Book Review: Intellectual and Cultural Property: Between Market and Community

discussions of Viverios de Castro’s notion of controlled equivocation, they provide crucial insight into the challenges of understanding across the cultural and epistemological divides inherent in different languages. Finally, chapter 7 asks the extent to which official multilingualism has created enforceable rights in legal processes. In her consideration, Leung ponders the tensions between legal ideas of fairness and language rights. Such tensions arise, for example, with juror selection in language-specific trials; should the jury consist of a defendant’s “peers” who speak a minority language or should the jury be representative of a given jurisdiction? Leung also identifies other tensions such as those that occur with the use of interpreters and the exercise of interpretive powers held by judges. Many of these tensions highlight how the universalism assumed by law comes into conflict with the needs of minority language speakers. In this way, the chapter speaks to interculturalidad as conceptualized by Robert Aman in his article, “Colonial Differences in Intercultural Education: On Interculturality in the Andes and the Decolonization of Intercultural Dialogue” (2017). The chapter thus points to a need to look deeper into the colonial nature of law and the incongruence of legal values with other cultural traditions of justice or fairness. To further illuminate the tensions inherent in language right discussions, a decolonial perspective is necessary. In her concluding chapter, Leung summarizes the complexity of discussing official multilingualism on a global scale because of the sheer multitude of ways it has been enacted and enforced. She resists judging the value of multilingualism, noting instead the true nature of official multilingualism is power and nation-state survival. Leung succinctly states that “both symbolic jurisprudence and shallow equality are properties of a policy of strategic pluralism” where official language use is not “inherently just or unjust” but is instead one among other “viable strategies for the survival of a polity” (249). While it may be argued that monolingualism is unjust, the point here is that official status alone does not ensure linguistic survival or enforceable linguistic rights. In this light, it is important to think of official multilingualism as an always unfinished enterprise. While Leung does speak to the symbolic importance that official status can have, many factors determine the role of a language in a given society. For language movements that have achieved official status and are frustrated with the lack of substantial legal support or protection, Leung offers a clear analysis of the mechanisms they are working with, and sometimes against. While primarily a legal analysis, the focus on ideological forces makes this book important for those in the humanities interested in the sociology of language, sociolinguistics, and language planning for revitalization movements.