<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Philippe van Parijs explains in <italic>Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World</italic> the concept of maxi-min language use as a process of language choice. He suggests that the language chosen as a common language should maximize the minimal competence of a community. Within a multilingual group of people, the chosen language is the language known best by a participant who knows it least. For obvious reasons, only English would qualify for having that status. This article argues that maxi-min is rather a normative concept, not only because the process itself remains empirically unfounded. Moreover, language choice is the result of complex social and psychological structures. As a descriptive process, the maxi-min choice happens in the reality fairly seldom, whereas the max-min use of languages seen as a normative process could be a very effective tool to measure linguistic justice.</p></abstract>

Philippe van Parijs explains in Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World the concept of maxi-min language use as a process of language choice. He suggests that the language chosen as a common language should maximize the minimal competence of a community. Within a multilingual group of people, the chosen language is the language known best by a participant who knows it least. For obvious reasons, only English would qualify for having that status. This article argues that maxi-min is rather a normative concept, not only because the process itself remains empirically unfounded. Moreover, language choice is the result of complex social and psychological structures. As a descriptive process, the maxi-min choice happens in the reality fairly seldom, whereas the max-min use of languages seen as a normative process could be a very effective tool to measure linguistic justice.

Maxi-Min Language Use A Critical Remark on a Concept by Philippe van Parijs

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, European and Regional Studies

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

{"article-title":"Maxi-Min Language Use A Critical Remark on a Concept by Philippe van Parijs"}

Philippe van Parijs explains in Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World the concept of maxi-min language use as a process of language choice. He...

Maxi-Min Language Use A Critical Remark on a Concept by Philippe van Parijs

Published Online: Oct 26, 2016

Page range: 63 - 70

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/auseur-2016-0009

Keywords
maxi-min, minimex, linguistic justice, language policy, language choice

© 2016 Jan Kruse, published by De Gruyter Open

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Maxi-Min Language Use A Critical Remark on a Concept by Philippe van Parijs

Published Online: Oct 26, 2016

Page range: 63 - 70

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/auseur-2016-0009

Keywordsmaxi-min, minimex, linguistic justice, language policy, language choice

© 2016 Jan Kruse, published by De Gruyter Open

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
maxi-min, minimex, linguistic justice, language policy, language choice