religion at a time.
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