The Inhumanity of Right

Abstract

dants do not have the same rights as the Danish-speaking majority for permanent residency, education, and work opportunities. Deep down, this is rooted in the fact that language is a critical means of government manipulation, and thus that language planning is ideologically-driven and politically-motivated. With more immigrants dwelling in Denmark, Faingold calls for re-evaluating “the view that language rights of indigenous minorities necessarily supersede the language rights of minority immigrants” (119). In Chapter 6, Faingold recapitulates the significant research findings and proposes directions for future research. He points out that as time goes by, the potential impacts of Brexit on the development of regional minority languages are also worth investigating. Faingold offers a thorough understanding of linguistic minorities’ language rights in the EU by situating his analyses in various legal, political and social settings. However, his study would have been more effective if he had incorporated other EU member states besides Spain and Denmark into a more comprehensive discussion of language policies. Besides, since the EU member states are given the exclusive right to determine the rights of national minorities, the protections of minority language speakers are subject to political considerations, social factors, and historical circumstances. In other words, proper contextualization is a prerequisite for conceptualizing language rights of indigenous and immigrant minorities in the EU. Despite some imperfections, the book provokes thoughts about possible solutions to address LPP issues in a context of linguistic diversity, such as the author’s own suggestion of making cautious adjustments to language laws and policies to help facilitate the linguistic integration of minorities into the EU.