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Free keywords:
acculturation, arbitrariness, linguistic integration, linguistic justice, relief
Abstract:
Public debates on linguistic integration as a socially desired outcome often share a prevailing sentiment that newcomers ought to “learn the language.” But the intensity of that sentiment is rarely accompanied by an equally robust understanding of what, precisely, it means in practice. This results in a notion of linguistic integration with an inbuilt tension between a seem-ingly pragmatic and commonsensical appearance, on the one hand, and a minimal action-guidance capac-ity, on the other hand. This paper explores this intrigu-ing tension, and it identifies three moral and practical challenges that this challenge presents to the norma-tive theorizing of the practical ethics of linguistic in-tegration: (1) a predicament of arbitrary treatment; (2) the interpersonal structure of social and linguistic learning; and (3) the affective dimension of linguistic integration.
