Linguistic minorities can arise through conquest and colonization, immigration, enslavement, or the creation of political states that ignore locally valued ethnic distinctions. Where there  are linguistic minorities, there also exist language conflicts and issues related to the rights of those minorities to use their languages freely and without prejudice. We will examine language conflicts in a variety of nations, and show how those conflicts have affected (i) the rights of certain groups to use their own language, (ii) groups’ efforts to secure those rights, and (iii) efforts to deny those rights through legislation and other actions. The course will analyze language rights from a linguistic perspective, cover language and nationalism with special reference to the situation in the United States, survey geographically and linguistically disparate language rights cases, connect all this to issues of language vitality and revival, and consider the ramifications of language rights to language planning.

Course site: http://people.cas.sc.edu/dubinsk/LING240/index.209.html