Language Rights and Untested Feasibility: Communities Struggle Against Linguistic Hegemony

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: Developing Our Humanity in Community

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is share how Freire’s concept of untested feasibility plays out in the contested arena of linguistic hegemony, where communities push back in their struggle to maintain their heritage languages under political, educational, legal, cultural, and social duress.
According to Freire (2014), untested-feasibility is key to possible transformations geared toward a more humane and ethical future. It is what makes us fully human, in that it is related to what we feel, our sense of ethics, the things that we are willing to fight for when communities confront “limit situations”, and the possibilities inherent in our desire and dream for a better and more just world.
Historically, language has been used as a tool to subjugate communities into subservient positions, to manipulate them, and to enslave them (Eriksen,1992; Fontana, 1993; Macedo, 2003). Despite hegemonic forces, these same communities fought back, resisted, and sought ways to reclaim their linguistic rights and humanity (Clachar, 1997; Cobas & Feagin, 2008; Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas, 2018).
The research follows a critical approach in sociocultural and historical inquiry (Kincheloe & McLaren, 1994) in which three cases representing historicity (historical authenticity) interplaying with linguistic hegemony within local, national and international contexts are compared and analyzed (Woolard, 1985; Mariño Paz,1998; Bartolomé, 2006; Quezada, 2016). The critical stance is that despite linguistic abuse and cultural negation imposed by dominating forces, these communities struggle for language rights (Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove, Phillipson, & Dunbar, 2019). Data sources include historical documents, research papers, and periodicals on the three cases where language is used to control, undermine, and limit community access to heritage languages.
Language suppression, displacement and elimination have been used historically by hegemonic forces through their colonialism, repressive fascism, and other racist and oppressive forces to control, undermine, and heist, communities. Despite the constant insistence of despots to control linguistic minorities through these practices, the bravery of communities in struggle for language rights are evidence of the possibilities inherent in their untested-feasibility, in these cases emanating from the desire and dream to maintain and sustain heritage languages (Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson, 2017).
The significance of this work lies in recognizing, recording, and reporting the potential of untested feasibility in people who seek to affirm their humanity and language rights through resistance and struggle when confronted with oppressive linguistic hegemonic forces (Phillipson,1999b).

Author

• Anaida Colon-Muniz, Chapman University