Shallow Equality and Symbolic Jurisprudence in Multilingual Legal Orders

Abstract

This book offers a critical perspective to the proliferation of official multilingualism in the contemporary world. Through diachronic and synchronic comparisons, it shows that official multilingualism has become a norm in the political management of linguistic diversity, but actual practices vary according to sociohistorical contexts and current power dynamics. It explains such convergences and divergences using a theory of symbolic jurisprudence, which posits that official language law has served chiefly as a discursive resource for a range of political and economic functions, such as ensuring stability, establishing legitimacy, balancing rival powers, and harnessing trade opportunities. The book goes on to examine the practical impact of official multilingualism on public institutions and legal processes and the application of linguistic equality—frequently asserted in multilingual polities—on the ground. The study shows that serious pursuit of linguistic equality calls for elaborate administrative effort in public institutions and carries a potential to clash with existing legal practices (from legal drafting and interpretation, to language rights in trial proceedings). However, such changes—however extensive—hardly ever disrupt the status quo. The book further argues that linguistic equality as proclaimed and practiced in many polities today is shallow in character, and must not be confused with popular conceptions of equality. The book concludes that both symbolic jurisprudence and shallow equality are components of a policy of strategic pluralism that underlies official multilingualism. Although official multilingualism can legitimately be used to pursue collective goals, it runs the underlying risks of disguising substantive inequalities and displacing more progressive efforts in social change.