Language Politics in State- and Nation-building

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Language plays a central role in political organization and development. As a medium of communication and a key marker of identity, language creates possibilities for inclusion and exclusion in the political, social, and economic spheres. For these reasons, the decision to recognize some languages as official, and thus confer privileged status to those languages and their associated identities, has important implications for state- and nation-building in linguistically diverse countries. Understanding the origins of language policies and their consequences for state development and national identity thus remains an important task for scholars of comparative politics.

This panel brings together a diverse set of scholars working from a variety of empirical approaches to push the research frontier in the study of language politics. Lee, Ramachandran, and Zhang explore the consequences of official language for interactions between state and society in the postcolonial world. They argue that individuals that do not speak the official language of state administration are less likely to access the state, comply with regulations, and utilize government services. Sasaki examines the reverse relationship: the influence of state reach on identity and language. He argues that distance from the political center and early-modern tax institutions explain the origins of ethnolinguistic diversity within the state, and he tests these arguments with new data from the case of France. Fouka investigates the phenomenon of cultural assimilation through the lens of education and language policies in the context of the United States. She provides a detailed causal evaluation of the effectiveness of Americanization policies for nation-building and for the short and long-term social, political and cultural integration of immigrants. Ostwald and Oliver explore the political dynamics and the role of language as a site of contestation in the 2018 Malaysian election, which saw the first electoral transition from the dominant party in Malaysia’s history. They conceive of the election as four separate contests in four separate electoral arenas, each of which have a distinct vision of what constitutes the “New Malaysia” – a debate that concerns Malaysia’s national identity and the politics of language and cosmopolitanism.

Together, the papers on this panel offer a diversity of theoretical insights, empirical approaches, and regional focuses that promise to enrich our understanding of the relationship between language and state- and nation-building.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 11: Comparative Politics

Individual Presentations

• The Political Consequences of Language Policy for State Developments - Melissa M. Lee, Princeton University; Rajesh Ramachandran, Heidelberg University; Nan Zhang, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

• Ethnic Autonomy - Yu Sasaki, Waseda University

• When does Assimilationism Work? Lessons from the Americanization Movement - Vasiliki Fouka, Stanford University

• Four Elections and a Transition in Malaysia - Kai Ostwald, University of British Columbia; Steven Matthew Oliver, Yale-NUS College

Chair

• Amy H. Liu University of Texas at Austin

Discussant

• Amy H. Liu University of Texas at Austin