Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

66 Language Planning and Education
ethnic lines, feeding ethnic antagonism and hardening inter-group boundaries.
Institutional bilingualism, in the words of the historian Arthur Schlesinger (1992:
cited in May 2001: 99), ‘nourishes self-ghettoisation, and ghettoisation nourishes
racial antagonism’. In short, pluralist policies threaten the forging of a common
American identity and thereby undermine national unity.
In a country as large and diverse as the United States, a single common language
is, the assimilationist argues (see Schmidt 2000: 171), a necessary bond, an essential
instrument for people to imagine themselves members of a unified society of equal
individuals. It helps transcend ethnic divisions, facilitates communication and
fosters an American consciousness.
It would not be too difficult at this point to disparage this assimilationist discourse
as too obviously self-serving, as masking the dominant group’s desire to preserve its
hegemonic privilege, but to indulge this kind of ad hominem argument would be to
miss the point that the assimilationist case emerges from a long tradition of liberal
theory regarding the structure of the nation state. In the historically dominant
conception, this is an homogenising institution composed not of groups but of
individuals whose ethnic, religious or caste differences are abstracted away allowing
them to be reunited ‘in terms of their subscription to a common system of authority’
(Parekh 2000: 181), to which they are expected to relate in a uniform, unmediated
manner. To be a citizen is to be the possessor of identical individual rights and
obligations in what Parekh (2000: 9) refers to as ‘a homogenous legal space’; it is to
transcend ethnic particularisms and give allegiance to a more impersonal authority.
Thus, with ‘several centuries of the cultural homogenising of the nation state’
(Parekh 2000: 9) as background, it is unsurprising, perhaps, that assimilationists find
it difficult not to equate unity with homogeneity.
The pluralist response to the arguments above operates on two levels: one practical
and empirical, the other more theoretical. At the practical, empirical level, pluralists
point out that multilingual states are not necessarily more prone to ethnolinguistic
conflict than monolingual ones. After all, most states are multilingual, and while
some have experienced ethnic conflict, many have not. And where ethnic conflict has
arisen, it is not usually multilingualism or language per se that is the principal cause,
rather material ethnic inequalities; though, in mobilising to secure redress for these,
minority groups may seize on language, or language-based discrimination, as a
symbol for their grievances and as a rallying point.
A related point is that coercive linguistic assimilation, unjust in itself, may actually
provoke what it seeks to prevent. May (2001: 224), for instance, argues that the cause
of many ethnolinguistic conflicts has not been the concession of minority language
rights but their denial. In this view, the best way to defuse grievance and promote
long-term stability is to display respect for the value of minority languages by
granting them space in the civic realm.
But enhancing the position of minority languages is not just beneficial for those
communities themselves. It also, pluralists argue, strengthens the nation as a whole.
This is because a multilingual citizenry enriches cultural life, and is an invaluable
asset in international trade and in matters of national security.