Bilingualism and Multilingualism

Official statements or policies about language can be made by governments at any level. These official statements about language may also be made at an institutional level, such as a church, labor union, or school. In general, the statements are about the status of a language, designating it as an official or national language; its form or structure (corpus), elaborating the language lexicon, or morphology; or its functions or use (including domains of use), as in the media of instruction in schools.

Government or official positions regarding language policies may be designed to promote a language through its recognition, use, or resource allocation; to tolerate the language, by not making any policies with regard to it; to restrict it, by conditioning societal benefits, rights, or services on knowledge of the language; or to repress it (sometimes referred to as linguacide), by actively prohibiting its use and its transmission from one generation to another. Very often these approaches or designs are influenced by whether the language is seen as a resource (promoting foreign-language learning, for example), a problem, or a right (human or civil). Language policies of promotion and repression may be justified in several ways, sometimes ideologically similar, such as by national unification. Their means, however, are drastically different. These approaches to language policies may favor single or multiple languages. India, for example, has two official languages—Hindi and English—and more than fifteen national languages, reflecting the status of other languages within the component states of the nation.

The juridical concept of human rights has developed over the last hundred-plus years. Language has often been considered an important aspect of these rights. Two international standards are developing: the right to be free from discrimination based on language, and the right to access (acquire and use) one's mother tongue and the languages of the community and state if they are different. In some countries these rights are tied to "individual" freedoms of expression and speech (as in some Western countries); in other countries, they are seen as part of the right to cultural integrity and identity (some socialist countries, for example, recognize clearly identified national minorities as nations with inherent rights and protections).